A couple of days ago a LOT of MacBook rumors broke all together. The juiciest is this one: http://9to5mac.com/2012/05/14/apple-readies-revamped-15-inch-macbook-pro-retina-display-ultra-thin-design-and-super-fast-usb-3-3/

All this sound very plausible and true (i’m still skeptical about the Retine Display thing, but it appears to be almost confirmed) however there’s one thing that does not makes sense.

The sources described the case and the port holes and 9to5mac made a mockup based on it that looks like this:

There’s something wrong here. The power connector and the thunderbolt port are on different sides of the MacBook. That is not right, actually it’s very wrong . Consider connecting a Thunderbolt Display to the MacBook (THE ONE display apple wants you to connect to your MacBook), The Display’s connector is one cable splitted at the end in two: power and thunderbolt cable. Like this:

So basically, you cannot connect a thunderbolt display to the new MacBook. Apple won’t make such a mistake. NO. WAY. JOSE.

Maybe Apple will update the Thunderbolt Display and break backwards-compatibility. They’ve certainly done it before, but usually for technical reasons, not design mistakes. So I don’t think that’s the case.

Most likely 9to5mac got that tiny bit of their report wrong. But if that’s the case one cannot help but wonder, what else is wrong about it?

Here’s a tought I’ve just come up with:

Everyone seems to agree that Apple simplified the name of the iPad to just “iPad” instead of iPad 3 or iPad HD just because “it makes sense”.

I agree on this as well. It’s obvious once you see almost every other product line that adding “marketing model names” or numbers is not necessary for Apple and not an Apple-like thing to do.

Everyone has already said that there are no MacBook 5 or iPod 11 and stuff like that. It makes sense. Right now only the iPhone has “model names” but that might change on the next iteration.

But what if this simplification of the name is the door opening for something else?

Where does Apple add “marketing model” names to its products?
The answer is: On the ones that have branches. Continue reading →