In 2015, Apple released the first 12-inch MacBook. By reviving the iconic MacBook brand, this laptop was everything an Air model should have been at the moment but still wasn’t, featuring a built-in Retina display, very light, and a beautiful design at the same time.
Although some Apple evangelists would say otherwise, this Mac had a few flaws. It had a butterfly keyboard, which was a good idea but a bad implementation since it easily broke, only one USB-C port for both charging or using an accessory, and it had an Intel Celeron processor, which was incredibly underpowered.
In 2016, Apple released a new iteration. In 2017, the company unveiled a final version with the Intel Kaby Lake m3 processor and a new butterfly keyboard with faster storage and memory.
This 2017 12-inch MacBook lost a few colors in 2018 and was quietly discontinued in 2019. Even so, Apple continued supporting these Macs with software updates.
With macOS Ventura in 2022, Apple dropped support for the 2016 model, and now with the recently-announced macOS Sonoma, the latest 12-inch MacBook will no longer update to this version, meaning Apple is once again killing its MacBook brand for good.
Interestingly enough, there’s only one Mac from 2017 that Sonoma supports: the iMac Pro. Besides that, Apple requires a Mac model launched in 2018 or earlier, even though this new update doesn’t bring several new features.
macOS Sonoma focuses on video conferencing tools (for both FaceTime and third-party apps) while adding a new Game Mode for Apple Silicon Macs, improving gaming performance on the platform. It also improves iMessage, adds widgets to the desktop, and offers more privacy features for Safari. The new operating system will have a public beta available by July, and Apple plans to release the official version to all users later this fall.
