Forget changing the rules–Apple’s just making them up as they go along

Some things just don’t matter, even if you think they really do.

Recall, if you will the spring of this year. Seems like years ago, right? [ten thousand yard stare] Anyway, there was a big hullabaloo when Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said Apple would first ship the M4 in the iPad Pro. “Unpossible!” people said, defying both English and, well, actual events. “New members of Apple”s M-series of chips should come in Macs first! Gurman must have heard it wrong. That guy’s hopped up on goofballs! His head’s not on straight! He’s six meatballs short of a sub!” (Remember? That was totally a thing we were saying back in the spring. You couldn’t stop saying it.)

It was also argued that Apple wouldn’t introduce a new chip in the iPad line because it sends a bad message about the importance of the Mac in its lineup. If that use of the passive is making your eyebrows touch your hairline, then please know that the Macalope was one of the people arguing that. It just seemed wrong. But it wasn’t.

Now, according to Gurman, M4-based Macs will be coming later this year, specifically MacBook Pros, Mac minis, and iMacs.

In retrospect, is it going to matter that the M4 shipped first in the iPad Pro? No. People will still buy Macs to get the new processors. No one is going to say “The M4?! Why would I buy that when it’s in a very expensive iPad I already didn’t buy!” Because look at that argument. It doesn’t make any sense.

(You can just make your own strawmen. Straw is like just lying around in fields. It’s all over the place. Who’s going to stop you from gathering some up? The straw police?!)

(You can also just make up “the straw police!” Having your own column is wild!)

Many of the arguments against Apple shipping the M4 in the iPad Pro first came with caveats at the end that went something like “Now, I can see one reason this might happen…” and these were based on good instincts as it turned out. Maybe they couldn’t make enough M4s to start so it went with a device that wouldn’t ship in as great numbers (particularly priced as they are).
Maybe the higher-end versions wouldn’t be ready soon enough so Apple wanted to stretch out the lead time. Whatever the reasons were, we are here now facing M4 Mac shipments later this year and… it’s all fine.

You know what else doesn’t matter? One word, Benjamin: plastics.

Gurman has further suggested that the next Apple Watch SE might be plastic. The idea of metal Apple products going plastic might put some in a tizzy, but count the Macalope in with The Verge”s Wes Davis who calls it exciting. Are a lot of crappy products made of plastic? Absolutely. But a lot of good products have been made of plastic, too. Some were even made by Apple.

Reasonable people may disagree, but for the Macalope’s money, the unibody MacBook of 2009 was a great product, at the very least a big improvement over the plastic MacBooks and iBooks that came before it. Likewise the iPhone 5c. This might seem like a stretch because it was apparently a product so great that Apple never did a plastic phone ever again. But go back and look at those colors. iPhone Pro users would kill for just a hint of those colors in their phones, a mere soupçon. The Macalope never owned one, but he held one back in the day when kids still said things like “back in the day” and let him tell you it was some nice phone. If it was so great, then why didn’t it sell? Heck if the Macalope knows, but it was possibly just priced too high. If there’s anything the last few years of iPhone sales have taught us it’s that people need a good reason not to get the higher-end models.

So, maybe keep those prices on the low side if you’re switching to plastic, Apple. But otherwise? Just because it hasn’t happened before doesn’t mean it can’t be a good idea.