Eshu Marneedi

iPads and Mac laptops got a cleanup, but Mac desktops are still confusing

Apple last week announced updates to many of its popular iPads and Macs. It first began on Tuesday, announcing two new iPad models:

Apple today introduced the faster, more powerful iPad Air with the M3 chip and built for Apple Intelligence. iPad Air with M3 brings Apple’s advanced graphics architecture to iPad Air for the first time — taking its incredible combination of power-efficient performance and portability to a new level. iPad Air with M3 is nearly 2x faster compared to iPad Air with M1, and up to 3.5x faster than iPad Air with A14 Bionic… Designed for iPad Air, the new Magic Keyboard enhances its versatility and delivers more capabilities at a lower price. With iPadOS 18, support for Apple Intelligence, advanced cameras, fast wireless 5G connectivity, and compatibility with Apple Pencil Pro and Apple Pencil (USB-C), the new iPad Air offers an unrivaled experience…

Apple today also updated iPad with double the starting storage and the A16 chip, bringing even more value to customers.

It continued on Wednesday:

Apple today announced M3 Ultra, the highest-performing chip it has ever created, offering the most powerful CPU and GPU in a Mac, double the Neural Engine cores, and the most unified memory ever in a personal computer. M3 Ultra also features Thunderbolt 5 with more than 2x the bandwidth per port for faster connectivity and robust expansion. M3 Ultra is built using Apple’s innovative UltraFusion packaging architecture, which links two M3 Max dies over 10,000 high-speed connections that offer low latency and high bandwidth. This allows the system to treat the combined dies as a single, unified chip for massive performance while maintaining Apple’s industry-leading power efficiency. UltraFusion brings together a total of 184 billion transistors to take the industry-leading capabilities of the new Mac Studio to new heights.

And concluded with a MacBook Air update:

Apple today announced the new MacBook Air, featuring the blazing-fast performance of the M4 chip, up to 18 hours of battery life, a new 12MP Center Stage camera, and a lower starting price. It also offers support for up to two external displays in addition to the built-in display, 16GB of starting unified memory, and the incredible capabilities of macOS Sequoia with Apple Intelligence — all packed into its strikingly thin and light design that’s built to last. The new MacBook Air now comes in an all-new color — sky blue, a metallic light blue that joins midnight, starlight, and silver — giving MacBook Air its most beautiful array of colors ever. It also now starts at just $999 — $100 less than before — and $899 for education, making it an incredible value for students, business professionals, or anyone looking for a phenomenal combination of world-class performance, portability, design, and durability. With two sizes to choose from, the new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air are available to pre-order today, with availability beginning Wednesday, March 12.

It was a busy week in Cupertino, and in pre-Covid (or even during-Covid) times, it would almost certainly warrant a full-blown event broadcast from Apple Park. But, alas, we’re stuck with lousy press releases — not even a fun video like the MacBooks Pro from last fall. I really wish Apple would stop doing this.

The new iPads are nothingburgers, and I can only think of two things to remark on: release cycle and Apple Intelligence (or the lack thereof). The M2 iPad Air was released last May, meaning it wasn’t even out for a year before it was replaced, making it one of the shortest-lived iPads ever. None of the iPads, for that matter, are on a steady release cycle:

New iPads Pro aren’t due until next year and the iPad mini just received an update last year. I don’t mind the iPad mini’s cycle being so irregular, but the rest of the iPads should all be on an 18-month cadence. One announcement in October, the other in the spring. By contrast, every Mac laptop gets an update yearly at roughly the same time. (I’ll get to desktop Macs in a bit.)

Update cycle quibbles aside, the iPad Air is pretty meh, but I think that’s alright. It’s the iPad for everyone, and the distinction between it and the iPad Pro is pretty well-defined. I think it sells the best, too, and I don’t have any complaints about it. It’s a boring iPad, but it’s the device most people should buy. Case closed. The iPad (no suffix), on the other hand, is primarily intended for schools and toddlers. For $350, I don’t think it needs to do much other than have a decent display and competent processor, and the 11th-generation iPad does both of those things well. I, along with Mark Gurman, the most reliable Apple leaker in the business, thought it would have the A17 Pro, matching the iPad mini from last year to receive Apple Intelligence, but that didn’t happen. I think that’s probably to reduce costs because most people buying (or using, rather) the base-model iPad aren’t interested in Writing Tools or whatever. So it goes. Both iPads remain products in Apple’s lineup for yet another year.

