I've been back doing more work with Macs just because of the way business went. I'll certainly be roasted by some of you sharing my honest opinion about the release after following an interesting discussion. I think that Apple released this Macbook because they can and loyal customers will buy it, outdated or not. It was like seeing the iPhone 5 come out as an incremental upgrade but still with a ludicrous price tag. The specs were long bested by Android phones that cost much less. In the Apple ecosystem there is no competition. There is just "what we offer that is better than what you have." I'm not saying that what Apple puts out sucks - hardly. The products are usually never less than average with at least a few really impressive things (such as the camera, which has always been excellent and towards the top of all phones.) It's just that you have something that may only be pretty good overall, you're paying top dollar prices, they make a killing.... and they have you lusting over how much better the next model is that is introduced - perhaps just 6 months later. Now they may have you for 2 big ticket sales when they only would have had you for one.
I remember back when Blackberry and Palm dominated the phone market. They became complacent and played the "milk the customer and technology" game. Each upgrade began to be marginal - noticeable but marginal. They died because users saw other options in the marketplace and the investment in Palm and Blackberry apps wasn't the same as investing with all your music in iTunes and Apple's assortment of proprietary stuff. Apple is very smart that way. They know that once you have totally embraced the ecosystem, it's a costly departure if you've invested in it. And in fairness, many companies work the same way. But here there is far more brand loyalty for personal, economic and technical reasons. I was a HUGE Mac person back in the day (and was in a couple of magazines.) I made a decision to diversify based upon seeing Apple move towards being proprietary and controlling the entire ecosystem. While there are benefits to only having to program for and service your own equipment (without a doubt), one needs to appreciate the pros and cons of that situation and others. And controlling the ecosystem means Apple can experiment at will with its customers who will buy at top dollar since there are no alternatives, even if it's mediocre by Apple standards.
PS - Case in point - it's hard to believe that Apple released an iPad Mini 3 with such old specs. Even the iPad Mini 4 isn't a tremendous upgrade - and they are still selling 16GB models which carry a $400 price tag (useful primarily only for data input and reading documents). They offer it because they can to a walled market that will buy it. Other than a better camera and UHD resolution (versus more than acceptable 1080P), I bought almost the same 2 years ago for $250 in the Android market -- with an SD slot that allowed me to add 64 and 128 GB SD cards. They release it because it's better than what Apple customers currently have. And if they want something better that has just one really good feature, they have no alternative for purchase.
