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Comment by silvestrov | Hacker News Reader

In advertising it is very important to keep the message simple and straightforward. Adding (too many) details makes the ad ineffective.

Most people who knows the big deal about size & weight can see it on the details page and in the movie ads.

The retina screen is what the competition can't match, not fully nor partially.

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This is exactly what I thought was happening, from the press headlines and the front page. (That it's a new macbook with retina display.)

Until I clicked the video and found out the extent of the reduction here. They have completely blown the announcement in my opinion. Even something as little as "The All-New Macbook with Retina Display" would have been enough to draw attention to it. ('all-new')

It's not everyday that something gets reengineered so thoroughly. they blew playing this up. apple fans live for these big announcements, and put up with a lot of crap that really shouldn't be press coverage but are (marginal bumps) just so they can get at the juicy unveilings. This is one of them - and should be presented as such.

it's not too late, and the front page should be changed to reflect the extent of this miraculous reengineering right in the 6-word announcement; at least add "all-new" (copout) or something more descriptive right in the blasé sentence "Introducing Macbook Pro with Retina display", which sounds like...a macbook with a Retina display.

The "It's a whole new vision for the notebook" underneath it in that ugly grey doesn't do justice to the redesign, since that's exactly what they would say about a bump to retina display with no other reengineering.

What I don't understand is why it is marketed as a MacBook Pro, and not as a 15" MacBook Air. It has much more in common with the Airs than the Pros.

Because it doesn't taper to a penny-edge and weighs several pounds more. It's not really what the "Air" was about.

If you say "15 inch air" people have expectations that you couldn't have fit all the muscle this thing has into.

> It has much more in common with the Airs than the Pros.

Technologically yes, in terms of industrial design, power envelope and form-factor no, it doesn't have the characteristic tapered edge (or the possibility to slide it into an envelope), and it remains very heavy compared to an Air: the weight has gone down to that of the "old" 13" MBP (4.46 to 4.5 lbs), but it's half again the weight of the 13" Air 2.96 lbs) and almost twice the weight of the 11" (2.38 lbs).

"All-new" in advertising is so overused as to be meaningless. It would make 25% of those eight words into white noise.

um, next to a picture like that it makes you pay attention to what's new about it.

The only people who are going to be able to tell the difference between that picture and any other Mac from the last few years are people who don't need the tagline to tell them that it's all new, since they're going to be looking at the specs.

I agree with you it's a big deal, but it's also out of the price range of most of their customers -- until the new design trickles down in a year or two, like it did for the Air. This is the part of the product cycle where you make a product just for wealthy or fanatical people while you figure out how to scale. So their marketing strategy is probably as much about selling the other 5/6 of their product line that people can afford. "Retina Display" is enough to get people's attention -- no reason to also emphasize that the rest of the product line is using an old design that's on the way out.

Just another factor to think about when you decide what and how much to trumpet ...

Then they don't understand the Apple product cycle and are currently being run by clueless monkeys.

if they want to do what you suggest, don't make a big announcement and don't put it across the front page...(bottom-left area is fine in case they're trying to limit the exposure). what they've done is just stupid and inconsiderate to the hardware team and apple's fans, who love these types of innovations even if they can't afford them yet.

most people who loved the idea of the air and apple's achievement with it didn't buy one when it came out, haven't bought one since, and still had fun hearing, reading, and talking about it.

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