I miss my Air, but love my Pro... until I toss it into my backpack.
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2026
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Apple
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Mac Book Crystal? Mac Book Water? Mac Book Hobby?
Probably just „MacBook”. Apple segments their offerings into 3/4 tiers these days and it’s a bit unusual that there’s only 2 major product lines for their laptops, both of which having their name imply being adjacent to some regular one.
They have 3 tiers for MacBook, now:
- MacBook Pro
- MacBook Air
- MacBook Neo
I’m little surprised they would add a fourth. The naming is normal for a while now like Mac Mini and Mac Studio for desktop.
Completely forgot Neo existed. My brain seems to refuse to accept they didn’t name it SE. I’m going to write an angry letter to Apple now. They’re going to overdo it now with rumours of MacBook Ultra.
In the late 2000's and early 2010's, the base MacBook used to be the base model laptop: the cheapest option, nothing special in terms of performance or quality. Then, if you wanted a more premium option, there was the MacBook Air for thinness or the MacBook Pro for the highest performance features and hardware.
But the thinness of all laptops started to encroach on what made the Air special, and the general march towards cheaper electronics made it so that the base level MacBook didn't make a ton of market sense when the MacBook Air was $999, and the MacBook Pro's special hardware differentiation started to trickle down to the cheaper models, too (high DPI "retina" displays, aluminum unibody construction, huge multi-touch haptic trackpads). So there wasn't a place for a base MacBook anymore. The Neo came in and took that old space once Apple developed a willingness to sell a laptop for less than $999.
I'm just not seeing what market segment a base MacBook is intended for, at this point.