The 2015 MacBook Review
by Ryan Smith on April 14, 2015 10:15 AM ESTThe MacBook's Design
In terms of overarching design, the MacBook is both treading new ground and much of the same. As we’ve mentioned before, the big promotional point for the MacBook is how small it is. And yet at the same time Apple has retained more or less all of the stylings that have come to define the modern unibody MacBook family design. The end result is a laptop that looks and acts almost exactly like a smaller MacBook Air or Retina MacBook Pro.
This leads to the new MacBook having all of the contours and finishes we have come to expect from a MacBook family laptop. The all-aluminum unibody design continues to impress and holds up well even with the MacBook’s smaller form factor. For the MacBook in particular it serves two goals for Apple, the first being to give the device a premium feel, but the second is to serve as a means of cooling the MacBook.
For one of the biggest changes in the MacBook compared to the MBA is the fact that this is a completely fanless design. There are no fans or even vents on the laptop to move heat or hot air; the closest thing that comes to a vent is the grating at the top of the laptop, above the keyboard, which houses other items such as the speakers. Otherwise all real heat dissipation is carried on by the aluminum case itself, which in turn is made practical by the use of the ultra-low power Core M processor. This also means that the MacBook is silent, containing no motorized parts and the only moving parts being the keyboard keys, the trackpad, and the screen hinge. The MacBook Air for its part was seldom loud, but for whisper quiet there’s no topping fanless.
Moving on, Apple retains the sloped design of their MacBook Air, leading to this MacBook having a similarly variable thickness. At its thickest part, towards the rear of the laptop, it’s just 13.1mm thick, and towards the front of the laptop this narrows to just 3.5mm. As with the MacBook Air I’m not sure if this sloped design is really necessary or beneficial versus a flat design, or if Apple does it merely to show off, but if you like your wrists low to the table, then at 3.5mm at its thinnest point, the MacBook is among the thinnest. Meanwhile the fact that the edges are also curved makes the MacBook deceptively thin overall, as even at 131mm it doesn’t feel even that thick when grabbed from the edges.
Perhaps the most notable – and admittedly cosmetic – change from the MacBook Air is the Apple logo on the top of the laptop. The iconic lit white logo is gone in favor of a black mirrored logo in its place. Apple doesn’t specifically address the logo, but with the tight constraints on both thickness and battery life – Apple needs to get 9+ hours off of a 39.7Wh battery driving a 12” Retina display – I suspect Apple finally sacrificed the logo to further save on power.
The other big cosmetic change here is the color of the aluminum laptop body itself, which in a first for an aluminum Mac now comes in multiple colors. Further reinforcing the crossover nature of the device and its place between a tablet and a traditional laptop, the MacBook comes in the current iOS device colors of Silver, Space Grey, and yes, Gold. Silver will be the closest to the traditional aluminum look, Space Grey is as close as you’ll get to a black MacBook, and Gold continues to defy our own expectations and be a popular color on Apple devices. Overall the current coloring is limited to just the MacBook, but given Apple’s drive for style, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if this eventually came to the Retina MacBook Pro as well, though perhaps not the MacBook Air for cost reasons.
I also want to quickly call attention to the lid hinge in the MacBook, which is something I feel Apple has done very well with. In such a thin and light laptop the percentage of the laptop’s weight that’s carried by the screen/lid has gone up, which risks the laptop becoming top-heavy. Not only has Apple managed to avoid a top-heavy design, but the hinge is as perfectly balanced as I’ve ever seen. The hinge is just loose enough that even trying to quickly lift the lid can’t really torque the laptop’s base up, and yet no looser than it needs to be. As a result the hinge still offers plenty of resistance without it being a problem for the relatively light base, and the laptop can easily be held at 90° without the lid dropping.
