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I think they could absolutely do that. It's possible they could do both — reintroduce the MacBook and also reduce the Pro form factor down to match the Air. At
by charliepark 15y ago
I think they could absolutely do that. It's possible they could do both — reintroduce the MacBook and also reduce the Pro form factor down to match the Air. At that point, the question becomes "how would they sufficiently distinguish between the regular and the Pro" ... and that might be where retina displays, higher storage, touchscreens, etc. come into play.
The tiering strategy is what I find really interesting, so that's what I wanted to explore with the post. But, yeah, I could see them dropping the optical drive, and that seems to be what most people project will happen.
- pmjordan 15y agoI was a little surprised when they released the Thunderbolt Display without a built-in optical drive. I fully expected them to make that into a de-facto docking station and drop the drive from all portables and the Mac Mini (they did so on the latter) - a slimline drive and controller would have added very little cost considering the Thunderbolt electronics (i.e. a PCIe bus) are already in there anyway. But then the whole Thunderbolt thing really hasn't taken off - I suspect Intel is artificially keeping the bridge chips' away from general availability to keep prices high. Which has resulted in a rather lacklustre product line-up one year after launch.
- tomkarlo 15y agoWhy do they necessarily have to "sufficiently distinguish between the regular and the Pro"? Why not just drop the Pro and Air labels and unify into one line? Easier to market, cheaper to stock and support. More streamlined. Doesn't that seem more like Apple?