- Hi. Welcome back to my channel.
Today, I've got another Tech for Designers
review video for you and I'm gonna be telling you
about using the 12 inch MacBook for design work.
Now I got this computer partway through last year
and I got it to use as an on-the-go computer
because this thing is so tiny and thin.
Such a nice light portable computer
and I got it because I wanted to use it on public transport.
I have a lot of side projects on the go,
as you'll know if you've seen my channel before,
and I wanted to be able to work on those while
on my commute to work.
I also thought it would be a great computer
to have to take away when I'm traveling as well
rather than my 15-inch Retina Macbook which
takes up quite a lot of space and is rather heavy.
These day, I work from home so I don't do
the commute-to-work thing anymore but I do love taking
this laptop to work in cafes because it's much smaller
to put in my handbag than trying to lug the 15-inch
around with me.
Because it is a lot smaller than my 15-inch Macbook,
that does mean it's less powerful as well.
I thought I'd do this review to talk to you about
how it feels to do design work on this smaller,
less-powerful machine so that, perhaps,
if you're thinking of getting it,
you know what to expect.
First, let's talk about hardware.
Like I said, this thing is just super-thin and light.
Minus the gold one because these do come
in many different colors and I've stuck this
"Teach What You Know" sticker on it because
I just thought that looked cool there over the apple.
Unlike the Macbook Airs which are obviously Apple's
other thinnish computer, these Macbooks
have Retina screens which is a really nice touch
and makes it much more suitable for design work.
Because of the Retina screen as well, it means
I can set it to more space
in the screen resolution options and that means
that actually I get a whole lot more fitting
on this workspace than I would if I just used
it at the normal 12-inch resolution.
The screen is nice.
The keyboard is all really nice.
I absolutely love typing on this keyboard.
It's so much better than the old Mac ones.
I've gotten really used to this now
and I prefer to do most of my writing on this machine
because of it.
Because this keyboard is so nice to type on.
I don't know. The keys are just nice and flat
and it's just really nice to use.
Does take a bit of getting used to
but once you get used to not having to push down
as far on the keys,
it's awesome.
The trackpad is also great as most Mac trackpads are.
This one has the Force Touch trackpad and, personally,
I don't know why that's useful on a Mac.
I don't know.
I know there's also things that you're able
to do with it but there's not anything that I've found
that you can do with it that actually improves
my workflow.
Most often, I'd say that the Force Touch actually
would hinder my workflow.
Because I'd accidentally Force Touch something
when I was just meaning to click.
So I turn that off,
which is good that you can have that option.
One of the big downsides to this computer is,
because it's so thin,
it's got very few ports.
It's just got a USB-C port here and then
your headphone jack on the other side.
And I guess,
considering what they've done with the iPhone now,
I should be thankful that they even put
a headphone jack on it.
I personally haven't actually found this lack
of ports to be that much of a problem because
this isn't my main computer so I'm not trying
to get stuff off of an SD card into it.
I'm not often trying to charge my phone from it
or anything like that.
I have got this dongle here which plugs into
the USB-C and it's got a USB port, an HDMI,
and also a USB-C.
Means you can be charging your computer
while also presenting.
And also plug this in if I do want to charge my phone
from the computer which seems a bit overkill
but there are options.
I think that the lack of ports would bother me if,
like I said, this was my main computer but for me,
the fact that this is so portable outweighs
any annoyance of having to also have a dongle to use.
What about actually doing things on this computer?
This is what I've had a lot of questions about,
especially when I did my Tech for Designers Hardware video
where I went through all of the hardware that I use.
A lot of questions came from who were interested
in how powerful this thing was and if you could actually
do proper design work on it.
I took this away with me when I went on a company retreat.
This is the only computer that I took.
So all the work that I did that week
was done on this little laptop and it was really a test
of it's power and also its limitations.
Like I said, my first tip for using this for design work
is to set it to that more-space screen resolution
option because otherwise I personally just feel like
it's really cramped and you can't see enough
of the screen to get stuff done.
Especially for video-editing in particular.
This way, you can see much more of your windows
in Premiere or whatever it is that you use
if you have more space.
So, video-editing on this.
I found it's perfectly capable of editing the video.
I haven't found it lagging at all or anything like that.
