Apple appears to be rolling out a wide-reaching branding change about how it refers to its Mac portable lineup. Up until recently, Apple officially referred to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro as “Mac notebooks” or just “notebooks,” leaning on the relatively outdated industry terminology of notebook computers.
But now, everything user-facing appears to be slowly converting to using a “laptop” nomenclature. Updates to the Apple Online Store product pages, articles in the Apple Support knowledge base, and even the Mac operating system is beginning to reflect this branding update …
Over the last week, 9to5Mac has noticed that Apple Support articles have begun being updated to refer to “laptops” or “Mac laptops,” instead of notebooks.
Dozens of articles have already been updated, at least in the United States localization.
The Apple Online Store also appears to be transitioning. Whilst the website is far from comprehensively converted, many pages in the Mac sections now talk in terms of laptops rather than notebooks.
Apple has not officially acknowledged the change of wording choice, but it certainly feels like a step in the right direction: Calling your computer a “notebook” feels decidedly old-fashioned these days. It also matches what other PC manufacturers typically call their portable machines.
In addition to online copy updates, the default device name for a new Mac installation is also changing to suit the laptop preference. With macOS Ventura, a newly set up MacBook Air or MacBook Pro will be called ‘[name]’s Laptop’ by default. (It used to be set to “[name]’s MacBook Air” or “[name]’s MacBook Pro”.)
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