New MacBooks: How Often Is Too Frequent For New Machines?

New MacBooks: How Often Is Too Frequent For New Machines?As sure as night follows day, another Apple MacBook range was launched yesterday.

Of course things about it are xTimes faster than the previous models and the clever Apple marketing leads you down the path that you can’t live without it — don’t get us wrong, we’re not immune and are tempted to trade up our 3+ year old iBook, especially with the reduced prices of the new machines.

There’s a video been released featuring the people behind the product – The Steve is nowhere to be seen.

The video is of such extraordinary visual quality, we were almost breathless. It’s the best I’ve ever seen in over ten years of creating video online. A great advert for Apple Quicktime – and for the size of their bandwidth budget(!).

Passion For Product
It focusing mainly on the creation of the one piece aluminium body. Jony Ive, who has been credited with transforming the look of Apple’s products over the years, looks like he’s pouring his heart out (no reasons to think he isn’t) over how they’ve agonised over each and every detail of the new Macbook. This peaks with his announcement that the inside of the machine is even more beautiful that the outside.

New MacBooks: How Often Is Too Frequent For New Machines?While the Apple-ers also describe how the machine is as green as it possibily can be, we can’t but fail to notice the speed that Apple bring out new machines – it’s just over a year ago that the last New Apple MacBooks were released.

What about the long term?
Put aside for one moment the anger of those who have just bought new MacBook’s, what will those who upgraded a year ago to the the new machines do with their (perfectly serviceable) machines?

As Gavin Starks of AMEE said in a soon-to-come out interview we carried out at FOWA last week, “Why are products being designed to only last for a short period of time? With reference to the iPod, “Within 18 months of a products release, they’re effectively landfill. That’s atrocious.”

As has been said before, “There is no such thing as throwing away – there is no ‘away’.”

How about Apple put their very capable brains into designing a machine that isn’t superseded every 12- 18 months?

3 thoughts on “New MacBooks: How Often Is Too Frequent For New Machines?”

  1. good comment.

    In amongst all the hype and excitement – which sucks me in as much as the next apple fanboy, and I’ve been waiting for the macbook revamp since I bought mine less than a year ago ! – good to be reminded it doesn’t have to be this way…

    Unfortunately the whole tech consumer world is built on the same model, it’s just with computers, and now iPods, mobiles and whatever else you come up with it just moves so fast that it really does sometimes look as tho your current model is “outdated’ a year down the line…

    Just a little bit of hypevertising to confirm and heighten this impression and Bob’s your uncle, another unit shifted…

    Sad in many ways, but can’t really begin to deal with it properly unless you’re prepared to allow that the underlying malaise of consumer society – the belief that if I can just get my hands on X I’ll be happy, at last – drives and at the same time goes a whole lot further and deeper than Apple’s latest product launch. Know what I’m saying ?

  2. I think it’s even simpler than “consumer society”: Apple is a company! A stock-listed business that, though it does have $20 billion in cash already, wants to earn more money… Fair enough a goal for a business, I would say.

  3. I’m with you on this.

    It will be really interesting to see if people will put their hands in the pockets to buy these at such an amazing upgrade rate.

    Shortly people will be finding that when they put their hands in their pockets might find no money there.

    What will the companies do then?

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