Close your eyes and imagine you’re walking into an Apple Store. Maybe you could visualise your last visit. Look around you. Focus on the MacBooks: the standard models on the table in the centre, and the Pros and the Air on the counter against the wall. Good. Now, holding that thought in your mind, place the newly announced MacBook line-up in their correct places, new aluminium MacBooks with the old white ones, new MacBook Pros alongside the old 17″. If you thought something along the lines of “ugh” then we’re on the same wavelength.
There’s something deeply unsettling about the MacBook range as it stands after today’s event. Please, don’t get me wrong. Taken alone, the new all-aluminium designs are fantastic. I can’t wait to see the LED backlit screens and play with the glass touchpad. These are archetypal Apple products, the kind we always long for, the reason there’s so much frenzied speculation leading up to a product launch. All of a sudden, the machines which yesterday we were proud to own seem terribly dated, like something from another era. Which is why it’s so unnerving to see those same machines, the same designs, still hanging around in the current line up. And it would appear that Apple feels the same, since their “Which MacBook are You?” page lists only the new MacBooks and the Air.
I can’t help wondering whether something went wrong.
The rumours of a new manufacturing process turned out to be correct. Jonathan Ive himself took centre stage to talk us through it, and seemed justly proud as he did so. This is the process — mentioned in the last earnings call — which Apple’s competitors will be unable to match for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately it is also more than likely the cause of the jarring discord in the MacBook range. The process is new, so unlikely yet to be operating at full capacity. And it also appears to be expensive: from the figures given in the keynote, there seems to be an 80% wastage between the starting aluminium black and the final case. While some or all of this could be recovered and reused, this only adds to the expense.
This expense is most likely the reason that the white MacBook has not been retired. Yes, I did suggest that Apple should keep it as their low end machine. But in that case I was thinking of Apple taking a form factor which they had had years of experience producing — making it cheap to continue manufacturing — and with a few modifications to the specifications, make something which could be positioned as a $800 NetBook killer. Although the white MacBook has been given a price cut, it is still nowhere near that level, and has obviously only been retained because even the lowest spec of the new MacBooks comes in at too high a price point. (And in the UK, the white MacBook now starts at £719, £20 more than previously. Thanks, Apple.)
That the aluminium carving process is not yet fully up to speed is hinted at by the lack of a new 17″ MacBook Pro. While John Gruber suggests that the 17″ may be phased out, I frankly cannot see this happening. Apple has good market share among video professionals, many of whom (eg. those in the news media) require portable editing stations: not a laptop you can carry in your hand luggage and use on an aeroplane tray, but one that can be lugged around on location and used in a hotel room. The 15″ MacBook Pro simply doesn’t have a large enough screen, either in terms of physical size or resolution. Apple would be crazy to abandon the 17″, especially when competitors are offering 19″ and larger desktop replacements.
The new MacBook line-up will be amazing. Once it is complete. Once the cost of manufacturing makes a sub-$1100 MacBook possible. Once capacity allows the new 17″ cases to be produced. Hopefully everything will be in place for an announcement at next January’s MacWorld Expo. Until then, the new MacBook range should be viewed as a work in progress.
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We couldn’t all be at the MacBook event today, but thanks to the magic of the internet we can all pretend. Hit the links below to see both the full Stevenote and the MacBook “making of video.” Then head down the pub and astound your friends.
