Apple’s 12-inch MacBook line-up made its debut in March of last year. It revolutionised the portable computer industry and was quite the eye catcher. But its notable omissions in connectivity options made consumers hold back on their purchase. Jumping one year ahead, a refresh of the 12-inch MacBook has been announced and it may not be what was expected.
With notable improvements only seen on the processing power and battery front, the new 12-inch MacBook now ships with the current-gen Intel Core M3 processor, which is a considerable step up from the first generation of Intel Core M processors however it’s not as beefy as the full fledged Intel Core-i series of processors that feature on all other MacBooks from Apple. The inclusion of Intel HD Graphics 515 and faster PCIe flash support may be welcome additions, but the sacrifice in processing power has allowed Apple to improve the battery life on the 12-inch MacBook to 10 hours, lasting one hour longer than the older MacBook.
Internal changes apart, the shell of the new 12-inch MacBook remains unchanged from last year with Apple sticking to their much criticised approach of featuring only one USB-C port on the machine for connectivity. Although they have added a rose gold option for the new 12-inch MacBook, Apple may have missed the trick by not providing consumers with at the very least, multiple USB-C ports.
The new 12-inch MacBook starts at $1299 for the base variant featuring 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Optional upgrades to processing power and storage are also possible for an added price and you may check out Apple’s official store here for full details, which has already been updated to reflect the refreshed 12-inch MacBook line-up.
