Correct me if I'm wrong but was it Tim Cook mention that Apple needed more product lines to remain competitive and profitable without siloing the current line up?
I believe this was at the recent D10 conference? If I recall correctly Cook said that as a strategic guideline for Apple. This is not necessarily a specific strategy for any of the sub areas that Apple has products in. This is a guide between those product areas (e.g., Mac , iPad , etc.). It is why the dropped "Computer" from their name several years back. Apple needs to do something beside the "Computer" (i.e., general PC) silo.
Apple needs a competitive Mac along with a competitive iPad along with a competitive iPhone. If they just try to make one of those competitive and coast on the others then the organization will fail over time at being competitive overall and profitable overall.
Having the goes into a positive feedback loop of negative outcomes if try to apply it to an individual silo itself. If Apple comes up with sub-sub-sub product lines aimed at extremely narrow and lengthy features then will stretch the limits of product segmentation too far. You get a bloated, confusing product line up and much higher internal cannibalization that is driven by the bloated line up versus cannibalization driven by external factors ( new better technology , changing user preferences , etc.)
For example, you couldn't build an effective iPad 12 years ago. (with the
same design constraints and price point the iPad has now. ) So Apple didn't . If Apple purely focused on being the best Mac company they could be they would have missed the iPad. They also have to willing to take the lowest end Mac "losses" to pick up the iPad gains in some cases. (primarily, externally factors driven cannibalization. Other companies invented the core technology that enabled the iPad over those 12 years.... Apple just used them. )
When the heck did he say that? If anything, he would state EXACTLY the opposite...the rumor above is absolute BS - Apple will NOT introduce a new line, it will streamline the current one even further.
They may. Strategy is not tactics. Sometimes you have to briefly reverse direction to get out of a local maximum and on to a better global maximum.
Over time, the MBA wiped out the legacy MacBook/iBook line. However, it took several years to get there. Over those years people going used to the concept that a laptop with practically all of the sockets and disks removed could still be a viable laptop. Over time Apple tweaked the design until finally the MBA 11" wiped out the MacBook.
These forums are filled that huge numbers of repsones when the rumor says Apple is going to take away a feature or two. Remove the ODD and Firewire ..... "oh it is the end of the world" ..... for 300 - 600 responses. Apple is going to remove Ethernet ... another 200-300 responses.
Now imagine what would happen if Appe willy nilly announced they were cancelling the Air
and Pro lines at the same time. Especially, in the context they had eliminated the MacBook. Imagine the panadomium. That would be a good 1000 posts about "OMG Apple is going to force everyone into using iPads. " kind of thread.
If these new MacBook come out and people can look them over in the stores for 11 months then if they later come out and say the Air and Pro are dead at least people know (well those with some sense ) that this isn't an "iPad" move but a Mac move.
Like the MBA I think Apple is going to "park" these new entries above the MBP in price for a year or two then then start to "merge" the price points. At the "merge" the MBP and MBA will get wiped out. It wouldn't be surprising either if the MBP 13" and MBA 13" switched entry price points. (e.g,. MBP gets dGPU. )
If these "new" versions come standard with large SSDs (over 128GB) and "Pixel doubled" (Retina) displays it is going to be hard to make them beat the others on price and keep Apple's standard margin. Similarly, Thunderbolt is going to grow at normal pace and won't be fully deployed for at least two years. TB only has one year, of those two, under its belt. And if betting on Haswell to get them out of some thermal/performance jams ... chuckle ... like Intel is going to arrive on time with that. Probably not given their track record over the last 12 months. Apple is a couple of years ahead of all of those being a foundation they can layer the whole laptop line on for the broadest spectrum of users. A "big bang" replacement wouldn't likely work.
(minus the 17", which doesn't make any sense anymore - you need bigger screens as a professional editor? That's why you have the iMac or Mac Pro).
That's a bonehead comment. The need is there. The substantive problem is that those truly in "need" are relatively small in number.
The 17" users who "needed" ExpressCard or the fastest CPU/GPU combo or several other factors really didn't need the 17" screen iteself. It was just coupled to the biggest screen. These days the 15" has all the PCI-e expansion , CPU , GPU abilities the larger form factor has.
Similarly, those that just needed the pixels ( e.g., needed to put all the pixels of a 1080p video stream on the screen at once with pixels supported by the native screen panel ) can also likely "get by" with a 15 screen if more pixels than the 17" had. Many video and photographers fall into this bucket. ( a full screen playback/slideshow of the underlying video/RAW files is going to use all of the pixels if looking for tiny glitches in the recorded material. )
The only ones that are left are the ones that needed larger "effective" pixels but also needed alot of them visible at the same time. That's going to be a smaller group that the number of 17" sold now. If the 17" is already at 1% .... that's indicative have entered a sub-silo that is tooooo narrow.