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By Dan Moren for Macworld
No man’s land: The lack of MacBook middle ground
Recently, in taking stock of my primary computing hardware, I noticed an interesting trend: Over the course of the last year, I’ve swapped out almost all of the devices that I use every day. I replaced a 2011 iMac with a new 2017 5K model. My iPad Air 2 got superseded by a 10.5-inch iPad Pro. And, of course, my iPhone 7 was turned in for an iPhone X.
Some of this is the nature of the job. When you write about tech, people want to know about the latest and greatest devices, and there’s not much to say if you don’t have access to those devices. But some of it is about your own usage, too. That iMac was getting too long in the tooth for some of the things that I do every day (namely podcast editing); I wanted to get an Apple Pencil, which didn’t work with the Air 2… and so on.
But usage also can be an impediment to adoption. Case in point, the one machine that I didn’t upgrade: the very 11-inch MacBook Air on which I’m writing this column. Because for my usage, this early-2014 laptop still fills a niche that can’t be addressed by either the MacBook Pro or the new MacBook.