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Back when I worked at Apple the dirty secret was that the cheapest models, despite all the marketing of the MacBook Pro, made up the majority of sales. Back th

Back when I worked at Apple the dirty secret was that the cheapest models, despite all the marketing of the MacBook Pro, made up the majority of sales. Back then it was the white plastic MacBook but now it's the 11" MacBook Air that occupies that slot. That model and its crappy TN screen is vastly inferior and more expensive than similarly-sized ultrabooks. The only redeeming feature it has is MacOS. Instead of replacing the Air, Apple introduced the MacBook at a premium price point. It seems like a marketing failure to me that a lower spec MacBook (1080p, slower SSD) wasn't released and the Air discontinued.

jclardy 10y ago
Yeah, discontinuing the Air is crazy. The "entry level" laptop from Apple now (excluding their late-year models they kept around) is now $1299 and features a Core M3 processor. For people with a 2014+ Air that is a downgrade in performance for more money than they paid initially.
- runjake 10y ago
  The MacBook Air (Early 2015) isn't discontinued. They're still being manufactured and it's still a marquee item with its own header on Apple's website. The date nomenclature of Apple's products is the product release date and not its manufacturing date.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  Huh? No, Apple's entry-level laptop is the $999 MacBook Air 13″, which has an i5. The 11″ MacBook Air was discontinued, but the 13″ is still around.
  - CoolGuySteve 10y ago
    You're correct, I didn't notice that the 11" was discontinued. They've effectively raised the price of their entry-level computer by $200 which would explain a slowdown in sales. I guess we saw with the different Apple Watch versions, Apple is exploring just how much utility they can capture as margin.
  - jclardy 10y ago
    It is, but should we really count a laptop with a horrible looking TN panel, 1440x900 resolution, and a processor two generations behind that costs $1k to be a viable option for people? That laptop should cost $700 max in 2017. The only reason they have it is likely for education sales, since they have no other reasonable laptop right now.
    - rigden33 10y ago
      Yes, why wouldn't we count it? It's an entry level laptop for a reason; it's going to have entry-level specs.
      - jclardy 10y ago
        I guess what I'm really asking (given the original subject of the post being declining Mac sales) is who is going to buy it? You can buy a Chromebook with a 13" IPS touchscreen that looks better than the Air for $250. The air is a decent machine for doing dev work, but compared to what its competitors it is a complete rip-off. Its only selling point is running OS X.
        rigden33 10y ago
        Well what do most people (not just devs) like about macbooks? I would say build quality, "it just works" (macOS), and status as an apple product. The entry level macbook air still has those things. As for the chromebook comparison, macbooks have always been more expensive than its competitors at the same spec level, so this is nothing new. I feel like saying it isn't a viable machine because of old specs isn't necessarily true since people will still buy it.
        dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
        > Its only selling point is running OS X. I mean, that's the strongest decision when evaluating a new machine for me. If someone wants to replace my machine, they also need to replace the software on the machine, and I don't think the Chromebook is even aimed in the same direction as Mac OS X. It doesn't have the breadth of software, hardware, or even file interaction necessary to get through the classes I took in college, let alone my self education. If you know exactly what you need from your machine, the chromebook may very well be sufficient. I don't think you can depend on it as a general purpose computer quite yet.
mhurron 10y ago
> Back when I worked at Apple the dirty secret was that the cheapest models, despite all the marketing of the MacBook Pro, made up the majority of sales. Isn't that normal for almost every product though? You advertise the top of the line knowing that most will come in and look for something similar that fits their budget.
robotresearcher 10y ago
> now it's the 11" MacBook Air that occupies that slot. They don't sell that model any more. 13" is the only MBA now. http://www.apple.com/us/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air http://www.apple.com/us/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air
iaskwhy 10y ago
Just a reminder: the original Macbook Air was introduced 9 years ago for US$1799, a very premium price point for a, at the time, really weak machine. Give it time!
