Jus thinking about my MacBook alternatives list above. It means I know what I would look at as alternatives. Me, a Mac user since 1985. Even through the ‘beleaguered’ nineties. It’s depressing. That’s what it is.
Jus thinking about my MacBook alternatives list above. It means I know what I would look at as alternatives. Me, a Mac user since 1985. Even through the ‘beleaguered’ nineties. It’s depressing. That’s what it is.
No doubt. While I didn't own my own Mac until '89, I used them and was a fan since then as well. Even in the 90s, I had no issue picking which Mac(s) I wanted, and was telling people to buy Apple stock. While there were problems, there was also hope. Apple's mission was solid, they were just the underdog, facing seemingly unsurmountable obstacles. These days, I'm looking everywhere for small glimmers of hope.
I don't think people should have to buy a MacBook Pro to get some of that, though. Maybe the 16 GB or RAM or *discrete* GPU, but there should be a non-pro machine with a good screen and good-enough GPU.
My wife's MacBook Pro is getting pretty old so today I went to Apple's site to see what a new one costs. I was genuinely shocked to discover that I can't buy a 15" Apple laptop with a TB of storage for less than CAD$4000 (USD$3000). With AppleCare, taxes, and a few adaptors to accommodate the USB-C connectors, we're looking at just shy of CAD$5000.
Looks like her existing MacBook Pro is going to get even older. WAAAY older, at this pace.
Lately a few things have had me thinking about how committed I am to staying with an all-Apple setup -- loads of software glitches, troublesome iPhones, disappointment in the 4K Apple TV -- so just for giggles I'd like to check how green the grass is on the other side of the fence. Anyone have suggestions of high-quality Wintel laptops you would actually consider buying for yourself?
$5000 iMacs and $4000 MacBook Pros looks like the same thinking where sweatshop produced Blue Jeans cost $200 or more. Thanks Angela & Tim.
I don't think people should have to buy a MacBook Pro to get some of that, though. Maybe the 16 GB or RAM or *discrete* GPU, but there should be a non-pro machine with a good screen and good-enough GPU.
My wife's MacBook Pro is getting pretty old so today I went to Apple's site to see what a new one costs. I was genuinely shocked to discover that I can't buy a 15" Apple laptop with a TB of storage for less than CAD$4000 (USD$3000). With AppleCare, taxes, and a few adaptors to accommodate the USB-C connectors, we're looking at just shy of CAD$5000.
Looks like her existing MacBook Pro is going to get even older. WAAAY older, at this pace.
Lately a few things have had me thinking about how committed I am to staying with an all-Apple setup -- loads of software glitches, troublesome iPhones, disappointment in the 4K Apple TV -- so just for giggles I'd like to check how green the grass is on the other side of the fence. Anyone have suggestions of high-quality Wintel laptops you would actually consider buying for yourself?
$5000 iMacs and $4000 MacBook Pros looks like the same thinking where sweatshop produced Blue Jeans cost $200 or more. Thanks Angela & Tim.
You seriously cannot blame $5000 for an iMac...its a Pro Mac whether you think it is or not. Its not like this is the cheapest iMac you can buy. Its not even marketed toward regular consumers. Stop over exaggerating and please for the love of god, stop blaming Tim Cook for every thing. FFS people!
macxpress said: You seriously cannot blame $5000 for an iMac...its a Pro Mac whether you think it is or not. Its not like this is the cheapest iMac you can buy. Its not even marketed toward regular consumers. Stop over exaggerating and please for the love of god, stop blaming Tim Cook for every thing. FFS people!
A $5000 iMac Pro is a complete steal in comparison to a $3-4k MacBook Pro. It's that MacBook Pro that is considerably overpriced.
cgWerks said: re: grass greener - The big problem - at least from my perspective - is the whole eco-system and then certain pieces of software.
