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When he was interviewed by the Irish Independent three years ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked whether he could see the iPad and MacBook lines of computers ever merging.
No, he told us: it would lead to a compromised experience within both ranges.
This week, Cook took to the stage in New York to launch several new
computers.
The two most important, though, were the ones that may be competing directly for the attention of the enthusiast or semi-professional user: a new MacBook Air and a new iPad Pro.
Of these, there is most pent-up demand for the MacBook. Loyal Apple laptop owners have been waiting for a new MacBook Air for a long time – at least three years. In the period since Apple significantly upgraded its most popular computer, rivals such as Microsoft, Dell, HP and Huawei have advanced with compelling new laptops and hybrid devices.
But as sleek and powerful as those machines are, none have what many MacBook Air users prize: Apple’s Mac OS. That has kept the relatively slow, old-fashioned MacBook Air in the game up until now. What Apple announced on Tuesday was something more like a thinner, lighter version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
The new laptop’s main design difference is that the ‘bezels’ are far thinner, meaning that the new MacBook Air is 17pc smaller, despite have the same size screen. It is also marginally lighter than the previous model.
The next biggest upgrade is the display itself, which has been updated to a high resolution ‘retina’ screen, similar to the ones seen on MacBook Pro laptops.
The new laptop also has a Touch ID fingerprint sensor and Apple’s ‘butterfly’ keyboard.
The latter feature has not always proven to be popular with Mac owners – there is a litany of issues that people have had with the butterfly keyboard on the MacBook Pro. It remains to be seen whether Apple has ironed out those issues with the new machine.
There are only two connection ports, both of which are USB-C (or ‘Thunderbolt’ as Apple refers to them).
Two or three years ago, this might have caused disquiet. However, most people accept that physical connection ports for computers aren’t as critical as they once were unless they’re heavy-lifting productivity devices.
Nevertheless, it looks like the older USB connection format, used among other things for charging cables, may not be long for this world.
There’s a considerable amount of power available under the hood of the new MacBook Air, with up to 16GB of Ram and up to 1.5 terabytes of storage.
However, the entry-level price for the 8GB (128GB storage) version of the MacBook Air is €1,329, a premium price in some respects.
Apple says that the Touch ID sensor and the Retina screen, together with the new design, make for a new laptop that is scarcely-less powerful or desirable than a MacBook Pro.
In the lead up to the event, there was some speculation that this may be an ‘affordable’ laptop, possibly around €1,000.
But several external factors combined to make it an easy decision for Apple not to price it at that level.
Other than its own new features, Apple may have looked at the large gap that would have opened up between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro — some €500 — if it had been priced at €1,000.
Then there the strategy around promoting the other main product launched by the company on Tuesday, the iPad Pro.
Apple sees a big future for the iPad Pro as a long term ‘main’ computer for consumers and professionals alike.
But it may need a nudge.
The new 11-inch iPad Pro model costs €909 (and €1,109 with a Smart Keyboard).
To encourage adoption, one theory would suggest, it needs to be noticeably cheaper than the MacBook Air.
The latter has an established, devoted user base, some of which might migrate in time over the iPad Pro if they would just try it.
This isn’t Apple’s position, either explicitly stated or implied: but it’s just curious that the MacBook Air has come in at a higher-than-expected price, while the new iPad Pro‘s cost is at what people hoped and expected it to be.
On the iPad Pro upgrade itself, its main appeal is in the extra power under the hood (via Apple’s A12X chip, claimed to be faster than 92pc of laptops) and bigger screens in the same (or smaller) device sizes.
Because of the thinned-out bezels, the base model now comes with an 11-inch display rather than the 10.5-inch screen used by the existing model. The removal of the bezels means that the larger 12.9-inch iPad Pro is now 17pc more compact than the older model, despite having the same-sized display as the current model.
It has two other significant changes.
The first is that there’s no front-facing button anymore. Instead, Touch ID is replaced with Face ID, the facial-recognition technology seen on Apple’s iPhone X and Xs smartphones. Unlike on iPhones, the Face ID implementation on the iPad Pro works while holding the tablet in any position or while seated using the new Smart Keyboard Folio.
And the new device uses USB-C instead of Apple’s traditional ‘Lightning’ connection cable format.
One advantage to this is that the iPad Pro can be used to charge other devices, such as an iPhone. It can also be directly connected to hardware such as cameras.
(Apple says that it may lead to more categories of devices using the iPad Pro for content and data transfers, including audio files.) It is explicitly positioning the iPad Pro as a natural tool for designers, photographers and other creative professionals, with better functionality in apps such as Adobe Photoshop.
To this end, the company also launched an updated Apple Pencil that attaches magnetically to the iPad Pro and begins charging immediately.
A new touch sensor built onto the Pencil detects taps, which Apple says represents a new way to interact within apps.
There’s also a new Smart Keyboard for the iPad Pro which costs €199.
Both new iPads are 5.9mm in width, making them slightly thinner than the existing models.
Apple is very serious about the iPad Pro as a long-term computer that has serious professional and productivity appeal.
It is betting that younger generations have become used to mobile operating systems as their primary computing interface on a day-to-day basis and that this will naturally translate in time to productivity and work purposes.
Getting professional software companies such as Adobe to come on board with apps such as Photoshop is crucial in this regard.
So maybe the company can’t make its newest laptops appear to be too closely priced to the device it may believe holds the key to its long-term dominance of a big niche in portable productivity computing.
Online Editors
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