Every Mac in Apple's current lineup except the 12-inch MacBook is outdated; the 13-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro was last updated in June 2012, still costs $1,099
One thousand, five hundred and fourteen days. Or: four years, one month, and twenty-four days.
Context & Ripple Effects
By August 2016, Apple's Mac line has gone stale across the board: the only machine refreshed recently is the ultra-thin 12-inch MacBook with a single USB-C port launched in March 2015, while everything else carries designs years old. The worst offender is the 13-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro, untouched since June 2012 and still priced at $1,099 — over four years on sale at the same price.
The same day, ExtremeTech argues the stall isn't neglect but physics: the slow rate of improvement in commodity PC hardware gives Apple little to ship. That framing sets up the arc the later coverage completes — once Apple stopped waiting on the PC supply chain, the cadence snapped back, from the M1 MacBook Pro in late 2020 to the M4 generation in October 2024.
First-order effects
- Buyers shopping the Mac lineup in August 2016 face a $1,099 laptop built around June-2012 internals, while the sole current-generation option is the port-starved 12-inch MacBook starting at $1,299.
Second-order effects
- With Windows OEMs shipping fresher commodity hardware, Apple's aging Intel-based machines put renewal pressure on the company that ExtremeTech's hardware-plateau argument can't fully absorb — pointing toward controlling its own silicon, which arrives with the M1 MacBook Pro's claimed 2.8x CPU and 20-hour battery gains in 2020.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Mac updates decouple from the industry's component cycle entirely: Apple moves from multi-year gaps on Intel parts to an annual self-driven cadence, ending at the M4 MacBook Pro's $1,999+ price floor with Thunderbolt 5 and 16GB+ RAM as standard.
The trend: Mac refresh cadence is shifting from hostage to the PC hardware cycle to an annual rhythm set by Apple's own silicon roadmap.