- m_mueller 10y ago
  Yes, and they had a strong lineup of other models to choose from back then.
neutronicus 10y ago
What Ultrabooks do you think are better bang for the buck?
- grepthisab 10y ago
  I like the Dell XPS 13 quite a bit.
  - dhfhduk 10y ago
    Earlier in my life, I always ended up buying Dells, mostly because they were the best purchases for me. Then at one point I needed a new laptop, and the 11-inch Air was the only one that really fit the bill hardware-wise. There was the Yoga, which I almost purchased, but I didn't quite trust it despite its appeal and positive reviews. After about about a year or so, it seemed like Apple abandoned that small laptop market, and multiple other vendors started releasing really competitive products in that space, especially HP and Dell. If I was purchasing a new laptop, it would almost certainly be an XPS 13. This sales news isn't anything new. These things seem to go in cycles--I suspect in 7 years or so we'll be talking about how Dell isn't keeping up with Apple again.
- CoolGuySteve 10y ago
  My Asus UX305 has a very similar design to the 13" Air but a Core M CPU, no fans, and a great 1080p matte IPS display. The track pad is excellent as well. It cost me $600. That all being said, I switched from MacOS to Ubuntu a couple years ago because I was finding the increasingly frequent notifications and general ugliness/usability of newer MacOS versions were becoming very Windows XP-esque. I might very well be the only person who prefers Unity to MacOS.
  - Koshkin 10y ago
    Linux runs on UX305 very well. Tried Fedora/Gnome and have been running Slackware/KDE for a while now with no issues with either.
freehunter 10y ago
Quite a few years ago I saw someone at college using a white plastic laptop and man I thought that looked sharp. I glanced at the top of it and saw it was a Mac. At the time I didn't own a Mac and I didn't follow their product lines, but that was a hell of a good looking laptop, I thought. That was actually the first time I'd ever seen a Macbook, I don't come from a very well-off or tech-forward area. Everyone at the time owned a Dell Inspiron 150x. When I looked it up I was really disappointed to see that it had been discontinued. I have an aluminum Macbook and sure it's nice... but when I think about Macbooks, I think about that white plastic machine. Shiny, almost see-through. It really stood out to me in a world of dull metal and chunky black plastic and laser-etched designs on laptops. My 2015 looks nice, I guess, but in my mind it doesn't look nearly as nice as that shiny, translucent white Macbook I saw years ago. Now, I never used one and I'm sure a lot of people here have, and I'm sure there are a lot of negative stories about them cracking or discoloring or being squeaky or something. But I still remember the first time I saw one, and it stuck with me. That was the same when I saw an aluminum Macbook, it was nice. They don't look all that special these days, the design is getting stale. Everyone has a Macbook-looking laptop, from a distance I can't tell the difference between a Samsung Chromebook and an 11" Macbook Air. I hope they can wow us with a new design again in the future.
- jotjotzzz 10y ago
  I still have my old white Macbook. It has never discolored for me and it's still running pretty fast.
  - niels_olson 10y ago
    I donated white 2007 to the local Lego robotics team and it's still winning.
- gamache 10y ago
  That case (basically the same as the iBook G4) was a beast. In the pre-Magsafe days, I had an iBook G4 survive three surprise drops to a hardwood floor without so much as a ding on the case. I miss that in the new Macs -- my 2013 MBP has picked up a couple of battle scars. But incidentally, I just bought a ThinkPad, and it took a bit of a tumble the other day, and there is zero evidence of this on the case. Once I get past the couple of interface and power-management deficiencies, I could get used to this.
tomwilson 10y ago
I don't think the 11 has ever sold in great quantities. I had one for years (recently replaced with the new 15 pro) and I rarely ever saw another 11 in the wild. If I did it was usually at WWDC. The 13 air however would easily be their most popular laptop. Those things are literally everywhere.
rsync 10y ago
"That model and its crappy TN screen is vastly inferior and more expensive than similarly-sized ultrabooks. The only redeeming feature it has is MacOS." Except it's made from a block of aluminum, has excellent build quality and will easily last 5+ years of day-in-day-out use. All I wanted was an 11" MBA with a higher res screen. They could have reused the exact same form factor and dies and tooling, etc. I would have happily upgraded to that.

