As the current MBA is the most popular macbook in Apples inventory. I just cannot see them abandoning the "Air" branding just yet! But who knows? I can be wrong on this!
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2022 'MacBook' and 'iMac Pro' Could Help Apple Simplify Its Naming Strategy
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I disagree with that. I’m a professional user and have an iMac Pro and a MacBook Pro. I don’t need internal expandability in my computers. Some Pros will, but in 2021 the vast majority won’t.
Are people buying it because it is the cheapest MacBook or because it is a MacBook Air?
I like the idea Tim single handedly does product names ? Perhaps he does the catering too ?
Each kind of iPad is on a different update cycle and it just wasn't the time for an upgrade of the Air at that time.
When the last Air launched it did beat the Pro (pushing 2 years at that time) in some tasks and until they released the M1 versions it made little sense to buy the (smaller) Pro over the Air.
Same with the Macs, everything still intel after 2020 made little to no sense even if it was considered a higher tier and once these get/got replaced 1st gen AS will/does look bad.
Upspec a 13" MBP and you pay so close to the base 14" that one has to wonder why the 13" is still an offer.
Same will happen once Macs with 2nd gen AS come to market.
I agree about the 99% of Apples customers, but I assure you that there are people at Apple whose entire professional lives revolve around this kind of marketing. Whether they add something meaningful to the world or society around them is debateable, it seems to me that they to a large extent perform for their own clique. Pays the bills though.
Grow up then start posting? It reads like an angry teenager.
This stopped being true once the G4 iMacs got a bigger screen and was a complete nonstarter for the G5 and upper end of everything Intel that followed.
I think people who cling on to this fantasy that Steve Jobs would've done more pro Macs with internal expansion than Cook ended up doing are hilarious. The opposite would've been the case. Jobs would've been a staunch "the desktop era is over; get lost with your backwards view" guy. That's assuming he would've even let the Mac exist in 2021 at all. He wanted it dead even in the 1990s.
So you're arguing both that Cook is not a product person, and yet also at the same time, that he is for some reason personally involved in product naming? Pick one.
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Exactly. SJ was CEO when both the "cube" and the "trash can" Macs were released. Both were beautiful machines but were quite limited.
He had actually been dead for two years by the time the trash can Mac Pro came out. But, yes, he was clearly very much for moving on from towers. He had the NeXT Cube, and then the Power Mac G4 Cube (and rumor has it he was reluctant to kill it off). I find it perfectly plausible he would've loved the 2013 Mac Pro.
IMO the iPad naming convention makes some sense but could be changed. Currently:
entry: iPad
consumer (in 2 sizes): iPad mini, iPad Air
"pro" (in 2 sizes): iPad Pro 11/12.9
I think this selection is fine. The naming could be tweaked but I think there are many that understand this arrangement and it would not serve any real purpose to change it.
entry: iPad
consumer (in 2 sizes): iPad mini, iPad Air
"pro" (in 2 sizes): iPad Pro 11/12.9
I think this selection is fine. The naming could be tweaked but I think there are many that understand this arrangement and it would not serve any real purpose to change it.
If Apple does adopt the new naming system, we will have to constantly read about how the new MacBook isn't really a MacBook because it isn't a 12" model like the original etc.
As long as a device works as I want it do, I really don't care how Apple labels the model.
As long as a device works as I want it do, I really don't care how Apple labels the model.
By that logic, I wonder why Steve dropped ‘i’ from consumer notebooks when introducing the MacBook?
If ‘i’ was such an important piece in the naming convention for consumer devices, shouldn’t it have remained iBook or (worse) iMacBook?
Come to think of it, something else product person Steve did was introduce a quad-based product matrix (iMac / iBook for consumers, PowerMac / PowerBook for professionals) but then abandoned this within a matter of years after introducing the experimental G4 Cube, the Mac mini and the MacBook Air.
As you quite rightly mentioned the lineup under cook has often been confusing (I’m thinking between 2015 / 2019 when they had a MacBook Air, a MacBook, and a MacBook Pro - with the MacBook being LIGHTER than the MacBook AIR) but Steve himself wasn’t afraid to set product schemes and naming conventions, only to then rip up his own rule book.
As far as iDevices go, I personally think after over 10 years it’s not fair to compare Steves iDevice product line up to Cooks. Here’s why:
iPad and iPhone lineups were more streamlined under Steve, and so naturally choosing an iPad or iPhone was comparatively easier. The reason there were less options wasn’t for simplicity’s sake, but because during his tenure these products were relatively immature - they were just getting started, even the iPhone.