One thing I do is set Premiere to half-resolution preview
so that way it's not trying to take up too much
of this guy's RAM.
By the way, I didn't say that before,
but my computer is the early 2015 model
so it's the first version of these that came out, I think.
So I'm sure the new ones are a little bit more improved.
This one has eight gigabytes of RAM,
one-point one gigahertz processor which is, obviously,
not that impressive.
And it's got 256 gigabytes of hard drive space.
Those specs are not great when it comes to wanting
to do work that requires a bit of grunt.
But like I said, I've managed to edit videos
on this thing absolutely fine.
I edited a lot of videos on it when I was commuting
and same whenever I go away.
This is what I edit on and it works out absolutely
great for that.
One thing that it's not great for is exporting those videos.
On my 15-inch Macbook, exporting a 10-minute video
might take, I don't know, like 22 minutes
or something like that.
Maybe less. I don't know.
Depends on what effects I'ved used.
But this guy takes over an hour to export
a video sometimes which is obviously not great.
It's doable, though.
You just set it there and leave it to do it.
But, yeah.
It just takes a long time so be aware of that
if you're looking to make this your main machine.
That it has not got the power of other Retina Macs.
The other main piece of software that I use all
the time is Sketch which is a vector-based
web design tool, I suppose, is what you'd call it.
I'm unsure if you've heard about it.
I'll link on a card if you're interested in that.
That I found works absolutely great on here because
the program itself is vector-based and runs very quickly.
It's not trying to process a lot
of bitmap images or anything.
And so, power-wise, it's been great for that.
The screen size has been slightly too small for it, though.
If I have an Artboard in Sketch that's perhaps a design
that's 1200 pixels wide, for example,
you can't quite see the whole design at full resolution.
You have to zoom out which means you're looking
at everything much smaller than it will actually appear.
For that reason, I tend not to use this thing
to do finished design work and it's more for the idea stage.
Or more when I'm out in a cafe and working on things
which is generally going to be something that's
not finalizing web design, for example.
It's not the sort of work that I do there.
So, again, that hasn't really been a problem
because that's not what I use this computer for.
But it would be a problem if this was
my only computer, I think.
I would get quite frustrated about that.
Keep that in mind.
Like I said, I love writing on this thing.
It's the perfect little writing tool because
the screen is the perfect size that you can see
your writing tool, whatever it is you're using.
But it's not so large that you're going
to have other windows around distracting you.
And like I said, the keyboard it super-nice to type on.
Whenever I write the show notes
for our podcast, for example,
I do it on this machine and I also
use Photoshop on it to create
our feature images for the podcast as well.
That runs absolutely fine.
When I get a few too many images
in that featured image Photoshop folder,
it does take a while to save because, again,
it's not that powerful.
But that's just something that you learn to deal with.
So, all in all, I don't think I recommend this computer
to a designer who is starting out and this is
the first computer that you buy or
the only one that you own.
For the same price at the moment anyway,
you can get the older Macbook Pro 13-inch
and I think that would be a much more useful computer
if you're getting started.
There's more screen real estate.
It's more powerful.
It's a little bit heavier, obviously.
But if it's your only computer,
then I think that's probably a better option.
If you're looking for a more portable travel computer,
no matter what other computer you own,
then I think this is going to be a really great option.
Because, honestly, I cannot get over how compact
it is and how it just fits so easily into
whatever bag it is that I'm carrying.
It's pretty much the same size as carrying
around an iPad but you can get a whole lot more
done with it.
For that, it's awesome.
That is my review of the 12-inch baby MacBook.
I hope you enjoyed hearing my thoughts on it
and hearing about using it for design purposes.
Because I'm sure that most people who buy this
are probably not buying it for design.
I don't know.
I hope you enjoyed hearing that perspective
and hearing what it's like to work on it.
Thank you for watching this video.
Give it thumbs-up if you did enjoy it.
If you've got any ideas for what kind of videos
you'd want to see in this Tech for Designers series
going forward, then please feel free to leave
the suggestions down below in the comments.
I'd love to see them.
Hit the Subscribe button if you're new to my channel
because I make new videos talking about design
and design-related tools and things every single Saturday.
I will see you in the next one.
Bye.