Why Apple will NEVER bring this MacBook back...

here's the thing about Apple they really don't fail very often but when they do they have a tendency to do it spectacularly remember this can't innovate anymore my ass yeah that line and this Mac Pro have basically lived in infamy ever since that moment in 2013. this thing was a failure no doubt about it Apple even admitted that they were wrong with the direction they went for the 2013 Mac Pro but there was another product one that honestly failed to a greater degree that a lot of people actually really like I'm talking of course about the 12-inch retina MacBook and I have a love hate relationship with this thing because ever since the very beginning I wanted this to be brilliant and when Apple announced it they set this up as the future of mobile Computing so we challenged ourselves to take everything that we had learned in designing iPhone and iPad we challenged ourselves to reinvent The Notebook but the craziest thing was they did and we did it normally when Apple says that they're going to reinvent something that just means taking away a port that you used to use or making it thinner but this laptop is completely new the technology required to make this laptop possible was more dramatically different from the previous models than Apple silicon is from Intel yeah that's how significantly Apple changed this laptop and yet after it launched in 2015 it got two minor spec bumps and then they killed it but the device itself and a lot of the technologies that it introduced are still with us today and are still shaping modern Computing but before I explain what the hell I'm talking about a quick word from today's video sponsored today's video is sponsored by clearvpn the VPN that I love to use clearvpn comes from macpaw the creators of clean my Mac X who have been a long time supporter of the channel they've reworked clearvpn for a streamlined user-friendly experience that emphasizes the most important features it uses top tier encryption and employs a strict no log policy so no online activity or personal info is collected or stored see clearvpn believes that your data is private so they offer a secure browsing module for free to all users clearvpn is the VPN that you can trust and you'll love using so whether you want to secure your browsing experience change your location or access streaming services from anywhere in the world clearvpn has painless setup in seconds it is so simple to use it is really really fast and with plans starting at just 3.50 it's affordable as well and you can use promo code El miani with the link in the description below to save even more get three whole months for just 10 bucks so why wait check out clearvpn today so let's break down why the 12-inch retina MacBook was so revolutionary this thing is a complete reinvention of the laptop that is for once not a hyperbole Apple actually reinvented nearly every single component to make this possible so let's break it down in what I call the 10-step recipe for making a revolutionary laptop [Music] the first step is your goal and the goal here was simple make the most portable radical laptop ever made so step two we gotta figure out how big it needs to be and the simple answer is the keyboard it has a full size keyboard it goes all the way to the edge that actually defines the size of the notebook Apple didn't want to shrink a keyboard they never have they never will so that is our defining characteristic but in a device this thin it's also got to be a really shallow keyboard enter the butterfly mechanism and honestly we don't need to get into that because we all know how that ended so now that we have our keyboard it's on to step three the display and quite simply it's got to be a 12 inch panel because you can't fit anything that much larger anyway but beyond just being small this display has to be thin and light so Apple came up with a whole new structure for building really thin display panels that are still bright and honestly it aged pretty well this is an eight-year-old laptop and the the display still looks really good step 4 the track pad there's not enough room in something this small for a traditional clicking track pad so we're gonna have to come up with something totally new a solid state glass track pad with capacitors and electromagnets that simulate the sensation of a click the force touch trackpad is legitimately one of the most incredible things that Apple has ever put in their laptops we all kind of take it for granted now but as a technology it's absolutely brilliant so things are looking pretty good so far we've got our display and our input devices but this being a portable device you're gonna need some batteries and how do you fit them in something this thin well traditional rectangular batteries aren't going to work so of course what you're gonna do the obvious answer is to come up with contoured terraced battery cells in fact we got 35 percent more battery within the same space by these new contoured cells do you know how hard that is to do you I've actually got a bottom case for a 12 inch MacBook right here and you can see how wildly shaped these batteries are this is not something that you will see in any other laptop and that brings us on to step five the logic board we got to fit a computer in this thing and take a look at this bottom case see this tiny little space up here that's that's all the room there is for the computer and this is it this is the entire logic board