> That line of criticism has not aged well That does not mean it wasn't true. Fourth-gen Macbook Pros were rather meh, coming after the much acclaimed 3rd-gen

> That line of criticism has not aged well That does not mean it wasn't true. Fourth-gen Macbook Pros were rather meh, coming after the much acclaimed 3rd-gen (not to mention the keyboard fiasco). 2012 MBPs are still sought after today; will anybody really look for a 2018 MBP in 2026? > Apple have successfully executed a bigger R&D project than any PC manufacturer in history. That's a testament to the greatness of the open architecture, actually. No single PC manufacturer ever needed to innovate on the core HW, as they could reap the benefits of Intel/Nvidia/AMD's R&D. This allowed for cheaper PCs which penetrated our world much faster than the previous fragmented microcomputer offer. Granted, this also led to a "race to the bottom" wrt. stuff like trackpads and displays, but let's also look at the bright side for a moment :) > As a result, the base model Macbook Air now offers objectively better value for money than any competing laptop, when considering just the basic metrics of performance, form factor and battery life. Still, I agree with you on that. All benchmarks (not only from the magazines, but also those from tech Twitter) point to a paradigm shift in what people will expect from a PC a few years from now.