Occasion #2

Finished my first final of the semester. Good times were had in preparation and celebration, and then I typed about it to the internet. The end. If, for some reason you still haven't gone to bed like a good boy, here I'll talk about how great I think it is that Intel brought back unlocked low-end SKUs. The new unlocked Pentium CPUs have me excited, because if I finally stop being lazy, get that job I keep talking about, and save up enough money, I might be able to make a pretty cool desktop without crying every time I see the receipt.

You know what else has me excited? What Apple keeps not doing with their Mac line. So here's my pitch for a high-entry/lower-mid range MacBook (I'll rant about desktops some other time):

1. Body of a MacBook Pro with Retina display Obviously with a much less interesting port selection, but I think the Retina model has one of the nicest bodies I've seen on a laptop. It's got the sleek lines and smooth curves of the original MacBook Pro, while ditching the extra thickness for something on par with a larger Ultrabook.
2. Mobile i3 CPU Something like the i3 4110M, which Intel reports to be their cheapest mobile i3 SKU, would allow this hypothetical MacBook to drop approximately $90 off the price right off the bat. It's hard to say exactly how much Apple pays, but it's easy to see how this drop, together with a port selection akin to the MacBook Air, could lead to significant savings. Thanks to the improvements Intel has made to energy efficiency and performance, such a CPU is now a viable option for doing the sorts of things many Mac users find themselves using their computer for, and doing them quite well. Battery life would take a hit relative the MacBook Air, but the extra space in the case could then be used for an even larger battery to recover some of this, or other options like PCIe-based SSD options alongside SATA 3 hard drives, perhap even dual hard drives.
3. 13" HD+, 15" Full HD displays Apple has a lot of options with regards to display, but I think that this hypothetical 13" model, while essentially a 13" MacBook Air with a less efficient CPU (albeit with a higher clock rate,) would allow Apple to knock the price down into the ~$600 range, without compromising on their refined user experience or standards of quality. A 15" model with a full 1080p display would be somewhat like the discontinued 15" MacBook Pro in terms of performance and build, but with a newer, much more efficient, processor, giving it greater battery life. 

There are obviously a lot of things that Apple could do to make a much more easily affordable "entry-level" MacBook, and not all of them involve compromising on quality. Loosening up their definitions of premium by choosing a cheaper CPU, using a larger body to reduce component density, while also reusing tried-and-true features like the MacBook Air's 13" display, would let Apple extend their reach into markets they've long ignored by leveraging economy of scales with advancing technology. For an excellent example of how a high-performance laptop can be sold for a bargain without completely abandoning build quality, I direct you to the Lenovo Y510p. It's apparent that this isn't quite up to Apple's standards, lacking a high-grade aluminum unibody, etc. but it's also packing a significantly more power CPU and larger supply of RAM than Apple does by default.

At the very least, Apple could produce a model with the storage options of an older MacBook Pro, while keeping the specs about par with a MacBook Air, providing an affordable alternative that sacrifices hard drive read/write speeds for capacity, and possibly a slightly improve port selection. If Apple were to sacrifice the screen resolution (for 1366x768) or go with a plastic unibody instead of an aluminum one, they could compensate with the aforementioned better storage options, a speedier CPU, or even an bigger battery paired with Ultrabook-class CPUs for drastically more absurd battery life than the current 13" MacBook Air.

Like I said, there are obviously a lot of options, but what matters to me is that Apple try them. I appreciate that Macs are premium devices and I appreciate that Apple has been lowering prices on the baseline MacBook Airs into the affordable by most range, but I think they're missing out on a huge chunk of the laptop market for no real good reason at all. Intel's making it so well-performing CPUs and GPUs are no longer expensive, storage prices are stable and low, and even displays are becoming more affordable as high-density joins the mainstream. High quality devices are no longer restricted to also being high cost devices.