The MacBook dilemma: Pay more, or get an old machine
At its MacBook-centric event Thursday, Apple announced very few in-house devices: essentially, just three new MacBook Pros, 13- and 15-inch models with a Touch Bar -- the laptops' new signature feature -- and a 13-incher without one.
If you don't care about how much any of it costs, go right ahead and buy one. But if you're a cost-conscious customer that wants to buy a new laptop from Apple, your choices just became a lot crappier.
The changes to Apple's laptop lineup are subtle, but significant. The new MacBook Pro starts at $1,499 -- that's the Touch Bar-free variant. Apple's VP of Marketing Phil Schiller compared that version to the Air, touting it as a faster, better, lighter and thinner option.
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That may all be true, but it's also $500 more expensive than the cheapest, 13-inch MacBook Air. For two new entry-level Pros, you can buy three new Airs -- not a negligible difference for a small business.
It's ok, you think, because Apple is still offering the 13-inch MacBook Air (the 11-inch variant is gone, sorry). That is correct, but that machine has not been updated. It's the same old Air, last updated in March 2015, and changed in spring 2016 to start with 8GB of RAM instead of 4GB.
What are your other sub-$1,500 options? You can get the old, old 13-inch MacBook Pro, which Apple still sells. It's also a 2015 model that costs $1,299. Or you could get a MacBook for that same price, but frankly, a MacBook won't do for any sort of professional work.
Apple's pro-grade laptops are, simply put, much more expensive than before.
In one fell swoop, Apple raised the entry-level price for professionals looking to buy its laptops by an enormous 50 percent: from $1,000 to $1,500. Anything less than that, and you can only get a machine that's a year or two old. Sure, that old Air or Pro will still do its job, but for a cost-conscious professional or small business, it makes far more sense to buy a Dell, HP or a Lenovo and get a 13-inch laptop with the latest processors and the latest design starting at around $1,000.
By the way, when I say "latest processors," I mean Intel's Kaby Lake processors; those are one generation ahead than the Skylake processors Apple is using in its newest MacBook Pros.
(While Apple doesn't list exact specs of processors used in its laptops, I've checked the specs prior to the event and after, and they all appear exactly the same for the 13-inch Air, as well as the cheapest 13- and 15-inch Pro.)
You can have nice things, but you can't have cheap, nice things
Think about this for a second. It would've been simple for Apple to update the Air or the old MacBook Pro with at least an Intel Skylake processor. But the company chose not to do that. That would make those old machines too attractive. Those models still have the MagSafe connector, the SD card reader, full-sized USB ports -- you know, the stuff people actually use. They'd have new chips inside, and they'd be cheaper than the new Pros, and everyone who doesn't care about Apple's new Touch Bar would choose those. Oh no, we can't have that.
As it is, both the Air and the cheapest 13-inch Pro (hidden at the bottom of Apple's MacBook Pro page), which you're still buying from Apple as "new," still rock Intel's Broadwell processors; that's two generations behind the current one. And the old 15-inch MacBook Pro has an even older processor, a 2.2GHz quad-core Haswell.
The words Broadwell, Skylake or Kaby Lake might not mean much to an average user. But the professionals know what they're buying, and I reckon they won't be happy.
It's possible that Apple will update the Air at some point in the future. But when? Are you ready to gamble on that? Or are you going to give a thousand dollars for an old machine?
I was sure, prior to this event, that I'll be ordering a new MacBook come Friday. But right now, I'm looking at my old 13-inch MacBook Air, and suddenly doing nothing seems like the best option.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
