There have been two macs that I've hated, the original MBA with one (and only one) USB port and the 12" Macbook.

I was one who dived into the Dell Mini craze many years ago. It was cute, but not terribly useful, but it did end up taking up permanent residence on my nightstand. It plays nice water sounds 24/7 over an old 2.1 sound system and at bedtime, I use it for playing music or audiobooks. I might read and reply to texts and email and keep webpages up for weather, air quality, this forum and other thingies I might wanna check just as I go to bed or when I arise.

When an 11in mba became affordable for this use, I switched from the dell mini to an MBA11. The MBA is bigger, but not too big for this use. It's a much better computer and it's not stuck on Mac OS 10.6.

The last mba11 that I used was a 2015 i5 model. It was nice enough, but those 12" Macbooks with that lovely screen were becoming affordable. I got one and sold the mba.

I really tried to like the mb. It had 8GB of RAM and an SSD - my needs are very minimal, but this damned thing just wasn't up to it. I found a cheap 2016 model - it wasn't any better.

In the meantime, iTunes went through some changes as I upgraded OSes. Most important for the bedside computer is that iTunes will no longer plays most m4b or m4a files (audiobook files). They will play in the new audiobook app, but I hate that app.

So I made a Chopper decision - I'm gonna downgrade the bedside computer and leave it as is forever.

I found a slightly banged-up 2015 i7 mba11 and installed Mojave - the last OS that didn't mess with the itunes file compatibility.

I just assumed that the 12" macbooks would be faster than the mba11 they replaced because they were newer - wrong. Those things benchmark almost 1/2 the speed of this i7 mba11.

The 12" screen is much nicer, but frankly, I've hardly noticed - really because itunes conveys info so much better than Music. Even though the mba screen is smaller, I had to scroll more on the 12" becauase the newer Music app is so much less dense with data. The newer OSes have LOTS of airy empty space - I guess it's a cleaner look, but it's a look with less info on the screen.

Anyway... I've made the move. No more 12" macbooks in my life and this little computer is gonna run just as it is until it dies. Then I will (hopefully) replace it with an identical setup.

Hal: "Never upgrade (the beside computer)!"

Only Mac I came close to hating was my PM 7200.

The 12" MB is a compromise form factor/system for sure. If Apple were to put an M-series chip in it, could be quite useful (under 2 lbs total). But not for your uses - for travelers.

The i7 MBA machines are terrific. My son is using his daily from 2014. We updated the SSD and had to do the hard part of replacing the keyboard (and on its third battery, but that's easy to swap). He will use it until the motherboard dies I think.

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hal
Most important for the bedside computer is that iTunes will no longer plays most m4b or m4a files...

You'll need to change the media-type metadata to "Music" to keep it in iTunes or the Music app.

You can then change the Genre to "Audiobook" or "Books and Spoken" or whatever to sort it.

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DeLeader!

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hal
I was one who dived into the Dell Mini craze many years ago.

OMG! I was part of that craze too! That was a fun project although I didn’t have that computer very long. A friend of mine got laid off during that time and needed a computer, so I reformatted it to Windows (his preference OS) and gave it to him so that he could us while job hunting.