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It's been a while since Jobs' nice simple quad chart. I miss the elegance of that.


But those quadrants still had options for upgrades. I think people vastly misunderstand that chart. It was about reducing product lines down because the Apple of the 90s had too many models that all varied very subtly.

Or are you forgetting that you could choose display types on the old PowerBooks and MacBooks , or choose drive options for a premium etc?

There’s nobody confusing the Pro for the Air or the Neo.

Nobody is confusing the iPad base, air and pro. They’re all strongly segmented.


Yeah quadrants are just a first level sorting mechanism to get people in the door and focused on something. The real genius of Apple's segmentation is that there's always a next step up just $100-300 away. So you might start in the consumer side, but then walk your way up to pro because your consumer laptop is now optioned out enough to be within spitting distance, so may as well make the jump.

They are more segmented today than they were a few years back. It was a mess for a while.

Today the Apple site shows:

Neo / Air / Pro / PROLED-Pro

iMac / Mini / Studio

Which you’d have a hard time claiming is easier to understand than

MacBook / MacBook Pro

iMac / Mac Pro

It would have been cleaner still if they’d eventually renamed the iMac to just ‘Mac’.

I guess I just like symmetry.




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