I absolutely agree. The issue is that the benefit and reliability of that ecosystem is deteriorating for me. Apple's vision of how we use a multi-device system seems to be going in a direction that is less satisfying to me. I'm also experiencing outright failures of certain features that require brute-force solutions (like wiping an iPhone back to factory condition and rebuilding it from scratch). Obviously not everyone has problems and my preferences may not be consistent with what most people want, but for me the hold of the ecosystem is weaker than it was a couple years ago.
cgWerks said: [...]My wife has a pretty nice 'surface-like' machine she got from work, and I can't recall the brand right now. She like it quite a bit, but it wouldn't a 15" MBP replacement... more of a MacBook/Surface competitor.
I took a cursory look at the Surface line and came away feeling mostly positive about it. The Surface Book 2, which costs about the same as a MacBook Pro, lacks certain features of the MacBook Pro but offers some the MBP doesn't. The features that are missing are mostly ones my wife doesn't care about, and the features it adds are mostly things she likes. The problem is how hard it is to compare a feature on a spec sheet to use in real life. Like the screen. Supposedly the SB2 has a great display, but is it comparable to the best-in-the-world screen on the MBP? The SB2 provides a pen tool, but I can't tell if it lags, or if there's so much glass between the screen pixels and the pen tip that it causes parallax issues, unlike the iPad Pro.
At this point I'm just looking out of curiosity, not any burning need to replace her old machine, but like @Entropys I want to at least make an informed decision whenever it comes time to pull the trigger.
I’m trying to square the circle on the rMBA or rMB13 rumors. Weird.
We know now that Cannon Lake 5W processors suitable for the MB12 is being pushed into 2019. If Apple was planning on dropping the MB12 to $1000 and creating a new MB13 for the $1300 price point, using 5W Y-series processors, Apple would have to ship them with the existing Kaby Lake Y-series chips, now more than year old shipping in the MB12 since last year, or wait another year for Cannon Lake Y-series to come.
So, this means Apple hase to move up the Coffee Lake U-series at 15W. The MBA and pseudo MBA replacement, the MBP13 w/FN keys, uses 15W U-series processors. So, backup plan is to rev the MBA13 with a high DPI display and Coffee Lake U-series.
This would strand the MacBook 12” as a boutique product instead of the future low end Apple laptop. That’s all kinds of weird.
Best outcome to me is a 13” laptop in the style of the MB12 slotted into the $1200 price point, the MB12 dropped down to $1000, the MBP13 FN with Coffee Lake at $1400, and maybe the MBA just retired.
cgWerks said: re: grass greener - The big problem - at least from my perspective - is the whole eco-system and then certain pieces of software.
I absolutely agree. The issue is that the benefit and reliability of that ecosystem is deteriorating for me. Apple's vision of how we use a multi-device system seems to be going in a direction that is less satisfying to me. I'm also experiencing outright failures of certain features that require brute-force solutions (like wiping an iPhone back to factory condition and rebuilding it from scratch). Obviously not everyone has problems and my preferences may not be consistent with what most people want, but for me the hold of the ecosystem is weaker than it was a couple years ago.
Same here. I've spent more time in the last couple years *attempting* to fix stuff then in who decades previously. And, like you say, some of it just can't be fixed anymore, or it's easier just to wipe it and start over.
Even then, we're still having issues. My wife's MBA often pops up Apple ID sign-in windows as she works and does things. I haven't been able to make them go away. I had to start over on my own laptop a year or so ago, because even like 3 levels of Apple tech support (and hours of time spent with them) couldn't fix things.
And, iOS... yea it's pretty much a use it until it has issues... then wipe and start over. For anyone who has ever fixed computers, it's pretty frustrating in terms of non-granularity.
This would strand the MacBook 12” as a boutique product instead of the future low end Apple laptop. That’s all kinds of weird.
Isn't it already there? I think they have to wait until they MB can be powerful enough to not be boutique (wether next-gen Intel or A-series, etc), at which time it can replace the Air.
[...] And, iOS... yea it's pretty much a use it until it has issues... then wipe and start over. For anyone who has ever fixed computers, it's pretty frustrating in terms of non-granularity..
