The memory of the MacBook Apple laptop may stop at Jobs' phrase "the thinnest laptop in the world" and the MacBook Air that slipped out of the brown paper bag.
The wedge-shaped design, the monolithic aluminum milling process, and the extreme thinness are not new in the current laptop market. But looking at the 2008 market, the MacBook Air is unique.
When the Wintel camp was still mentioning the concept of "ultrabook" and popular science, Apple directly used the deep-rooted word Air to become the representative of thin and light books with MacBook Air, and eventually led the design style of many products.
▲ 新 MacBook Air
Until the new MacBook Air abandoned the "wedge" style, it was also said by many old users to have lost the wind bone of the Air series.
Compared with the "high-profile" and "avant-garde" Air series, the MacBook Pro series is much more low-key, but this does not mean that it is unpopular or not highly discussed.
On the contrary, in Apple's previous plan, Air was for the general public, while Pro was for those professional-level users.
Jobs and the original MacBook Pro Image from: TIME
At MacWorld in 2006, Jobs announced a number of products, including a new product line for Mac, the MacBook Pro.
The original MacBook Pro was born out of the PowerBook G4 in design, but turned to Intel in terms of processor, and it was Apple's first laptop with Intel processor, and Magsafe magnetic charging was also introduced.
The establishment of the MacBook Pro product line is not a "highlight" moment like Air products, but more focused on how to interpret Pro, and pragmatism.
Pro is the "extreme" performance
The emergence of MacBook Pro is almost a follow-up to the PowerBook series, and the shift from PowerPC to Intel processor platforms is also a reason for replanning the product line.
Just like Jobs' emphasis on the Air series, the emphasis is "thin", and the MacBook Pro is "performance".
At MacWorld, Jobs said in his provocative language, "We want to build amazing products for you, but we don't know how to make them happen with PowerPC."
"It's hard to believe that the MacBook Pro with Intel processor is 4~5 times faster than the Powerbook G5."
On the one hand, Intel processors were much more powerful than PowerPCs at that time, and the x86 architecture was already a mainstream.
Image from: PCMag
On the other hand, it is also the MacBook Pro or MacBook series that has always had Apple's official support for "dual systems", and the built-in Bootcamp can simply boot and install the Windows system.
Turning to the Intel processor platform, reorganizing the Mac product line, and extending to MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, is actually Apple's desire to increase Mac sales and reverse the original Mac that was at a disadvantage in the PC market.
MacBook Pro Early 2008 Image courtesy of Macrumors
After all, in 2006, Apple Inc. had not changed its name and was still called Apple Computer Inc., and Mac was still a major business of Apple.
Embracing the x86 architecture, using the Intel processor platform, and the official support for "dual systems" is to subtly attract Windows users to the Mac platform.
After all, Windows computers at that time were comparable in design to a handful of MacBooks.
▲ MacBook Pro Mid 2012. Image courtesy of Learnrobotics
It can be said that from PowerPC to Intel, as well as the establishment of MacBook Pro, on the surface, is for more powerful performance, secretly, Jobs also laid a foreshadowing for the subsequent MacBook Pro to become a "star public" product.
With the advent of such an open MacBook Pro, MacBook Pro has gradually got rid of the niche choice and has become a choice that high-end laptops cannot avoid.
Pro, more than "performance"
If the original MacBook Pro is based on the characteristics of Intel's new platform, then the three generations of improvements of MacBook Pro in 2008, 2012, and then to 2016 are based on design and technology.
In 2008, the design of Unibody was introduced and the Multi Touch trackpad was added to the practicality, which opened the experience gap with the Windows camp laptop.
MacBook Pro with retina screen Image from: PCMag
In 2012, Apple introduced the concept of the Retina retina screen into the MacBook Pro, a 2K+ resolution screen, coupled with reasonable software scaling, further elevated the Pro properties of the MacBook Pro series.
Of course, these specifications, designs, and configurations were eventually gradually delegated to the Air series, and gradually became a standard feature of the entire MacBook product line.
