8 MACWORLD FEBRUARY 2020
MACUSER APPLE’S NEXT MAC SHOULD BE CONSUMER-FOCUSEDThe iMac’s design has remained largely unchanged since 2012.portable segment of the Mac lineup that is
crying out for attention. At present, that
range, once the crown jewel of the lineup,
is surprisingly sparse. The 13-inch
MacBook Air is a good product, and will,
presumably, be even better once it
hopefully ends up with the same
redesigned keyboard in the 16-inch
MacBook Pro—but it’s only one machine,
with relatively few configuration options.
I get it, I do. Apple’s learned a lot from
what’s actually important to users with its
successes in the iOS device market,
where options don’t go beyond color and
storage capacity. At times, the company
has been dinged for taking some of those
lessons too close to heart, such as
emphasizing qualities like thinness and
light weight over computing power.
Now that Apple has addressed
many of those criticisms with
the redesigned 16-inch
MacBook Pro (and,
presumably, some as yet
unannounced but likely
update to its 13-inch
counterpart), it may be
time to refocus on a
few of the other
benefits that it could
import from its iOS
lineup. Thinness
and lightweight
aren’t inherently
bad—throw in some all-day battery life, and
there’s a compelling Mac laptop that a lot of
consumers would probably jump at the
chance for, even if it meant sacrificing some
power in exchange. A lightweight laptop
designed around a custom-built Apple
processor seems like it would go a long
way to filling that niche.
More to the point, it would provide
another very distinct option alongside the
MacBook Air—because as good as the Air
is, one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to
laptops. There’s a reason that the 11-inch
MacBook Air and 12-inch MacBook existed
alongside larger, more powerful
counterparts. Even the iPad has
multiple consumer
options, from