Originally Posted by Robo
I think the problem with the 12-inch MacBook was in part a branding problem, but not in the way Apple imagined.
When Apple introduced the first MacBook Air in 2008, they sold it alongside the MacBook and MacBook Pro as a third sort of computer, different from the entry-level MacBook and the powerful MacBook Pro. It was premium, but in a very different way from the MacBook Pro. "MacBook Air" was a second type of premium product: users understood they were paying a premium for miniaturization. It wasn't intended to be the cheap MacBook for everybody.
But then in 2010, the script flipped. The second-generation MacBook Air, with a design that was in some ways less premium than the original, replaced the MacBook as Apple's cheap MacBook for everybody. It kept the MacBook Air name, however, even though it was the Default MacBook. And then, in 2015, Apple introduced a new, more expensive, more compact notebook where users paid a premium for miniaturization. And they couldn't call it MacBook Air, because the Default MacBook was called MacBook Air, so they called it just "MacBook." It was totally backwards.
They shouldn't have convinced themselves that the 12-inch MacBook was going to be the new "everyday" notebook. A vision statement of what everyday notebooks would look like a few years down the road, sure, but it was never going to be able to get down in price to be the cheap MacBook for everybody with expensive bespoke components like terraced batteries. It was the new MacBook Air, in the 2008 sense of the brand. The 12-inch MacBook was frequently dogged for being overpriced even though there wasn't anything in the industry comparable to it. To me, that's a positioning problem.
But just as crucially, once the MacBook Air design was adjusted for the mainstream in 2010 and became the cheap MacBook for everybody, Apple should have dropped the "Air" modifier. Because there will always be an opportunity for a premium miniaturized version of a product, just like there's always an opportunity for a premium higher-performance one. They shouldn't have tried to act like the mainstream cheap MacBook was the premium miniaturized version, even if it was the same size as the previous premium miniaturized one (and smaller in the case of the 11-inch), because that just painted them into a corner. Especially with the 2018 model, the entire point of the so-called MacBook Air was that it was cheaper and had a larger screen than the more compact model, albeit at the cost of additional size and weight. The naming was completely backwards!
I'd love it if we could get back to the base MacBook being just the MacBook, and then the MacBook Air could be the super-svelte premium model. How great is it, how freeing, that the base iPhone isn't called iPhone Air? If that iPhone needs to be thicker than the higher-end models (as it currently does) it can be, without causing a weird contradiction. I get why Apple keeps using the MacBook Air name — it's hugely popular — but I'd argue that the the MacBook Air name became popular in the 2010-on era, when it really should have just been MacBook all that time. That's why I've described these positioning mistakes as original sins; they were choices made years ago that have consequences for the clarity of the line to this day.
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