Was it easy to come across in actual Apple Stores?
For a time, the unibody model remained on retail display at Apple stores. Whether they were showcased or just tucked off in a corner is something I can’t answer.
Per the earlier-linked article posted by
@GMShadow and also mention on Everymac, the unibody MBP was removed from retail store floors by June or July 2016, but kept on sale (and probably still stocked at Apple retail stores) until late October 2016, notwithstanding factory refurbs to linger on a little longer.
The amount of time I spent inside an Apple store, between 2012 (
after my first A1278 keyboard replacement in May 2012, within its one-year warranty period) and 2016, was probably less than twenty minutes. After that 2011–12 threshold (and products worth looking forward to in person stopped being sold, like the iPod classic, the 4th/5th-gen iPod nano, the cMP, the unibody Macs, an operating system I
wanted, promotional materials on Xserve… and so on), my desire to spend much time in those crowded, loud, hectic spaces made any desire to go in evaporate unless there was a thing they sold which I needed (such as a Magsafe adapter after my cat would chew one to failure).
I have an iGPU-only 15" r"MBP". To me, this thing is a larger MBA on steroids (just what I bought it for), not a thinner port-starved MBP.
That “steroids” thing is why it was a MB
P and not a MB
A or
MB.
I love your always-fresh insights on display tech discoveries with unlikely mixes of hardware, software, and tweaks, but real talk here: you’re kind of an outlier as consumers go. Most folks don’t go into buying a laptop or MBP thinking, “How will this play nice with the multiple displays I have lying around my home?” Most folks buying these laptops simply want what they know works, has the in-built features and ports they need, is portable and easy to move around, and for a smaller group planning ahead, a sense of how upgradeable its internals may be.
The mid-2015 iGPU rMBP might not be
your (display) cup of tea, but I suspect one of its enduring selling points for another year was not only consumer/buyer/procurement familiarity with the retina series by that point, but also a desire to stick with the older-styled keyboard whose mechanical/tactile origins dated back to the 2006 MacBook and 2008 MacBook Pro. It could be that Apple even did that as an olive branch to buyers who, even after 2016,
insisted on having a MBP whose form factor was two generations behind.
Even as Apple made the function keys a base model feature of the Touchbar-era 13-inch models, enough consumers were disinterested, again (as with the long holdover with the unibody models), with the way Apple tried to drag all buyers forward at the same time to a less-versatile, more closed, and by some measures, flimsier-feeling product. And so they continued to buy the last-gen form factor rMBPs until 2018.
I didn't imply that only few were buying them. I was just wondering how many buyers were prioritising the low starting price over its features.
There might be some proprietary market research buried in an Apple storeroom, now caked in a sheen of dust, which might answer that question.
For musicians and digital video folks — prosumers, professionals, whatever — who were not in a place (or desire) to also upgrade their entire studio hardware away from, say, FireWire-based connectivity, that alone was probably a key selling point of it (and, until 2014, the Mac mini): they could take their laptop to different studios and not have to worry that stuff there might not connect with it. And even those folks who
did use a second display for their in-studio workbench, the “slower” graphics of an iGPU which might not make a gamer or 4K fan swoon wouldn’t be at issue.
Personal case in point: In July 2006, I bought a MacBook. I didn't really care for white polycarbonate and really wanted an aluminum shell, but the MBP was (1) twice as expensive and (2) a bit too large and heavy for my taste. If there'd been a not-quite-as-expensive 13" (or better yet, 12") aluminum MacBook in 2006, I'd have bought that in a heartbeat.
:nod:
