Apple’s latest Retina Macbook is a controversial product. It is a Macbook that is thinner and lighter than the ones called Macbook “Air”, thus making the naming standard a bit incorrect. It also use the new USB-C standard and only have 1 port, for charging and everything else. If we want to use the port for something else while charging, we need a separate adapter, and many people seem to hate this design decision. Finally, Macbook 12″ 2015 is powered by Intel Core M processor, slower than i1 or i7 in other Macbook models, but the processor allows such a thin design because no fan is required, at all.
I got my Macbook as one of my work gear. When asked to choose between Macbook Air or this new 12″ Retina Macbook, I was contemplating. The super-thin and lightweight design (920 gr) will make 12″ Retina Macbook very convenient productivity tool to carry around. However, I was worried about few issues that might become a problem: the slower Core M processor, the single port of USB-C and the arguably-small screen size. Macbook Air 13″ seemed like a “safer” choice, but the less weight and Retina screen made me choose 12″ Retina Macbook instead.
With all the unique design choices, clearly 12″ Retina Macbook is not a laptop for everyone. Many reviews I found discuss people’s experience of using this product for a specific role. I work as Digital Project Manager. Sometimes my role requires me to do work at unusual timing (e.g. near midnight or during weekend activities). This post is about my experience in using this laptop for my specific usage pattern.
Overall Design
Super thin and lightweight design are the major selling point of this laptop and here I can say that it delivers what I expected. 12″ Retina Macbook is unbelievably thin and having it inside my everyday bag does not feel like I am carrying a laptop at all. The Apple logo does not glow like in most other Macbook models, but I am happy to exchange a glow I rarely see with the super portability.
Having said that, using a super lightweight laptop does have few minor quirks that I did not expect before. One, I have long-time habit to open a laptop using one hand. So far I can do this with most laptop I have used, including a 13″ Retina Macbook Pro from few years ago. This new Retina Macbook is so light to the point I need both hands to open it. The bottom side of the laptop is not heavy enough to keep the laptop stable when I open it using one hand. Two, the weight is also too light for keeping the laptop stable when plugging (and unplugging) the USB-C charging cable. I can get used to these after few days, but certainly worth to mention here.
Real Usage Speed
Any formal benchmark would put the performance of Intel Core M processor below its more popular siblings (i5 and i7) being used in other Macbook models. However, having lower score in formal benchmark does not necessarily translate into worse actual user experience.
My daily use of 12″ Retina Macbook 2015 consists of opening two browsers (Chrome and Firefox, each have 7-15 open tabs), MAMP app to run local server of digital products I am working on, Atlassian SourceTree app to access remote repo at Bitbucket, Dropbox app to keep my files synced, Slack app for communication, MeisterTask app for task management, Brackets app to open and work with source codes and FileZilla app for FTP. Occasionally I would also use of Pixelmator app for simple image editing, Napkin app for adding notes in screenshots, Flowchart Designer app to create flowcharts, iTunes app to play music and Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac to create documents or spreadsheets. Most of my project management tools are cloud-based, so browser tab is all I need for them.
The unit I have is the low-end model with 1.1GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor (Turbo Boost up to 2.4GHz) with 4MB shared L3 cache, 8GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3 onboard memory and 256GB PCIe-based onboard flash storage. So far I did not notice any issue with performance. 12″ Retina Macbook is reasonably fast to handle these apps without any major issue. Booting time is as fast as I expect it to be, app loading time is nowhere near being uncomfortable, generally I do not think the Core M processor hindered any of my productivity work. In a way, I guess the 256GB flash storage plays an important role to achieve this user experience, thus compensating the lack of performance from the processor.
Admittedly, things became a bit sluggish when I opened too many tabs in my browsers. At one point I opened around 40 tabs in my Chrome because I needed to do some research-and-compare, and I got quickly reminded that the machine I was working with was not the Macbook Pro or iMac.
Clearly, 12″ Retina Macbook is not a machine for everyone. I would not recommend designers who are using Photoshop or Illustrator heavily to use this laptop. It is simply not a good match. However, for some other professions, such as project manager or a digital developer, or other people using laptop mainly for browsing, social media and editing documents, this laptop is surprisingly capable.
One USB-C port for everything
I was having serious doubt about a laptop that only has one USB port and also use that single port for charging. Turns out, I don’t use that port as often as I imagined it to be. All computers in my work place are iMacs, everyone uses iPhones, therefore I can easily AirDrop everything. At home, I also use Apple computers, making a lot of things doable without any USB device and without having to install third party file transfer solutions.
Still, at one time I needed to copy an important file from a USB drive and I could not do it. Not because the port is being used for charging, but because the port is USB-C, a new standard that is only recently introduced and not many devices use this new standard, yet. So my USB drive with “classic” USB connection can’t be plugged into the only port in this Macbook. I ended up copying the file to another Mac first, then used AirDrop to transfer the file. Still, very inefficient work. So I got myself a simple USB-C to USB converter from Incipio (cheaper than the official one from Apple) and had no problem in transferring files.
As I wrote in Overall Design section, I am more annoyed with the fact that I need to use both hands to unplug my charging cable now. I feel this as a huge downgrade being a person already spoiled by the magnetic MagSafe chargers for years.
Display size
As expected from Apple device with Retina display, this new Macbook has gorgeous display. The 12″ size is actually more than usable. I don’t notice any significant “downgrade” from my 13″ Retina Macbook Pro. However, of course it does feel very different when I regularly switching from using 27″ and 12″ screen. 27″ Retina 5K display wins by a landslide.
Other Aspects
Few other aspects worth to mention here is the new keyboard, force touch enabled trackpad, battery life and temperature. The new keyboard has a totally different feel from anyone who used any other Macbooks before. This new keyboard uses Apple’s new butterfly mechanism with 17% larger keys but 40% thinner. Thinner keys mean our fingers will experience less movements, less “pressing down” feeling, yet somehow still get the tactile feedback. I use Apple Magic Keyboard with my 27″ iMac, this Magic Keyboard is said to use butterfly mechanism as well, yet the keys are still deeper than the ones in 12″ Retina Macbook. Keys in 2015 Macbook almost do not “move” at all, and that might be a problem for some people. For me, it took me about 3 days of steep learning curve before I got used to this keyboard.
Force Touch enabled trackpad is nothing but a gimmick at this point because it does not have as many supporting apps (yet) and the experience of using force touch on a trackpad is nowhere near using it in a touch-enabled screens. Perhaps this will improve in the future, but for now, I just can’t see it as a major selling point. Finally, the battery life is somewhat decent. Apple promises 9 hours of battery life. I generally get around 7 hours of usage before the battery reaches below 20% and I reached to my charging cable. If I leave it until near empty, maybe I will actually get 9 hours.
Finally, the temperature of 12″ Retina Macbook is generally lower than the temperature of my Retina Macbook Pro. I find this quite impressive considering that this laptop does not have any heat-fan at all. The only time I notice reasonable heat on this Macbook was when it was charging while I worked. So, charging while doing some light activities brings the temperature slightly higher than not charging while doing some serious productivity work.
Conclusion
Overall I am quite happy with this Macbook as productivity machine. It’s lightweight and very portable. The processing power is still surprisingly decent, despite having low on-paper specs. This is clearly not a computer for everyone, but most people that do not expect gaming or serious multimedia work would find this laptop very usable.
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