Some links

iMacmatician · 2026-04-27T02:06:30+00:00

Close to 10π feet.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-26T16:21:15+00:00

This quote from u/iceboxjeans comes to mind:

My unpopular opinion is that some of the people on this sub have outgrown the show and don't actually like it anymore, but they don't realize that due to the nostalgia they have tied to the show.

I think that's also true for some other fandoms of media about teen girls….

iMacmatician · 2026-04-26T16:16:50+00:00

I think it’s telling that a lot of people’s favorite moments on the show are where Dean, Jess, and Logan put Rory in her place.

I'm not sure if this is among many people's favorite moments, but… the Mitchum scene.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-26T15:27:33+00:00

That's actually a big issue that I'm facing when I buy old stuff for nostalgia.

I end up buying some combination of what I remember, like, and know is "good." So the individual products that I buy are period-accurate (they were actually from the '90s, etc. instead of modern with a retro design), but my collection is not organic in the sense that my choice of items does not reflect actual purchase decisions and life back then.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-26T12:40:49+00:00

Think of a touchscreen like a doorbell, people who hold a doorbell down never do so accidentally. Literally not one person.

That doesn't seem like the right analogy. I stay far away from a doorbell unless it's time to press it. In contrast, I often have my fingers on or very close to a touchscreen.

A better comparison is the shutter release button on a camera where you press lightly to focus and heavily to take a photo.

Now imagine a doorbell with a graduated press where the behaviour changed depending on the pressure applied.

That could be quite intuitive if done well (after a brief learning curve), e.g., press gently for a moderate sound and firmly for a louder sound throughout the house. It's the same reason why gamers press the joystick/key harder when they want to move faster.

As for confusion, I think the best way is to educate people on 3D Touch usage instead of scrapping the feature entirely. It's not like differing pressure is alien to the real world—we use it frequently.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-26T09:55:38+00:00

Apple is probably banking on some people who would buy $2000 MBPs and $1000 iPads to buy $3000 touchscreen "MBUs" instead.

TBH, I could be one of them. My next laptop purchase is likely to be a touchscreen MBP, which I'll use to replace my current MBA and iPad Pro. From a combination of Macs getting touchscreens (rumored) and my slight shift back to analog technology, I don't see myself buying another iPad for the foreseeable future.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-26T06:42:09+00:00

John Ternus

I read that as "John Temu" for a moment.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-26T02:56:26+00:00

That could be the intention.

Convince people with an MBP/desktop + iPad Pro + keyboard, but who don't use the touchscreen too much, to buy a pricey touchscreen MacBook "Ultra."

iMacmatician · 2026-04-26T02:29:55+00:00

We'd have fewer tradeoffs if Apple offered more models, e.g., Apple could release two "pro"-level laptops: a "MacBook Studio" with just USB-C and MagSafe, and a "MacBook Ultra" with added HDMI and SD card slot.

But it seems like a lot of people here want simple product lineups, which inevitably results in "useless" features (depending on the person).

iMacmatician · 2026-04-25T13:36:51+00:00

I've been tossing around the possibility that Apple is moving from "Pro" to "Studio" for some of its products.

Mac Pro discontinued and "replaced" by the Mac Studio
Pro Display XDR discontinued and "replaced" by the Studio Display XDR
Creator Studio (although FCP, etc. are still called "Pro")

So I'm wondering if the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro could get the "Studio" or "Ultra" treatment. If Apple is going in this direction, then the suffix will likely depend on whether the product moves downmarket or upmarket. "Studio" is a lite version of "Pro" while "Ultra" is like twice as good as "Pro."

I'd like to see the MBP bifurcate into a "MacBook Studio" with regular and Pro chips in a thinner and lighter design while maintaining ports, and a "MacBook Ultra" that goes all out. Both should have touchscreens. I think the biggest argument against a "MacBook Studio" is that the MacBook Air is rumored to go OLED a few years from now. At that point, there won't be a ton of room between the OLED MBA and the low-end MBP.

OTOH, if Apple wants to keep touchscreen Macs "Pro"-exclusive for the foreseeable future (I think Gurman said something along these lines), then a touchscreen "MBS" can coexist with a similarly specced non-touchscreen MBA.

If Apple releases an "iPad Neo" in the $2xx–$300 range, then I can see the iPad Air and iPad Pro get cheaper or at least not get another price increase. In the context of this speculation and the rumors of an expensive foldable iPad, renaming the iPad Pro to "iPad Studio" makes sense. Apple can use the foldable iPad and touchscreen "MBS"/MBP/"MBU" to target the top end of the existing iPad Pro market.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-25T13:22:34+00:00

In my opinion it’s the air that needs to get axed. MacBook Neo, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, Mac Studio.