Even when it's not actually broken, iOS sometimes makes me cry.
The latest twist for me is software updates that change how a feature is turned on or off, then switch it off, even though it was on before the update. It took me close to an hour to figure out why I could no longer send SMS messages with iMessage on the Mac. Turns out an iOS update had turned it off, and added a new activation function I wasn't aware of.
It took a day or two for me to get around to digging into that particular issue because I was burned out from figuring out why making phone calls on the Mac had stopped working. During that time I wondered why I would bother paying for an ecosystem that doesn't work. Then I realized that Windows doesn't even offer those features, so I'm not sure switching is a good solution.
So for my wife, daughter, and me, it seems the fundamental problem is just that Apple's more affordable laptops all have 13" screens. Those of us who really want a larger screen are faced with either buying an expensive Mac or a less capable Windows machine.
This would strand the MacBook 12” as a boutique product instead of the future low end Apple laptop. That’s all kinds of weird.
Isn't it already there? I think they have to wait until they MB can be powerful enough to not be boutique (wether next-gen Intel or A-series, etc), at which time it can replace the Air.
It started out as boutique product, but the expectation was for the MBA to be retired and the MB takes its place at the $1000 to $1500 price tiers. They just needed a 13” or 14” version to flesh out the lineup or to occupy the 15W CPU slot. If we take what Schiller said about the MBP13 FN at face value, that it is the successor to the MBA13, they already have it, and it in fact has a $1300 price SKU. It just that the price of the MB12 hasn’t dropped to $1000 just yet.
The laptop lineup is almost there, they just need to drive the price of the MB12 down to $1000. They can probably cut the SSD to 128 GB and sell the existing MB12 for $1000, or get really close. The 256 GB SSD model that is currently for $1300 dropped to $1200. The MBP lineup gets 15, 28 and 45W Coffee Lake processors.
Maybe the MBP13 FN is really an upscaled MB12 that has enough cooling for 15W CPUs or Apple can stick with the existing MBP ID, who knows. Just strange that they would rev the MBA with a high DPI display all this time. In 2016, prior to the 4th gen MBP release, there was a rumor that there was going be a MBA13 with a Retina display. That actually ended up being the MBP13 with FN keys. Wouldn’t be surprised if these MBA13” with Retina display turns out to be a MB13 or a cheaper MBP13 FN.
lorin schultz said: Even when it's not actually broken, iOS sometimes makes me cry.
The latest twist for me is software updates that change how a feature is turned on or off, then switch it off, even though it was on before the update. It took me close to an hour to figure out why I could no longer send SMS messages with iMessage on the Mac. Turns out an iOS update had turned it off, and added a new activation function I wasn't aware of.
It took a day or two for me to get around to digging into that particular issue because I was burned out from figuring out why making phone calls on the Mac had stopped working. During that time I wondered why I would bother paying for an ecosystem that doesn't work. Then I realized that Windows doesn't even offer those features, so I'm not sure switching is a good solution.
So for my wife, daughter, and me, it seems the fundamental problem is just that Apple's more affordable laptops all have 13" screens. Those of us who really want a larger screen are faced with either buying an expensive Mac or a less capable Windows machine.
I hear you. I've had the same problem a number of times... to the point that for each OS update (so I tend to wait and do them less frequently), I comb through the settings. It's often stuff like which apps get backed up, or which ones use cell data, or background notifications. Sometimes it's other things, like you say, that dramatically change workflow.
As I've said many times, I've spent more time fixing and troubleshooting our small family eco-system (and never getting it completely fixed!) in the last 5-10 years than I spent in the previous 20-25 combined. Much of the gain in workflow productivity has been eaten up by mucking with stuff that used to work. And, even after that, my systems are much more in disarray than they've ever been.
At least the cloud stuff has been reasonably reliable in the last few years. One of my friends was early into all that stuff and got burned so many times (lost his contacts, calendars corrupted, etc.). And, what really pissed him off is that Apple treated these foundational things as if they were just irrelevant add-ons. I'm not sure Apple has ever really gotten mission-critical when it comes to their services. That used to be the one very legitimate concern corporate IT had about implementing their stuff. If an HP has a problem, you call, they come out and swap it. Apple was clueless in that regard.
