Almost 2 years ago, when Apple introduced the 2016 MacBook Pro, the price of the MacBook Pro line significantly increased. In the past, you could buy an entry-level MacBook Pro for £999, then suddenly they retailed for £1749. Apple pushed up the price and are keeping it up high because they want people to see this device as a professional tool. These devices are for the kind of professionals who buy iMac Pro, not for the masses, hence the high price tag. This is in stark contrast from the situation of the past 8 or so years where the 13-inch MacBook Pro has been the go-to, default Apple laptop (and maybe any laptop for that matter). So when consumers see the high price, they get confused, especially if they are upgrading from a previous model that, when purchased, was a much lower price. They (the consumer) begin to think Apple have lost their way, fuelled by the non-tech media spreading a narrative of Apple being ‘doomed’. People are looking at the high end of Mac portables in the wrong way. It’s not 2011 anymore, it’s the Cook-era, and in this era the MacBook Pro is for high-end professionals.
So, you’re an average consumer, maybe your needs are pretty simple; you want something more capable than an iPad Pro (what’s a computer? Right?!), but you’re not a high-end professional prepared to spend almost £2,000 on a laptop. It’s time to start looking at the lower end of Mac laptops. This is where things start to go south. The sweet-spot price point for these computers has always been around the £1000 mark. Any lower is great - provided quality is not compromised, any higher is getting a little eye-watering for someone who just wants a laptop running macOS. Luckily, there is a Mac currently sitting at this price point, as it has been for a number of years; MacBook Air.
MacBook Air starts at £949 and would be a great value computer - if it were about £300 cheaper. The screen is non-Retina, using a display that looks like it’s about 8 years old - because it is. Apple should be ashamed of themselves for shipping this display on a device at any price point, let alone the £1000 bracket. High-end PC manufacturers would be crazy to include such a low-res display with poor colours and viewing angles in 2018. Apple get away with it because they’re Apple, and they shouldn’t. Internally, the MacBook Air is acceptable. Last refreshed in early 2017, the difference over the previous 2015 model is incredibly minor so you’re effectively getting a 3 year old machine for your money. Having said this, the performance will be more than suitable for basic users. But what if you want something a little better, or a little well, newer?
Well for £1249 you can buy the 13-inch MacBook Pro (2 Thunderbolt 3 Ports). First introduced in 2016 - then refreshed in 2017, this model has no Touch Bar (hence the colloquial name ‘MacBook Escape’ due to the presence of a physical escape key), and only 2 Thunderbolt /USB-C ports as opposed to 4 (hence Apple’s aforementioned official name). When originally introduced, Apple described this machine as an option for potential MacBook Air customers, because internally, the specs are on a par with what a modern MacBook Air should be. So it’s called MacBook Pro, but it’s not a MacBook Pro. It’s at this point I begin to feel sorry for prospective Mac buyers - it’s just confusing.
It only gets worse. For the same price as MacBook Escape (or more depending on spec), you can have something smaller and less powerful than MacBook Air - the 12-inch MacBook. Lovingly known amongst Apple fans as ‘MacBook Adorable’, this 12-inch notebook is everything MacBook Air should be in 2018. It’s even thinner, even lighter, and above all it’s equipped with a Retina display. The only problem is it costs £300 more than a MacBook Air, and starts at the same price as the MacBook Escape. So you could have something that looks like a MacBook Pro and has MacBook Pro written on the box for the same price as something that’s effectively an overpriced, modern MacBook Air. I’m getting confused just writing this and I deal with these computers on a daily basis.
There is a new hope however. It’s been rumoured for a while but it looks like Q4 2018 will see the introduction of a MacBook Air ‘successor’. Rumours have been very conflicted, but it seems for certain it will be a 13-inch, Retina Mac portable. What form this Mac will take is pretty much unknown at this point. Will it be a 2018 MacBook Air? Will be a 13-inch MacBook alongside a refreshed 12-inch model? Will it replace the 12-inch altogether? No one seems sure. Personally, I think the current MacBook Air will be discontinued, along with the MacBook Escape. The MacBook Escape was notably absent from Apple’s 2018 MacBook Pro refresh and it’s starting to look like a strategy that didn’t work out. However, it is possible that this new machine is just a refreshed MacBook Escape rebranded as ’13-inch MacBook’ rather than MacBook Pro.
What will happen to the 12-inch MacBook Adorable is another question altogether . Back in 2015 it seemed as if it would be the MacBook Air replacement, but the Intel M-series CPUs still haven’t got cheap enough to manufacture hence the high starting price of MacBook. Apple could take an alternative approach, such as renaming it to MacBook mini and only sell the 512GB option to justify the high price and the fact at £1549 it costs more than the bigger, better laptop *cough* iPad mini 4 *cough*. It could also remain stagnant for the next 18 months, until Apple decide to use it as a platform for launching the first ARM-based Mac equipped with their own A-series processors.
In my eyes, the perfect solution is to drop everything besides the 13-inch and 15-inch Touch Bar MacBook Pros, and to sell them alongside this mysterious, new, affordable 13-inch laptop. This wouldn’t be very characteristic of Tim Cook’s Apple so I’m not holding out hope.
Regardless of Apple’s intended strategy and previous motives, the notebook lineup has ended up in a mess. At the top, MacBook Pro is in good shape, but the consumer line needs fixing, and this new mystery Mac should help to bring balance to the force.
This post wasn’t designed to criticise the products themselves (except for the non-Retina screen on MacBook Air), rather critique the lineup as a whole and see if I could make any sense of what is coming next for Mac notebooks.
:))