Has MBA Development thrown Apple behind in the mainstream laptop wars?

HP announced Penryn in its laptops this week, and Dell has come out with an ultraportable laptop AND a tablet PC already this year. With the MBA likely to appeal to a smaller audience, I'm thinking that Apple needs to assign some significant resources to a big-time update of their mainstream MBP and Macbook product lines real soon. The MBPs need to slim down and the Macbook just needs a very healthy refresh. Will this be the year for an overhaul, or are we going to have to wait until Macworld 2009?

 

Not sure I agree with your assessment, Zeos. Apple and Macs in general, appeal to a smaller audience. Apple is currently on a roll and I suspect the roll will continue with the MBA, though I personally would not buy one.

 

Apple has a total of 3 laptops. Dell and HP have how many?

 

The MBP needs to slim down? Isn't it already one of, if not the, lightest and thinnest 15.4-inch notebooks out there?

I expect some redesign of the MBP this year...its been long waited for. The MacBook is still selling like hotcakes, and considering the design is from May 2006, not too long ago as far as Apple usually is.

 

Well, if you compare the MBP to other 17 inch laptops, then you'd find them very thin, haha. TBH, I find 1-inch to be a perfect size. It's not thick, but allows the laptop to be durable. Any thinner and you get flex, like the MBA.

 

But that audience is growing and PC people are now comparing their usual Dell and HP purchase to Apple. There needs to be a draw for people to look at Apple computer products. IMHO, Apple always needs to be ahead of the curve in the mainstream market in order to keep the momentum the recent success of the MBP and iMac lines have brought them. Apple computers will not sell based on the merits of OS X alone; it will take a combination of continued innovation in their mainstream products PLUS a strong OS.

 

Apple will have refreshes of the MBP series. Whether there are major hardware changes or not no one knows. Even if Apple lost some development time on the Pro notebooks due to the MBA all Apple has to do is a simple CPU upgrade to buy more time. Montevina is due in a few months so Apple may hold off any major changes until that time. The MBP's are still the smallest and lightest 15" and 17" notebooks on the market so I'm not sure why you feel they need to slim down. The MB just had a refresh a couple of months ago so it isn't due an update for a few more months.

I'm all for updates on the portable line, but I don't believe Apple is falling behind at the moment.

 

I'm not so sure Apple wants to take over Dell and HP just like that. With a higher market share comes the things that Mac OS X doesn't currently have to worry about; security and such.

Instead, Apple is currently catering to a market of users that really love the company and its products, and its still getting tons of media attention. Of course, Apple currently does not have the perfect lineup.

And really, the MBP seems to be more popular, but in fact the MacBook is the big seller. The bigger market (not our tech-conscious market, but the real home user market) loves the MacBook...its sales are off the roof.

 

True, but other brands are starting to look like the MBPs (in form and finish). The MBP has held the title of "best-looking" laptop around for the past couple of years. I suppose my point is that Apple needs to do something with their mainstream laptops to regain the unique position they have held for a while. The longer they wait, the more shiny, light, and thin 15.4-inch notebooks will be around. True, OS X will always be an advantage, but it helps to have the best laptops too.

 

Don't fix it if it ain't broken .

Macbooks and MBP's are both nice machines. The only thing I can think of that needs to change is making them both at least .5 to 1 pound lighter, and maybe change the macbook from plastic to aluminum.

 

But they must also cater to shareholders that demand long-term growth in profit and revenue. Their stock tumbled from over $200 to around $130 over the past couple of weeks, a larger percentage than their competing firms. This was partly due to a mediocre Macworld and lowered projections for Q2 by Apple. I think pressure from Wall Street will demand innovation since Apple must innovate to continue to grab market share.

Oh, oh. I'm sounding like PC on the Mac/PC TV commercials!

 

If the question is "Is Apple at work on significant revisions of the MacBook and MacBook Pro", I think the answer to that is almost definitely yes.

I think it is also probably safe to say that the eventual updates of the MacBook and MacBook Pro will probably benefit from some of the engineering work that went into the MacBook Air in terms of making even more efficient use of space/etc.

In terms of why the MB and MBP haven't seen major chassis updates, I still go back to Apple's explanation for this during the initial Intel roll-out; Apple has wanted to keep Macs looking pretty much the same to help reinforce the idea that these machines are still Macs even though the internals have changed.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some more significant chassis updates in the Spring/Summer; in the near future the Penryn's will probably just be updated like most of the PC laptops are so far (with a CPU update, but no major significant changes beyond that). Montevina seems like it would be a good time to debut more significant updates.

-Zadillo

 

If only the MBP had an Blu-Ray drive I would buy one I think right now they are doing fine they have three machines that cover just about all notebook needs.

 

I think Apple's actually making the right decision by staying out of the high definition format war. Blu Ray has the edge, but its still not definitive that it can win yet. Also, Apple's pursuing its own with downloaded HD movies, so I think Apple's making the right decision by staying out, at least for now.

 

To be clear, Apple has picked a side, when they joined the Blu-Ray Disc Association. But Apple's position seems to be that they see more of a future in digital formats/etc. than optical storage. I think if they are interested in it at all, it is probably more from a storage and authoring standpoint.

One of Jobs' recent quotes when asked about the format war was:

This is of course a bit premature, as we're still a whiles away from things like 1080p movie rentals or purchases, but I think the point is essentially the same.

I saw some Blu-ray fans criticizing him for this quote, but I have seen similar sentiments elsewhere in discussions of the "format war", and the idea that the future isn't going to be on optical discs any more anyway.

I've heard some fairly compelling arguments that this is sort of where Microsoft sits too; that a lot of their support for HD-DVD actually is more about trying to keep a 'format war' alive that hopefully kills both formats and pushes people as well towards digital downloads/etc. (i.e. from the Xbox Media Marketplace).

I would not be surprised to see Blu-ray drives as options eventually on some Macs, but I don't know that Apple or Microsoft really have their hearts really set on either of these formats.

 

Yeah, Apple is officially with Blu Ray (and on the Board of Directors in the Blu Ray Assocation too...not just a Contributor), but what I mean was nothing Blu Ray has come out of Apple yet .

 

Apple will wait until BRD is in final spec. They're not stupid enough to screw their customers over like Sony is.

 

How so? They and many other laptop manufacturers are using draft-n wireless for example, it works just fine and its not finalized either.

 

Biggest problem is movie playback. I was looking at some BRD burners this week, people are saying most of them will only play a handful of movies without using some software hacks.

Sony also said at CES that only the PS3 will be able to fully support final spec BRD movies. They really mean that unless the players can be upgraded to final spec (and have internet access) then they will not be able to use the special features on the disc. But still, the burners are having a ton of problems right now.

Now, if you have a straight BRD player, then you run into less problems. Except those can't play or read burned BRD discs apparently.

 

Macbooks and MBP's are both nice machines. The only thing I can think of that needs to change is making them both at least .5 to 1 pound lighter, and maybe change the macbook from plastic to aluminum.[/QUOTE]

I agree entirely with this: I don't have a problem with the MB, but an LED screen and either an aluminum chassy or something that would take almost a pound off it would push me to buy one immediately.

 

The bottom line is that Apple is not changing the sexy looks of the MBP for at least another year... because I just got mine like 4 months ago!

 

Yeah, I'd like the MacBook to slim down just a bit, drop a bit in weight, add LED-backlighting, and it'd truly be a fantastic notebook.