Laptop of the future
Vlad Savov of The Verge says the new MacBook is the future:
I have no doubt that this new MacBook will, over time and one or two more iterations, become my go-to laptop for both work and play. It’s headed down the exact path I want to see all portable computers pursuing: dispensing with mechanical cooling, raising resolution, reducing weight, and (hopefully) keeping battery life strong. I also love Apple’s aggressive embrace of the USB Type-C connector. There are two ports on the new MacBook: a headphone jack and the reversible USB port that’s about to become the standard for smartphones, tablets, laptops, and everything else USB. The Type-C connector will funnel everything into and out of this new notebook, serving as its power supply and, with the requisite adapters, wired internet port, its HDMI video output, and its SD card reader. The adapter part is where (costly) annoyances will arise.
The new MacBook might not be so suitable for my usage patterns (external monitor & charging laptop in one place most of the day) but it’s interesting to see the compromises Apple is willing to make to push portability forward.
This is the same strategy they used with the MacBook Air. They pushed hard for portability in the first release, to howls of disbelief, and then improved the specs in subsequent iterations as the technology improved. The same concerns facing the MacBook today (lack of ports, under-powered processor) faded away in subsequent iterations of the MacBook Air as the specs improved and user behaviour changed.
Ultimately, the choice for the average user boils down to: better portability every day or extra ports that are not used every day. And portability wins.