My perfect laptop would be light like the Air, but have a nanotexture display and the ability to get more RAM. It's like they know me or something.
2026 Apple Devices
- Thread starter wco81
- Start date
Man... this feels like Apple trying to engineer an iPhone X moment for the Mac, but doing it by adding a display type (OLED) and feature (touch) that's been present on PC laptops forever. To do that then call it a luxury device? It's just... ew.
A bad time for the Mac if this comes to pass.
A bad time for the Mac if this comes to pass.
I would guess it just means that the new TSMC process node is going to be very expensive and/or supply constrained for a while. I can't see the tandem OLED or touch screen being the inhibiting factor, as Apple have been using both a for a while, and tandem OLEDs have moved to the higher end of the TV market in the past year.
What? Apple taking common features from the PC world and acting as if adding them to the Mac is a revolutionary event? That's never ever happened before.
Vincent Hanna
Ars Scholae Palatinae
The current M5 MacBook Pro chassis is still relatively thin and light for a high end, full power laptop. The new M6 with OLED and 2nm (and maybe better battery tech?) can get thinner and lighter enough to pull double duty as flagship professional laptop (with M6 Max option) AND vanity Executive Laptop.
And as such, it could sit above the only seven-month-old M5s for some time, maybe even a full calendar year if there is no base M6 this cycle. This produces a something-for-everyone laptop line that would be, by far, the strongest in Apple’s history. (Starting prices for each line.)
M6 Pro and Max MacBook Ultra $2799
M5 Pro and Max MacBook Pro $2199
M5 MacBook Pro $1699
M5 MacBook Air $1099
A18 MacBook Neo $599
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Perhaps that explains the rumors of the base iPhone moving to a Spring 2027 launch. Everything expensive and 2nm launches in the fall. Everything reasonably priced and 2nm launches in the spring.
Totally fair, though ISTM the borrowing is more on the phone side from Android. What's the most recent instance of PC innovation borrowed/emulated/copied by the Mac? I can think of UI bits that Windows pioneered, but nothing on the hardware front.What? Apple taking common features from the PC world and acting as if adding them to the Mac is a revolutionary event? That's never ever happened before.
Vincent Hanna
Ars Scholae Palatinae
It only took us five days to get back to “Apple is doing it wrong.”
It will be a luxury device because it will have:
1. The fastest, most power efficient SoCs on the planet
2. The best dual OLED display in the industry
3. Elegant and fun touch controls that are significantly better than what is available on Windows
4. The sexiest thin and light design that no full featured Windows laptop could ever approach
Yeah… the problem with that is that the M5 generation can’t hold those price points indefinitely. What happens when M7 gen comes on the scene? Do they keep the non-touchscreen MBP at M5 while the Ultra bumps to M7 gen? Do the bump it up to M6 but keep the touchscreen and OLED exclusive to the Ultra?
A few things seem clear to me:
- You don’t make macOS touchscreen capable and then only release touchscreens on your flagship devices. They made that mistake with the TouchBar am I don’t see them making it again.
- You can’t keep OLED as an Ultra only feature. It’s on its way to being table stakes at the price points tha Apple sells. And there’s already rumors of the MBA going OLED in ‘28.
- You can’t bifurcate 2nm and 3nm for long. Eventually everything is going 2nm.
I just don’t see any universe where a 2nm, OLED, Touchscreen MBP coexists over the long term with a 2nm, OLED, Touchscreen MacBook Ultra with all the same specs but a bit thinner/lighter. I can, however imagine a chonky 2nm, OLED, Touchscreen MacBook Pro coexisting for a long time with a MUCH thinner/lighter MacBook Executive.
Vincent Hanna
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I’m only positing this as a one-time, one-year strategy while Apple rides out the RAMpocalypse and the expensive/crowded transition to 2nm. October 2026-October 2027.
By that time the M7 can go into the new Ultra line and the MacBook Pro (and Air) get the M6 as RAM and SSD costs finally ease.
