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If these chip release dates turn out to be true, I'd wonder why Apple didn't just shelve the M6 and call the M7 the M6 a few months later.

I'm sure they have their reasons but it seems odd to me.
 
No, it hasn’t.
Check out the Fujitsu LifeBook, Dynabook Portege, Samsung Galaxy Book Pro, Asus ExpertBook B9, Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano. All 13-14" that are sub 2lbs and a whole bunch of others that are lighter than the 13 MBA which is a hefty 2.7lbs.

Again the MBA is a great machine and is thiner, but the "Air" moniker doesn't really fit anymore in terms of weight.
 
Something doesn't smell right for the MacBook Pro Ultra. Why would anyone spend a lot more money for an OLED screen and redesigned notebook and be stuck with a prior generation M5 processors when everyone knows within a year, maybe less, these will be upgraded to the M7 lineup. Seems like the Ultra will be a sales dud until the M7's arrive.
 
If this is indeed the roadmap, Ternus is simply following Cook’s playbook with slow incremental features.

I was hoping things would change with a hardware guy at the helm.

You DO understand this stuff was already planned — and the scale they operate on it needs to be done well ahead of time. You won’t truly get his full influence til late next year.
 
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Apple needs to make its own memory. Short of that, the U.S. government needs to prod the three memory chip makers by potentially allowing the Chinese memory makers to compete.
It would be very uneconomical for Apple to build and operate its own RAM fab.

It might cost about $20 billion to build it, but there's also the ongoing operating and upgrade costs to keep redesigning the RAM every 12-18 months to keep shrinking it, making it more power-efficient, etc., and to redesign and replace the fabrication hardware to make this redesigned RAM. Those ongoing costs would be on the order of tens of billions of dollars every few years. Apple prefers for existing RAM fab companies to absorb most of those costs.

Then there's the costs to license or purchase thousands of patents for making RAM. They'd also have to poach a lot of employees from the big three RAM makers, and/or from China's CXMT, which none of those companies (and China's government) would take kindly to. Samsung supplies a lot of components to Apple in addition to RAM (displays, camera tech, and mobile storage NAND chips), so ruining their relationship would be pretty damaging. Getting the US government to allow Apple to buy RAM from CXMT, due to import controls on goods made in China by companies owned by or tied to their government and military, would require some kind of Herculean effort to revise US import controls to get exemptions.
 
At this point just combine both MacOS & iPadOS together as well as both hardware devices MacBook Pro & iPad Pro, and just sell the iPad mini and iPad entry level as they are, or just combine the both altogether.
 
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