Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the company’s newest laptop at its Spring Forward Apple Watch Event on Monday, Mar. 9 and it’s the tech giant’s thinnest, lightest and smallest yet. But the most glaring update is the model’s single port.
The new MacBook has just a single USB Type-C port, or USB-C, and a headphone jack – and that’s it. It doesn’t even have a fan. The single port means, for example, you can’t charge your laptop and your phone at the same time, or output video to a monitor while inputting files from an external data source. And none of your flash drives, hard drives, phone chargers and anything else using a standard USB will work – you’ll have to use an adapter until they release the USB-C Lightning cable.
While some spectators are grumbling about the updated design, this is standard Apple conduct, catering not to existing consumer behavior (like how we watch movies on our TVs via our laptops with our hard drives plugged in), but to a forward-looking vision of where the industry is headed.
Remember when they dropped the floppy drive and serial port, then Firewire ports and CD-ROM drives? And they skipped Blu-Ray completely. This new “one port to rule them all” will encourage data transfers over wireless connections and Cloud-based storage, disrupting the market and pushing it towards a cordless future.
The new MacBook also features a new, pressure-sensitive touchpad with force sensors, allowing for an expanded suite of gestures, like deeper clicks to fast-forward videos and force clicks on address links to open the Maps app.
And the keyboard has a new key mechanism designed for greater precision, higher accuracy and thinness.
With nine hours of battery life, the 12-inch model weighs just two pounds and is 13.1mm thick, with a 0.8mm thin outstanding Retina display at a resolution of 2304 x 1440 pixels.
And it comes in a gold-finish option, like the latest iPhone, with a retail price of $1,299.
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