This same weekend Apple will fulfill the wishes of many MacBook Air fans. A potential Mac Pro has also been reported. It will be reduced, with the removal of one of the strongest options.
When a bigger screen is on the Macbook Air, it will be welcomed by many at the bottom of Apple’s macOS laptop portfolio, moves that created good news for not-so-rosy geekers at the top of the portfolio. Reporting by Mark Gorman:
It’s possible that the company has eliminated this higher-level configuration, which may disappoint Apple’s most demanding users – photographers, editors and programmers who appreciate this kind of computing power. The company made this decision due to both the complexity and the cost of producing the It’s basically a fused four-chip M2 Max.
SAN JOSE, CA – JUNE 03: The new Mac Pro on display during the Apple Worldwide Show 2019 … [+]
Apple’s previous focus used performance as the lineup’s primary differentiator. With the weakest Intel chips powering the cheapest MacBook Air laptops accounting for the ridiculous power available in the Mac Pro, this was a simple approach almost forced on macOS devices due to the demands of the x86 platform.
Under these circumstances, the top-of-the-line Mac Pro was sold on available power, and rightly so…just like the MacBook Air was sold on the balance between power and portability.
Now, the Mac platform as a whole finds itself in a new realm, where Apple Silicon’s advantages have changed the nature of the wallet. The MacBook Air is still the portability king of macOS devices, but now it has the ability to keep up. There are far fewer compromises under ARM-based chipsets than under Intel.
And that met the Mac Pro in a sticky spot. Sells itself as the most powerful, capable, and flexible Mac you could buy. I have no doubt that in raw numbers, the Mac Pro is “the best Mac Apple can make”, but that statement is open to some interpretation.
We already knew the Mac Pro was late. We now know that Apple has cut back on the baseline performance that many expected.
Learn more about Apple’s plans for the larger MacBook Air…