My guess is it's a transitional period. The new low-end 13″ MacBook Pro, the new 12″ MacBook, and the outdated 11″ and 13″ MacBook Air probably ought not to coexist. But the MacBook Air is important to Apple as their entry-level (i.e. cheapest) laptop, and the MacBook is still too expensive and not quite featureful enough to replace it.

I think Apple would like to drop the MacBook Air in favour of a cheaper MacBook at some point, but they can't right now.

I was wondering what would happen if Intel bought Compaq back in 1991 (when Rod Canion and Jim Harris was still at Compaq) for a while now. Intel has a high profit margin too, and Compaq had higher profit margin back in 1991. Even back in the late 1990s laptops still had a higher profit margin, and laptop theft was more common in these days. Anyone remember the Apple price increases in 1988? Particularly for the Mac II it was worse.

You could just as well have said:

"Apple throwing darts at a board to try to appeal to every possible price point just before Steve Jobs returned"

I was for a while thinking of the case where Apple bought NeXT, but Gil Amelio and later Ellen Hancock stayed as CEO. While PC margins was declining, I was thinking that Apple could mostly focus on the higher-end PC and workstation markets. I wonder how this would have compared to Tim Cook today.