But MacBook Pro is like a new technology testing ground, constantly leading and defining the trend of high-end portable laptops.
MacBook Pro with Touchbar Image courtesy of cnet
In the new design in 2016, the excessive pursuit of thinness and thinness also made the all-round and reliable Pro become a little biased, and also stole the original limelight of the Air series.
Design aside, the 2016 MacBook Pro also introduces many features that are rare in the PC field.
MacBook Pro 13/15 Image courtesy of Apple
First, the emergence of TouchBar, the interaction mode of touch first appeared in the MacBook series, the second is to greatly reduce the form of the interface, only retain the USB-C (Thunderbolt) interface, and the third is the popularity of butterfly keyboards.
From the perspective of today, these three new features are controversial, and apart from bringing extreme thinness, they do not contribute to practicality and durability.
Moreover, for the Pro series, the property of thinness and thinness is more in line with the characteristics of the Air series. After the MacBook Pro adopted a new mold in 2016, the MacBook Air also adopted the same type of design style.
But the degree of differentiation between the two, or the positioning of Pro and Air, is becoming more similar and close.
In addition, during the four years from 2016 to 2020, Intel processors did not bring technological breakthroughs, which also inspired the contradictions between the four years of MacBook Pro on thin and light design and performance release.
Originally in Apple's ideal, thinness and performance release are not contradictory, but two attributes that can be integrated into MacBook Pro products.
Old and new MacBooks
It is undeniable that the MacBook Pro in this period and the practice of vigorously reducing the types of interfaces have also affected the design trend of Windows high-end notebooks, and aluminum alloy integration has also become a trend in notebook design.
Unconsciously, after nearly two generations of optimization, MacBook Pro is no longer the choice of a small number of people, but gradually to the public, becoming a choice for more and more people.
Truly popular and unique
Today, Apple's profit lies in the iPhone, as well as the ecological advantages and ecological experience composed of several major systems.
The annual proportion of Mac series or MacBook Pro is very stable, and under the pursuit of thin and light design, the positioning of each product line is slightly blurred.
Coupled with Intel's unenterprising catalyst, Apple made a decision to reinvent the wheel.
This decision is to once again let the Mac change the camp, and similar to the original MacBook Pro, the new MacBook Pro has become a test of Apple's transformation.
Whether it is an interview with Apple's chip team or speculation by some foreign media, the lack of Intel processors is actually just a catalyst for this conversion camp.
In recent years, most of Apple's business and services, as well as the focus of ecological construction, have revolved around portable mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads.
And their A series chips all belong to the Arm architecture. Simply put, the main revenue of iPhone and iPad has shifted the focus of Apple's ecology and most service businesses to the Arm architecture, and it is only a matter of time before the x86 architecture is abandoned.
Redesigned, and replaced with a new processor architecture, so that the 2021 MacBook Pro 14/16 looks like the positioning and status of the original MacBook Pro.
Going around in circles, the birth of self-developed M chips has returned MacBook Pro, a product line loved by users, to the original point.
And regarding thinness and performance, Apple is no longer based on design, starting to balance, and messing up some of the previous decisions.
▲ The famous scene of the M chip MacBook
The design team, core manufacturing team, and software team worked together to rediscover the original pragmatism of the Pro series and the extreme energy efficiency brought by the M chip.
The most important thing is that under the Arm architecture, Apple's software system ecology has also completed unification. The recent macOS upgrade, which began to differentiate the processor in terms of functionality, is also based on this reason.
When the MacBook Pro 14 was released, many Apple users compared it with the PowerBook G4, but from the product positioning and existence behind it, it was actually closer to the original MacBook Pro.
But the difference is that the original MacBook Pro is still a niche product, and today's MacBook Pro has become a popular in the field of Arm architecture PCs, and it can even be said to be the only choice.
Macbook Pro, and the MacBook series are growing into a brand, even if the Apple prefix is removed, it still can't hide the light on the MacBook Pro.