Today it's the MacBook Neo unless you have a higher budget and want a nicer screen and more power. Then it's the MacBook Air, unless you do serious photography, video, audio, or development work then it's a MacBook Pro.
It's still a pretty simple, linear progression up the line.
Steve Jobs presided over an era where they were selling:
- A white plastic 13" MacBook
- An aluminum 13" MacBook
- 13", 15", and 17" Macbook Pro
- A high end 13" MacBook Air that thermally throttled and was more expensive than most of their other laptops
Replacing my iPhone was a nothing burger of choice, on paper the iPhone 15 pro was the best feature set for value vs buying a new iPhone 17, but Apple know that so don't sell the older models directly when the new models come out.
There's really limited impactful innovation when you get into the details.
Today Apple is the most profitable company in the world, and every product line is ruthlessly optimized/scrutinized to maximize their revenue/supply chain use/suss out consumer needs for the next cycle.
There isn’t a world where Apple has a $4T market cap and where their product offering fits in a neat 2x2.
Well first I would ask them what they are planning to use the Macbook for.
Then I would make the recommendation. There is Macbook Neo for basic stuff. Macbook Air for regular stuff and Macbook Pro for gangsta stuff.
It seems there is still good differentiation between the Macbook lines.
Now the 8gb can be concern to some but not to many IMO. And I am also feeling just a bit optimistic that Apple will realize that the largest criticism of this product can be that it doesn't have 16GB otherwise even more people can buy so in the future, I expect 16 GB to be possible too (When Ram bubble finally bursts)
Later when Apple was on sound financial footing, Jobs expanded the product line. That was the right thing to do at that time.
With the Neo, Apple now offers 3 lines of laptops: Pro, Air, Neo. This is not substantially different from 2010 when Apple under Jobs offered 3 lines of laptops: MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air.
I think these are all different markets - $1k seems like a small amount for the MBA but it's too much for quite a few people.
I professionally edit tens of thousands of very large RAW photos, edit 4K video all day long, write, web and very light dev work.
All that on a used M1 air. Still the fastest computer I’ve ever used.
The pro is so insanely powerful there really are only devs (and maybe only ai devs) who need it.
Depending on their budget and needs, a Neo, Air, or Pro.