Apple Announces October Event for Macs: 'Scary Fast'

Did you forget about the Mac Mini?

I'd say Apple is roughly still sticking roughly to the quadrants in the Mac space, with the Mac Mini/Studio and MacBook Air/Pro.

The iMac is the odd one out in my view. It exists somewhere on or near that mini-studio axis but is distinct for being AiO, lagging in updates, and coming in colors, so seems to target a customer sensitive to price, complexity, and appearance, but not performance or the cutting edge.

I agree that the Mac Pro disqualifies itself and isn't positioned to be part of the calculus.

I disagree. While they don't have too many form factors, they are too close to each other and have way too many CPU/RAM variants that makes everything too complicated. Especially when you factor the GPU variants on top and the insane pricing you will have to suffer for non-trivial amount of (soldered) storage. And they still sell old generation of many products, with any updated chip depending on when they last announced stuff. It doesn't make sense that they still have old versions on MacBook Pro with an M2 when a MacBook Air has an M2 (I know the thermal implication, but it makes no sense). It doesn't make sense to have an M1 MacBook Air barely cheaper than the M2 version that has many improvements. I feel like they are really trying to confuse and milk the customer in the most efficient way. And everybody cries at the Mac Pro but the Mac Studio doesn't make more sense, it is just a bigger Mac Mini. If at least they killed the Mac Mini considering that if you configure it properly it will come in range of Mac Studio pricing.

Unlike earlier Mac lineups that were driven by technology/thermal limitation; all the options seem very arbitrary and staged in a way to maximize revenue instead of customer satisfaction. Previously there was a few models with a few options. The most basic model was subsidized by the whole lineup because it was not that different from the best one.

For example, back in 2005, the difference between an iBook and a PowerBook of the same size was only on a few characteristics that would only matter to a truly professional user. Now the difference between a base MacBook and MacBook Pro is unreal and the pricing difference too (considering that everything is soldered). If you look at pricing, the difference between the least expensive iBook and most expensive PowerBook was only x2.5 (the actual difference in capability was not that big, especially for enthusiast use case). Nowadays it is very hard to pinpoint what model to use as extremes in the first place (because the lineup is convoluted) but it will give you a ratio of x3 to x4.5. And the difference in capabilities between the cheapest MacBook Air and the best MacBook Pro is completely insane. But on top of that everything is soldered so you can't fix a "bad" (storage/ram capacity) configuration after the fact. So not only you have to make sure to select a processor that is not too anemic, but you better not fuck up on the options either. It is made purposefully to play the FUD game to get people to overspend "just in case" (or be mad and re-sell to rebuy, which makes one more Mac sold).

In my opinion it has never been more complicated to choose a Mac for people to buy. In fact, now, if people did not have a Mac before I just point them to much cheaper but still very good laptop PCs. For legacy Mac users I try to understand their workload to point them at something that will not have them overspend, but it is really guesswork at this point. And do not get me started on the iPads, it is pure nonsense...

Apple still sells well because of their name, history, and good quality manufacturing but it is nothing like a premium experience, especially at the price point they are at. It feels more like an overpriced upscale supermarket where options are not bad per se, but you get confused as to why there are so many options for a single item and why the price varies so much between equivalent items...