One thing that always impresses me about apple is how strong their product positioning and marketing are. One of the the things that apple does to ensure a premium customer experience from the get go is keep their product line simple so that the consumer doesn’t have to worry about the specs. For example, If I wanted to run Garageband on the go, all I have to do is go out to best buy and pick up the latest iPad and I know it will run it; I don’t have to google around and see what the spec requirements are for it.
This plan works most of the time, but not to long ago apple slipped up and messed up their perfect plan. To illustrate how, Let’s say I was a non technical user who wanted to get started with video editing. If I were looking for a PC, I’d probably want something with 8GB of ram, a 500GB HD or two and a quadcore processor (maybe an i5, but I’d be OK with a Phenom X4 II as well). If I were looking for a Mac, I know anything with ‘Pro’ in the name will run any of apple’s ‘Pro’ apps. OK so I decide on a Mac, now I can get the Macbook Pro 13, 15, 15 with Retina Display or the MacPro tower. So I pick up a 13” Macbook Pro because it’s small and cheap but when I get it home and start editing I find it runs like a dog with two legs. “How could this be? I got the Pro model?!” the now outraged user asks. Well dear user it’s because apple slipped up
How apple slipped up
It’s really simple, while apple strives to get a way from numbers and specs, apple has inadvertently slipped up by give the 13” aluminium Macbook the ‘Pro’ moniker. When apple says a machine is’Pro’ you’d assume that it is in the same league as the rest of the ‘Pro’ line up is but you’d be wrong. The base model 13 has a dual core 2.5Ghz i5 while the base model 15” has a Quadcore 2.3Ghz i7. Sure the rest of the specs are the same, but with a huge difference in processor performance they’re really not in the same league.
Of course, this isn’t the type of problem that would make apple go out of business, and yes, I love the fact that apple is focusing on making a small number of very good computers, (unlike say, rim) however I think that calling the 13” Macbook and ‘Pro’ computer is just downright misleading.