The laptop line is really a mess. Yes, if you're looking for a bigger screen at semi-reasonable prices, you're just outta luck. Same for desktops unless you're OK with an iMac. Apple has nothing in the middle... it's high-cost low-end, or very-high-cost pro. That used to not be the case.
The laptop lineup is almost there, they just need to drive the price of the MB12 down to $1000. They can probably cut the SSD to 128 GB and sell the existing MB12 for $1000, or get really close. The 256 GB SSD model that is currently for $1300 dropped to $1200. The MBP lineup gets 15, 28 and 45W Coffee Lake processors.
Yea, the MB just needs to be a bit more powerful to enter the mainstream of laptops like the Air currently is. My wife really, really wanted a MB when she bought her MBA last year, but it just isn't quite powerful enough... and she didn't really like the 13" MBP, even aside from the price. She likes the MBA form-factor quite a bit. Even though it's close in size and weight, the perception of it, due to it's shape, is that it's smaller than the MBP.
The laptop lineup is almost there, they just need to drive the price of the MB12 down to $1000. They can probably cut the SSD to 128 GB and sell the existing MB12 for $1000, or get really close. The 256 GB SSD model that is currently for $1300 dropped to $1200. The MBP lineup gets 15, 28 and 45W Coffee Lake processors.
Yea, the MB just needs to be a bit more powerful to enter the mainstream of laptops like the Air currently is. My wife really, really wanted a MB when she bought her MBA last year, but it just isn't quite powerful enough... and she didn't really like the 13" MBP, even aside from the price. She likes the MBA form-factor quite a bit. Even though it's close in size and weight, the perception of it, due to it's shape, is that it's smaller than the MBP.
Yeah, maybe the 2013 Mac Pro isn’t the only piece of Mac hardware that Apple has painted themselves into a thermal corner. Curious why they decided on a MBP13 FN instead of rMB13. Perhaps the MB industrial design can’t go above 5 to 10 W TDP, even at 13” display sizes, and that left them going with a MBP13 FN. However, they likely couldn’t hit $1500 with the MBP13 TB, so that was probably the biggest reason they went with the FN model.
Still doesn’t explain why they didn’t want to come up with a MBA13 successor. A MB13 model with a cTDP up to 8W would have both given it a larger display and enough performance in the $1300 slot, and the MB12 could have been dropped to $1100.
tht said: However, they likely couldn’t hit $1500 with the MBP13 TB, so that was probably the biggest reason they went with the FN model.
I'm sure pricing has to do with it, but my hunch is that the FN models were available as an alternative to the TB models, as they knew the Touch Bar would create an outcry.
The laptop lineup is almost there, they just need to drive the price of the MB12 down to $1000. They can probably cut the SSD to 128 GB and sell the existing MB12 for $1000, or get really close. The 256 GB SSD model that is currently for $1300 dropped to $1200. The MBP lineup gets 15, 28 and 45W Coffee Lake processors.
I have two objections to that.
One is that at the low end you have a gimped computer that's still expensive. $1000 for only 128GB of storage and really limited power doesn't seem like a big seller.
The other is that the only 15" option is a top-of-the-line model. I'd prefer to see a good/better/best lineup with both small and larger versions of each.
lorin schultz said: I'd prefer to see a good/better/best lineup with both small and larger versions of each.
For sure. The laptop line isn't the only one that has this problem, either. And, it seems Apple favors current, older, oldest to do this, which comes with a bunch of other problems.
Apple’s laptop line has always coupled screen size with higher performance.
The only time there was ever a “cheap” 15” model was when they briefly offered one without discrete graphics. And that was still more expensive than both 13” base models.
Granted, the entry-level price on the 15” screen has never been as high as on the Touch Bar models, but to pretend that the line is a “mess” since then is just wrong.
