On Wednesday Apple set the death of the MacBook . No , not its entire line of laptops , which made up 70 percentage of the Macs sold in the company ’s just - finish third quarter . get the chopper is the $ 999 clean plastic MacBook , which has held down the low - cost ending of Apple ’s laptop line for year .
If you ’re searching for a cause for the MacBook ’s demise , depend no further than the product line Applealso update on Wednesday : the MacBook Air . In 2010 , the 11 - inch MacBook Air joined the MacBook at the low end of Apple ’s laptop product wrinkle .
This new multiplication of MacBook Airs swelling off the MacBook entirely . Rather than tally Thunderbolt and Intel Core i5 processors to the MacBook , that offering is being sent to the laptop computer necropolis . As of now , if you want to purchase the down in the mouth - monetary value Mac laptop available , it will still cost $ 999 — but now it ’ll have an 11.6 - in display and a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 processor . Users who demand a 13 - column inch laptop computer will now compensate $ 200 more — thebase - point 13 - inch MacBook Pro ( ) costs $ 1199 .
This ends a long rivulet for the adjectiveless MacBook . In terms of design philosophy , the MacBook ’s linage traces back ten long time , to the release of a shiny white polycarbonate iBook in 2001 . The iBook name became MacBook in 2006 when Apple switched the Mac over to Intel processors . The new MacBook appeared in both sheeny white and matt black manikin , with the black fashion model being more or less infamous for its “ disastrous tax”—it cost $ 150 more than an identically configure white manikin . The MacBook was the first Mac to sport the straight key layout that now beautify all Apple keyboard , laptop and USB alike .
In 2008 the MacBook in short assumed the aluminum look of the respite of Apple ’s laptop computer stemma , and Apple polemically released it without a FireWire port . When that model was upgrade to add FireWire , it joined the MacBook Pro line , allow the world without a MacBook until recent 2009 . That was when Apple introduced a fictile version of its “ unibody ” laptop design . It ’s this design that survived until the discontinuance of the product Wednesday .