By that time the M7 can go into the new Ultra line and the MacBook Pro (and Air) get the M6 as RAM and SSD costs finally ease.
Apple isn't doing anything right now. This is the Ach spinning out because we react to Gurman's
Yeah, the iPhone 8/X simultaneous release is probably a good comparison. They introduced the X with all kinds of fabulous new features and a high price, and the 8 for a more typical evolutionary phone at the old price. By the next year, they were able to transition the X's features into the mainline lineup (XS and XR), and just kept the older versions around as budget models. Eventually, all of the phones became X-like.
OK.
Wait… You just said a one-time, one-year strategy and then in the very next sentence you’re suggesting that they’ll keep the Ultra/Pro distinction into a second year, second M series generation. I’m confused.
The idea that there could be a gradual transition between two generations of MBPs seems to be breaking people's brains. I don't see why this is so hard.
The new one will have a thinner top case and slightly smaller overall dimensions for the same size screens, enabled by OLED and 2 nm process. It will be an "Ultra" type product at first, although probably just marketed as "MacBook Pro with Touch" or something that allows a graceful transition. It's not going to be an "Executive" product, because it will be capable of performing just like a previous-gen MBP. Once volume builds on both the OLED panels and 2 nm chips, it will just be the new MBP. Again, we went through exactly this in 2012 and 2013.
Once the MBP is fully transitioned, we'll then see an Air with touch and OLED, and touch without OLED will come to the Neo.
I expect relatively minimal changes to macOS for touch, and we've already seen a lot of them (bigger window chrome, taller menu bar). I think what is clear in 2026 that wasn't clear in 2018 is that people in a touch-all-screens world are perfectly happy just to poke at desktop interfaces with their fingers. I watch my colleagues doing it with their ThinkPads all day, every day.
The new one will have a thinner top case and slightly smaller overall dimensions for the same size screens, enabled by OLED and 2 nm process. It will be an "Ultra" type product at first, although probably just marketed as "MacBook Pro with Touch" or something that allows a graceful transition. It's not going to be an "Executive" product, because it will be capable of performing just like a previous-gen MBP. Once volume builds on both the OLED panels and 2 nm chips, it will just be the new MBP. Again, we went through exactly this in 2012 and 2013.
Once the MBP is fully transitioned, we'll then see an Air with touch and OLED, and touch without OLED will come to the Neo.
I expect relatively minimal changes to macOS for touch, and we've already seen a lot of them (bigger window chrome, taller menu bar). I think what is clear in 2026 that wasn't clear in 2018 is that people in a touch-all-screens world are perfectly happy just to poke at desktop interfaces with their fingers. I watch my colleagues doing it with their ThinkPads all day, every day.
Vincent Hanna
Ars Scholae Palatinae
You’re right, that was confusing.
I’m open to either strategy: the new MacBook Ultra as a permanent top tier above the MacBook Pro (just as the Neo is a new low end tier below the Air) or they do the iPhone X/8 strategy that @Louis XVI detailed and all the features eventually trickle down and standardize.
But if I had to pick right now, I’d go with the Ultra being a new permanent line that always has first dibs on the newest and most expensive M-series SoCs.
For years, Apple tried to serve the entire laptop market with only two product lines. The Neo smartly expands it to three, and the Ultra would make it four.
If that’s the case then describe the sales strategy when the MBP and MB Ultra coexist and the only differentiating factor is the SoC. How much of a premium do you imagine that Apple can continue to charge based on a single generation difference in SoC - after the TouchScreen and OLED have moved down to the MBP?
If Apple were to offer 4 lines of laptops I think this would be a much easier to explain lineup over the long term:
Entry - MacBook Neo AXPro
Mainstream - MacBook Air MX
Luxury - MacBook Something MX, MX Pro
Pro - MacBook Pro MX Pro, MX Max
The luxury model leans into the portability side of the power user and the Pro leans into the performance side of the power user. When you move to a new process node, you can take the improvements in the form of higher performance or more efficient performance or some combination of the two. In terms of 2nm, the luxury model would take the improvements in the form of more efficiency allowing for more portability, and the pro model would take that benefit in the form of the ability to last longer under peak load.
