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Comment by lucasyvas | Hacker News Reader

Curious if anyone thinks there's a market for this? As a fan of the Air, the weight and size is the whole point. I don't personally see how this aligns well with the original design goals of the line. It would probably still be light, but the M2 Air is already almost 14 inches.

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There is. 15" laptops are the most popular size and what Apple sells in that size bracket is not cheap. It's a pretty gaping hole in their lineup really. A $1300 or $1400 15" MBA would probably sell very well, not because of weight and size but because it's a 15" screen for less than $2500. It makes more sense than the 13" MBP that's barely distinguishable from the MBA.

absolutely. when I worked at bestbuy maybe 5 years ago, there were a lot of people who would have bought a Mac if there were a cheaper 15" option. For many people, especially some older folks, 15" is the minimum.

On the other hand, there were also a few people who paid up for a 15" Pro just for the larger screen.

Older people like big screens because it's easier on their eyes. The pixel density of a Macbook is hugh, making the icons and fobt size look small at a default magnification.

Lots of PCs sold today are 14-15 inches but with 720P screens, making the icons postively gigantic.

Mac supports like 5 default different scaled display resolutions, this is a non issue.

You can set your 16” screen to an almost 720p resolution which makes everything clown sized but super super crisp.

You and I know that. The average Mac buyer however is not going to System Preferences > Display and then setting the UI scaling manually.

They buy devices on the basis of how it looks at the Apple Store, and the display models show them at the default scaling.

old people talk to salespeople. a competent salesperson will bring to the scanning features.

*scaling

As a webdev I don’t need beefy gpu and cpu performance has got so good that even smaller one would do. Also 15 and 16 have same resolution so not much difference for dev. I mostly work off a couch so having lighter laptop would be nice. I’m always amazed when I pick up previous gen 15”.

I’ll need to replace my 2015 model soon, and anything smaller than 15” is a downgrade - screen is too small for serious work all day.

The problem is that MacBook Pros has been creeping past into the $2000 range for an entry level configuration.

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