There are two things that are weird about it at the moment: 1) The MacBook should be the entry-level machine, replacing the Air entirely (but won’t until they can drop the price to $999).
2) The 2015 15” MacBook Pro remains available to keep the entry-level 15” Machine below $2500.
Apple’s laptop line has always coupled screen size with higher performance.
The only time there was ever a “cheap” 15” model was when they briefly offered one without discrete graphics. And that was still more expensive than both 13” base models.
Granted, the entry-level price on the 15” screen has never been as high as on the Touch Bar models, but to pretend that the line is a “mess” since then is just wrong.
Speaking only for myself and not anyone else, I didn't mean to suggest the line is a mess, only that the line as it currently exists isn't a good fit for what we want in our house. I've always felt more than a tinge of pain paying what it costs to buy a MaBook Pro, but this time the pain is great enough to prevent the purchase. I don't know if that's because prices have exceeded the threshold I can tolerate or if my tolerance is lower than it used to be.
2) The 2015 15” MacBook Pro remains available to keep the entry-level 15” Machine below $2500.
Good point! I missed that because it's way down at the bottom of the Buy page.
Taking a quick look at that exposed what may be the problem for us: Apple's pricing for storage upgrades. A dollar per gigabyte is a big hit.
In the past we've purchased our machines with base RAM and storage, then upgraded it ourselves with much less expensive third-party components. Since we can't upgrade them ourselves anymore we have to pay Apple's prices for upgrades. Apple's storage prices being more than double what third-party solutions costs drives the net cost of the machine into uncomfortable territory for those of us who need/want a big chunk of onboard storage.
The laptop lineup is almost there, they just need to drive the price of the MB12 down to $1000. They can probably cut the SSD to 128 GB and sell the existing MB12 for $1000, or get really close. The 256 GB SSD model that is currently for $1300 dropped to $1200. The MBP lineup gets 15, 28 and 45W Coffee Lake processors.
I have two objections to that.
One is that at the low end you have a gimped computer that's still expensive. $1000 for only 128GB of storage and really limited power doesn't seem like a big seller.
The other is that the only 15" option is a top-of-the-line model. I'd prefer to see a good/better/best lineup with both small and larger versions of each.
For the big brands (MS, HP, Apple), hitting the $1000 price tier with a thin and light laptop currently requires giving up something: CPU, RAM, SSD, display. MS offers a $1000 Surface Pro SKU with an i5 and 128 GB SSD. The SKU with 256 GB SSD has an MSRP of $1300, but they have a $200 sale and people can get it for $1100. Still can hit the $1000 price point. Same thing with the Surface Laptop. For the $800 price points, MS is dropping down to 4 GB of RAM on Surface devices. Ouch.
The current MacBook Air has a Core i5-5350U, 8 GB RAM and 128 GB SSD for $1000.
The current MacBook has a Core m3-7Y32, 8 GB RAM, and 256 GB SSD for $1300.
For the MacBook to hit $1000, it has to drop to a 128 GB SSD. It would be a better machine than the current MBA13: faster CPU, faster GPU, better display, lighter machine. Apple has no update choice with the 5W Intel processor lineup this year (other than moving up the Kaby Lake speed grades, but that means no m7 blah blah CPU upgrade option), but they can rev the MB with 2 TB3 ports, and drop the price. That’ll open up 5K monitors and eGPUs to the MB. It will be a very good machine at $1000 with 128 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM, Core m3, and 2 TB3 ports.
As an aside, I had an odd musing regarding the ARM processors Apple is gradually adding throughout its Mac lineup. If Apple uses an A11 in a $1300 MB or MBP, that A11 could be faster than the Intel processors in them. 😊
Comments
It’s depressing. That’s what it is.
Thanks Angela & Tim.