for the 12 inch MacBook this is quite simply the smallest logic board in any Mac ever made even Apple silicon the M2 MacBook Air doesn't even come close to this level of size and density but the other thing that you're probably not noticing on here is a fan that's right step six you gotta build the first fanless MacBook or sorry as Phil Schiller put it the device with the circular shape on the right well that's a fan with vent support what the heck is vent support it's just a weird way to say that I I've been thinking about that for eight years and unfortunately that brings us to step number seven when you have a fanless board that's this small there's really not a lot of options for chips that you can put on it obviously we are five years out from Apple silicon so Apple had to unfortunately turn to these it's powered by an Intel Core M 5th generation 14 nanometer process you can configure it with speeds up to 1.3 gigahertz and yet all that performance just consumes 5 Watts oh yeah yeah and you can definitely predict how things were going to end when they put those chips in the peak of Intel's complacency era where they had basically no competition yet those chips are garbage not only are they unreliable but they're painfully slow that chip honestly doomed the 12-inch MacBook like more than any other factor that was the one that just didn't work but that brings us on to step eight and this one is a bit of a sneaky step in fact they only talk about it very briefly but Apple came up with this system for combining the antennas for your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with the speaker housing that's genius and step nine design a pair of really dang good speakers this is the laptop that started Apple's Relentless March towards increasing the sound quality on their devices this was legitimately the best sounding laptop Apple had at the time and it was also tiny and finally that brings us to step 10. you guessed it it USBC when you make a device that's this small there's no room for ports so as Phil Schiller said if we're going to have a port on it let's make the most versatile connector we've ever put in a notebook the technology behind this is a brand new standard called USB C and you're going to see it appear in more products but first you see it here and honestly he's not wrong I mean people made fun of the USBC Port back in 2015 but I think honestly it's aged pretty well Apple was right about USBC and so when you combine all of these things you've got a recipe for the most portable most radical MacBook ever made but you've also got a recipe for failure because out of a lot of those Technologies some of them really didn't work the butterfly keyboard we all know how that ended and this logic board as as impressive as it was to make something this dense it was hideously unreliable vastly underpowered and it was just ahead of its time it was too early to make something this thin and light and portable but why not do it now ever since the rumors that Apple was switching to Apple silicon people have said this is the perfect device for that you could honestly pull a chip straight out of an iPhone and put it in this exact same design fix the keyboard and you'd have a great device but the problem is while this MacBook was too early to succeed I think it is now too late for this design the ship has kind of sailed I mean just look at the M2 MacBook Air this is honestly pretty close we're maybe 80 percent of the way to the 12-inch Macbook so to have these devices exist side by side wouldn't really make sense I think Apple took the more sensible decision of making a larger MacBook Air because there are probably more people that would want that extra screen real estate than would want that tiny extra little bit of portability and in fact this reflects a reversal in Apple's strategy in recent years they used to be all about making everything as thin as possible but that got them into some trouble we had keyboards that were barely usable we had MacBooks that thermal throttled we had iPhones that bent and after Johnny Ive left Apple I think there was a reckoning there they said why are we doing this why are we so obsessed with making everything thin to the point that it compromises its functionality and that's why now we have this 16-inch MacBook Pro that's a thick boy but it's thick for a reason you get so much more battery life cooling capacity performance and ports by doing that so I think that the 12-inch MacBook is more important than Apple will ever admit this was the device that kick-started the push towards Apple silicon and away from making everything as thin and light as possible at the expense of all other things it was a failure but it was a kick in the pants that Apple needed to get us to where we are today which is the best laptops in the world so I don't think Apple's gonna bring back the 12-inch MacBook and I think that's probably for the best as much as I would love to see another one but I'm really curious to know what you guys think should Apple bring it back or am I right that its time has come let me know in the comments below and of course be sure to like comment and subscribe I will see you guys in the next one [Music] [Music] oh [Music]

Channel: Luke Miani

Views: 154,921

Keywords: apple, apple silicon, 12 inch, macbook, college, laptop for school, portable, ultrabook, intel vs apple silicon, apple history

Id: 6CkEyCYWJKQ

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 16 2023