The Macs are far more delightful and what I expected when Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, posted a “Something in the Air” teaser on X — and only X, much to my chagrin — a day before the first press releases were sent. The new MacBook Air’s highlight is the $1,000 starting price for the latest M4 processor. Finally. With this, the MacBook Air becomes the single best computer for the money sold in the world, bar none. My only complaint is that it starts at 258 gigabytes of storage, which is too low for anything in 2025, but it’s not much to argue over when most high school and university students store everything on Google Drive, anyway. For everyone else, I’d recommend bumping up to 512 GB, which costs an insane $200 extra. (That’s where they get everyone.) Thanks to Apple Intelligence, it starts at 16 GB of unified memory, which is fantastic, and it comes in a beautiful yet muted sky blue finish. I really wish Apple would make Mac laptops like the iBooks again. There has to be a market research reason, but the lack of color is a shame.

Walmart still sells the M1 MacBook Air for an astonishing $630, which is great, but for $370 more, the current-generation MacBook Air is such an incredible value that it’s not even really close. It even blows the Mac mini out of the water — for $400 more, it’s a Mac mini with a screen, trackpad, keyboard, speakers, and now an improved webcam. The MacBook Air has always been good, but now it’s unbelievable what a deal it is.

The Mac Studio, however, is anything but a deal. It’s still $2,000 for the base model and $4,000 for the higher-end one, but puzzlingly, the two configurations include the M4 Max and M3 Ultra. I was puzzled by this initially, but then I realized the M4 Max doesn’t have the “UltraFusion” interposer that allows two processors to be fused together. Every high-end M-series chip has had the interposer, but interestingly, the M4 doesn’t. Apple later said to the media that not every generation will have an Ultra variant, putting the guessing games to an end, but this weird staggered lineup means the M4 Max and M3 Ultra are relatively similar in performance. Graphics-wise, the M3 Ultra still is more performant, but that effect won’t be felt by most Mac Studio buyers.

Last year, I wrote about how the Mac Studio is not long for this world because it’s updated infrequently and only has the same processor as the MacBooks Pro, which have gorgeous screens and everything else a laptop needs for only about $1,000 more. I still feel that way — even more so, in fact. The Mac Studio and the Mac Pro both occupy redundant areas in the Mac market, and I think at least one of them has to go. My eyes are on the Mac Studio: While I hate to see it leave, the high-end, $4,000 Mac Studio doesn’t deserve to exist. If it’s going to be operated infrequently, it should be eclipsed by the Mac Pro, which has always been a product for the 1 percent of Mac users who need extra processing power. That computer still has an M2 Ultra, which is unbelievable in 2025. If it runs a year behind, it might as well have the latest Ultra processor. That way, there’s no worry about how frequently it’s updated.

The base-model Mac Studio, meanwhile, deserves a price reduction to, say, $1,800, and it should be updated alongside the MacBooks Pro every year. With the infrequently updated Mac Pro out of the way, the Mac Studio would function like the Mac mini does to the consumer-level MacBooks Air. It would fit perfectly in Steve Jobs’ grid of Macs:

Meanwhile, the Mac Pro could hang out somewhere on the side as a computer for even more professional professionals. I think this grid makes much more sense in the Apple Silicon era, and every model would also be priced fairly. People could get every processor in either a desktop or laptop configuration at a reasonable price every year, as the desktops would be updated alongside their laptop counterparts. Consumer models in the spring, professional ones in the fall. Clearly, the Mac Pro is meant to be the low-yield, infrequently updated computer, so it should adopt the latest Ultra-series processor, which also isn’t updated every year. The Mac Studio should be dedicated to delivering the latest-generation processors at a good price, just like the Mac mini.

I don’t think Apple will ever do this because the marketing department is drunk with power, but here’s hoping. In the meantime, good luck explaining this chaotic mess to a normal person just looking to buy a pro-level Mac. (And yes, there are plenty of pro Mac buyers who don’t have a doctorate degree in Cupertino-ese.)