Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Planning 'MacBook Ultra' With Touchscreen and Higher Price

Veinticinco said:
At least the Neo fills a hole in the market. Where do you position an Ultra (or whatever stupid unoriginal name they come up with)?

This is just what the MBA should have become after the M1 generation, ultraportable, options like nano-texture display, minimal bezels. But Cook refused to do that as long as he had to conform to the magic $1000 threshold.
Click to expand...

Apple explicitly has mentioned that the MBA is the best selling Mac model they have in the line up. It is one of the best selling PC in the overall laptop market (mac or not).... and you want to throw that product in the dumpster in terms of sales ?

That doesn't make any sense. As you state the Neo is filling a hole where largely Apple did not sell Mac systems into. Therefore sales of Neos likely will not eat all that much into the unit sales of the MBA. Some users to 'over stretched' to get a MBA will fall back to a Neo, but the M(n+2 or n+3) SoC being better than the Mn Pro will also 'eat' users out of the MBP 14"/16" group also. Pretty good chance the MBA unit sales stay in the same range as they are no which is #1 selling Mac in terms of unit numbers. The product slot that the current MBA product is in is a central core of the whole Mac ecosystem. That $1,000 threshold is critically important to keep with respect to the whole ecosystem.

Apple could 'swap' the name for the current MBA product to 'MacBook'. But after Apple tried to bring the niche lightweight product back as the "Macbook" they have somewhat muddied the waters . The 'MBA' name has been stuck in the legacy 'Macbook/Power' role for well over a decade now. It is just pragmatically just stuck that way now. Folks can lament that until the cows come home ... but it probably won't move. Another reason why got a 'Neo' suffix to do something 'new'. So if Apple were to chase after ultraportable they would likely need a new suffix name. It may be 'Ultra', but likely won't be 'Air'.


Veinticinco said:
Jobs’ Apple used to lead the way, skate to the where the puck is going to be. How times have changed.
Click to expand...

where the puck is going is where the market is going. Generally the laptop market is not going to be 'far above $1,000' priced laptops. The niches are not the 'puck'.

The classic MacBook/PowerBook product died around 2009. (or at best into 'comatose zombie' state in 2009) Steve Jobs was still around ( and Apple has 2-3 year long road maps so handwaving that he was sick so it slipped through the cracks is just that ... handwaving.) The transition of the MBA to that particular role of "MacBook" in the line up happened on Jobs' watch , not Cook's.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Christopher Kim, Tagbert and Matt713
hoodlum90 said:
This sounds like an iPhone X redux.
Click to expand...
Very similar marketing to ditching the home button with iPhone X but keeping the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus around. iPhone X came in one size and honestly (for me) it was the year to skip the upgrade. But it is a way to introduce a new design shift without sabotaging your main stream high-end products.

I went from iPhone 7 Plus to iPhone Xs Max because I felt the iPhone X was compromised. So if the Ultra seems to make too many compromises buyers can get a Pro and ride that out for 3 to 5 years until Apple works out the compromises.

I think if the lineup stays fragmented in this way it might be too many choices and make it harder for buyers to decide leading to no decision. More choices, more FOMO and more hesitation to purchase. There is a narrow line between too few and too many choices and you gotta find the balance.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Christopher Kim
Unregistered 4U said:
Since Apple Silicon, have they released a new generation ONLY in the high end products first? The answer is no. With every new generation of Apple Silicon, while MacBook Pro’s may have been introduced, it’s always been alongside an iPad Pro, an iMac or a MacBook Air. The only time a M series chip was released ONLY in a Pro product was the iPad Pro with M4.

That analysis was via an idle thought and a google search and is likely more based on reality anything out of Gurman. 😉 Mainly because I don’t get paid from you paying attention to me!

Just from that, if anything is coming and will be introduced by itself, it’s far more likely to be an iPad Ultra than anything running macOS.
Click to expand...
Judging by the reportedly slow sales of the iPad Pro, I doubt they'll launch an iPad Ultra. Nobody wants that-- but Apple is probably aware that people want a touch device that runs macOS, so it makes far more sense to launch a new MacBook with touch capability and price it above a MacBook. If the entry point is at least $2499, then they've sold a MacBook Pro and half an iPad and Tim Cook will be happy 😉
 
  • Like
Reactions: Christopher Kim and muzzy996
Love-hate 🍏 relationship said:
Fuuuuuu that means I'll have to wait even longer for a thinner MacBook Pro??

