Buying a MacBook in 2017 shouldn’t be this hard. The amount of confusion around specifications, hardware options (to TouchBar or not to TouchBar), #DongleLife and more have created a messy ecosystem that’s so unlike Apple, it’s hard to believe it exists.
I’ve been using a 2014 MacBook Pro for a few years now. It’s a serviceable laptop that’s still going strong. Its aluminium shell is still pristine, that Retina Display is still as gorgeous as ever and I’ve all the ports I could ever need. The device is showing its age now, however, and while I want a new MacBook, the upgrade path is just too complicated.
Till 2015, the choice of MacBook was easy. If you were on a budget, you bought a MacBook Air. If you wanted something more powerful, you simply bought a Pro in either the 13-inch or 15-inch variant, customised to your liking. If you felt like it, you could even manually upgrade your storage. If you were invested in the Apple ecosystem, everything would just work.
Fast forward to 2017, and the options couldn’t be more confusing.
Display: Sizes and standards
In 2017, there are four display options to choose from. You can go a non-retina 13-inch display on the MacBook Air, a 12-inch Retina display with a standard colour gamut (100 percent sRGB, 70 percent P3) and either a 13-inch or 15-inch display on a MacBook Pro, which supports wide colour gamuts (100 percent P3).
Why is Apple offering a non-retina display in 2017 and why aren’t all the displays P3-compatible? I’ve no idea.
What’s P3? In layman’s terms, a P3-compliant display can display about 40 percent more colours than a regular display. Reds, greens, blues, they’ll all be more vivid and you’ll notice less colour banding in images.
USB-C: USB-Confusion
The biggest highlight/controversy related to Apple’s new MacBooks is that they all support USB-C. Apple’s been preaching the benefits of USB-C since they introduced it to the MacBook in 2014, and I don’t think the company appreciates how complicated they’ve now made life for everyone.
The biggest confusion for everyone, something that Apple doesn’t clarify, is that USB-C only refers to the shape of the connector, not its capabilities.
