MBA cannibalizing MBP

[palpatine]

here we go again. heaven forbid a company have two or more product lines. i don't know what apple will do, but i hope they will keep a fully powered high-end pro line for those of us who value power over portability, and an air line for those who don't. i don't relish the thought of paying more for less of everything

 

[grahamnp]

Just because more customers favor one laptop doesn't mean Apple has to forget about all their other products. It's in their best interest to capture as large a user base as possible. Also, the Pros are still more popular than the Air. Just speculation on my part but I can see the iPad and similar devices destroying the MBA's entire market segment in a few years.

The MBA is also nowhere near as powerful as the 15/17" MBP and just because majority of users won't upgrade doesn't mean that the option needs to be taken away from everyone.

 

[Young Spade]

here we go again. heaven forbid a company have two or more product lines. i don't know what apple will do, but i hope they will keep a fully powered high-end pro line for those of us who value power over portability, and an air line for those who don't. i don't relish the thought of paying more for less of everything

I think that when the next MBPs get refreshed, we'll see things like 500 gb stock HDD, 6/8 gigs stock RAM, and a higher resolution screen. The MBA was just upgraded and the specs it has are pretty essential for a laptop in today's age (4 gigs minimum).

The Pro's will be upgraded and be the top of the line next agenda. Personally I just got a MBP because of the upgradability and, well, the fact that it's pretty damn thin on its own.

 

[tamvly]

It's called market segmentation. No company is better at it than Apple.

 

[akhbhaat]

Even with the new pros, desktops are still faster, higher res, and cheaper. So why not have a wicked desktop and pretty capable laptop.

My thoughts exactly.

 

[bniu]

MBA might cannibalize the 13" MBP which is only dual core and doesn't have discrete graphics but no MBA is anywhere near the performance of the 15/17 MBP. The big boys have quad core CPUs hyperthreaded to 8 threads, can take 16 gigs of RAM, have a 1 GB discrete graphics card, can drive two thunderbolt cinema displays daisy chained, can take a 600GB SSD, and put out massive amounts of heat!

Here's a metaphor of a MBP 17 owning a MBA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCh_Cn1x1EY

the 15/17 MBP are high yield machines. While they won't capture much market share, they're not supposed to. Their mission is to attract those customers willing to shell out $2K+ for a laptop, kinda like a $20K airline first class seat. The MBA goes after a different segment of the market where prices are lower but market share is higher. Combined, the MBA and MBP == great profits for Apple!

 

[Young Spade]

^I agree with the last part of your statement. For someone that wants a Mac but also wants a machine that can handle hard, hard editing, rendering, or other work, they're going to have to shell out a lot of money.

Honestly, they could lower the price; the baseline 15 inch is 600 more than the baseline 13; there's a reason they're doing that and it isn't the increase in price to make the darn thing either.