Soft Spot for the Little Guy
Whether it's the 12" PowerBook, the 11" MacBook Air, or the smallest iPad Pro, I've always had an affinity for Apple's smallest devices.
If anyone tells you that people are rational, you can tell them to bugger off. The truth is, decision making is driven many other factors, from the time of day to our emotional state; and many other factors we're scarcely even aware of. It seems that happens to have also been the case with many of my Apple purchases, from the 12" PowerBook G4 to the iPad Pro 11"; Apple's smallest products have always held the biggest place in my heart.
A rational decision would be to buy the product that has the most features for the best price. But Apple's smaller products have often lacked features present in their bigger counterparts. For example, opting for the 12" PowerBook G4 meant missing out on a backlit keyboard, a slower processor & graphics card, and a smaller memory ceiling than the 15" PowerBook. Another example pits the 11" against the 13" MacBook Air, the latter sporting better battery life (5 v. 7 hours), more storage, the addition of an SD card reader, and a faster processor.
Another rational position to take would be to buy the product that best fits your use case. But then again, I'm forced to rule out that my predilection for smaller Apple products doesn't have anything to do with their portability or my love of squinting at smaller displays. I may have said that it was when justifying a purchase, but the truth is that majority of the time, when my laptop leaves the house, it is carried to & from a vehicle to go to & from a coffee shop. In all reality, with travel this minimal, it would be just as inconvenient to carry a 2 lbs laptop as it would be to carry a 15 lbs one.
So the question becomes: if it's not price, features, or use case that's directing my purchase, then what is? After some thought, two ideas emerge: preference and aspirational ownership.
Preference
At first, I was going to write that Apple's smaller devices are "nicer", but when I had visions of my English professor haunting me for using 'nice" as an adjective and thought I better change it to preference. I prefer Apple's smaller devices, even knowing about the hardware concessions I sometimes have to make. Maybe it's due to that evolutionary predisposition to find baby versions of things more charming that's gone haywire in my brain? Generally speaking, I find Apple's smaller products suit my workflow well, and I also happen to find them more aesthetically pleasing. In the battle between form vs. function, I'll gladly sacrifice a few MHz of processing speed for an inch off the screen or a mm off the body.
Aspirational
The second irrational explanation for my affinity towards small tech is the aspirational lifestyle it hints towards. The idea of an ultralight computer that I can easily take and travel around the globe pulls at the heartstrings of how I want to live my life, unburdened by things, exploring place after place. When I describe that, you weren't picturing me lugging around iMac 5K or the 18.8 lbs Predator 21 X gaming laptop. The best advertisements don't sell the product; they sell a vision. And when I picture a life I want to live: minimal, with the freedom to move yet remaining digitally connected; smaller tech plays neatly into that aspirational fantasy.
Maybe this all boils down to strong marketing and stronger rationalizing pulling the wool over my eyes, but I did say at the start of this entry that little of our decision making is rational? I think we choose to buy the stuff we do in part because we believe it conveys a particular image, fits with the view & values we have and the life we aspire to live, and yes, on occasion, because it truly is the best and most appropriate tool for the job. For me, Apple's smallest offerings have found that perfect ratio of performance, features, form, and aspiration.
