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Comment by lukifer | Hacker News Reader

Apple's simplified product line is a very good thing, but they're only hurting themselves by not throwing a bone to customers with more specific needs. The Air itself finally satisfied the sub-notebook market that Apple all but ignored for a decade, and it was fantastic for their bottom line.

In a perfect world, they would have a 15 or 17 Pro model with an empty bay for BTO options, such as a 2nd battery, an optical drive, a platter HD, or a second SSD.

But we all know they won't do this. They'll cook the SSD onto to the motherboard to make it as crazy-sexy-thin as possible, the tech press will ooh and ahh, they'll sell like hotcakes, and the power users will cling to the last generation as long as they can, hoping in vain that Apple will eventually come around.

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I agree with the customizable bay idea but also that it probably won't happen. Whenever I hear rumors about moving the mechanical drive in the MBP to the SSD in the MBA, I wonder about how they're going to satisfy all of the people who don't care/know about read and write speeds but wonder why their storage space got cut in half.

I wonder if Apple pays any attention to the users who put a 2nd HD in the optical bay? Anecdotally, it seems common among power users, but I'd be curious to find out just how widespread it actually is. And you're right, even regular users will be baffled when their shiny new laptop has less storage than their crummy old one.

All I know is, unless affordable 2TB SSDs magically appear out of nowhere, I'm never going back.

I use an optical bay caddy, too. Maybe Apple is betting on Thunderbolt external drives - those look pretty attractive...

If you look at the ipod, where the ipod classic has maxed out at 160gb and hasn't seen a refresh for 2.5 years you can see that they don't cater to the top 0.1% of users.

What they might have a problem with though is convincing the average user that their computers with 256 gb are actually better than the really cheap windows machine with 750gb, to a user that does seems like it's 3 times better.

The best of both worlds would be to have an SSD for / and spinning metal for /Users.

I don't think you'll see a bay capable of supporting an optical drive -- they're gone, and few people care -- but I'd still expect the next generation MacBook Pro 15" to augment a cooked-on SSD with space for a user-fitted 2.5 inch HDD. And the 17" model should have space for TWO user-fitted 2.5 inch drives, as befits the model's target market.

I'd also expect a next-gen MacBook Pro to have multiple Thunderbolt ports for connecting a multitude of monitors, storage and pro peripherals.

> they're only hurting themselves by not throwing a bone to customers with more specific needs

Do you have any clue what it costs to do a low-volume custom build of a product? Apple's margins would vanish in a puff of irrationality.

> The Air itself finally satisfied the sub-notebook market that Apple all but ignored for a decade, and it was fantastic for their bottom line.

You presume without evidence that a MacBook Air made with 2000ish technology would be wildly successful. I have no reason to believe that to be true, particularly because sub-notebooks were very much a niche product until the netbook fad, which is pretty much over.

> power users will cling to the last generation as long as they can, hoping in vain that Apple will eventually come around

And eventually the power users will come around. They always do. The cycle is quite predictable.

You're presuming without evidence that an Air in 2005 or so would not be successful. Moreover, it need not be an Air as we know it, but simply a MacBook with no optical drive and a 10-11" screen. The tiny Vaios of the time did fairly well, and with healthy margins.

I'll stipulate that I have no clue what BTO infrastructure costs.

However, I do take umbrage with the notion that power users will simply see the light one day. Most of the time, it's not a matter of preferences or delicate sensibilities, but needing a tool to do a job. It is today impossible to have a modern Mac laptop with five extra batteries, harming a certain user segment's ability to work while traveling. Soon, it may be impossible to get a modern Mac laptop with over 512G of storage, which sucks for someone, say, editing video in the field. (Dangling an external HD sucks; you're one jostled cable away from serious data loss.)

I have no issue with the "applianceification" of computing; in fact, I'm all for it. But because this has been Apple's focus, they've spent less effort in recent years on professionals for whom Macs are vital tools (see also the Final Cut fiasco). Maybe those users simply aren't profitable, which would be very sad indeed, given the alternatives.

Hopefully, cheap and huge

... SSDs are around the corner, making the issue moot.

Apple's simplified product line is a very good thing, but they're only hurting themselves by not throwing a bone to customers with more specific needs.

I don't think so. People seem to believe ANY lost sale is lost money, but it is not so. Every sale comes with what is called an "opportunity cost" (wikipedia it).

Making stuff for tiny niches is not worth it if you have a nicely streamlined production run going.

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