They are good enough for most needs and don’t carry the sticker shock of the premium models, and those premium models are for those of us who want the latest and greatest innovations Apple provides. (I expect the MacBook to see a price reduction in the near future to clarify its place in the lineup.) The mainstream machines are for most of us. All of the entry level machines are for consumers who may not know what they want and will gravitate toward the most affordable option. The iPad line seems to be taking a similar approach.Īnd now things start to make sense*. Yes, premium machines have better capabilities than the lower tiers, but they also come with desirable features - things like Touch ID and the Touch Bar. Forget any notion of consumer, prosumer, or professional usage and think in terms of desirability instead. When Apple announced the new iPad Air and iPad mini, I felt they needlessly complicated the product line, but a pattern may be emerging.Ĭurrently, Apple seems to be filling out a MacBook product line that moves from entry-level to mainstream to premium. The no-modifier iPad is still around with its 9″ screen and slower processor, and the iPad mini lives on with the faster iPad Air architecture and a 7″ screen. The updated iPad had some concessions compared to the iPad Air, but it was still a good update and smoothed out a rather odd naming convention.īut now the iPad Air is back, basically reviving the 10.5″ screen of the 2017 iPad Pro, while that line has moved to 11″ and 13″ screens. In 2016, the iPad Pro came out the very next year, Apple dropped the Air branding from any iPads, so now their lineup was iPad mini, iPad, and iPad Pro. The iPad Air was thinner and lighter than previous iPads, and that’s where things maintained for a couple of generations. There was no iPad Pro yet, but there was an iPad mini. The iPad Air came our in November 2013 and completely replaced the iPad line. The word Air has had a similar journey in the iPad lineup. Looks a lot like a 2017 iPad Pro… The Air and the iPad Lineup ![]() Now, the MacBook serves as the thin and light machine with compromises, the Air is the mainstream consumer/prosumer machine, and the MacBook Pro straddles prosumer and professional customers. Then Apple brought back the MacBook in a thinner, lighter form-factor, and the Air became its heavier, slower budget sibling. ![]() Then, it evolved into a replacement for the white plastic MacBook, serving as the only alternative to the MacBook Pro. For a time, it existed in its own category for early adopters. Over the years, the MacBook Air had different places in Apple’s product lineup. It made compromises it had almost no traditional ports but it was cool. No one had seen a computer so thin or light before. Steve Jobs held up a manilla envelope, the type you might see for old interdepartmental messages, and pulled a computer out of it. It was one of the most memorable product reveals in recent history, even compared to the much-anticipated iPhone announcement from the year before. The MacBook Air and a New Product Category Steve Jobs at MacWorld 2008 ![]() This approach remained fairly consistent over the next few year and saw Apple through the Intel transition, with the Mac mini replacing the eMac in the consumer category. The laptop line was already beginning to grow a little confusing, with the smaller PowerBook targeting a humbler audience than those who would buy the larger models. If you were to try to grid out their products in 2004, it might look similar to this: The four-quadrant grid was never going to last forever, especially with the growing prosumer market and Apple choosing to move beyond computers as their primary hardware products. Over the years, Apple’s customer base has grown considerably, and their business model has evolved. Of course, there were multiple choices in each category, but it was clear to potential customers which machine was for whom. ![]() The intended audiences were clear, and everything from the components to the industrial design reflected this approach. At the 1998 MacWorld Expo, he shared a simplified product grid that would serve as the foundation for Apple’s product lineup for several years. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the late 90s, he found a product line that was too confusing for most consumers, so he simplified things. An Abridged History of Apple Product Names
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