The original 12-inch MacBook was used as a pioneering device. Will it be a shrunken-down MacBook Air and take after that device’s design language, or will it have a slightly chunkier format akin to the MacBook Pro? Or will it instead sit in its own individual MacBook line and thus look slightly different? That’s unknown for now. Its design will probably depend a lot on which MacBook family it is part of.
We think it’s therefore likely that the 12-inch MacBook will follow suit.
Recently, Apple has moved to bring its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines together in terms of visual styling, with both laptops adopting similar flat-edged designs. Apple also needs to worry about how such a laptop would fit into its already-full lineup, which includes both the M2 MacBook Air and the M2 MacBook Pro. The 2015 12-inch MacBook came with a launch price of $1,299, but it’s possible the revived version could cost more since Apple has been increasing its laptop prices of late. Only time will tell.Īs for the pricing, that remains unknown at this point. Or it could be that Gurman is wrong on the release date. It could be that the sources Young and Kuo spoke to are not aware of the device simply because it is so early in the development process and manufacturers have thus not been informed of it. Companies in the MacBook Pro display supply chain we talked to are not aware of. Young, for his part, has said “Apple’s strategy for notebooks is currently 13” and larger. Display industry expert Ross Young and seasoned Apple tipster Ming-Chi Kuo both allegedly checked with their sources and came up empty-handed. However, other prominent analysts are more skeptical. Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, who has been one of the strongest proponents of the 12-inch MacBook revival idea, says the device is “still in early development” and probably won’t see the light of day until late 2023 or early 2024. Right now, it looks like the 12-inch MacBook is a long way from release.
So, what can we expect? Will the new model be like the original 12-inch MacBook, or will it be taken in a new direction? We’ve rounded up all the news and rumors into this post to help you get up to speed. If that proves to be true, it would be a comeback for the ages.