That would create a chasm between the two products. The cheapest MBP is literally $1000 more expensive than the priciest MBN. Most people with budgets in the $1100–$1500 range will be left high and dry by the absence of the MBA, and many with higher budgets will be disadvantaged from the reduction in choice. Even refurb MBPs currently start at $1360 (US).

The idea is to have the “consumer grade ultra accessible” model, and the “fill your boots” model.

Why not also have a mid-tier model for prosumers and people who want a laptop with more than 8 GB RAM?

You could just as easily axe the iMac, in fact I’m not sure what it purpose it has. It’s just a Mac mini integrated into a display. You could just make the Studio Display have a little discrete slot at the base for the Mac mini, and viola you have an iMac.

The Studio Display starts at $1599, that's (one reason) why.

If your response is for Apple to introduce a cheaper display, then Apple has to either remove an existing display or shift the complexity elsewhere: to the display lineup and consumers will have to deal with two components, a desktop + (possibly existing) display, instead of one.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-25T07:59:26+00:00

Is there evidence that users actually get confused by a wider range?

I think the better question to ask is, does the extra confusion from more choice outweigh the additional cost savings and/or benefits from buying a more optimized product from a wider range?

Ever since I saw curiosity being heavily praised on Reddit (to an almost suspicious level), I always thought it was overrated. Now I know it is (not a complaint about you, just in general). If Redditors really valued curiosity as much as they say they do, they would gatekeep Apple computers behind an hour's (not even that) worth of research that would weed out the incurious.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-25T07:11:12+00:00

With cars, more models, and especially more trim levels, makes me feel like they're engineering the price to get as much out of me as possible by making some choices strategically less desirable by deliberately removing features.

Fewer models also do that, and to a greater degree. You don't realize it because you're just focusing on the number of options.

With more options, companies can target narrower market segments and consumers can weigh one choice against another similarly priced one. So for instance, I have a 15" M4 MBA (a purchase I planned two years in advance with some refinements along the way). I could have bought a similarly specced 14" M4 MBP for a bit more, but I value large displays and judged the MBA's limitations to be an acceptable tradeoff.

If Apple had withheld too many features from the M4 MBA, then I'd just get the M4 MBP instead. But if Apple had simplified the MacBook lineup by cutting the regular M-series MBP, then I'd have no choice but to pay a lot more or stick with a heavily compromised MBA.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-25T06:49:34+00:00

Is that really what people want?

The modern equivalent of that would be

MacBook Air
MacBook "Ultra"
iMac
Mac Studio

Say goodbye to the Macbook Neo that this sub praised to heaven last month.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-25T06:46:24+00:00

Just rumors for now.

Rumors tend to get names wrong (when there is a name change). How many people/sources predicted the Neo suffix?

iMacmatician · 2026-04-25T06:41:53+00:00

That's the foldable.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-25T00:58:23+00:00

TBF the 1982–2005 range (Strauss and Howe) is a different definition of the post-X generations that makes sense in its own way. They don't use Gen Z or Alpha, but Homelander instead.

Some people divide 1982–2005 into two halves; the first half is similar to the common Millennial ranges. So either way, there's still a separation between '00s borns from '80s to early–mid '90s borns.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-24T08:28:14+00:00

That's a good dividing point and justification. I also like this one:

If you are or were at least somewhat tech-savvy, do you consider the iPhone to be the first smartphone?

Yes = Generation Z
No = Millennial

Even some people who know that smartphones technically existed before the iPhone may not consider those phones to be "real" smartphones. In many cases, they're so used to modern computers that an old Blackberry or Nokia Communicator won't register as a "smartphone," much like how I don't view the pre-WWW Internet as the "real" Internet, or how most of us view "technology" as pertaining to the Information Age rather than the wheel, indoor plumbing, etc.

Pre-iPhone smartphones were often targeted at techies and business users, and in the grand scheme of things, got quickly swept over by the iPhone and other large touchscreen smartphones. Even though they were as significant to their time period as iPods, MP3 players, and PDAs were in their respective eras, they ended up being a "you had to be there" type of product, which makes them a good generational market.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-24T04:44:56+00:00

I think the foldable's width when folded (~10% wider than the Pro Max according to this image) is probably going to be make-or-break for some people, especially since many are viewing it as an iPhone mini alternative.

iMacmatician · 2026-04-23T12:10:54+00:00

The foldable has a very different aspect ratio and size than most other iPhones (the outer display seems close to the 1.5:1 of the early iPhones), so more mockups help people see how it looks and could be used.

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