jclardy 10y ago

Yeah, discontinuing the Air is crazy. The "entry level" laptop from Apple now (excluding their late-year models they kept around) is now $1299 and features a Core M3 processor. For people with a 2014+ Air that is a downgrade in performance for more money than they paid initially.

runjake 10y ago
The MacBook Air (Early 2015) isn't discontinued. They're still being manufactured and it's still a marquee item with its own header on Apple's website. The date nomenclature of Apple's products is the product release date and not its manufacturing date.
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
Huh? No, Apple's entry-level laptop is the $999 MacBook Air 13″, which has an i5. The 11″ MacBook Air was discontinued, but the 13″ is still around.
- CoolGuySteve 10y ago
  You're correct, I didn't notice that the 11" was discontinued. They've effectively raised the price of their entry-level computer by $200 which would explain a slowdown in sales. I guess we saw with the different Apple Watch versions, Apple is exploring just how much utility they can capture as margin.
- jclardy 10y ago
  It is, but should we really count a laptop with a horrible looking TN panel, 1440x900 resolution, and a processor two generations behind that costs $1k to be a viable option for people? That laptop should cost $700 max in 2017. The only reason they have it is likely for education sales, since they have no other reasonable laptop right now.
  - rigden33 10y ago
    Yes, why wouldn't we count it? It's an entry level laptop for a reason; it's going to have entry-level specs.
    - jclardy 10y ago
      I guess what I'm really asking (given the original subject of the post being declining Mac sales) is who is going to buy it? You can buy a Chromebook with a 13" IPS touchscreen that looks better than the Air for $250. The air is a decent machine for doing dev work, but compared to what its competitors it is a complete rip-off. Its only selling point is running OS X.
      - rigden33 10y ago
        Well what do most people (not just devs) like about macbooks? I would say build quality, "it just works" (macOS), and status as an apple product. The entry level macbook air still has those things. As for the chromebook comparison, macbooks have always been more expensive than its competitors at the same spec level, so this is nothing new. I feel like saying it isn't a viable machine because of old specs isn't necessarily true since people will still buy it.
      - dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
        > Its only selling point is running OS X. I mean, that's the strongest decision when evaluating a new machine for me. If someone wants to replace my machine, they also need to replace the software on the machine, and I don't think the Chromebook is even aimed in the same direction as Mac OS X. It doesn't have the breadth of software, hardware, or even file interaction necessary to get through the classes I took in college, let alone my self education. If you know exactly what you need from your machine, the chromebook may very well be sufficient. I don't think you can depend on it as a general purpose computer quite yet.

mhurron 10y ago

> Back when I worked at Apple the dirty secret was that the cheapest models, despite all the marketing of the MacBook Pro, made up the majority of sales. Isn't that normal for almost every product though? You advertise the top of the line knowing that most will come in and look for something similar that fits their budget.

robotresearcher 10y ago

> now it's the 11" MacBook Air that occupies that slot. They don't sell that model any more. 13" is the only MBA now. http://www.apple.com/us/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air http://www.apple.com/us/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air

iaskwhy 10y ago

Just a reminder: the original Macbook Air was introduced 9 years ago for US$1799, a very premium price point for a, at the time, really weak machine. Give it time!

m_mueller 10y ago
Yes, and they had a strong lineup of other models to choose from back then.

neutronicus 10y ago

What Ultrabooks do you think are better bang for the buck?

