At WWDC last week, Apple unveiled the final Mac to get Apple Silicon- the Mac Pro. The latest 4th generation Mac Pro now comes with the M2 Ultra chip inside and as it went on sale this past week- the Mac transition to Apple Silicon that began just two and a half years ago- is now complete. It is no longer possible to buy a new Mac from Apple with Intel chips inside. 

I figure now is as good of a time as any to review the current Mac product lineup and see where the strengths and weaknesses are. So without further ado, lets start with Apples laptop lineup, the MacBooks. 

I like the way Apple has organized their chart laying out the low end, entry Macs on the far left and their primer high end expensive Macs on the far right. So lets start at the left with the 13” MacBook Air with the M1 chip. This Mac is still actually really nice! Yes it came out in 2020 and yes it reuses the design of the MacBook Air that came out in 2018, and yes it still has the M1 and not M2 chip, but the M1 chip is still very, very good. The design is a little long in tooth, but it’s not bad by any means. And it has an amazing price starting at just $1,000. Students, who year after year buy the MacBook Air in droves, can pick it up at just $900. It’s a really nice Mac for those on a budget and who don’t need the latest in Apple technology. 

We then come to the 13” and 15” MacBook Air with M2 chips. These Macs I also really love. The default Mac for most people to buy should probably be the M1 MacBook Air. If you are able to spend an extra $100 on the M2 version, you defiantly should. The screen is a little larger, the design is a little better, the processor is a little better, everything is just a little better. Remember what I said about students buying the MacBook Air in droves every summer? Yep- this is a fantastic option as well. And unlike the M1 model, it gets even better. For $1,300 you can get the exact same Mac but in a bigger 15” size. I expect this to also be popular with students, but I think offices and people with vision problems will love this Mac as well. 

Next we come to… oh no. The 13” MacBook Pro with M2. This is the first MacBook in this lineup that dose’t make a ton of sense. It is most comparable to the 13” M1 MacBook Air. Unlike the MacBook Air though, this MacBook Pro has the same design that it had in 2016, which is very outdated and very controversial, and while it does have the M2 chip, it dose’t have the more powerful versions that its bigger and newer brethren have. It starts at $1,300 so you might as well get the 15” M2 MacBook Air with a bigger screen for the same price, same chip, and same port selection and get a better design at the same time. 

Finally, we come to the 14” and 16” MacBook Pros. Oh boy! These are some good Macs! In 2021 when these models were introduced with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, the whole marketing campaign was focused on picking your size, picking your chip, and letting it rip. And that remains the case today. The two sizes can be configured to be identical with the only difference being the size (obviously) and the battery life. Everything else is equal between these machines. They are expensive starting at $2,000 and can be configured up to $6,500. But the power they offer users is unmatched by anything expect the higher end desktop Macs. If you are a professional and need the absolute best computer money can buy, these are your Macs. 

Overall, the MacBook lineup is in a pretty health state. With the 13” and 15” MacBook Airs and 14” and 16” MacBook Pros, Apple has learned an incredible lesson- people love size options and don’t want features exclusive to bigger sizes of the same product. This is something they had struggled with in the previous generations of Macs from 2016 to early 2020. Compared to the lineup then, this lineup is a complete 180 turn. There is still room for improvement. Last week Apple dropped the 13” M2 MacBook Air from $1,200 to $1,100. I hope this trend continues and next year we can see the M1 MacBook Air discontinued and fully replaced at its $1,00 price point by the M2 MacBook Air. It may even come with an M3 chip. That’d be great! And I hope also that Apple discontinues the 13” M2 MacBook Pro. It has no real place in the current lineup and while yes, it acts as a bridge price wise between the Airs and the high end Pros, it dose’t offer anything that would make you choose it over any other option it sits between. 

Next, lets look at the desktop Macs. This encompasses everything from the all-in-one iMac to the to top of the line Mac Pro tower. Similar to the laptops, Apple has arranged them with the entry models on the left and pro models on the right.

First up, the iMac with M1 chip. This is a nice computer, but I do feel like its a bit of a niche product. It is aimed at people who need to share a home computer with other users, grandma and grandpa who need a simple to use desktop computer, and those who need a desktop to work from home. The colors are nice and the design is great. My have three problems with the iMac that make it difficult to recommend to anyone. One, the colors. The lack of a black option is disappointing and the mismatched front and back colors are odd to say the least. Second, it still uses the M1 chip. It really wouldn’t be hard for Apple to swap the M2 into this thing. Third, it comes in only one 24” size. As we’ve learned with the laptop lineup, people love having size options! Why not introduce a bigger models? Overall, at $1,300, the iMac is hard to recommend. It’s not bad, but it could be so much better. 

Next, the Mac mini. This is a fun product. It starts at a super affordable $600 and you can choose either the basic M2 chip or spend more and get the M2 Pro chip- the same chip as in the base 14” MacBook Pro. I really have no complaints with the Mac mini. It is affordable and has a small design. I could go for an even smaller design or a space gray color option, but otherwise, it is a nice Mac. 