I took a cursory look at the Surface line and came away feeling mostly positive about it. The Surface Book 2, which costs about the same as a MacBook Pro, lacks certain features of the MacBook Pro but offers some the MBP doesn't. The features that are missing are mostly ones my wife doesn't care about, and the features it adds are mostly things she likes. The problem is how hard it is to compare a feature on a spec sheet to use in real life. Like the screen. Supposedly the SB2 has a great display, but is it comparable to the best-in-the-world screen on the MBP? The SB2 provides a pen tool, but I can't tell if it lags, or if there's so much glass between the screen pixels and the pen tip that it causes parallax issues, unlike the iPad Pro.
At this point I'm just looking out of curiosity, not any burning need to replace her old machine, but like @Entropys I want to at least make an informed decision whenever it comes time to pull the trigger.
We know now that Cannon Lake 5W processors suitable for the MB12 is being pushed into 2019. If Apple was planning on dropping the MB12 to $1000 and creating a new MB13 for the $1300 price point, using 5W Y-series processors, Apple would have to ship them with the existing Kaby Lake Y-series chips, now more than year old shipping in the MB12 since last year, or wait another year for Cannon Lake Y-series to come.
So, this means Apple hase to move up the Coffee Lake U-series at 15W. The MBA and pseudo MBA replacement, the MBP13 w/FN keys, uses 15W U-series processors. So, backup plan is to rev the MBA13 with a high DPI display and Coffee Lake U-series.
This would strand the MacBook 12” as a boutique product instead of the future low end Apple laptop. That’s all kinds of weird.
Best outcome to me is a 13” laptop in the style of the MB12 slotted into the $1200 price point, the MB12 dropped down to $1000, the MBP13 FN with Coffee Lake at $1400, and maybe the MBA just retired.
Even then, we're still having issues. My wife's MBA often pops up Apple ID sign-in windows as she works and does things. I haven't been able to make them go away. I had to start over on my own laptop a year or so ago, because even like 3 levels of Apple tech support (and hours of time spent with them) couldn't fix things.
And, iOS... yea it's pretty much a use it until it has issues... then wipe and start over. For anyone who has ever fixed computers, it's pretty frustrating in terms of non-granularity.
Isn't it already there? I think they have to wait until they MB can be powerful enough to not be boutique (wether next-gen Intel or A-series, etc), at which time it can replace the Air.
The latest twist for me is software updates that change how a feature is turned on or off, then switch it off, even though it was on before the update. It took me close to an hour to figure out why I could no longer send SMS messages with iMessage on the Mac. Turns out an iOS update had turned it off, and added a new activation function I wasn't aware of.
It took a day or two for me to get around to digging into that particular issue because I was burned out from figuring out why making phone calls on the Mac had stopped working. During that time I wondered why I would bother paying for an ecosystem that doesn't work. Then I realized that Windows doesn't even offer those features, so I'm not sure switching is a good solution.
So for my wife, daughter, and me, it seems the fundamental problem is just that Apple's more affordable laptops all have 13" screens. Those of us who really want a larger screen are faced with either buying an expensive Mac or a less capable Windows machine.
The lineup should go something like:
$1000, 5W CPU: MB12
$1300, 15W CPU: MBP13 FN
$1800, 28W CPU: MBP13 TB
$2300, 45W CPU: MBP15 TB
The laptop lineup is almost there, they just need to drive the price of the MB12 down to $1000. They can probably cut the SSD to 128 GB and sell the existing MB12 for $1000, or get really close. The 256 GB SSD model that is currently for $1300 dropped to $1200. The MBP lineup gets 15, 28 and 45W Coffee Lake processors.
Maybe the MBP13 FN is really an upscaled MB12 that has enough cooling for 15W CPUs or Apple can stick with the existing MBP ID, who knows. Just strange that they would rev the MBA with a high DPI display all this time. In 2016, prior to the 4th gen MBP release, there was a rumor that there was going be a MBA13 with a Retina display. That actually ended up being the MBP13 with FN keys. Wouldn’t be surprised if these MBA13” with Retina display turns out to be a MB13 or a cheaper MBP13 FN.