Over the past 10 years there’s been a seismic shift in the way people use phone and tablet devices. We have creative professionals using iPads to get digital Designs and illustrations done, video editors using iPhone for field photography and video.
Some people need more from their devices, but these things cost money to implement. They could put them all into one iPhone, bump up the price for everyone (including the many who don’t need those capabilities) or split the product lineup. They did the latter and thus new models and SKUs had to be created otherwise Apple would have well and truly fallen behind.
When you’ve got a product name as synonymous as ‘iPhone’ and ’iPad’ (with all the good will you’ve built up over many years behind them), but you realise you need to create a new, higher end model because the market is changing - what are you going to do?
You could stubbornly stick to a naming convention that was introduced over fifteen years ago, drop the ’i’ (because that’s strictly for consumer devices after all) and release products such as ‘PhonePro’ or ‘PadPro’, or you could honour brand/product awareness you’ve carefully generated over the past decade and choose the option they went with.
But the ‘i’ is just for consumer products so it’s against the rules to have a product with both ‘i’ and ‘pro’ in it’s name? Well, rules were made to be broken and at this stage in the game, dropping it would confuse consumers more than keeping it.
I’m under no illusion that Cooks apple has made sense all the time. There’s the aforementioned MacBook confusion but also I still wonder where the iPhone 9 is, and why they had a fleeting obsession with Roman numerals (iPhone X), but sometimes to find something that ‘sticks‘ you have to experiment.
So I’m saying Apple should just throw everything to the wall and see what sticks? No, not necessarily. But Steve did it too. He made a product matrix to get Apple back on track and then when he could afford to, deviated away from it. He experimented with the G4 cube, then created a MacBook which although thin and light was more expensive and more underpowered than the cheaper MacBook at the time.
It didn’t matter because Apple could, and still can, afford to experiment.
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The first Aluminum “MacBook” was renamed to MacBook Pro a year later with the same design and non removable battery but essentially exactly the same machine inside. Wouldn’t put it past them to change the name.
Honestly I wish they’d bring back the polycarbonate chassis as a “MacBook” - they were virtually indestructible and didn’t start pitting if your skin was slightly acidic.
I want a Magic Mac mini XDR Pro SE Max Air S. 2. In space charcoal graphite gray, please.
Regarding the MacBook Air, I know shortly after Apple discontinued the white polycarbonate MacBooks, the Air soon became Apple's entry-level consumer laptop instead of the premium ultra-portable model it originally was. And the fact that it now had Turbo Boost processing and an SSD by default, along with having two USB ports and a Thunderbolt port and SD card slot (the latter only on the 13-inch model) really helped this, compared to the first generation only having a single USB port, a MiniDisplay (originally Micro-DVI) and headphone jack. School districts would purchase MacBook Airs in bulk the way they did with the white iBooks and MacBooks. (Because of this, we often get a bunch of second-generation MacBook Airs from school districts at my workplace.) This is why Apple also made that 12-inch MacBook from 2015 to 2019 as a premium ultraportable laptop to fill the purpose the Air originally did. And of course with the switch to Apple Silicon, the M1 MacBook Air would come very close to the M1 13" MacBook Pro in processing speed and power, especially the 8-core graphics model, so the difference was even minimal compared to their Intel predecessors. Though the M1 Air is still much thinner and more lightweight than the first generation Airs, yet is more powerful and has those two very versatile Thunderbolt/USB4 ports. So even though the Air is currently Apple's thinnest and lightest MacBook available, the "Air" name has kind of lost its' original meaning.
Why remove the Air name when they finally make it thin and light again??
Agreed. Bring back the single port MacBook as the “Air” and give it an M1 and a Magic Keyboard and I’m there. Update the current Air to just MacBook. Problem solved. The thin and light one is the Air and the laptop for everyone is just MacBook
You're assuming Tim Cook is the one responsible for the product naming and not, say, Joz Joswiak (SVP of marketing), people like to think Apple is a one man operation, and Tim Cook is responsible for say, the new MBP not having HDMI 2.1, this is stupid.
You're correct Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, that should give you a second to pause and think of very different leading styles, including a more hands-off approach as TC area of focus is operations, not design, marketing or engineering. I expect Tim Cook gives Apple's leadership a lot more freedom to make final calls than SJ ever did.
You're right. The 13" M1 MacBook Pro is in No Man's Land right now. Why would anyone buy it? It should have been phased out, though that would leave a gap in the lineup price wise. That's where the new MacBook will come in. Hopefully they will offer not only a 13" version but a larger 15" version.