Thoughts on the Macbook Air Successor

There has been some hot takes on the new Macbook Air rumored by Mark Gurman of Bloomberg. For a few years Macbook Air has been Apple’s top-selling Mac by a long shot. It’s been a good combination of price, power, and traditional ports for a lot of people, especially students. I’ve been thinking about what kind of machine I would like to see replace the Macbook Air at the entry-point of Apple’s lineup. I think that the best scenario would be Apple retires the current Macbook Air, Macbook, and entry-level Macbook Pro line and introduces a machine that’s stationed between the Macbook Air and Macbook. The Macbook was supposed to be Apple’s replacement to the entry-level Air, but the Macbook never got cheap enough or powerful enough to really replace the Air. I’m hoping we see a Macbook that is a blend of the two computers, a little bit thicker than the Macbook, but with the slim bezels for a more modern design. I think they should have 2x USB-C ports (1x on each side) and a headphone jack, that would make it a more flexible machine by giving it the simple ability to charge and plug in something at the same time. I think it should start at 13” for the screen size, but also have bigger a 15” option. I think the baseline should hit $999, which would put it at $900 for Education and the higher end models, especially the 15” model comes with the Touchbar and TouchID, features that I really see as beneficial to the average consumer. Finally, they really should use the traditional Intel i5-class of processors, not the Atom-based units that never seem to have enough power. I feel like the new Macbook Air replacement should simple be called the “Macbook” and come in the variety of colors like the iPhone and current Macbook line. That would simply branding and make the differences between the Macbook and Macbook Pro more obvious. The Macbook Pro would allow for the bigger 15” screen, graphics cards, more ram, more storage, more IO, etc. So, that’s my hopes, I guess we’ll see in a month or so from now what Apple is actually planning. I’m hoping they use this opportunity to reset the consumer Mac line this fall and simplify things.