White MacBook Killed Off In Favor Of Air

Apple has quietly retired its white plastic MacBook, with the company's Mac range now consisting solely of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro notebooks along with the Mac mini, iMac and Mac Pro desktops. The MacBook – which had stuck around as a perennial student favorite – had not been refreshed since March 2011, and the consensus was that Apple would likely replace it with the basic 11.6-inch MacBook Air.

The fact that the Air and the MacBook were both priced at $999 didn't do anything to dissuade those rumors, though those buyers wanting to match the plastic notebook's 13.3-inch display will have to step up in the range. The 13.3-inch MacBook Air starts from $1,299, in fact, though that does get you 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, not to mention its 1.7GHz Core i5 processor.

So, little surprise that Apple has pared down the range, though that's not to say the MacBook name couldn't be reborn at a later point. Apple seems perfectly content with its computing pincer-movement of the present, however: offering everyday users more interested in browsing and multimedia the iPad, while those looking to get work done get to pick from a more grown-up notebook range.