Apple may have missed out on moving all of the Mac platform over to the ARM-based Apple Silicon by the end of 2022, but the delay to that critical Mac Pro is not the only controversial decision made by Tim Cook and his team looking forward to 2023… the unloved 13-inch MacBook Pro is going to pick up an M3-powered update,
A 2020 Apple MacBook Pro laptop computer, taken on November 16, 2020. (Photo by Phil Barker/Future … [+]
The latest details on Apple’s macOS hardware portfolio have been collated by the team at HowToiSolve:
“Apple will launch a 13.3-inch MacBook Air with an M3 chip and a 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with the same processor between Q3 and Q4 2023. These launches will be closely followed by a 24-inch iMac with an M3 chip in late 2023 or early 2024 and a new Mac mini.”
The first M1-powered hardware – the M1 MacBook Air, M1 MacBook Pro, and M1 Mac Mini – looked identical to their older Intel-based models. The massive upheaval in the core hardware and the software was hidden away as much as possible, and the laptops were sold as “same as before, but faster” to offer confidence to consumers.
The Intel-powered MacBook Air had to carefully balance its small size and heat output to get a balanced machine suitable for day-to-day use, which left scope for a larger MacBook Pro with extra fans and thermal options, plus more battery life, to deliver a more powerful experience.
Moving to ARM negated all of this. The MacBook Air and MacBook Pro were running the same M1 chip that offered a significant step-up in power available to users. The MacBook Air became the weapon of choice for many because the advantage of ARM allowed it to outperform much more expensive Intel-based laptops.
The M1 MacBook Pro added a fan, offered a twenty percent increase in power, and …that was about it. The extra sliver of power that would be critical in an Intel portfolio is simply not needed in the Apple Silicon world when the MacBook Air is more than capable.
If you need a powerful MacBook, the answer is not ‘a MacBook Air with a fan’, it is the professionally focused 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models running the M1 Pro and M1 Max chipsets that offer far more power than the vanilla M1.
The consumer-focused M1 MacBook Pro is caught between a world of “if you need power, buy one of the other laptops” and “if you want value for money, buy one of the other laptops”. It was a marketing stop-gap that is no longer needed.
Except Apple brought it back with the M2 Generation… the M2 Air has more power than the M1 and meets the day-to-day expectations, with the upcoming M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pros delayed but coming in the first half of 2023. And now Apple has made the shock decision to continue this Frankenstein of a laptop for another generation with an M3 MacBook Pro.
Why does this MacBook Pro continue to exist? Is the reason for these hobbled macOS laptops simply to satisfy a marketing need for a Mac laptop at every price point, and to offer an overpriced MacBook Air to the geekerati that want to be seen to have a MacBook Pro without actually spending top-dollar for the professionally focused MacBook Pro?
In Apple’s world of minimalist portfolios, where each item has a well-defined role, this ‘consumer’ MacBook Pro is shockingly out of place.
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