“If you’re just on your way to your local Apple Store to pick up a new MacBook, then you might want to wait a few weeks — a refresh of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lineup seems imminent,” Adrian Kingsley-Hughes writes for ZDNet. “Since Apple didn’t announce any new MacBooks at the iPhone 7 launch event, analysts are now expecting that Apple will unveil new laptops before the month is out.”
“The MacBook Pro… is in serious need of a revamp considering that the last major redesign happened back in June 2012,” Kingsley-Hughes writes. “What about the MacBook Air? Well, one rumor is that Apple is planning to kill off this line altogether, starting by retiring the 11-inch MacBook Air, since this space is now filled by the iPad Pro.”
Kingsley-Hughes writes, “But it doesn’t seem that the MacBook Air is going anywhere yet, and the latest leaks and supply chain chatter points to this being more of a refresh than a total redesign.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Replacing all the existing ports with a single USB-C port” would mean more than a mere “refresh” of the MacBook Air.
No iPad, Pro or otherwise, is a Mac replacement for any serious user.
No laptop is any replacement for a desktop for a serious user.
No desktop is a replacement for a server for a serious user.
But “serious users” are a REALLY small group of people… so, I’m sure someone wants the serious user market, Apple’s going for the money.
Your first two statements are true. But if Apple is unable to produce profitable Macs for creative and server markets like it used to, then that doesn’t reflect well on its current “supply chain genius”, does it?
What Apple has done is assume that it can continue to charge high markups because it thinks that Apple fashion will continue to sell Macs. Actual sales, however, show that this is not the case. Apple needs to get competitive if it wants to maintain critical mass of developers creating software for the Mac.
All of the video, scientific, and engineering clients I know who used to use Macs have switched back to Wintel because they just couldn’t live with Apple’s limitations and pricing for yesterday’s performance.
Apple needs to do better to be a player in personal computers, it can’t rely on consumer iOS gadgets alone for its future.
Except that… it can. Part of the supply chain genius is knowing what NOT to make. Not just for quarter to quarter profits, but for what you want to be making 5 years from now.
Apple’s moves have been calculated to get Pro’s to move on. Apple doesn’t make iTunes, Mac App Store, or Apple Music ongoing revenue from someone who buys a Mac to virtualize Other OS’s. And, they make a LOT more money on services over time than on hardware. The hardware that feeds those services is the hardware Apple wants to make.
When only Pro’s were buying Mac’s, Apple made computers for them. Now that Pro’s are a small percentage of total revenues, It would likely cost Apple more in R&D and marketing than they’d make even if every pro that wanted one bought one.
Making performance PCs is not rocket science. Smaller companies are doing it and are selling for less than half the price that Apple charges and still showing a profit.
Has Apple become that inefficient/incompetent?
I’m ready, I’m ready for two new iMacs as well, come on Apple, I’m fit to burst, i can’t take it any more…😩
I have heard these rumors since summer. Where is the beef?
Shhh. Apple leaders are hard at work. The Apple leadership team is busy discussing the removal of all meat-related emoji to promote a more sustainable vegan lifestyle, you know, in honor of His Steveness. Siri is being programmed to answer your meat-related questions with snarky tofurkey comebacks. This is mission critical stuff, so our wait for real hardware improvements will just have to get longer….
Mac PRO?
APPLE, we have allowed you to skate by for the last two years without an update to the MAC PRO.
If one is not forthcoming in the next few weeks, we will, as guided by Monty Python, taunt you with, “I fart in your general direction!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWBUl7oT9sA
Let this be a warning.
December will be there years on a Mac Pro upgrade, I believe. I don’t get it.
In the entire history of computing, I’ve never wanted a new macbook pro as much as NOW!
.
Bring it on Apple! Nevermind the polish software side of it. We know you’ll get there. Bring the machine to lights!!
My iMac died. I need a new one. Feel like I’ve been living in a motel room while my house is being fixed. My phone and Pad are not enough.
So the totally illogical MacBook and Air situation is set to continue it seems. Either it was planned which means someone behind it has lost the plot or it was unplanned which means the roadmap has taken a serious wrong turn some time in the last year or so.
Maybe, in the near future will add an iBook with iOS, and a MacPad with macOS. 🖖
Link to the article doesn’t work
Do none of these pundits ever pay attention to what is actually shipping?
Intel is shipping the Y and U variants of Kaby Lake, and the full line up of Skylake (except the E and Xeon variants). So there are no Kaby Lake chips shipping that are appropriate for a MacBook Pro or the higher end MacBook Air. They U variant is barely appropriate for the low end MacBook Air. It is much more appropriate for the MacBook. And don’t even think about the Y variants, which are really aimed at things like higher end tablets.
The H variants (appropriate to laptops like the higher end Airs and all Pros) won’t ship in quantity until calendar Q1 2017. The S variants (appropriate to the higher end iMacs like the 5K iMac) won’t ship in quantity until a similar time frame. (Though Apple has been known to use the equivalent of the H variants in lower end iMacs. Yes, laptop CPUs in iMacs.)
Sure, as I’ve said before, Apple *could* work a very, very special deal with Intel for Apple to get all of Intel’s early production runs on the H and S variants, but that is extremely unlikely. Possible, but extremely unlikely. Even then, Air and Pro systems availability would likely be extremely constrained until mid January 2017 at the earliest.
There have been rumors that the S (and even the E and X) variants of Kaby Lake would ship in quantity before the end of 2016, but so far absolutely none of those rumors seem to be coming even close to panning out. (Besides most of those rumors were at their peak back in the June/July 2016 time frame.)
So… If Apple feels they must ship new MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros in quantity this calendar year (and when has Apple *ever* felt that it *had* to ship new products) the alternative is to ship Airs and Pros with last generation Skylake chips.—
Sure. That makes sense. Ship Skylake laptops then have the rest of the world ship Kaby Lake laptops two to three months later. (/s)
Good points. However, Apple hardware improvements DO NOT have to be tied exclusively to Intel chip releases.
Moreover, the performance improvements of Kaby Lake are reported to be relatively modest.
Apple has had over a year to get SkyLake installed across the board, and instead it has done nothing.
Apple has had years to offer new GPU options, again it’s been sitting on its ass.
Apple could have had Thunderbolt III and/or USB-C ports in all its Macs last year, but no, again Apple just kept shipping old hardware at inflated prices.
Apple could have offered upgraded memory and hard drives across the board, yet no, all the Macs especially the desktops are crippled and harder than ever for the user to internally upgrade.
Whoever is so inept at Apple to get meaningful value improvements to the Mac lineup needs to be canned immediately. If Cook thinks this is acceptable product management, he also needs to be canned.
I’m waiting to buy a new MacBook Pro. Though it’s a laptop, it has to be able to run Final Cut and Blender… at least for small jobs.
We all want the best for our money so if you need a new Mac now definitely wait until Apple hopefully announces the next Mac lines later this month.
But even if Apple gets the Kaby Lake processor this year the Mac won’t be much faster than the current line. And AMD 4xx GPUs series are rebranded from last year.
I will wait another year and see if Nvidia returns to the Mac.