Why The Macbook Air Might Spell The End Of Configurable Macs

Apple’s approach to iPads and iPhones may dramatically change how we shop for Macs in the future.

- Jason Snell

There’s been a lot written about the potential merging together of the software that runs (and runs on) the Mac and the iPad. 2019 is shaping up to be a huge year, as Apple’s devices get closer together than they’ve ever been before.

But while the focus on Apple’s smooshing together of its platforms has been primarily about the software (iOS apps running on the Mac) and hardware (the potential of future Macs running Apple-designed ARM processors), the new MacBook Air got me thinking about another way Apple’s approach to iPads and iPhones may dramatically change how we shop for Macs in the future.

AS LONG AS IT’S BLACK

The new $1,199 base-model MacBook Air ​comes with a 1.6GHz dual-core Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz. If you max out all of its specs, on the other hand, you’ll walk away with a $2,600 computer…with the very same 1.6GHz processor. Apple will let you expand storage (to 1.5TB) and memory (to 16GB), but the processor you get is the processor you get.