Gurman: Apple moving towards [just some?] thinner products

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Most interesting question to me is just: is this a move in general or are they going to add new SKUs explicitly for this purpose?

The iPad Pro was kind of just doing it for one, at least for now with where the Air is. He suggests thinner MacBook Pros, which would basically set the MacBook lineup as thin entirely.

iPhone seems to be partial?

 

[dada_dave]

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Most interesting question to me is just: is this a move in general or are they going to add new SKUs explicitly for this purpose?

The iPad Pro was kind of just doing it for one, at least for now with where the Air is. He suggests thinner MacBook Pros, which would basically set the MacBook lineup as thin entirely.

iPhone seems to be partial?

It would seem odd for Apple to revert the MacBook Pro to being so thin that it drops ports again. Possible, but odd. Though again Apple could be working on lots of things but only some of those designs see the light of day. I’m surprised the rumor isn’t for a thinner, lighter Air? The others I believe.

Gurman is kind of hit or miss this far out.

 

[Cmaier]

It would seem odd for Apple to revert the MacBook Pro to being so thin that it drops ports again. Possible, but odd. Though again Apple could be working on lots of things but only some of those designs see the light of day. I’m surprised the rumor isn’t for a thinner, lighter Air? The others I believe.

Gurman is kind of hit or miss this far out.

not sure that they really need to drop ports to make it thinner. I’m more worried that they’ll come back with Butterfly Keyboard 2.0.

 

[dada_dave]

not sure that they really need to drop ports to make it thinner. I’m more worried that they’ll come back with Butterfly Keyboard 2.0.

For hdmi it depends on how thin they get, but yes butterfly 2.0 could be a concern

 

[Yoused]

butterfly 2.0 could be a concern

But, what if 2.0 fixes what was wrong with the original design?

 

[Jimmyjames]

Thinner is fine as long as ports aren’t removed and fans aren’t forced to spin up as a result of inadequate cooling. I don’t want to go back to the Ive years.

Ross Young (display analyst) claims some of the thinness will be due to the move to oled screens. That would be great.

 

[Cmaier]

But, what if 2.0 fixes what was wrong with the original design?

they could fix the issue where the keys stop working or double-type. They can’t fix the terrible ergonomics due to lack of travel, and still have it be useful in thinning the device, I assume.

 

[dada_dave]

But, what if 2.0 fixes what was wrong with the original design?

Sure hence “could” be, but for some people just the lack of travel by itself was the problem. For the record I never used it myself so I can’t comment but I saw some people say it was just bad regardless.

they could fix the issue where the keys stop working or double-type. They can’t fix the terrible ergonomics due to lack of travel, and still have it be useful in thinning the device, I assume.

And while I’m typing @Cmaier responds with exactly my point!

Thinner is fine as long as ports aren’t removed and fans aren’t forced to spin up as a result of inadequate cooling. I don’t want to go back to the Ive years.

Ross Young (display analyst) claims some of the thinness will be due to the move to oled screens. That would be great.

Absolutely, though my screen is pretty thin as a percentage of width of my MacBook Pro - it isn’t much. Plus that makes faceID even harder if they still want to do that. But then maybe they have a fix for that.

 

[Yoused]

Sounds like "thinner" means not the entire thing but the screen part. Imagine a screen that has almost no mass, flips up with no effort, and if the screen weighs almost nothing, the base part can be lighter without compromising balance.

 

[MacPoulet]

I wouldn’t mind them getting a little bit thicker and tougher. While I love my 14” M1 Pro MacBook Pro (that’s a mouthful), it feels a lot more delicate than my aluminum PowerBook G4. That thing is a tank.

 

[theorist9]

Given that the Pro/Max MBP's are getting progressively higher TDP's with each generation (and attendantly noisier, according to user reports, particularly the Max*), I think making them thinner would be going in the wrong direction.

*See:

 

[Cmaier]

Given that the Pro/Max MBP's are getting progressively higher TDP's with each generation (and attendantly noisier, according to user reports, particularly the Max*), I think making them thinner would be going in the wrong direction.

*See:

i suspect m4 is a lot cooler than m3, and who knows - at the rate apple is going, these could be m5’s.

 

[Yoused]

I keep hearing vague noises about reed cooling, which can target specific SoC hotspots. If Apple is in a posiion to implement that, they may not need to use a fan at all.

 

[Altaic]

Thinner is fine as long as ports aren’t removed and fans aren’t forced to spin up as a result of inadequate cooling. I don’t want to go back to the Ive years.

Ross Young (display analyst) claims some of the thinness will be due to the move to oled screens. That would be great.

The M4 die shot shows double the Thunderbolt blocks, so I’d hope the trend is for more ports not fewer.

 

[jbailey]

they could fix the issue where the keys stop working or double-type. They can’t fix the terrible ergonomics due to lack of travel, and still have it be useful in thinning the device, I assume.

I personally loved the touch feel of the butterfly keyboard. The double spaces and missing characters were the problem for me.

 

[mr_roboto]

Thinner is fine as long as ports aren’t removed and fans aren’t forced to spin up as a result of inadequate cooling. I don’t want to go back to the Ive years.

Ross Young (display analyst) claims some of the thinness will be due to the move to oled screens. That would be great.

Was about to say just this. Baseline LCD panels are always thicker than OLED, and the LCD panels in the current 14" and 16" MBPs are thicker than normal due to Apple's use of mini-LED zoned backlighting.

 

[Altaic]

I personally loved the touch feel of the butterfly keyboard. The double spaces and missing characters were the problem for me.

The feel didn’t really bother me, but I prefer the current keyboards. I’d like a future keyboard to have reconfigurable glass keys with a good kachunk feel, though. That’d be sweet.

 

[Jimmyjames]

The M4 die shot shows double the Thunderbolt blocks, so I’d hope the trend is for more ports not fewer.

There is some discussion on this on Twitter. Do we know for sure they are TB4 or is there any possibility they are TB5?

 

[mr_roboto]

The M4 die shot shows double the Thunderbolt blocks, so I’d hope the trend is for more ports not fewer.

Do you have a link? I haven't seen any M4 die shots yet, just the Apple "lots of unlabeled rectangles which may or may not be meaningful" marketing image.

 

[Altaic]

There is some discussion on this on Twitter. Do we know for sure they are TB4 or is there any possibility they are TB5?

No idea, but the blocks look pretty similar to those in the M3 series. I might poke around the firmware when I have some time. Would you kindly link the tweet(s)?