I think you’re putting too much hope in the 2 nm node here. There’s room for surprises sure, but neither TSMC’s 5 nor 3 nm nodes produced anywhere near such huge changes in power efficiency. If you look at the iPhone 11 Pro Max (last iPhone to use a variant of TSMC’s 7 nm node), almost all the gains in battery life have come from a larger battery. The 11PM has a ~15 Wh battery, while the 17 PM (using the most advanced version of TSMC’s 3 nm, so two full generations complete with node enhancements) ups it to ~19 (closer to but not quite 20 for the eSIM variant, a little under 19 for the physical SIM). Expecting that 2 nm will lead to enough efficiency gains to allow for a marked reduction in enclosure size doesn’t seem at all supported by recent history.
The limit with this is you can only segment the market so far, and Apple in particular has a history of overdoing it here and having one of their models hanging in the wind. You don’t need mid-90s levels of lineup sprawl to leave products without a defined audience. The G4 Cube, 12” MacBook, Apple Watch Edition, iPhones mini, Plus, and Air, and AirPods 3, were all victims of this.
I’m definitely with the iPhone X comparisons (or even the original MacBook Air), this year’s MacBook Ultra will be a transitional product that lets you spend extra now to get tomorrow’s standard MBP today, but the long-term plan is for it to replace to current MBP entirely.
I don't see the market for a "luxury" product in this environment. The perceived "luxury" will be with the performance line. That is what we learned from the iPhone Air debacle.
I continue to believe this will be a staged generational transition just like the 2012 Retina MBP.
I continue to believe this will be a staged generational transition just like the 2012 Retina MBP.
Yes, at the moment it's still reasonably simple:
Non-pro Macs: Mini, iMac
Pro Macs: Studio, Mac Pro$$$$
Non-pro laptops: Neo, Air
Pro laptops: MacBook Pro
It starts to get a bit busy when you drill down into each model.
Non-pro Macs: Mini, iMac
Pro Macs: Studio, Mac Pro$$$$
Non-pro laptops: Neo, Air
Pro laptops: MacBook Pro
It starts to get a bit busy when you drill down into each model.
Desktops are so niche to start with that it's hard to generalize from what Apple is doing there. Same with Vision Pro.
The heart of the product line is iPhones, MacBooks, and iPads in that order. And they seem to be converging on a model where there are three product tiers:
There are obviously differences around the edges, but with the addition of the iPhone e and the MacBook Neo, the matrix actually looks more sensible to me than it has in a while.
The heart of the product line is iPhones, MacBooks, and iPads in that order. And they seem to be converging on a model where there are three product tiers:
- Consciously, deliberately low-cost: iPhone e, MacBook Neo, iPad
- Mainstream without such aggressive tradeoffs for low cost: Plain iPhone, MacBook Air, iPad Air
- Pro with capital P, high price, high power: iPhone Pro, MacBook Pro, iPad Pro
There are obviously differences around the edges, but with the addition of the iPhone e and the MacBook Neo, the matrix actually looks more sensible to me than it has in a while.
I generally agree with this. But the nuance here is that there’s just nothing that people want to do with a Phone that meaningfully outstrips the fastest processor. There’s nothing that people are clamoring to do with their iPads that meaningfully outstrips the iPad Pro. But on macOS… there are plenty of pros who would gladly sell a kidney if you could stuff an Mx Ultra’s performance into a laptop. For all intents and purposes there’s just no upper bound to how much performance pros want in their laptops.
What that means is that on iPhone and iPad what a professional wants and what a “luxury” market consumer wants are functionally identical. That’s not the same in Mac laptops - there’s a clear difference between “I want all the raw power you can give me” and “I want the best features you can give me”. Is that difference enough to justify differing products? Probably not. But it’s there.
