I have one of the MacBook Pros with the butterfly keyboard and actually quite like it as a keyboard. It took some getting used to, but so does any new keyboard. Really like the feel of the keys and the short travel.
The issue, of course, is that the reliability was terrible. I had one keyboard replaced already, and I think the second one is beginning to lose a key. Thankfully, Apple covered the first one, as it requires a substantial replacement and (I think) costs around $700 if you have to pay for it.
Jason Snellās review of the new MacBook Pro calls out the same thing weāre talking about hereāthat the low-end model is a completely different machine thatās similar to the MacBook Air.
John Gruber, responding to Jasonās article, says exactly the same thing at Daring Fireball.
Theyāre not bad MacBooks by any sense ā but I genuinely wonder who theyāre for. Most people who want a 13-inch MacBook should definitely get the new Air; those who want or need more performance should get the high-end MacBook Pro. Iām not sure who the people in the middle are, other than those who feel they should buy a MacBook with āProā in the name because that sounds better.
That would perhaps make sense if the low-end 13" was actually good value. Itās not. For most consumers a new i5 Air will perform about the same and specāed the same (8/512) itās actually $200 cheaper. So thereās your coronavirus model.
Is there somebody out there who prefers the the MBP form factor over the Air? Sure. Is there somebody out there who prefers display brightness over battery life? Sure. But is that typical of the consumer market? Is it typical off the cornonavirus consumer looking for a budget Mac? Of course not. The low-end 13" is unfocused and a product without a real user base. In this market in 2020, a typical product of marketing gone unchecked instead of the result of ambitious engineering. Just the thing Steve abhorred.
We remember Steve Jobsā original four quadrants product approach, but we forget that he started selling quite a range of machines later on. In early 2006, Apple was selling the eMac, the iMac G5 17", the iMac G5 20", the Mac mini, the Power Mac G5, the Xserve G5, the iBook G4, the iBook G4 14", the PowerBook G4 12", the PowerBook G4 15", and the PowerBook G4 17" plus all their configurations.*
Right now, we have the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro 13", the MacBook Pro 16", the Mac mini, the iMac, the iMac Pro, and the Mac Pro plus all their configurations.*
Iām not really seeing much difference. If anything, Cookās lineup is less packed than Jobsā.
You are assuming that the majority of Mac purchasers are as savvy, technically oriented and discerning as you, an accomplished and focused and highly educated scientist, are. The majority of Mac purchasers are not. They donāt read TidBITS, Six Colors, Daring Fireball, or other technically focused Mac journals. Gamers will be focused more on speed, road warriors on weight and size, artists and visual production pros on screens, etc., etc. But in the current economic, health and social crisis, price is increasingly a decision making factor an everyoneās mind. A road warrior on a constrained budget will not want to schlep around a heavier machine, a gamer will be less concerned about weight and focused more on speed.
We donāt know what prices Apple had determined back in 2019 when the new Macs went into production. But we do know that the economic situation dramatically changed beginning this past December when China had a problem that could no longer be ignored. Apple has new products coming off recently unfrozen assembly lines that it needs to sell now. In order to do so they needed to price them accordingly during a rapidly deteriorating economic crisis affecting just about everybody on earth.
In the past few days I posted about the distress I had, and still have, about when it was announced that the just released, top of the line, 9600 beige box I bought about 6-8 weeks before would be unable to run OS X because Apple announced a new blue and white 9600 which would run a Power PC chip. Though I am still unhappy about not being able to run OS 10 for a few years and the subsequent price drop on my beige box 9600, I could understand why Steve Jobs wanted to release OX 10 ASAP. Did I whine about it on TidBITS Talk? No.
Youāve got it exactly backwards. Because most consumers arenāt nerds, good Apple kept things simple and avoided unnecessary overlap. Now not-so-good Apple has a lineup with two well tailored systems out of three, but only the nerds will know which two those are.
