So the new MacBook shipped this week. Not the Air, not the Pro — just "the MacBook," which is a naming decision I have Thoughts about but that's not even the thing I want to complain about today. The thing I want to complain about is the port. Singular. One port.
Apple showed this thing off at the "Spring Forward" event last Monday, the same event where they finally told us Apple Watch pricing (starts at $349, ships April 24, and yes the gold Edition model apparently runs into the five figures, which is its own separate insane conversation for another day). But the Watch is getting covered by literally everyone this week so I'm not going to add to that pile. I want to talk about this laptop, because I think it's a more interesting story than the smartwatch honestly.
Here's the deal: the new 12-inch MacBook has exactly one USB-C port on it. That's it. No MagSafe. No regular USB-A. No SD card slot. One port that has to handle charging, external displays, wired ethernet if you need it, everything, and you need a dongle for basically all of it. It starts at $1299, it's fanless, it's stupid thin (13.1mm, thinner than the Air), and reviewers who got early units this week are split right down the middle on whether this is visionary or just annoying.
I've been reading through embargo reviews since Wednesday and the split is kind of fascinating. Some people are calling it brave, the same word Apple used itself in the keynote, which, fine, marketing is marketing. Other reviewers are just straightforwardly annoyed that you cant charge the thing and plug in a mouse at the same time without buying a $79 multiport adapter separately. I dont own one yet (not paying $1299 to be a beta tester for Apple's port philosophy, sorry) but if I'm being honest my gut says this is going to be one of those decisions that looks prescient in five years and painful for the first eighteen months. USB-C is clearly where things are headed. Everyone building phones and laptops is going to land there eventually, it's a genuinely nicer connector, reversible, one cable to rule them all in theory. But being early to a standard nobody else has adopted yet means you're the one person at the coffee shop digging through a bag for an adapter while everyone else just plugs in.
The keyboard is the other big change nobody's talking about as much and honestly probably should be. New butterfly mechanism, apparently way less key travel than the old scissor switches on every other Mac laptop. I typed on one for about four minutes at a friend's place who preordered on launch day (he works in insurance, no reason he needed to be first in line, he just likes being first in line for things, which is a whole personality type I both dont understand and am slightly jealous of) and it felt genuinely strange. Not bad exactly. Just different in a way that made me second-guess every keystroke for the first minute. Shallow, clicky, precise. I could see getting used to it. I could also see hating it forever if my hands didnt adapt.
Oh, and HBO Now got announced at the same event, which is maybe the more consequential story long-term and got buried under all the hardware talk. Streaming HBO without a cable subscription, $14.99 a month, launching in April exclusively through Apple to start. If that actually works the way they're describing it, that's a bigger deal for how people watch television than a laptop port. Cord-cutters have been asking for exactly this for years and now it exists, at least on Apple devices for now, with everyone assuming Android follows eventually.
Anyway. I'm not buying the MacBook. My 2013 Air still works fine and I refuse to be an early adopter of dongle life on principle, even though I fully expect to eat those words in about two years when every laptop looks like this one. That's usually how it goes with me and new standards — dig in for a while, complain loudly, then quietly buy the thing once it's not weird anymore.