He'd tell us "you're buying it wrong."
I more or less agree with this, although I'd add a nebulous middle range a la dal20402's post. Like with the desktops there's the Mx Pro Mac mini, arguably up to the base Max Mac Studio. For laptops the MBA is there, perhaps up to the lower end of MBPs. iPhones, iPads, and the watches more obviously delineated, although being lower cost items to begin with means more people can afford to move up in the range.
And once in a while there's a random new product that breaks from whatever price and expected usage tier. Stuff like the MBA, retina MBP, iPhone X were ones that were temporary and later shifted into standard places in the lineup, with most key new features becoming standard across the whole line over time.
I'd fully expect this new MBP to follow that pattern, like nothing in the rumors seems to point to perpetual higher end only feature to me. To wrylachlan's point above, a super high end Mac feels like it'd go hard in the power/performance aspect (like Mac Studio vs Mac mini), which is a bit antithetical to the rumored thinner design. I'm sure they'll maximize the thermal load available, but that's a different direction than something like taking a monster Ultra SoC and designing a laptop around that. But hey maybe they pull off something crazy in a way we're not thinking with the increased flexibility they have with chiplets.
Personally a thinner MBP would be nice. I went from a M2 MBA to a M4 Pro MBP, and while not a massive change, the increased chonk is definitely noticeable, particularly when going back to the MBA (which is still used by family). The MBA looks crazy thin and feels really nice after getting used to the MBP. But again I'd fully expect that aspect to become a regular part of the line rather than being relegated to some new higher end.
It seems to me that the iPhone Air was Apple betting against the bolded part, and losing.
But I think your thesis also applies to the Mac, more than you think.
A "luxury" thing in this era is no longer just the slickest-looking or best-made thing. It's the thing with cred, the thing used by the people who REALLY use that kind of thing. And, for laptops, that's the "all the raw power you can give me" version. It's why Apple stuffs the Max and the highest RAM option into the 14" MBP, although that config is more thermally comfortable in a 16" enclosure. They upsell a metric ton of $1099 MBA buyers to the $1699 base MBP because it looks like a $5K capital-P Pro beast. And, for a limited time, they'll probably upsell some of those people to a $2999 MBP Touch.
Meanwhile a thin-'n'-light "MBP Executive" would be seen as a pretender device just like the iPhone Air was.
I’d characterize iPhone Air as Apple betting on “luxury users want to pay extra for less performance in exchange for cosmetic premium features on their mobile phone” and losing. I don’t know where marketers get this idea, but it’s popped up in the handset industry ocassionally, and it’s always wrong. Vertu, the $11,000 jewel-studded featurephone, is perhaps the most famous example. One can argue that the now-defunct iPhone mini series is another example of it, too, the “cosmetic premium” being the smallness.
And in a more obscure but egregious example, a Japanese home appliance company called Balmuda tried in 2021 to sell a $900 hipster phone with an outdated low-end CPU and a tiny screen, which they claimed was OK because it was allegedly aimed at people “who don’t like to spend time on their phones.” The subsequent debacle of the Balmuda phone irreparably punctured the myth around the entire Balmuda brand, which was enjoying a loyal following from people who were led to believe that Balmuda’s special design touch was worth a premium. But now that we know Balmuda knowingly hawks unremarkable smartphones with third-rate internals for first-rate price, what does that say about their toasters* and kettles? Oops! Their sales tanked and never recovered. I don’t know if Harvard Business Review has done a case study about this, but if they haven’t, they should.
The iPhone Air only had one camera. It was deficient in an absolutely key luxury feature for the product category.
I dont think this is true at all. None of the execs using a MBP give a shit if it’s the same design as a 5K device or a 10K device or a 100K devices. They care that it doesn’t look like a cheap device. If Apple made the Neo the exact same dimensions as the MBP that design would be less desirable even if at the same time they doubled the price of the highest end MBP.
