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GOLDFRAPP
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Join Date: Dec 2005
 
2019-11-14, 11:57

Quote:
Originally Posted by chucker View Post
I think extrapolating even numbers from a single product is a bit of a leap.

I would like to have a MacBook back, in the old sense of simply the non-Pro Apple laptop. The iMac Pro and Mac Pro are very clearly not intended for consumer use just going from price points alone. The MacBook Pro, instead, is sort of a hybrid now, going up to some fairly good specs (just two years ago, the max was 16 GB RAM with the iMac Pro going to 128, which was a stupid discrepancy; now the Mac Pro goes to 1.5 TB, but at least the MacBook Pro goes to 64), while also being purchased by people who just want a fancier portable Mac (despite not coming cheap). The 13-inch MacBook Pro is even weirder in that regard. One can argue it's almost impossible to use as a pro machine: there's no GPU no matter what, only four cores, and only 16 GB RAM.

But I don't think such a hypothetical MacBook Amateur is coming, and I think we'll see:

MacBook Air 13-inch
MacBook Pro 14-inch
MacBook Pro 16-inch

Not sure about the Air, though. Eventually, they'll want to shrink its bezel as well. Does that mean they'll make the device smaller? Or will they just bump it to 14 as well?
I'm not a spec geek, so I don't really care about RAM-SCHMAM speak or the likes. I'm your average consumer who buys a base-model Apple product every couple of years and calls it a day.

That said, I do tend to obsess about product nomenclature and lineup in general. Let's dig in:

Fist things fist, Apple will continue streamlining of their products with Pro and non-Pro variants like so:

Mac - Mac Pro
MacBook - MacBook Pro

iPad - iPad Pro
iPhone - iPhone Pro

AirPods - AirPods Pro
Apple Watch - Apple Watch Pro (yup, believe it or not)
HomePod - HomePod Pro (I'm still not sure about this one)

Second, Apple will continue elimination of "i" and extending the ubiquity of  in their product names as much as possible. Yes, that means one day we'll be gramming from our Apple Phone Pro Maxes. Although this transition will take a while to complete, it will happen.

Third, let's talk about product name prefixes and suffixes. Apple's five widely used ones are: Pro, Air, mini, Plus, and Max.

- Pro will continue to infiltrate product names wherever possible
- Air will eventually drop from MacBooks and iPads and be reserved for AirPods and AirTags only
- mini will stay alongside Pro, and every Pro product will have a mini counterpart, which means that the updated iPhone SE could be called iPhone mini
- Plus will be reserved for services only
- and Max will be used to call something large that is larger than large

Last but not least, MacBook screen sizes: extrapolating even-number prediction from a single product is not stretching it at all. In fact, around the time when edge-to-edge display on iPhone was a hot topic, I predicted that at some point Apple would also try to cram a larger display into an existing MacBook body through bezel reduction long before 16-inch rumor was even a thing. An actual announcement of the 16-inch MacBook Pro makes the even-number prediction that much more obvious and inevitable. The question that remains is whether Apple will stick to two MacBook sizes 14 and 16, or whether they will expand to three. The next logical question is which three sizes: 12, 14, and 16, OR 14, 16, and 18. The latter makes more sense since iPad has already invaded and overtaken the small-size territory with its jumbo iPad Pros. We shall see.

One more thing:

I do believe that iCloud (just like iTunes, iPhoto, and iBooks) will also lose the "i" eventually. But there's one hindrance: email address format. Switching to john.doe@applecloud.com is certainly a mouthful and a typeful. There's one possible solution though: buy cloud.com from Citrix Cloud for several million dollars and give us john.doe@cloud.com instead.

P.S. If you run into fists in my post, please know that it's fist, not fist. A lot of keys (including R) on my original MBPTB keyboard have failed. Having autocorrect is a saving grace.

Last edited by GOLDFRAPP : 2019-11-14 at 21:57. Reason: Fixing typos due to failing keyboard on my original MacBook Pro with Touch Bar
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