I've been waiting for too long
Click to expand...
IMO we already got one. 😁

IMG_0914.webp
 
  • Like
Reactions: transpo1
applegeek2024 said:
this is fine as long as they also make ipad w/ mac os.. and more like surface book 3(discontinued)..
Click to expand...
They're not going to do that-- a MacBook Ultra with touch and OLED will give them the profit margin to make it worth it. An iPad Pro with macOS is not going to do that.
MuckrakerJG said:
Putting the 14” M4 Pro at 2199 and the 16” base at 2699 would make it easy for 14” MacBook Ultra at $2499 and 16” MacBook Ultra at $2999 to start.
Click to expand...
Exactly.
joeblow7777 said:
I don’t see the point of a touchscreen on a Mac. I used touchscreen Windows laptops for years, pretty much from the dime they were first introduced with Windows 8 up until just a couple of years ago when I got my first Mac.
Windows 8 introduced a brand new tile-based UI to make it more touch friendly, and even so I rarely found myself using the touchscreen.
Click to expand...
Since I began using iPad Pros with the Magic Keyboard I constantly find myself reaching to touch the screen of my MBP when using that machine. A touch OLED display makes a lot of sense to me. Not because I'll use it all the time, but because I'll have the option; and the experience across devices will be much more seamless.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tagbert and muzzy996
I have to imagine that something like this would need insane cooling. Does the laptop form factor allow for this? I was given a work laptop that had an i9 processor in it and it's awful to use with how loud it is. Even worse that the fan is constantly spinning up and down.

Edit: I apparently imagined that the article mentioned this device would include a new Ultra chip, which on closer inspection does not mention.
 
Last edited:
I love the idea of a touchscreen mbp with OLED, but cranking up the price 20 percent? Not for me in this economy.
 
This is a good rumor if true. A new higher end laptop makes total sense, to broaden the laptops line even wider. And existing MBPs (mine is an M2) are such a very, very solid product that it would be wrong to change the MBP design this soon.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Levithescienceguy
Yeah..
turbineseaplane said:
iPadPro running macOS:
Touch doesn't work on macOS. It can't work. It wasn't designed for that. Nobody wants that!

Macbook, running macOS, with a Touchscreen:
Bringing our world class Multitouch experience, that everyone loves, to macOS!
Click to expand...
Yeah.. they seem to contradict themselves if this is going to go down. Gurman often wrong though.. god knows why he still has a job as an analyst 😂

So if this happens maybe Apple is looking to actually fuse iPad and MacBook so neither will exist after and the OS’es are actually transitioned into one. Like a decade or more timeline.

Then they would make good on their “What’s a computer?”
 
  • Like
Reactions: Brother Cavil
H.E. Pennypacker said:
More expensive than a MBP? Some MBP models are topping out over $4k. Who’s buying $5-6k laptop as a consumer? Absurd.
Click to expand...

Actually they’re already topping out at over $7K maxed out. And people buy them.

With some of what I do I would buy, and financially benefit from, more in a single laptop if I could.
 
Bubble99 said:
Exactly!!

So why is Apple bringing out touch screen for laptop? Is Apple planning on putting iPadOS on it or bringing out new OS?
Click to expand...
A handful of people on a tech forum complaining bitterly about touch screens doesn't tell us anything about whether or not the market wants a touch-enabled Mac. If Apple decides to release one, I'll trust the internal research of one of the most successful companies in history over forum dwellers griping about features they don't want.

The pearl-clutching over touch screens is crazy to me. It would be very easy to enable touch on macOS without dramatically changing the UI. There's absolutely no need to bring out a new OS. Apple added mouse support to iPadOS with no dramatic changes made. Same thing will happen when Apple brings touch to the Mac.

If you don't like touch, don't touch your screen. Your Mac will be just as it always was. I've never used a mouse with my iPad and my iPad is still the same iPad with the same UI. There's absolutely no way Apple will release yet another OS for this product. It'll still be macOS. It'll still look and feel like macOS. Touch is just another input method. You don't have to use it.
 
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: Christopher Kim, Tagbert and Allen_Wentz
antnythr said:
I have to imagine that something like this would need insane cooling. Does the laptop form factor allow for this? I was given a work laptop that had an i9 processor in it and it's awful to use with how loud it is. Even worse that the fan is constantly spinning up and down.
Click to expand...
• A new top laptop does not need to be the most powerful desktop replacement laptop Apple offers. The existing MBPs can continue to fill the Studio-power-but-still-portable role.
• A new top laptop could be mostly pretty, thinner and lighter, like an iPhone Air is.
• Using the high efficiency of the latest Apple chips a new top laptop could be reasonably powerful without needing to be a maximum workhorse.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back