On one side, Tim Cook has the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, the other side has the iPad and iPad Pro, and never the twain shall meet.
But what if Apple has decided that it wants to blur the lines between the iPad and the MacBook? What if Apple has decided to dilute the consumer view of what it means to be an Apple laptop or an Apple tablet? And what does this strategy mean for the next MacBook Pro?
The decision would unshackle the professional laptop from consumer expectations; it would allow Apple to pour a shocking amount of power and flexibility into the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops without compromising anything to fit with consumer expectations.
Game development using Apple’s MacBook Pro 16-inch laptop.
When we talk about the power available in Apple’s laptops, we must acknowledge that the move to ARM-based computing and the resulting Apple Silicon chipsets were game-changers for Apple and how it could pitch Mac computing. The MacBook Air was at the bleeding edge of that revolution; no longer reliant on Intel’s viewpoint on portable chips, the M1 catapulted the MacBook Air’s benchmarking and performance numbers over the equivalent Intel machines overnight. The MacBook Air M2 laptops, launched earlier this year, offered twenty percent more power than the already impressive M1.
For the average consumer, Apple’s M1 chipset offers more than enough capability for day-to-day work. There’s certainly enough for editing photos, working on audio, creating videos, running complicated and powerful apps, and offering solid hardware for developers.
The MacBook Air has lifted the baseline of the Mac, and that line now covers far more of the user base and arguably the vast majority of the consumer-focused user base.
The Mac is not the only place where you’ll find the Apple Silicon M1 and M2. Apple has outfitted various iPad Pro models with the advanced chipset. Given the continued push by Apple to have consumers consider the iPad as a computer just as much as a MacBook Air, then offering the same power on tap bolsters that argument.
With Apple bringing the visual language of both macOS and iPadOS closer to each other, bringing the ability to run applications on either platform, the blurring of the lines in Apple’s marketing, and the relatively similar physical size and weights, and you might be forgiven that Apple is looking to merge the bottom end of the laptop market and the top end of the tablet market.
Irrespective of the technical details beloved by the community, Apple’s set up and presumed long-term goal is to offer consumers the choice of a tablet that does “Apple things” or a laptop that does “Apple things.” The dominant elements here are the form factor and sweeping choices like “keyboard or stylus” …not in the operating system.
Apple’s decision to decouple the MacBook Pro away from the Air/iPad combination is key.
By deciding to work on common synergies at the lower end of the Mac portfolio, Apple allows the higher-specced machines – such as the professionally focused MacBook Pro models – to be decoupled and go away to do their own thing. This, in turn, offers much more power and flexibility to a smaller yet more demanding group of individual creators and production companies.
As the MacBook Air and the iPad Pro move closer together, I’m expecting the true MacBook Pro models to increase that performance gap and create a genuine pro laptop for the few, thanks to the Air and the iPad to satisfy the masses.
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