the MacBook early 2015 is here is it as
amazing as Apple's inability to keep it in stock anywhere and the appearance of
sealed units on eBay for greater than retail price would indicate or is it a
colossal failure and only worthy of being burned with fire or given my usual
water treatment well one or both of those things is definitely coming so get
subscribed now if you aren't already
Kingston casc 310 series business grade ssds feature firmware based power loss
protection massive capacities and performance to spare in fact we're using
them for our new production server click right here to learn more about them this
video promised to be one of the
easiest that I'd ever written and yet it ended up being one of the most difficult
I thought it would be easy because I summed up with the help of our buddy
John ringer from TechnoBuffalo my thoughts on the thing over two months
ago and figured I could pretty much Point vaguely to my left and say
basically that but it was difficult because now that I've actually been
Hands-On and using it as a daily driver I'm finding the 12-in retina MacBook
early 2015 edition whatever it's called
man I hate their naming scheme a little bit more difficult to hate a little on
the top of the unit under our protective dbrand vinyl wrap is a plain blasted
anodized aluminum finish with an app app logo Square in the middle on the bottom
is more plain aluminum and I guess this would be a good time to point out that
it can be silver gold or space gray with some assembly screws and four black feet
that are surprisingly non grippy making it easy to slide around on the desk then
on the sides we find one of the main sources of the controversy that exists
around this product a 32 mm combo audio
jack on the right and a single tiny USB
type-c connector on the left that's it
so out of the box you are expected to use the built-in Wireless ac867 megabit
Bluetooth or that USB port so it better
be one special USB port then right well actually it kind of is so for starters
and this is important it is not a USB 3.1 10 gbit Port rather it runs at the
older USB 3.0 5 gbit speed but because
it uses the type-c connector it gets some extra fancy functionality number
one is power it can both deliver more power than a standard USB 3.0 type a
port and it can receive power to charge
your notebook which is good because it's sure not getting power from anywhere
else number two is alternate modes which
use auxiliary pins in the type-c connector to enable extra functionality
like HDMI or DisplayPort video output with more fancy adapters soon to come
but lonus you might say I wouldn't have needed any any of that adapter stuff if
I just had a Meg safe power connector and a couple of normal ports on it
Lenovo and Jus managed to devices this th without removing all the ports why
couldn't Apple do that great question
moving on the MacBook has a silky smooth albeit a little bit flimsy feeling one
finger hinge that opens to reveal some of the actually more interesting things
that Apple has done under the hood I'll start with the webcam it's a piece of
crap and I'd say Apple's design team should be embarrassed but this is the
same company that put a microphone on the back of an all-in-one PC so I guess
anything goes around there so let's move on to the display why is it that apple
is the only one willing to Buck the industry 16x9 aspect ratio Trend and put
a 16 by10 display on smaller devices
where that extra vertical space is a freaking godsend thank you Apple for the
Bright Beautiful 2304 x440 stunner of an
IPS monitor that you've cred into this device since I use a Razer Blade 14 as
my daily driver I instantly started swiping around on it only to realize
that Apple still thinks a fraction of a millimeter is more important than a touchscreen so the rules are similar to
the local strip club but hey it's better than a p and Ice Cream Sandwich and I'll
take it under the screen are the surprisingly not horrible speakers most
devices this thin are basically unlistenable and will actually cause
vibrating Distortion when turned up to the max but while I didn't experience
any thunderous base while watching The Avengers Age of Ultron trailer the
experience was actually not too shabby which leads us finally to the meet and
potatoes of any notebook video what's it
like to actually use the thing well the story starts before the device was even
shipped when dbrand thoughtfully offered to pre-load Windows for me I told them
no don't worry about it it's okay to which they replied are you sure you'll
need the type-c breakout adapter from Apple which is out of stock and a USB
hub just to plug in the two flash dri required for the boot camp setup
process and that's really the experience in a nutshell want to do casual things
like watching HD YouTube videos around the house willing to use another
separate computer every time you want to plug in a mouse or transfer files off
your camera great experience want to do any kind of power user stuff on the go
although that stuff I just mentioned hardly feels power user to me buy
something else because you'll either be carting around adapters that negate the
ease ofuse benefits of thin light or you'll be constantly frustrated but
while it's easy to hate on and the lack of ports all but eliminates this MacBook
as an option for someone like me there were some things I really liked about
the device the haptic feedback touchpad and keyboard both very controversial
design choices stood out to me actually as a step in the right direction I'll
start with the touchpad instead of a hinge at the top and a mechanical
downward movement to make it click to save space that Apple assures us was
used to cram in more batteries for that 99 hours of web browsing per charge the