So the iPhone 17 pro max is sold out pretty much everywhere, and apparently this has been a problem for a while. Underestimated demand? Manufacturing shortages? I would have thought Apple would have this pretty well sorted by now after almost two decades of annual releases.
I found a 1TB in white at an Apple Store not too far away and pick it up. I did not really want that much space (cost), but oh well. I guess they do have some available to ship on their site if you can wait 1-2 weeks.
I found a 1TB in white at an Apple Store not too far away and pick it up. I did not really want that much space (cost), but oh well. I guess they do have some available to ship on their site if you can wait 1-2 weeks.
Honestly, I have a Balmuda toaster, and it's by far the best one I've ever had.
But the reasons why it works so well are technologically simple: an evaporation channel for water, to maintain some humidity, and a temperature sensor that is more accurate than a timer at sensing when toast is done. Their success is more a case of no one else even caring enough to add basic features to improve toasters.
I disagree with your first sentence. I don't think the MBP would be as popular with these people if it weren't widely known as a legit choice among people who push the crap out of laptops to do crazy things. It's the same perception that makes people want a G-Wagen more than a GLE-class.
I should have added that I have one too, and I honestly have not been able to tell much difference in the quality of my bread compared to other toasters. I do have to concede that it’s the best looking toaster I’ve ever seen, which does count for something in a house like mine, where the entire kitchen is visible from the living room.
Course the iPhone mini was in a different weird spot, technically the bottom of the new phone lineup...but introduced a bit after they came out with the cheaper SE 2 earlier in the year and advertised that as a smaller phone. Then there's the older bigger phones below as well, so if you wanted more size, there were cheaper options too.
Thinking of the iPhone Air gives me a crazy thought, that the iPhone mini would've done better in that position (...two cameras would help too). It'd still be a niche product, but it'd be a more noticeably differentiated niche product. It'd be akin to where the iPad mini settled in that lineup. It used to be at the bottom but I guess the mass market cared more about screen size and price while the niche was apparently pretty price flexible, so it moved a bit up market as a more premium product.
Nah. I think the average “bought a MBP despite not needing anything I couldn’t get on a MBA” buyer has zero clue that laptop power users even exist. They’re buying on the Pro name and a generic sense of costs more equals better. And I have no idea what a G-Wagen or GLE-class is so that analogy is totally lost on me.
Definitely too messy to be anything other than a temporary situation. Within a year or so, Apple would surely streamline it back to Neo, Air, Pro (or "Ultra"). Three lines is already a lot for Apple, but the Mac laptop market is probably big enough for it, if Neo is a hit. Cheap, light, powerful -- three clear and sizable use cases.
The iPad line has also gotten messy. Neo might cannibalise iPad enough to help Apple trim that down. So might a touchscreen MBP for that matter.
Come to think of it, a lot of Apple's product lines have expanded into three or more sub-lines, rather messily. This is getting away from the old standard/pro division that Apple had in each product line back in the Jobs era. Desktop Macs are particularly messy given that they are surely the smallest-selling of all: mini, iMac, Studio, Pro (the latter sort of, but it is still on sale). I'm not saying that Apple needs to stick to the non-pro/pro two category distinction, especially given how much bigger its sales volumes are in many areas since Jobs' time. But I do think this product line bloat-creep is symptomatic of a more generalized lack of focus in the latter years of the Cook era. Cook being an operations/logistics guy was surely the right call to lead Apple as it ballooned into the biggest manufacturing company in the world, but I like that the rumored new CEO supposedly comes from the hardware/product side of things. I think the company could do with a renewed emphasis on product.
Vincent Hanna
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I don’t understand this viewpoint at all. Apple currently has the best hardware lineup in its history, and the product lines make perfect sense. Sure, it’s not the old 2x2grid from (checks notes) 27 years ago, but it’s still remarkably lean and logical for a company of its massive size. Have you been to the Dell website lately?
