First Look: Apple’s Incredibly Thin and Light MacBook (Video)

I didn’t think my MacBook Air could ever feel big or heavy, but after seeing and touching the new MacBook, it does.

Introduced today at Apple’s Spring Forward event, the MacBook is not an upgrade to the MacBook Air nor is it a replacement for the MacBook Pro. It’s the start of a new family of laptops for the company, with the first model arriving on April 10 with a starting price of $1,299.

I got a chance to check out the new MacBook after the event, and it’s beautiful. Maybe it’s because we’d already seen the Apple Watch and knew a lot about it going in, but I thought the MacBook was the more exciting product announcement of the day.

At 13.1 mm thick and two pounds, it’s Apple’s thinnest and lightest laptop to date. I was surprised at just how light it felt when I went to go pick it up. The 12-inch Retina display (2,304 by 1,440 resolution) is also gorgeous. I seriously looked at my MacBook Air and frowned.

The new keyboard takes a little getting used to, and I have mixed feelings about it. While the buttons are bigger, there’s very little travel, so it doesn’t really feel like you’re pressing the keys. If it weren’t for the letters appearing on the screen, I would wonder if anything was actually registering. Maybe it’s something I’d get accustomed to with more time, but I like my keyboards to have a little more feedback.

The new Force Touch trackpad is a little tricky, too. It works like a traditional trackpad, but it’s also pressure sensitive and has a feature called Force Click that opens the door to potentially useful shortcuts. For example, if an email has a date and time within the text of the message, you can click on it to create a calendar appointment. In one demo I was given, I clicked on “Banzai Pipeline” in a Web article, and a little preview window showed up with a Wikipedia summary of Pipeline.

But Force Click didn’t always work. When I tried it on a URL, which should just show a preview of the website, it launched the full Web page instead. I tried it several times, and the same thing happened over and over. There appears to be a fine line between a regular click and a Force Click. An Apple spokesperson showed me how you could adjust the sensitivity and pressure of the trackpad in the Settings menu, which helped a bit.

Of course, we’ll be sure to test these features, plus Apple’s claim of all-day battery life and the new USB-C port, in depth once we get the laptop in for review. In the meantime, for more on the new MacBook, you can check out our hands-on video above.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Explanatory journalism is a public good

At Vox, we believe that everyone deserves access to information that helps them understand and shape the world they live in. That's why we keep our work free. Support our mission and help keep Vox free for all by making a financial contribution to Vox today.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$95/year

$120/year

$250/year

$350/year

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $120/year

Yes, I'll give $120/year

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via