CrunchGear

Goddamn Apple, constantly pestering me to give up my PC habit, needling me with sexy new Macbooks at obscenely rapid intervals.

I’ll not turn to the dark side. Never!

Hate to say this but I switched from OSX to XP about 6 months ago and really haven’t missed Apple what-so-ever. I had been with a mac continuously for about 15 years! Basically, the lack of software, over-priced hardware and support lacking have switched me back to the PC world… I fear for good. Oh… and 3DS Max still not being available for MACS is a big thing too… but that’s another argument for another day ;-)

Hopefully you guys cracking the lid open on this will make Apple revisit the idea and actually go ahead with production.

Jon

Yeah ’cause comments on a web sites are the primary driver behind Apple’s product roadmap. I’m sure Steve checks out these web sites before he starts production

Judging from the specs I don’t think that this one is feasible mostly for the reasons that you already pointed out. This would totally cut the head off of their macbook sales UNLESS, of course they beef that line up again. But then…that would be the 2nd time they have upped the ante in specs for the same price since I bought my macbook less than 3 months ago … I’m not bitter, really I’m not ;-)

Bull. First, MOSR is a website not worth the electrons its built with. Second, the specs are pure bull. Maybe - a big maybe - more conservative specs might be believable, such as use of integrated graphics vs. a discrete chip. And the batery life claims are complete fantasy. Even still, this would simply dig in to the MacBook sales. What separates the 13″ MacBook from the 12″ “MacBook Thin” other than 1″ of screen size? I doubt it’ll happen.
When you compare the differences between the 12″ PowerBook G4 and the 15″ PowerBook G4, you’ve got the difference between a MacBook and a MacBook Pro. Apple’s line seems reasonably complete (at least for Apple’s typical strategy).

Once I went Mac, Ill never go back.

Well a large portion of the MacBook crowd has been clamoring for discrete graphics for a long time - Is it really a big deal if they lower the Macbook sales a bit and pick up the slack with a obviously (much?) more expensive Apple product? I think there is still room for an ultraportable Pro.

I just recently got a MacBook and didn’t feel the need for dedicated graphics (and havn’t yet!). The casual consumer will still buy a great many Macbooks IMO.

@Jon, I’ve had the exact opposite experience, recently defecting to the Apple camp! I’ve not really missed a thing about XP and I’ve pretty much filled in all my holes in OS X. I havn’t even installed Parallels/XP yet either… maybe I won’t at all!

Although the actual construction of such a doomsday machine, I mean super-thin laptop may be infeasible, I think if Apple were able to make one, it wouldn’t hurt their sales too badly.

Here’s how I see it. Currently Apple is producing Macs for average/slightly techie type people, such as young adults, college students, hip 30s. They’re also making macs (like the MacBook Pros) for those who feel like dropping the extra money for a shinier and pretty computer. However, the group that I feel Apple is ignoring somewhat, which they will be catering more towards given their recent product releases, would be the group of pure professionals, whether they be travelling business class elite or graphic artists, or people with a ridiculuous amount of money to spend on shiny things.

Now the market for the last group of people is extremely small, mostly comprised IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads and other super small laptops, but if Apple were to get their foot into the door, and really work the fact that their computers can run the best of both worlds, I think they could stand to profit a bit. Sure Apple would take a hit initially with the ramp up and construction costs to build a super-thin Mac, but looking at those specs, and given a reasonable price (anything competitive with a ThinkPad) you could definitely get quite a few customers, maybe even enough to turn a profit.

::snapping back to reality:: I’d have to agree with several, most notably Jim, because those stats are ridiculuous. A 6.5 - 8 hour battery life on a laptop that is supposed to be super thin is ridiculuous, especially given the new cautions taken in battery design or production. With everyone most recently demanding more and more life to their laptops, manufacturers have been struggling to keep up, and thus are cramming more and more power into older tech batteries, resulting inevitably in a battery cell exploding and fire shooting out everywhere. Couple this with the heat MacBooks (variants) are already putting out, plus a dedicated graphics card (ATi Radeon Mobility X1600 or nVIDIA GeForce GO 7600 graphics systems), I’d think you’d be walking around with a big portable frying pan, albeit a THIN big portable frying pan…

Well, thinner would make it more useful as a frying pan… XD

Oh! I meant to add. “The media (including us Bloggers) are focused on the iPhone iChat Mobile (mark my words there), and we lose site that it’s not AppleWorld, but MacWorld.”

Sight!!! Come on, reread, PLEASE? Is it that hard? I feel like I’m reading things written by the stupid kids at school -.-

How can you canabalize your own sales? If someone buys one of these instead of a mcbook, they still make a sale and still make money. I never understand that train of thought when it comes to dismissing a product line.

Thank you, Elodie, for saying what I was thinking! So many blogs like this one make elementary mistakes like that, and they wonder why they’re not treated like “real” news!

Remember that there are no 12″ MacBook Pros out yet
All the specs listed match up to a small, high end Pro series. If they pull it off I’ll be ditching my current rig and moving over to one machine for all my tasks, that for sure

Thomas F: I think Matt (the author) was trying to say that by introducing a new MacBook model, the initial start up costs to produce the current MacBook would remain fixed, while the new Mac Thin would take away from the current MacBook sales. This means that the current MacBook is less cost effective, and takes longer to pay off the initial costs, and thus is less profitable.

In addition, starting production of a new MacBook Thin would result in initial production/set up costs, and with limited sales, the individual MacBook Thins would also be less profitable per unit.

Thomas, cannibalizing on your own sales is a BAD thing in business… hence why you see the ipod lineup within x$ increments. The reason being, although money is money, products that sell at the cost of other models leads to logistical nightmares… for instance, if you got 10 ipod black and 10 ipod whites, all the whites get sold out but nobody likes the white… what do you do with the white ones? Do you simply leave them on the market, drop their price tage or ship them back to warehouse… and sell them by the pallet on overstock.com? ;-)

Realize retailers have 40-60% markup on most electronics in their store, so that 100$ ipod really cost maybe 50-60$ for the retailer to purchase of which Apple “maybe” makes 2-5$ per unit… maybe 10, depending on how fast they can whip their chinese slave labor pool to increase production per hour.

So the cost of cannibalizing one product over Thomas ends up hurting the bottom line (somebody needs to ship those units back, sell at a loss etc.). This actually happened when Apple first released their ipod in white or black, I don’t remember what the solution by apple was but I think it involved tweeking production so that 2 blacks where produced for every white (ipods) until balance was again restored in the logistics department.

Jon

i bet itl be $999

The reason I’ve not yet switched to apple professionally, is because of the lack of an ultraportable. If apple, did make such a device, speicifcally because of bootcamp, they would get a serious leg into the business market, as every CEO in the land would want one.

how low will the current macbook pros go…I’ll take one @ 1500…CDN now….might not be so generous later….