Moving on, we’ll cover the ports in depth a bit later, but we did want to quickly note the MacBook’s choice in ports while discussing the design. In another example of Apple minimalism – or maybe just another sign of the tablet/laptop crossover – the MacBook only has 2 ports: a USB Type-C port, and a 3.5mm combo jack for audio. All wired power, data, and video is routed over the single Type-C port, and the laptop itself is thin enough that there’s not room for something much larger, at the very least not without making the laptop thicker or eliminating the base’s curved sides. This makes the MacBook very much like an iPad, with its single Lightning port and a 3.5mm combo jack, and has some definite repercussions for usability.
With regards to internal design there’s not a lot we can say at this time – Apple doesn’t like us disassembling review samples – but in lieu of the eventual iFixit teardown, Apple has posted a handful of sanitized shots of the MacBook’s internals. Apple is keen to show off the MacBook’s miniscule logic board, which is only 1/3rd the size of the 11” MacBook Air’s board. Much of this is enabled by the use of the Core M processor, itself using an especially small package to leave room for other components. This is combined with a highly integrated design that sees the RAM soldered on the board, and I suspect the SSD as well, meaning virtually nothing here is replaceable short of the entire logic board itself. In any case, along with this Apple has forgone some of the 3rd party chips like Intel’s Thunderbolt controller, which reduces to a minimum the number of chips they need alongside the Core M processor.
Update 04/15/2015: The iFixit MacBook teardown is in, giving us some excellent shots of the logic board. These pictures show us just how little is there beyond the Core M CPU, the RAM, SSD, a couple of extra controllers, and the necessary power management hardware.
With such a small logic board, Apple has filled out the rest of the laptops internals with batteries, 39.7Wh worth to be precise. This ends up being just a bit more than the 11” MBA’s 38Wh battery, again despite the smaller overall footprint, and is a result of Apple’s use of their new layered lithium polymer batteries, or as Apple likes to call it, their terraced, contoured battery cells. Overall LiPoly has slightly lower energy density than Lithium Ion, however in return it’s a more malleable medium, allowing for greater shape customization, which is what Apple is taking advantage of here. The end result is that Apple is able to better fill out the sloping, rounded case of the MacBook with battery cells by terracing them, squeezing out what little space would have otherwise remained.
Taken in overall, the MacBook has a distinct iOS-device feel to it at times. This is most immediately apparent from the selection of chassis colors, but digging deeper it extends into the electronics and internal design choices as well. Pairing a relatively large screen with a small logic board and filling out every nook & cranny with batteries is very much the iPad way of building things, never mind the fact that the Core M processor itself is designed in part to be a high-end tablet processor. Then of course is the port selection: just a single combined power/data port, and then the 3.5mm jack for audio.
The end result is a device that has an interesting laptop/tablet crossover design to it. The MacBook is still without a doubt a Mac laptop, but it’s also more like an iOS device than anything before it. Consequently while it’s still primarily meant to be used as a laptop – just a very portable, very light one – it’s also clear that Apple envisions it being used like a tablet. To be charged overnight, carried around and run during the day, and then put back on its charger for the night.
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tpoccu - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
Did you write something similar about the original MacBook Air, you know the one that cost about 3 times as much as this, also had only USB, video out (micro-DVI if memory serves which nothing else ever used), and a headphone jack, and had atrocious performance compared to its contemporaries? The same MacBook Air that only one redesign later would go on to become the defacto standard for how mainstream laptops are built now. I suppose it is easier to rant without any use for foresight.Schickenipple - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Seriously, BittenRottenApple: You need to get laid.All companies will do whatever they can to sell whatever they can because they want to make money and people will continue to buy their stuff. If being 'informed' means that consumers will turn into you and start spouting useless crap on technology forums for hours at a time, then they would probably rather pay a lot of money for a new OS X device and have some fun. Even if it is just a sweet-looking netbook. Grow up and quit wasting your energy on this stuff.
Also: Change your username to something less troll-like and cliché. We all knew exactly how your comment would read before even reading it.
karpodiem - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
I laughed through reading some of this, but agreed with much of it than I disagreed with.Spot on
star-affinity - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
”They eliminate all ports except for one outdated USB port?”How is it outdated? USB 3.1 barely just hit the market.