A quick search turns up a lot of results about laptops and tablets flying off the shelves in an even more highly highly price conscious, work and school at home focused market:
This article is from the WSJ, where it is behind a paywall:
One of the points covered in the article above is how Apple typically waits to anounce its new lineups with a spectacular show-and-tell, but not this time. Iām sure that Apple as well as all the PC and Chromebook manufacturers in the world are very aware that once things open up, the boom is highly likely to end and they need to rake in whatever they can as quickly as they can.
Iām still wondering whether to upgrade my 13" 20013 MBP 2013. Iād definitely like some more SSD. Yetā¦ I really thought they would do a 14" this time, like they did a 16" to upgrade the 15".
This is from a friend who works at Apple:
āIn the āstrange but trueā category, Apple is incredibly tight-lipped internally about release dates and features, so the ārumorsā sites nearly always have better info than youāll get internally. It looks like the 14ā MBP is most likely to be announced at WWDC, which they just announced will be virtual this year, on June 22. Hereās an example of the rumors:
The other thing I think is worth paying attention to (not sure, though) is special dealsāwhen resellers or Apple start offering something with a big discount, it might be (I say, cynically) that they think theyāre going to get stuck with a big inventory once a newer model is released for roughly the same price."
I think I might as well wait at least until WWDC to see if there is anything new. But does Apple release upgrades so soon after an upgrade like this?
If you can wait I guess you might as well. Honestly though, I have a hard time believing Apple would launch a new 14" MBP less than two months after they refresh the 13" MBP in such a considerable way. But of course itās entirely possible.
If youāre running out of space now, you could also just get a new 13". If indeed we see a new 14" in a couple months, you can always sell off your still almost new 13" and replace it with a brand spanking new 14". Thatās definitely what Iāll be doing if indeed that 14" surfaces.
Really not strange but true. In the 1960s and 70s my father would talk about how much the IBM salespeople didnāt know and how rumors, which turned out to be truek, were unknown to them.
Last fall/winter I got a new battery for my iPhone SE. The guy who worked with me of course tried to talk me into a new phone. I told him all the offerings were too big (and since my case was off I even showed him). I also told him it was highly likely a smaller phone was being announced in the spring. To which he said āApple has NEVER announced phones in the spring!!!ā And I held up my SE and said āOh yes they did!ā
So now there are a few more results showing for the 2.3 GHz i7. If I cherry pick the single very best result from that list I see 1361/4885. Thatās about 10% better than the 2.0 GHz i5. Base clock speed alone is 15%. And considering most results are lower, I have to admit Iām a bit underwhelmed. Then again, itās only a $200 upgrade (11%). Probably best to wait for more results to come in.
Iāve been moaning and groaning about how Apple announced a brand new, super powered, cooler looking blue and white 9600 running a just revealed G chip that could run OS X about 6-8 weeks or so after I bought my beige 9600. To add insult to injury, the price of the beige box started dropping not long after. My vote is to wait, especially since the newer A chip Macs are expected soon.
I can imagine so. Problem here is that most people focus on the short term cost of acquisition instead of total costs of ownership. The lower cost MBPās will probably have a shorter useful lifespan (especially due to the old generation processors), increasing TCO.
The low-end MBPās donāt make much sense to me either. I do not think they would be in the lineup if Steve was still around, he was too much of a perfectionist for that.
Whatās the model number of the new MBP 13" with 4 USB ports? Itās amazing to me that Iāve spent more than a few minutes searching online at the usual spots and canāt see it listed anywhere prominently!
Thanks, Simon - I ended up finding it from the Wikipedia article on MBP after all!
Iām shopping for cover/case/skin/keyboard cover and noticing there arenāt a lot of choices yet for this model even though itās been out for a couple monthsā¦
Just a suggestion: Whenever Discourse suggests that your post is too short, try padding it with information about how you found the answer (so others can learn from your work) or an explanatory link for reference. Personally, I would have looked for this info in MacTracker.
