No, you do not need powerful CPU/GPUs to watch video as long as the video is in an Apple-friendly format. There is hardware acceleration built into the CPU which handles video.
You can easily edit 4K video with the old Macbook,
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It is not supposed to be something you have to get when you have the previous version. It is just an upgrade. Apple assumes that Mac owners keeps their Macs for an average of 4 years. This should be a good computer for a lot of Mac-users which have Macs from 2013 and earlier and who have or want to adapt to a mobile, wireless computing lifestyle.
Those who bought the Macbook in 2015 should probably keep that until 2017 at least.
MacBooks is released like this:
Initial release -> iteration -> ... -> iteration -> (semi)huge revision -> iteration -> ... -> iteration repeat until end-of-service
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I have never understood why someone would buy the Air modells after having experienced retina displays.
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If you want a good notebook Mac for less than a $1000, Apple does not offer that. I always said that if you want to be a happy Apple notebook customer, you should be willing to spend a minimum of $1000 and usually in the $1200-$1600 range.