grepthisab 10y ago
I like the Dell XPS 13 quite a bit.
- dhfhduk 10y ago
  Earlier in my life, I always ended up buying Dells, mostly because they were the best purchases for me. Then at one point I needed a new laptop, and the 11-inch Air was the only one that really fit the bill hardware-wise. There was the Yoga, which I almost purchased, but I didn't quite trust it despite its appeal and positive reviews. After about about a year or so, it seemed like Apple abandoned that small laptop market, and multiple other vendors started releasing really competitive products in that space, especially HP and Dell. If I was purchasing a new laptop, it would almost certainly be an XPS 13. This sales news isn't anything new. These things seem to go in cycles--I suspect in 7 years or so we'll be talking about how Dell isn't keeping up with Apple again.
CoolGuySteve 10y ago
My Asus UX305 has a very similar design to the 13" Air but a Core M CPU, no fans, and a great 1080p matte IPS display. The track pad is excellent as well. It cost me $600. That all being said, I switched from MacOS to Ubuntu a couple years ago because I was finding the increasingly frequent notifications and general ugliness/usability of newer MacOS versions were becoming very Windows XP-esque. I might very well be the only person who prefers Unity to MacOS.
- Koshkin 10y ago
  Linux runs on UX305 very well. Tried Fedora/Gnome and have been running Slackware/KDE for a while now with no issues with either.

freehunter 10y ago

Quite a few years ago I saw someone at college using a white plastic laptop and man I thought that looked sharp. I glanced at the top of it and saw it was a Mac. At the time I didn't own a Mac and I didn't follow their product lines, but that was a hell of a good looking laptop, I thought. That was actually the first time I'd ever seen a Macbook, I don't come from a very well-off or tech-forward area. Everyone at the time owned a Dell Inspiron 150x. When I looked it up I was really disappointed to see that it had been discontinued. I have an aluminum Macbook and sure it's nice... but when I think about Macbooks, I think about that white plastic machine. Shiny, almost see-through. It really stood out to me in a world of dull metal and chunky black plastic and laser-etched designs on laptops. My 2015 looks nice, I guess, but in my mind it doesn't look nearly as nice as that shiny, translucent white Macbook I saw years ago. Now, I never used one and I'm sure a lot of people here have, and I'm sure there are a lot of negative stories about them cracking or discoloring or being squeaky or something. But I still remember the first time I saw one, and it stuck with me. That was the same when I saw an aluminum Macbook, it was nice. They don't look all that special these days, the design is getting stale. Everyone has a Macbook-looking laptop, from a distance I can't tell the difference between a Samsung Chromebook and an 11" Macbook Air. I hope they can wow us with a new design again in the future.

jotjotzzz 10y ago
I still have my old white Macbook. It has never discolored for me and it's still running pretty fast.
- niels_olson 10y ago
  I donated white 2007 to the local Lego robotics team and it's still winning.
gamache 10y ago
That case (basically the same as the iBook G4) was a beast. In the pre-Magsafe days, I had an iBook G4 survive three surprise drops to a hardwood floor without so much as a ding on the case. I miss that in the new Macs -- my 2013 MBP has picked up a couple of battle scars. But incidentally, I just bought a ThinkPad, and it took a bit of a tumble the other day, and there is zero evidence of this on the case. Once I get past the couple of interface and power-management deficiencies, I could get used to this.

tomwilson 10y ago

I don't think the 11 has ever sold in great quantities. I had one for years (recently replaced with the new 15 pro) and I rarely ever saw another 11 in the wild. If I did it was usually at WWDC. The 13 air however would easily be their most popular laptop. Those things are literally everywhere.

rsync 10y ago

"That model and its crappy TN screen is vastly inferior and more expensive than similarly-sized ultrabooks. The only redeeming feature it has is MacOS." Except it's made from a block of aluminum, has excellent build quality and will easily last 5+ years of day-in-day-out use. All I wanted was an 11" MBA with a higher res screen. They could have reused the exact same form factor and dies and tooling, etc. I would have happily upgraded to that.