entire surface of the spacious glass
toop capacitive touch pad is pressure sensitive and vibrates when you press a
little bit to simulate a click then again with an adjustable pressure
threshold in software when you press harder it's awesome this isn't your
dad's haptic feedback that makes the whole device shake and sounds like it's
going to fall apart it's incredibly subtle and I'm willing to bet that if
you didn't tell your mom that the touchpad doesn't actually press down she
would swear that it was moving down and
on top of that it's really useful since there's no driver support in Windows for
the feature not to mention the annoying delays on double touch to drag I had to
fire up OS 10 which thankfully I somewhat know how to use thanks to this
video series where it does loads of cool
stuff like allowing quick renaming of files and folders file previews getting
shipment details when you force touch a tracking number previewing links in your
browser and much more Paradigm shifting
I wish it was more customizable but who knows maybe that's to come then again it
is Apple the keyboard though is one that
many more people are raising hell about and I get it Apple's butterfly switch
another space- saving feature does not have the same satisfying tactile
feedback of a mechanical switch or even a half decent scissor switch but I have
to give them credit here I may not enjoy the typing experience and I don't but if
I evaluate it objectively then all I can say is this unlike ASUS they squeezed an
ambient light sensitive backlight in there like Microsoft's original touch
cover it's extraordinarily slim and
without practice I am similarly fast with a similar number of Errors compared
to my razor blade that's impressive
which I guess lands us at the conclusion for this video where I usually try to
summarize what the product is and who it's for so that'll take a bit longer
than usual because those answers are anything but simple here what is it on
the surface it appears to be a MacBook Air usurper with no IO that apple is
cramming down our throats by refusing to modernize the air with a decent screen
and storage but if we dig a little deeper and look at that tiny basically
iPad sized PCB that apple is bragging about we discover what it really is a
tablet whose touchcreen was stolen and replaced with a keyboard cover while it
wasn't looking making it a proof of concept product for two things at least
two things number one the rumored upcoming Apple CPU if a core M can power
a hyper mobile yosity experience then I
wouldn't be surprised to see an A10 or a11 chip do that in a couple of years
and number two USB type c since it gives
Apple a chance to ship this undoubtedly thoroughly validated but not yet field
tested connector in a relative L low volume product before they risk
deploying tens of millions of phones and tablets in the upcoming refresh only to
discover that it caused all kinds of problems and as usual the what is it
goes a long way towards helping us answer who is it for not me that's for
sure as much as I absolutely love the battery life and I can't help but feel
just a little bit cooler when I whip it out and start typing away at the airport
I've got to do and you'd have a much easier time selling me an air with a
decent screen thanks to it much more powerful Hardware not to mention the
unassailably technologically Superior Thunderbolt and Meg safe power connector
combo whose benefits range from additional speed and device daisy
chaining to the fact that some in Starbucks isn't going to trip on your
cable pulling your1 thousand computer off the table right as you were about to
save that latte powered novel you've been working on in fact the only
downside is that Thunderbolt stuff like docks is generally more expensive than
USB stuff but on top of the MacBooks inexplicably large price premium
compared to similar devices like the ASUS Zenbook ux 305 Apple wants $80 for
a fracking USB breakout dongle anyway negating a lot of the cost savings but I
told myself this wasn't going to turn into a rant so I won't do that and I'll
just do a Snappy ending line like um so if Apple wants your devices to reflect
who you are as a person then I guess if you bought a Macbook 12-in late 2015
retina you're the kind of person who's not in a hurry and even if you were you
don't have anything particularly important to do but you need to do it
for a long time in between charges and look really cool while you do it
speaking of looking cool Ting's mobile network supports the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus
so you can look cool while talking on your phone without paying more than you
have to they're the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and
customer satisfaction which means when you call them you don't talk to a robot
you get through directly to a person you
also pay for only what you use with the average Ting bill at about 24 months 24
months $24 per month per device if
you're stuck in a contract te will cover up to 25% of your cancellation fee up to
$75 and if you head over to lin.com and
try out their savings calculator and sign up you'll get $25 on service credit
or towards a new device so check that out
now so I think that's pretty much it guys thanks for watching like the video
if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment preferably at the form Link in our video
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they even sell MacBooks on Amazon I don't know if you do buy a Macbook on
Amazon I really don't recommend this one wait for an upgraded air hopefully it's
coming thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe not to
mention there are many excellent options for PC notebooks too just saying
f