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Comment by _bxg1 | Hacker News Reader

> Mac Pro was released too late for the quarter

That's fair

> it starts at $6000

The pricing/features can be (have been) debated ad infinitum, but no matter which way you slice it, it represents a huge new direction for the Mac line and at least at the high-end, industry professionals are excited about it. It's a big deal, and it's not a flop, so it should have an impact (next quarter, it seems).

> and despite complaints, the previous gen TouchBars are working decently for most people

Most people probably won't be trading in their 2018 MBPs for the new 16-inch, but given the strong feelings out there about the keyboard and airflow I'd bet some people will.

And more importantly there are people like me, who were holding off on a long-coming upgrade for a moment exactly like this, when Apple's solved the biggest issues with the design. It should've registered as some kind of sales bump, even if not a massive one.

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Just to give a counter point about Touchbar macbooks being 'good enough' - my experience with recent macbooks has been so bad that I'm just never buying a macbook again. Next laptop will be a thinkpad and it's very possible I'll be selling my current Macbook Pro 13inch on ebay because I'm so pissed off with it.

You can't produce crap products for 5 years and expect people to use that as a reason to rush to upgrade to the latest and greatest.

I am also excited about the Mac Pro. However, at a $10k average configuration, it would need to sell several tens of thousands to comprise 20% of Mac line revenue, which would be at least half of the video editors in the US.

While I wouldn't trade in a 2018 MBP, I'm definitely considering trading in my 2016 MacBook to either the 13" or the Air once they update them.

I suspect both of these new models came in too late to appreciably affect the Mac quarter results, though, as the OP mentioned -- and I also suspect that the number of people who were holding off on upgrades, like you, has been steadily rising. And I know I'm not alone in looking at the 16" one and thinking it was neat but just too big. So maybe the acid test is going to be seeing what happens to sales when they update the smaller models with the new keyboard.

> just too big

I pointed out in another comment that the 16" is actually slightly smaller on every dimension than the 15" 2015 MBP, even with the extra diagonal-inch of screen space:

  358.9 mm × 247.1 mm × 18.0 mm

  357.9 mm x 245.9 mm x 16.2 mm

Although I do believe it is slightly bigger than the 2016-2018 15"

You're right -- by "just too big" I meant my personal preference. :) If it's feasible I'll go down to the Air from the 13" MBP that I currently have!

I was expecting some pent up MBP demand to buy, so I am surprised sales declined. I still do expect that pent up demand to buy, though I am less confident.

Now I am just guessing while the new 16" made people more willing to buy a new MBP it wasn't getting them to rush and buy one. That is my case, I will likely buy this year, without the new 16" I think it was under 50% chance I bought a MBP (and a bit more likely I got some laptop I could run Ubuntu on).

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