At igamesnews, we used to complain that the MacBook line was too complicated, but Apple has now simplified it to make more sense. But what if Apple had gone even further: what if there was only one line of laptops, the MacBook Pro, and nothing else?
That’s what former Apple design guru Jony Ive wanted to do, according to journalist Walt Mossberg. In a recent episode of The Vergecast podcast, Mossberg talks about one of the ideas I had while working with Tim Cook at Apple. (It’s 26:30 into the show.) I wanted to narrow the MacBook line down to just one model, the MacBook Pro. “He decided there was no need to have an Air and a Pro,” Mossberg said. “He decided he could make the Pro and make it as light and as thin – or thinner – as the MacBook Air. And it would be a more expensive machine, which would be better for their bottom line, and people would buy it even if they didn’t need the extra power it provides.
Mossberg warns that the rumor is “a single-source story” from a “very high-level” person at Apple who “really knew the products very well.”
Apple fans may remember Steve Jobs’ philosophy of offering two different sets of products, one for consumers and one for professionals. Ive’s idea goes against this. “There was a big war between the design team and their cohorts (in other words, the team led by Jony Ive), and the engineering and product managers side of the company,” Mossberg said . The latter group wanted a new MacBook Air because it was Apple’s best-selling laptop. “They didn’t want to leave him to die on a hill.”
This dispute continued, but eventually the product managers gained the upper hand and a new MacBook Air was produced, although it was only a spec upgrade and not a redesign . Mossberg, who admitted that this story came from a single high-level source at Apple and could not meet “journalistic rigor,” said that this MacBook Air was launched at an event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in 2018. “This source One of mine pulled me aside,” Mossberg said, “and said, ‘We finally won. »
I left Apple the following year. It’s easy to conclude that this event led to Ive’s departure (Mossberg doesn’t discuss this in the podcast), but it’s more likely that Ive had planned to leave based on the outcome. I’ve been at Apple for almost 30 years and stayed for eight years after Steve Jobs died.
But (voiceover by Jeffrey Wright), what if Tim Cook gave in to Jony Ive? What if all we had was the MacBook Pro as Apple’s laptop offering? I was known to believe in showing customers what they wanted and I would say that customers would just adapt, but would they, especially if their wallet took such a hit? As Mossberg said, it would be a more expensive device, which would have led to considerable backlash from Apple customers. Maybe, maybe not. The world will never know.
