Sins of the super skinny models: Apple’s new 12-inch MacBook

The new MacBook and a next generation of laptops are incredibly slim, but there’s a cost.

Apple MacBook

This is a story about Apple’s new 12-inch MacBook and lust — one of the deadliest of the seven deadly sins. Apple has gone to extraordinary lengths to produce a notebook whose appeal is lust. What else can one conclude, given it’s a quarter thinner than the 11-inch MacBook Air.

Lust, after all, makes us do things we later regret. And buy things too.

Apple certainly wants you to lust after the MacBook as much as desire it. (Fittingly, I’m belting out this review with Carl Orff’s Catulii Carmina blaring in the background to tap the vibe.)

But the question must be asked — is the MacBook a case of form over substance?

You may fall instantly in love with the MacBook, as some of my colleagues did. But is it the notebook you’ll desire the morning after if, say, its battery does not last the distance while the juice still flows through your warm-blooded MacBook Air?

Having said this, the 12-inch MacBook is remarkable technology, with features designed to deliver its incredible wedge-shaped thinness. It’s 13.1mm thick and weighs 920g.

The backlit keyboard is 34 per cent thinner, with keys attached to a butterfly mechanism that offers decent tactile feedback. I am writing this review on the MacBook and have no trouble typing at full speed.

Like the new 13-inch MacBook Pro, the 12-inch MacBook comes with Apple’s Force Touch trackpad, which hardly moves downward when you press it. That would be a waste of space, you see. The trackpad instead creates the illusion of moving downward by sending artificial feedback to your finger.

But the quest to be the world’s skinniest notebook comes at a cost. Alas, there are only two ports on the MacBook, a USB-C port at the top left-hand side and a ­headset socket opposite it. Apple says the MacBook is designed for the future world of wireless ­technology.

Sure enough, it has built-in 802.11 ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 for fast connectivity. But to deck it out for this wireless future, you’ll need to buy a Bluetooth mouse that doesn’t use a dongle, and a wireless-connected hard-drive for auxiliary storage. There’s no USB 3.0 port for plugging in a flash drive, nor one for Apple’s heavily promoted lightning cable.

The alternative is to cheat, to buy USB-C adaptors that let you attach wired devices. In Australia, a USB-C to USB adaptor from Apple costs $29, a 2m USB-C charge cable $45 and a USB-C digital AV multiport adaptor $119.

It has three ports: a HDMI out slot for mirroring the MacBook screen to a TV, a standard USB 3.1 port for attaching flash drives and cameras, and a USB-C port for charging. You can get a variation of this with VGA instead of HDMI.

For me, the multiport adaptor is a must, delivering most of the missing wired functionality I want. But you’ll need to remember to carry your adaptors with you. ­Expect third-party vendors to quickly manufacture other USB-C adaptors. Belkin already does in what will be a healthy market for adaptors.

I’m not suggesting a totally wireless future is unreasonable, but you’ll need to buy new items.

There is potential however to adapt your portable USB battery chargers to the MacBook as the same USB-C port is used for powering it. You get a USB-C cable that connects to the unit for charging.

The MacBook’s other great feature is its equally skinny high-resolution retina display. Apple says the screen is less than 1mm thick with a resolution of 2304 x 1440 pixels. That’s somewhere around 2K resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels and a tad shy of MacBook Pro screen resolution. The screens displays the same crisp fonts as on the Pro, and watching video on it is a joy.

The trade-off is the lower speed Intel dual core M processor, rated at 1.10 gigahertz. The Core M is designed for mobile computing, delivers Intel’s high-definition 5300 graphics, good battery life and is fastish. It’s cool enough for the unit not to need a fan.

But it’s not as powerful as Intel’s Core i3/i5/i7 processors in a ­regular MacBook Air. The high- definition display sucks more juice and there’s limited space for a ­battery.

In my tests, watching video at 75 per cent display brightness, the MacBook lasted 7.5 hours whereas my 13-inch MacBook Air with a Core i5 processor lasted almost 10 hours. The MacBook’s battery life is good, but not as great as the Air’s.

Tests with Maxon Cinebench R15 returned slightly lower graphics card and main processor performance than with my 13-inch Air. Disk read speeds, however, tested better.

So the MacBook is not quite as powerful as the Air range, and its battery life is a tad shorter. Whether this is important to you will depend on how you use it. If it’s for basic word processing, emailing and web browsing, it may not bother you.

Then there’s the cost. The MacBook is more expensive than all MacBook Air models, but if you join the world of sin and lust, none of this will bother you.

The ­MacBook is available now.