I'm Worried About Apple's MacBook Air Replacement

The MacBook Air is about to get its hotly-anticipated replacement, and I doubt I'm alone in being worried. The Retina hold-out has long been on borrowed time, looking increasingly out of place in Apple's shiny – and controversial – notebook range. My big question is, as it crafts its successor, will Apple forget the reasons the MacBook Air is still so popular despite its age?

There's no denying that the current MacBook Air is ready for a rethink. Last updated in early 2017, with slightly faster processor options and 8GB of memory as standard, the roots of that model still date back two years or more before then. No Retina display, no Thunderbolt 3, and clinging to old ports that altogether help single it out as a throwback to an earlier age of Apple laptop design.

The concern is that Apple gets so caught up in making a beautiful, refined, "modern" notebook, it forgets one fo the reasons the MacBook Air has been a perennial success. A big part of that is price, but it's also about convenience. Two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, an SDXC card slot, Thunderbolt 2, and a headphone jack may look fairly old-fashioned at this point – particularly when compared with the USB-C-heavy MacBook Pro – but it's also a socket sweet spot for many.

Trying to read the Apple tea leaves is always a dangerous game, though it's also fair to say that Apple has some history in attempting to nudge users further up the price scale. The 12-inch MacBook was, to some extent, pitched as a MacBook Air replacement, only one with a significant premium attached.

For a long time I used a first-generation 12-inch MacBook as my everyday notebook, and I was a big fan – even of the keyboard. I'd be the first to admit that it wasn't an affordable machine, though, particularly if you took into account the accessories needed to work with the majority of peripherals. The USB-C landscape may have improved since that original laptop came out in early 2015, but even today it's still not ideal.

The 2015 MacBook committed the sin, therefore, of having fewer ports and a bigger price than the MacBook Air many were hoping to upgrade from. Given Apple's strategy in the intervening years, there's no reason to believe this new, 13-inch MacBook would be much different. The company has gone all-in on USB-C, and the few rumored specs we've heard about don't exactly chime with the idea of a "cheap" notebook.

If the sources are to be believed, the new 13-inch machine will finally get a Retina display. Where that will leave the notebook in relation to the 12-inch MacBook and the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro – both of which are currently $1,299 – is uncertain. If Apple wants to bring this new machine in at under $1k, matching the current MacBook Air's price, it may very well need to cut some corners to achieve that.

"Cutting corners" isn't exactly Apple's favored strategy. Indeed, pushing the top end of the range and pricing accordingly has done nothing but pay dividends for the iPhone, where unit sales may not be rising but average spend per device certainly is. Faced with that evidence that tech fans will, even if reluctantly, open their wallets a little wider if that's demanded of them, Apple could opt to abandon the $999 price point altogether.

That's good for Apple's bottom line, and for its shareholders too, but it doesn't bode well for those hunting down a bargain. The Cupertino firm's wares have never been rich-pickings for those on a serious budget – refurbs aside – but sub-$1k is at least realistically attainable for many. Will that last?

Price is, often, the last thing to leak. Whispers earlier in the year hinted that Apple was considering a "slightly higher" sticker for this new 13-inch model. With the MacBook Air replacement set to go upmarket, and rumors around the new Mac mini – itself finally said to be getting an upgrade after languishing for four years without a refresh – being targeted at pro-users this time around, it's unclear just where the first rung into Apple's range will be.