Looking back in the archives, I’ve written about laptops several times. My current personal machine is still a 17-inch MacBook Pro from 2009 that I call Lapzilla, while my work laptop is a mid 2013 edition 13-inch MacBook Air that I’ve generally considered the nicest computer I’ve ever used. The only things it lacks that I really want are a 1TB SSD and a Retina display. All eyes were on the Apple event earlier this month to see if we’d get a Retina Air, but the new MacBook popped up instead (in addition to speed bumps for the current Air and Pro models).

It seems that industry response has been somewhat negative, but I like the design. It’s not my holy grail machine, but I’d buy a couple of these for the kids in a heartbeat (if Uncle Sam wasn’t demanding a big check next month). I think the look of the gold model in particular is quite nice. It’s hard to tell what day-to-day operations would be like with the new Intel Core M processors and HD Graphics until I see one in the store, but I’m guessing the SSDs would make them seem much faster than Lapzilla on just about everything (even if they are still stuck at 256GB and 512GB capacities).

None of the OS X screens I currently use are Retina and I still think they are more than adequate. My iPhone 5S screen is Retina, but I don’t really notice the high resolution all that much, given the overall small size of the screen. The new MacBook has a resolution of 2304×1440 and I’m sure I’d get spoiled pretty quickly on a 12-inch screen with that much detail. The larger pixel aperture stuff to get better battery life is also nice.

The other design innovations in the new laptop all sound promising: Force Touch trackpad, Taptic Engine, the tiny logic board, terraced battery cells and the butterfly mechanisms under the keyboard all point to the direction the entire Apple laptop line will likely move. I’m not entirely sold on the single USB-C port idea, but I’m not openly hostile like many seem to be. Losing Magsafe isn’t a big deal to me – that invention has caused me much more grief by coming undone accidentally than it ever did preventing a laptop from crashing off a table. The only real issue I see for my use patterns would be the ability to have it plugged in to an outlet and have my iPhone connected to recharge at the same time. Extra adaptors do suck.

Now I just need to decide whether or not to throw Lapzilla a bone with one of these…