Hasn't this been (historically) how Apple laptop hardware revisions work? First gen of a refresh gets +200$ or so, with the bottom model missing some of the changes (retina, ssd or i5/i7 chips, for example). Next year they'll apply the changes to the old bottom model and drop all prices by $100 or so, and then drop them again the year after that. Maybe I'm misremembering, but this seems to be what they've done before.