> Is there anything really wrong with that approach though? No I absolutely get it, it's a good approach. As a consumer, I'd love if they'd just updated the A

> Is there anything really wrong with that approach though? No I absolutely get it, it's a good approach. As a consumer, I'd love if they'd just updated the Air. It's already light and thin with awesome battery and great performance, they could have iterated on that (e.g. butterfly keys, layered batteries & no-click touchpad), give it a 170 PPI screen (1920 x 1200), thinning out the bezels, or add USB-C etc. But instead they did something a bit too radical. Thin beyond necessity, a 480p camera while a 2012 ipod Touch had 720p/1080p, just a single port, and most importantly releasing a device that's slower than an already existing, last year, 'air' model. But I do get it. You need to do some big sweeping changes every 5 years or so. They iterated on the Air for 7 years, turned it into a low-performance $1800 device with 5h of battery, into a sub $1000 machine with 12h of battery, great performance, improved screen and ports. And now it's time for something new. If for example instead of releasing the 'air', they iterated on the Macbook endlessly, we'd probably never have gotten the air. > The most generous complaints are that "it came out one year too early." Pretty much. I can make that complaint about the Apple Watch (in 2 years an expensive Apple Watch will look dumb when a thinner device with smoother animations and longer battery life and better sensors come out), iMac 5k (thermal throttling?) etc. And that's indeed fine, a complement in a way. The new Macbook differs a little bit for me because it's not a completely new technology like the Apple Watch, or a new Smartphone or Tablet. It wasn't a question of 'do this or do nothing'. It was a question of 'handicap the Air and don't make a big investment in the line and do a new less capable Macbook at $300-400 more', or 'make engineering investments to improve the air'. I think that's a genuine consumer complaint one may have. As a consumer I'm bummed they didn't go with the latter. Would have really liked an Air with at least full hd, layered batteries, thinner bezels etc. Now my options are a premium netbook, or a MBP. I went with the rMBP. As an 'analyst' though, the rMB makes a ton of sense and if I were at the board of Apple I wouldn't have rejected, rather, applauded the current path.