Don't the Tim Cook years remind you of the Scully years? Too many needless product variations. MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, (IPad Pro?). Each in a half dozen configurations. For a product segment that is seeing significant decline in sales and is quickly losing relevance. It's almost like there are competing laptop factions within Apple tryin to whip up different takes. Seriously, why doesn't apple just make one line laptop with minor case variations as you go from small and portable to larger and more powerful so that they can be more agile, nimble and quicker to market with relevant hardware updates? In an ideal world, a single infinitely powerful, infinitely light/portable, infinitely ergonomic computer would be all that is required--kind of like a pencil. I think that producing too many options puts would-be buyers into purchase paralysis.
I so much wanted to get my son a new MacBook Pro for his freshman year at college, figuring it would last him through college and beyond and held off as long as I could. But the new pro didn't show up in time. I told him he could use a chromebook just until October when the new pros were sure to come out. I bought it two years ago for $200 just to see what it could do. He's been using it for two weeks and guess what? It's working out fine for him. It helps that he is going to a University of California campus and they, like others, have standardized on gmail and electronic submission of papers and homework via browser interfaces. It certainly isn't ideal for all circumstances and I'll get him a new pro when it ultimately comes out but now I'm wondering why?
His phone is his real computer and the chromebook works for coursework. Maybe because that's what his older sister got, maybe because I promised it to him, maybe because it's my impression of what he needs, but certainly not because I think that ten years from now anything that is built like a current MacBook will be as relevant as a transistor radio is today--which actually may be closer to the truth.
Why not just get him a mbook or air? Because the delta in price for several more years of usable life is relatively low and he's in a technical field so no telling what he might need. This has become really relevant with the recent Sierra upgrade. I have an original MBP15. A couple of my colleagues bought Airs at the same time, mainly to save money and because they looked cool. I'm quite happy with the upgrade to Sierra and I think I could go a couple more years with my pro, they are wishing they never installed Sierra and are requesting new laptops. But relative to the chromebook there really isn't much to be gained.
The stagnation of the Mac product line has really got me thinking about apple's motives. On the one hand, it makes perfect sense when it has be come such a small fraction of apple's revenue stream. The longer you can go between product refreshes the more profit you make as long as people are buying, because R&D, tooling and production costs are spread over more and more units, the individual component pieces become far cheaper because they are no longer state of the art but rather surplus, and you can make minor meaningless changes that don't cost anything actually lower production costs, and actually charge the customer the same or more for them. On the other hand, I can imagine the arguments that go on at apple concerning product differentiation.
If it were Jobs instead of Cook I think we would see a considerable reduction in product variation, particularly at the MacBook level.