Mac Studio, the latest totally new and original Mac product in years. It offers the M2 Max chip, same as in the 16” MacBook Pro, but can be configured to the M2 Ultra chip. The Ultra is just 2 M2 Max chips fused together. But that’s a lot of power in one chip. If you are a professional user who needs the best, the Mac Studio with either chip is probably the best for you. 

Finally, we come to the Mac Pro. This product is quite an oddball. The design is reused from the Intel days where it could be configured with new CPUs, GPUs, RAM, hard drives, the Apple Afterburner card, and whatever else you wanted, Apple Silicon dose’t allow for that. This generation Mac Pro comes with an M2 Ultra chip and more PCIe slots, but with virtually none of the expandability. The only things you can use the PCIe slots for on this new model are I/O expansions and hard drives. No CPU upgrades, no GPU upgrades, no RAM upgrades. None of it. Because of this, I don’t know why Apple introduced this model. Apple probably would have been better off ending the Mac Pro and letting the Studio replace it. 

Overall, the desktop lineup is good. The Mac Studio is a standout product. The Mac mini is great. But the lack of any upgrades to the iMac from 2021is disappointing. I’d love to see new colors and sizes in the future. And the Mac Pro is so bizarre I’m left to wonder why it exists in the first place. There is one notable thing missing from this desktop lineup compared to a few years ago. All the all-in-one Macs. In the Intel days, we used to have different sized iMacs and an iMac Pro. But now we are left with one. I’d love to see a beefed up iMac with the M2 Pro or M2 Max chip to fill that iMac Pro hole in the lineup. 

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed Apple introducing several new technologies that are targeted toward the car. Some of these technologies are for people who have very modern cars and others are more stopgap technologies for people with older cars. But all of these technologies have me thinking about Project Titan, Apple’s long-rumored car project. Will we ever see Project Titan materialize into a product or has Apple given up on the project and decided to rework Project Titan into new features that can be built into their existing product line?

Based on the past few years, I think Apple is clearly moving toward the latter. Repurposing technologies and features that were being designed for their own designed car and packaging them into their existing products- mainly iPhone and Apple Watch.

Let us start with a simple one. This past year with the release of the iPhone 14/14 Pro and Apple Watch Series 8/SE (2nd generation)/Ultra, Apple introduced a new feature called Crash Detection. Crash Detection is a safety feature that is designed to detect when a driver has crashed into another car. It does this by collecting a wide variety of data. For example, it uses data from the microphone to detect sound consistent with breaking glass, accelerometer data to determine if you suddenly stop moving, GPS data to determine if you are moving along a roadway, and many more pieces of data. This is all data that could be collected by a car and would be an excellent safety feature, and by extension selling point. But instead, Apple has chosen to build this technology into all their current Apple Watch models and most recent iPhone lineup.

Another is Emergency SOS via Satellite. This is currently an iPhone 14/14 Pro-only feature but is something that could be built into a car as the feature only requires a battery and a satellite connection. When Apple demoed the feature last September, the one thing that caught my eye was the questionnaire that Apple designed to speed up the process of getting users’ assistance by identifying what kind of help is needed. On that questionnaire, one of the options is vehicle issue. This would also be an excellent safety feature for a car and also by extension, a selling feature.

Third, the introduction of Car Keys to Apple Wallet. This feature works with the U1 and NFC chip inside an iPhone and Apple Watch to lock and unlock and remote start a vehicle. The feature was introduced at WWDC 2021 and is supported in a very limited number of vehicles. Very few are added per year. But this is the kind of feature that Apple would love to have built for their own car as it’s a perfect integration of hardware and software and would be very difficult if not impossible for other car manufacturers to replicate in the same seamless way. However, a delay or cancellation of Apple’s own car very easily could force the company to reconsider making that technology available to all car manufacturers.

Finally, I want to touch on the elephant in the room; CarPlay. Originally introduced as part of iOS 7, it eventually launched alongside iOS 8 and handled the bare minimum of what people wanted out of an “iOS in the car” experience. It handled iTunes Radio music streaming, Maps navigation, and phone calls and messages. That was about it. Over the past several years Apple has been working to improve it by adding more features and apps and even support for third-party apps for ordering food and paying for parking. At last year’s WWDC conference, Apple previewed what they called “the next generation of CarPlay”. This upgraded version of CarPlay was designed to work with a wide variety of car screens, multiple of them if a car happened to have them, and display multiple different controls for not just your phone but for your car as well. When the feature was announced last year, I was confident Apple was working to release its own car. However, a year later, it seems to not be what Apple is going for. And no car manufacturer has announced or committed to supporting this next generation of CarPlay.

Apple and their car project is a nearly decade-old broken relationship. It would greatly seem Apple wants to release its own car but simply cannot justify doing so, but for some reason can justify releasing it to the industry at large which, in turn, rejects the advances. Forcing Apple to reconsider its car project but the cycle keeps going on. I do genuinely hope that Apple decides to someday launch its own car. Every feature that Apple introduces that relates to the car is from a consumer perspective, very intriguing. But they are held back by not being able to control the hardware and software. These are the kinds of problems that Apple has historically excelled at solving. Identifying where a unique integration of hardware, software, and/or services can provide a compelling user experience.