They sold the Macbook air with Broadwell processors for over 3 years. They only changed the processors because intel discontinued them. They skipped 3 generations of processors.

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wtallis 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It would also be fair to say they didn't skip any generation of processors with that gap in updates, they merely sat out the first two years of Intel shipping Skylake five years in a row.

And in the meantime, they did use those first two years of Skylake for the 12" MacBook; the next update to the MacBook Air was after the last update the 12" MacBook ever got. For a while, the 12" MacBook was the more premium, thinner and lighter alternative to the MacBook Air with more advanced technology (and could plausibly have been construed as the intended successor to the MacBook Air), then in 2018 they merged back together with the introduction of the first MacBook Air with a Retina Display.

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soperj 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here.

They sold old hardware for the same price 3 years later as if it was a premium product. They didn't really have an excuse, they've been the most valuable public company on earth since like 2010.

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wtallis 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Selling an old model for a few years after its replacement shows up is not unusual. The only thing unusual here is that the 12" MacBook didn't end up actually replacing the MacBook Air in the long run, and the next major iteration went back to being called "MacBook Air".

The three-year gap in processor updates you're complaining about disappears when you recognize the 12" MacBook as an attempt to move the product line in a different direction, which Apple partially backtracked on after a few years. That course correction was quite a bit quicker than for the Touch Bar MBPs and the trash can Mac Pro.

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soperj 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> disappears when you recognize the 12" MacBook as an attempt to move the product line in a different direction, which Apple partially backtracked on after a few years.

and if my grandma had wheels she'd be a bicycle. As far as I can glean this was never something that they intended to do.

	▲	wtallis 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's entirely you choosing to ignore real and relevant products that Apple shipped during the time period you claim they were doing nothing. If you're looking for some kind of absolute consistency in when and how Apple uses the "Air" modifier on their product names, you haven't been paying attention.