It is literally called Pro if that is not for professionals then what is ?
its $1,000+ price tag is pretty steep if exclusively targeted towards consumer market.
Also the wife and kids have plenty of alternative devices including the iPad to do basic school, web and multimedia, the value prop for just that market is not convincing enough for me
Why would I buy and iPad and MB Pro if they are basically going to do the same type of work ?
While Apple's phones are not really "pro", I can see a phone being designed for the professional market primarily like the Blackberries and Nokia communicators of old.
Not to be snarky but if $1000+ is steep then your are not Apples target market. :) They have phones that cost over $1000 so $1000 for a laptop seems to fit.
For me, we just went all in on the Apple ecosystem because it is simple and the least invasive privacy wise. I do tech for a living so when I get home the last thing I want to do is debug anything. I think in the last 5 years the number of times my family has asked me for help to resolve something is under 5. This was not the case when we had Windows systems, Windows media centers, etc.
For 1000+ price to be scalable, Apple cannot rely on just consumer market of wealthy people earning 6 figure salaries of people in tech buying for personal use. They need the professional market which is my point. [2]
I have considerably less problems troubleshooting Chromebooks for the technically challenged than I have ever had with macOS or windows combined [1]
[1] TBF Windows has improved, S Mode, seamless upgrades etc have helped its user experience to improve. It is funny that windows is considered the more complex OS, their user friendly practices like strong backward compatibility and focus on GUI based workflows shot them to mainstream in the 90's, times have changed indeed.
[2] They are not going to lose professional user base overnight there will be stickyness, anecdotally I bought the first 2017 touch bar MBP, for 10-15 years Apple had delivered good hardware for me, that is the last Apple I will buy in a while. There is some stickiness in the professional market however the brand loyalty is very limited, if a device does not fit your needs you find one which does . You may feel sad you still need to make money though so you move on.
its $1,000+ price tag is pretty steep if exclusively targeted towards consumer market.
Also the wife and kids have plenty of alternative devices including the iPad to do basic school, web and multimedia, the value prop for just that market is not convincing enough for me
Why would I buy and iPad and MB Pro if they are basically going to do the same type of work ?