Ten years ago today, Apple unveiled the 12-inch MacBook to the world, claiming it had “reinvented the notebook” for the better. The laptop almost instantly divided opinion, with fans and detractors at each other’s throats from the start. And sure, it was by no means perfect, but look a little closer and I think you’ll find a device that has had a monumental impact on the world of computing — not just on Apple, but on the industry as a whole.
The 12-inch MacBook is often seen as a flop and as a product emblematic of the excesses of Apple’s Jony Ive era, where the design guru’s penchant for thinness and lightness ruled all. The fact that this MacBook was discontinued after just four years is seen as proof of this idea.
Yet I see it as something else: a precursor to many of the class-leading features that Apple fans enjoy today. Sure, it was deeply flawed, underpowered and overpriced. But it was also way ahead of its time and brilliant in so many ways. Ultimately, we probably wouldn’t have many of the features we see in the best MacBooks today were it not for the 12-inch MacBook.
Innovative new features
When the 12-inch MacBook launched, it attracted attention for many of the wrong reasons. For one thing, it was expensive, with its $1,299 price tag on a par with the MacBook Pro. That alone made it tough to swallow, but when you realized you were only getting an Intel Core M chip for your money — a chip that was designed for mobile devices rather than high-powered laptops — it really stuck in the craw.
As well as that, the 12-inch MacBook introduced the now-infamous butterfly keyboard, which was uncomfortable and prone to failure. Apple spent years trying to fix and refine this keyboard before giving up entirely. And then there was the gold color — the first time we’d seen this in a MacBook — which just felt plain pretentious.
Yet at the same time, this laptop packed in some incredible features not found anywhere else. It was amazingly thin and light for a laptop, drawing comparisons to when the original MacBook Air was unveiled in 2008 to shocked audience reactions. Ironically, the 12-inch MacBook threatened to cannibalize the MacBook Air, as the former was now far more slimline and portable than the Air.
The 12-inch MacBook also introduced the large Force Touch trackpad, an ingenious feature that is beloved to this day and has inspired copycats across the industry. And while it might not have been the first Mac with a Retina display, it still got this before the MacBook Air, showing that even portable notebooks could come with fantastic screens.
There’s more. Not only did Apple pack in an innovative battery design that helped it last all day despite its super-thin chassis, but it even managed to go without an internal fan, giving you the kind of silent operation that wouldn’t be seen again until 2020’s Apple silicon MacBook Air.
And then there was the single USB-C port, which the 12-inch MacBook was the first to offer in Apple’s laptop range. At the time, the move was mocked for ushering in the ubiquitous “dongle,” but it also helped spur the industry on to adopt USB-C far more widely. Now, it’s everywhere you look. In a way, it was reminiscent of when the iMac G3 dropped the floppy drive. No one misses those disks now.
Time for a reappraisal
It’s easy to remember the worst elements of the 12-inch MacBook. Don’t get me wrong, I was absolutely not a fan when it launched, and I know I’m not alone there.
But armed with a few years of hindsight and the knowledge of what the device went on to inspire, I think it’s worth reappraising the 12-inch MacBook. While its failures were many, it also helped introduce numerous class-leading features that you can find today in Apple’s MacBook lineup.
The way I see the 12-inch MacBook is that, like the equally notorious Apple Newton, it was a good idea done too soon. It was ahead of its time and wasn’t able to deliver on the promises it made, and while not all of its features were on the money, many of them were. Indeed, the ideas it embodied have driven Apple devices forward, and plenty of them have been widely adopted across the market.
The 12-inch MacBook may have failed, but Apple returned to the idea of a fanless, lightweight laptop driven by a highly efficient chip a few years down the road in the form of 2020’s Apple silicon MacBook Air. Some of the 12-inch MacBook’s best concepts are still alive today, even if the device itself has been consigned to the history. And that’s got to be worth something.
