Behind the percentages, “oh my god, this is our best laptop of all time!” and other enthusiastic Americans on stage
A friend recently wrote to me:
- Can you imagine? Apple made the MacBook Air better than the MacBook Pro.
I was surprised:
- What is better?
- And there is MagSafe. And it is lighter, more compact, and even quieter!
“Wait,” I say, “but the MacBook Pro also has MagSafe. Do you want me to take a picture?
I just have a MacBook Pro 14 '' from 2021 at homeyear, on the M1 Pro processor. And MagSafe, and a card reader, and in general an excellent laptop in general, well, except for the bangs (Apple tries not to count it anyway - it constantly hides it bashfully on official images and shows such screens on the screen so that the bangs are not visible).
MacBook Pro healthy person
But it turned out that a friend was talking about a new MacBookPro 13''. I didn’t watch WWDC 2022 anyway (as it turned out - and rightly so, I saved myself 2 hours for the sake of useful things). But it turned out that Apple has completely lost not only the coast, but does not understand at all what course and where it is going.
For those who, like me, missed the latest news,I inform you: Apple introduced a new generation of its laptop processors - now it's the Apple M2 - and has already announced the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro on them, but the “firmware” is only 13 ″. And in fact, this is exactly the “firmware” that is the successor to the Intel 13-inch “firmware”. With TouchBar and the absence of any sane ports, except for Thunderbolt, of which, by the way, there are only two.
M2. Just M2.
That is, watch your hands:Apple now has the MacBook Pro in three versions: 13, 14 and 16 inches. And obviously the 14 and 16 inch ones are many times better than the 13’’ model, if only because of the set of ports (4 Thunderbolt, HDMI, MagSafe and a card reader versus 2 Thunderbolt). But so far only the 13” model has received M2 processors, while 14 and 16 remain on the previous generation.
True, there is a nuance here:Apple at the presentation showed on the graph how much the M2 is superior to the M1, that's just ... Apparently, it was about the “ordinary” M1, and this does not apply to the M1 Pro and M1 Max. But how does the M2 hold up against them? And who knows!
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Most likely, M2 is definitely weaker, at least, M1 Max. But about the M1 Pro, I'm not sure anymore. Is Apple trying to confuse us all? Exactly!
A couple of years ago, our editor-in-chief in one ofmaterials on the site told why Xiaomi has such a strange naming - models from the same line (for example, Redmi Note) may not be similar at all. Models with the Lite index can “overtake” those with the T index… Well, in general, there is no logic.
The reason is simple:Xiaomi is trying to respond to the current realities of the market. What the market needs is what they produce, also taking into account the popularity of certain lines. If the same Redmi Note is preferred by yesterday's students because of the good price / quality ratio, then the new product should be released as Redmi Note if this particular target audience is needed at the moment.
Why am I telling all this?Apparently, Apple copied the path of Xiaomi, only in laptops. Cupertinians are now releasing laptops exclusively for today's tasks, accompanying them with such a thick layer of marketing that people generally stop seeing what is really happening. Obviously, the 13-inch “firmware” is intended primarily for “pontorez”, for which the very name of the MacBook Pro is more important than not only the characteristics, but even the price.
When was it still possible to imagine a situation whereDoes the current MacBook Air have more ports than the current MacBook Pro? After all, this 13-inch “firmware” has one of the Thunderbolts used to connect power, while the MacBook Air, even when “parked at the outlet,” leaves both Thunderbolts free.
And the MacBook Air will not have a fancooling, which means it will be quieter. Yes, in some cases this will lead to a decrease in performance - in order to prevent overheating, but ... A person who buys a MacBook Pro 13 '' according to the 2022 version is clearly not particularly pursuing high performance. And Air was enough even for processing RAW photos and editing Full-HD video 5-6 years ago.
At first glance, it seems that someone mixed up the signatures
The problem is that before Apple laptopswere synonymous with reliability. A couple of years ago, you could often meet people who are still “sitting” on old MBPs from the times of Intel Core 2 Duo. I have a 2013 MacBook Pro myself at home - and it's just a tank. In a good way. He seems indestructible and eternal. And I can’t say the same about the 2019 MacBook Pro with Intel Core i5, which I currently have for sale - it’s kind of flimsy. The MacBook Pro 2021 on the M1 Pro looks more serious than the year before last, but the approach itself confuses here: how much is Apple going to support all this hardware?
Or take a look here:TouchBar has long been recognized as a useless feature. She was abandoned in the new “serious” models. What is the point of releasing a new laptop with TouchBar today? Yes, even call it MacBook Pro, if it is inferior in many respects even to Air? Well, except for the desire to please the “pontorez”, who do not have enough money for a normal “bug”? What's the point of releasing a 13" model today if the 14" isn't much bigger? And the 13-inch Air is even smaller. Moreover, in 2013, the Air was larger than the Pro of the same year in at least two dimensions, but in 2022 everything is not so.
In fact, the TouchBar remained only so as not to change the production process for these particular models.
I am 100% sure that if science could nowbring Steve Jobs back to us - he would disperse this entire almshouse to hell. Jobs was always against model zoos and product fragmentation. But it seems that Tim Cook is striving for exactly this. We have already seen what the iPad line has become - a “rich” selection of sizes, resolutions, but everything is expensive. And what is not expensive is worse than the Chinese.
You see, this is also such a manipulation:the buyer is offered an expensive product (iPad Pro), which is unreasonably expensive (let me remind you that the price of the iPad Pro is already comparable to the price of the MacBook Pro), and the other is much cheaper. I'm talking about the regular iPad. Comparing the price of the iPad with the iPad Pro, it seems like a good deal, but in fact, the “regular” iPad is wildly overpriced. For the same money, you can buy much more “fancy” tablets from Xiaomi, for example.
MacBook Pro 2022 vs MacBook Air 2022. That's the difference
True, in Apple laptops everything is even worse, becausethat there is not even a big difference between the same MacBook Air 2022 and the MacBook Pro 13'' 2022. Well, that is, in the 8/256 GB configuration (RAM/SSD) the Air is $100 cheaper, and the 8/512 GB configuration is already worth the same - $1,500. Although, this is generally some kind of laugh - a laptop with a “pro” prefix and 8 GB of RAM.
Why didn't Apple update the MacBook Pro withdiagonals 14 and 16 inches? There are rumors that they didn't. Either because of the pandemic, or because of the “special operation,” or simply “didn’t calculate.” In any case, these are precisely the problems with planning. The same Jobs would have simply rescheduled the presentation, but Apple under the leadership of Tim Cook has nothing to fear. If Jobs had two main sales drivers: a cool product and marketing, then Cook's is only marketing. Cook's product may be cool, or it may not be at all - it now absolutely does not matter.
On the one hand, yes, Apple has reached the point where fans will buy anything just because it's Apple.
Again:I’m not speaking as a typical hater who, in principle, considers all Apple products to be unsuccessful simply because they are from Apple. I speak as someone who is very happy with my M1 Pro 14'' MacBook Pro. And I also say that the MacBook Pro 13'' from 2022 is unnecessary trash. An extra product in the line, which is being released now only because more interesting products have not yet been made. A placeholder between really interesting products, like the MacBook Air.
Although, I personally think that the most interestingThe milestone in the development of the MacBook Air was the 12-inch MacBook: truly the smallest and lightest. On Apple M1 / M2 processors, it seems to me that it would really “bloom”.