Apple is expected to announce the updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops in the next week. This should see the debut of the fastest M2 chips so far with the Apple Silicon M2 Pro and M2 Max driving the high-performance laptops. But if you are expecting Tim Cook and his team to light up the hall and satisfy its fanbase with the impressive macOS hardware, think again.
The MacBook Pro is going to be marginalized and pushed aside into the shadows. Apple has decided on a quieter boutique November event that will focus on launching the Mac Pro instead.
Apple Macbook Pro 16 inch with touchbar. Focus on MacBook Pro logo
This will be the final step in the Mac platform’s transition away from the x86 Intel platform to Apple’s own ARM-based platform. Announced at its Worldwide Developer Conference in 2020, Tim Cook set a deadline of ‘the end of 2022’ to have every new Mac released with an Apple Silicon chipset.
The MacBook Air, macMini, and entry-level MacBook Pro soon followed. After that, the iMac arrived alongside the Mac Studio (which arguably takes the police of the desktop Mac but in the mac Mini form), with the high-end MacBook Pro launch, almost closing out the portfolio. Just the Mac Pro remains.
The Mac Pro has many of the same story points as the high-end M2 MacBook Pro laptops that are expected next week. The Mac Pro is turning up the power options to a very high level, far beyond what regular consumers need. It offers far more capability to creatives where speed and ease of development are key, and it does it in such a way that it can fit into the existing systems and software with ease. And it is the final step of the Apple Silicon promise back in 2020.
Launching the Mac Pro deserves a launch event – for some this is the most critical part of the macOS platform, the machine that unlocks “god-tier creativity” – but to have it as the final chapter in the origin story? Where is the honor guard of “the best MacBook Pro we’ve ever made” leading into “the best Mac we’ve ever made”? That dramatic one-two has been sacrificed for a more introspective ending to the Apple Silicon story.
It is Apple’s story to tell, and no doubt the geekerati will spot the press releases when they pop up in the Apple Newsroom. Yet I can’t help feeling that delivering “the best high-performance laptop in a way that only Apple can” is a story that needs to be told far and wide and complements the Mac Pro ending rather than be hidden away to allow for the Mac Pro to offer a quiet and niche denouement.
