Truthfully, it's why I'm very sad that the Air looks to be discontinued. I'm still using a 2012 MacBook Air, and it was quite possibly the least stressful computer purchase I ever made. $1000 and some change to get a computer that has just worked magnificently for nearly 6 years now without missing a beat. I walked into an Apple Store, told the Apple employee I wanted a 4 gb MacBook Air, and in 5 minutes I walked out with one, no other pressure or sales pitches.

It was a very relaxed experience for me, and I certainly hope that it's still the same with Apple. $1000 isn't chump change, but it's accessible for someone just a little above the poverty line like me.

Yes, on my Air now. It's like my old G4 12" AlBook, just a no-hassle, always there laptop.

Why do you think that the Air is discontinued? They're still up for sale on Apple's site. The most recent updates were apparently in 2017.

He said looks t be. There are rumours of a new low cost Mac laptop with different branding. ‘Air’ branding doesn’t make sense for the low end model that’s not actually the thinnest and lightest in the range, which it hasn’t been since the MacBook came out.

I did read that, but I interpreted "looks to be" to mean the present appearance. Obviously the Air will be discontinued at some point, and when that happens it won't come as a surprise to anyone.

Its still using a processor from 2015. The 2017 updates were a minor spec bump.

The 11” was discontinued, which was a shame. My favourite laptop ever.

When I bought my 2012 MBP just after it was announced, it was a screaming deal. Retina screen (no other laptop had such hi-res screens), 256GB SSD base, 8GB RAM. That was the lowest configuration and it was $2400. Six years later, the $2400 model buys you basically the same laptop, same 256GB storage, except with a faster processor and faster 16GB RAM.

I just looked at Apple's US site and the base model 13" MBP is $1299 brand new. So the "fantastic deal" $1199 MBP is only $100 less than today's 13" MBP straight from Apple with no discount.

But it is six years later and that $1299 MBP still comes with an 128 GB SSD.

And I agree with your parent poster. In 2009 I bought a MacBook aluminium for ~1050 Euro. Later I replaced the memory by 8GB and the hard disk by an SSD. You could open it with a simple lever to replace the hard disk, memory, and battery.

My 2016 MacBook Pro, which cost 1700 Euro in early 2017 was more expensive than my 2009 MacBook Pro after upgrades (of course, with a more modern CPU).

It's sad that we seem to be standing still on the memory/storage size front, paying even slightly higher prices. In the meanwhile extensibility has gone out of the window. The only winners are Apple and the subset of the market that want even thinner laptops.

I remember looking through some numbers and realizing that my father paid somewhere around $6000 for our IIci in 1989.

That’s well over $10k in today-dollars.

I guess that’s it. I bought my first Mac in 2010, a 13” MBP for £800 and sold it in 2014 for €600 which made it a fantastic value machine.