There are five models of iPhone, four iPads, four desktops (soon to be three), three watches, three laptops, and two displays. Together they sell hundreds of millions of units per year. How in the world is this “bloat-creep”?
There are five models of iPhone, four iPads, four desktops (soon to be three), three watches, three laptops, and two displays. Together they sell hundreds of millions of units per year. How in the world is this “bloat-creep”?
I don’t disagree with your thesis but you are underidentifying the number of models. Apple sells year old iPhone SKUs so thats 6 models. Both the iPad Air and iPad Pro come in 2 sizes so that’s 6 models. MBA and MBP are also 2 sizes so 5 laptops.
There’s no getting around the fact that the choice space in Apple purchasing decisions is larger. There’s the models, there’s also colors, nano texture or no nano texture. There’s accessories like the Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil. I think each of those decisions is straightforward and Apple has done a great job creating meaningful differentiation between models so I don’t think they’re creating decision paralysis. But it’s clearly a lot.
Vincent Hanna
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I fundamentally disagree that it’s “a lot”. In fact it’s the leanest product portfolio in the industry BY FAR, especially when you consider that Apple competes in every consumer segment. Dell doesn’t make watches or tablets or phones, and they still offer more total SKUs than Apple.
Saying that the Apple hardware lineup is too big or somehow confusing to consumers is just nostalgia for the early-2000s Jobs era. Apple (and the world) are radically different now.
Saying that the Apple hardware lineup is too big or somehow confusing to consumers is just nostalgia for the early-2000s Jobs era. Apple (and the world) are radically different now.
The Dell website is exactly what Apple should seek to avoid. A key factor here is that Apple does not simply assemble commodity hardware and target different price points for multiple sales channels. It creates the OS and other key software and services that are intrinsic parts of the product. Hardware configuration creep is reflective of Apple generally losing some of its old laser-like focus on the product's purpose and the user's experience. We can see it reflected in the rather unsatisfying state of most of Apple's OSes at the moment.
I don't always agree with @Vincent Hanna, but when I do, I agree with Vincent Hanna.
Back around the turn of the millennium (almost*) no one was buying Macs. Jobs' problem wasn't "People love Macs; how do we capitalize on that." It was "How do we get people to buy Macs AT ALL." In that case especially, the 2x2 grid makes a ton of sense. They needed people to buy Macs without thinking too hard, because if they did they'd just buy a Gateway or Dell. It really had to be more of an impulse buy than a min/maxing of price vs performance for most people†.
To overuse the car analogy, it was like Hyundai/Kia back in the day. They couldn't have a choose-your-own buffet of options for their cars, because at that point the buyer is overwhelmed and usually will not do the work to figure out if they can make it worth their while. For an untrusted brand, it had to be a good value for money as-is or the potential buyer walked away for an already established (to them) brand. That said, BMW and Porsche can have so many options that the price of their car doubles. Their buyers want that brand, so they'll stick with the process to get exactly what they want.
Modern day Apple has is in a totally different position; namely, the latter position in the car analogy. People want Apple products. People, by and large, no longer think of Apple as a, "well, maybe I can consider this," type of purchase and are more likely to be in the mindset of "I want an Apple product, which is the best one for me?" Once a consumer wants a product, then you're able to have more choice available and option them up. They're not going to walk away overwhelmed because it wasn't what they wanted in the first place. They already want it, so they'll figure out the purchase.
TL;DR: When trying to convince people to buy a Mac, product lineup simplicity is key. When people already want to buy a Mac, a broader lineup is no longer an issue (assuming it doesn't get out of control).
So yeah, I agree. It seems like there's a nostalgia for a simpler Apple product lineup, and that's also a nostalgia for an Apple of a different time in a different world.
* I mean as a relative percentage of computer sales volume. They sold a lot, to be sure, but practically nothing in the grand scheme of things.
† "Most people" being the general buying public, not people who frequent the Ach.