”Other operating systems can be installed on just about any computer you can slap together, whereas OSX is specifically and deliberately designed to be non-functional on ANYTHING that isn’t made by apple.”
Not true – OS X works very well on my Hackintosh with very few modifications.
I wouldn't get this MacBook, but the recently updated 13" MacBook Pro looks quite nice in my book. I think OS X is worth a lot. There's less hassle with it overall (compared to Windows) and I can work much more switfly using it (less actions/steps needed for most common tasks). I say this working at an IT department at an office where there's computers running both Windows and OS X.
You don't have to like Apple or their products, but I don't thinks your criticism (or should I say rant) is very balanced.
sunnohh - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
Computers last 2 years for most Apple users 3 tops. Source former Apple certified repair tech. 1300 isn't that much money. And as a dedicated PC gamer with a Titan rig 24 USB ports; gigs of ram and inches of monitor; this MacBook seems like a great little second machine. I prefer portability in a laptop to power and as a somewhat fancy individual there are literally zero times I would ever need a port on a laptop other than power, which with an 8 hr battery can be discretely done from home. Some people have grown up jobs and need shiny Apple products and Mercedes cars to fit in at work.I am an extremely informed PC builder yet I choose Apple products because they are astonishingly high performing elegant bits of jewelry/PC. Ever compare the hinges on a MacBook to a Lenovo or asus? Good Christ. Apple sound quality? 100% better then the next best PC or android bar none. And I've tried everything and seen every measurement not even close. Color quality check.
Sure it's a cult but it's reasonably priced for the quality, especially compared to a Benz. And the best part of Apple ownership is I can have Apple pie and windows and it's ok. Seriously it's fucking awesome.
vista980622 - Wednesday, May 20, 2015 - link
There are some valid points there, and as a semi-professional video editor + graphics designer, I definitely know I'm not its' target audience. The new MacBook is designed for people who use computer differently than we do, and I'm glad a lot of my friends and people around me love the tiny laptop that is beautiful and light.vista980622 - Wednesday, May 20, 2015 - link
And I do enjoy the XPS 13 :)farhanshaikh74 - Sunday, May 24, 2015 - link
I was die hard apple fan from so many years and used to propagate apple products to such an extent that I am called Late Steve Job's best marketing guy in my hospital!However over last three years as Apple has stopped producing simple MacBook pro which are upgradeable (like mid 2012 MacBook pro) with DVD drive, I am feeling their vision of "design should include how things work" philosophy is losing its sheen.
Now they are selling only MacBook Retina, no non-retina laptops!, No laptops with DVD drive!! No laptops with 8GB RAM with normal Hard disk Drive which is upgradeable!!!
They are forcing us to buy ONLY Retian, with a fixed Flash drive which is meagre 126Gb or 256 GB, and those which come with 500 GB are exorbitantly costly.
They are forcing us to use iCloud for storage, without realising that in many parts of the world accessibility to WiFi and iCloud.
I am serious restricted by fixed 256GB Flash drive on my late 2013 Retina MacBook pro as I bought this expensive laptop, but struggling for space and the Flashdrive is not upgradeable!!
From last one week I am seriously considering Apple products and going back to Windows.
The design team in Apple is ignorant to a large population, who loves apple products and have moderate budget, they are busy catering only to high end products at premium price.
If this continues, they will find very few people using iOS in future and Apple will die its own death.
This is serious, as a die hard fan of Apple like me is writing such a comment!
Stimpak_Addict - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
Check out Thunderbolt 3. It seems like they made this form factor to accommodate it once it's finalized (and hopefully they'll include at least 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports with the next iteration).jdw1992 - Sunday, June 14, 2015 - link
I have to point out a serious area you lack on knowledge. You berate USB as being outdated compared to thunderbolt. If you were speaking of anything but USB C you would be correct. However, and I do not know why Apple did not point this out, USB C and thunderbolt are now one and the same. Intel announced that the standard known as Thunderbolt is now part of the USB C standard. In other words, Apple is the first to land the next generation of peripheral ports, the most versatile and fast one to date.