As I've said many times, I've spent more time fixing and troubleshooting our small family eco-system (and never getting it completely fixed!) in the last 5-10 years than I spent in the previous 20-25 combined. Much of the gain in workflow productivity has been eaten up by mucking with stuff that used to work. And, even after that, my systems are much more in disarray than they've ever been.
At least the cloud stuff has been reasonably reliable in the last few years. One of my friends was early into all that stuff and got burned so many times (lost his contacts, calendars corrupted, etc.). And, what really pissed him off is that Apple treated these foundational things as if they were just irrelevant add-ons. I'm not sure Apple has ever really gotten mission-critical when it comes to their services. That used to be the one very legitimate concern corporate IT had about implementing their stuff. If an HP has a problem, you call, they come out and swap it. Apple was clueless in that regard.
The laptop line is really a mess. Yes, if you're looking for a bigger screen at semi-reasonable prices, you're just outta luck. Same for desktops unless you're OK with an iMac. Apple has nothing in the middle... it's high-cost low-end, or very-high-cost pro. That used to not be the case.
Still doesn’t explain why they didn’t want to come up with a MBA13 successor. A MB13 model with a cTDP up to 8W would have both given it a larger display and enough performance in the $1300 slot, and the MB12 could have been dropped to $1100.
One is that at the low end you have a gimped computer that's still expensive. $1000 for only 128GB of storage and really limited power doesn't seem like a big seller.
The other is that the only 15" option is a top-of-the-line model. I'd prefer to see a good/better/best lineup with both small and larger versions of each.
Apple’s laptop line has always coupled screen size with higher performance.
The only time there was ever a “cheap” 15” model was when they briefly offered one without discrete graphics. And that was still more expensive than both 13” base models.
Granted, the entry-level price on the 15” screen has never been as high as on the Touch Bar models, but to pretend that the line is a “mess” since then is just wrong.
There are two things that are weird about it at the moment:
1) The MacBook should be the entry-level machine, replacing the Air entirely (but won’t until they can drop the price to $999).
2) The 2015 15” MacBook Pro remains available to keep the entry-level 15” Machine below $2500.
Good point! I missed that because it's way down at the bottom of the Buy page.
Taking a quick look at that exposed what may be the problem for us: Apple's pricing for storage upgrades. A dollar per gigabyte is a big hit.
In the past we've purchased our machines with base RAM and storage, then upgraded it ourselves with much less expensive third-party components. Since we can't upgrade them ourselves anymore we have to pay Apple's prices for upgrades. Apple's storage prices being more than double what third-party solutions costs drives the net cost of the machine into uncomfortable territory for those of us who need/want a big chunk of onboard storage.
For the big brands (MS, HP, Apple), hitting the $1000 price tier with a thin and light laptop currently requires giving up something: CPU, RAM, SSD, display. MS offers a $1000 Surface Pro SKU with an i5 and 128 GB SSD. The SKU with 256 GB SSD has an MSRP of $1300, but they have a $200 sale and people can get it for $1100. Still can hit the $1000 price point. Same thing with the Surface Laptop. For the $800 price points, MS is dropping down to 4 GB of RAM on Surface devices. Ouch.
The current MacBook Air has a Core i5-5350U, 8 GB RAM and 128 GB SSD for $1000.
The current MacBook has a Core m3-7Y32, 8 GB RAM, and 256 GB SSD for $1300.
For the MacBook to hit $1000, it has to drop to a 128 GB SSD. It would be a better machine than the current MBA13: faster CPU, faster GPU, better display, lighter machine. Apple has no update choice with the 5W Intel processor lineup this year (other than moving up the Kaby Lake speed grades, but that means no m7 blah blah CPU upgrade option), but they can rev the MB with 2 TB3 ports, and drop the price. That’ll open up 5K monitors and eGPUs to the MB. It will be a very good machine at $1000 with 128 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM, Core m3, and 2 TB3 ports.
As an aside, I had an odd musing regarding the ARM processors Apple is gradually adding throughout its Mac lineup. If Apple uses an A11 in a $1300 MB or MBP, that A11 could be faster than the Intel processors in them. 😊