It’s difficult not to wonder what Apple is up to with the MacBook. First, they took a laptop supposedly aimed at professionals, and stripped it of all the ports professionals need to do their jobs. Then, they priced their “budget” entry, the MacBook Air so close to their “professional” entry you might as well just spend the extra $300. And now they’ve handed in such a half-hearted “upgrade” to their line you’re stuck wondering why they even bothered.
Granted, Apple, as a company, has not been terribly ambitious lately, but beyond upgrading the specifications for the MacBook Pro, the biggest change is that now it comes in rose gold. The MacBook Air, meanwhile, did get one of its two major gripes addressed — it now has 8GB of RAM standard, so you can use Chrome again! But if you were hoping for a screen upgrade for the Air, or for the Pro to sprout a spare USB port, that’s apparently not going to happen any time soon.
This makes a kind of sense if you realize Apple no longer really views itself as a technology company, but even by that standard, “it comes in pink now” isn’t exactly going to enthuse even the fashion conscious. It’s difficult not to look at this and feel like Apple doesn’t want to make laptops anymore.
There’s an excellent reason for that: It doesn’t. In fact, the company has admitted their laptops are eating into the iPad’s sales, even as computer sales generally sink, a phenomenon widely credited to tablets. Apple has the best-selling tablet out there, even if iPhone sales easily dwarf everything else it sells, and the iPad Pro is clearly a bid to lure MacBook users over to tablets.
So, why not just end the line altogether, or turn the “Pro” into an iPad package? It’s where Apple is clearly heading, however slowly. True, some of its hardcore fans may be angry, but in the end, it makes more sense to give the MacBook a proper ride into the sunset than just hope it goes away.