> I am very disappointed to see the design is identical to what we currently have
Yeah one possible explanation I can think of is that they're not 100% confident in how rollout will go, and they want to avoid the situation where people in the wild are showing off their "brand new macs" which are still going through teething issues. There's less chance of souring the brand impression of M1 if they blend into the product line better.
Alternatively, maybe they want to sell twice to early adopters: once for the new chip, and again in 12-18 months when they release a refreshed design.
I think it could also be that a lot of people will be 'calmed' by the design they're used to when you're trying to convince them of a new chip the average consumer might not understand
I don't know about that, I think the confident move would have been to release the new chips along with a big design update.
As you say, I think the average consumer doesn't understand the difference between an Intel chip and an Apple chip, and will probably not understand what if anything has changed with these new products.
I would say developers would be the group which would be most anxious about an architecture change (which is probably why this announcement was very technically-oriented), and developers on average are probably going to understand that design changes and architecture changes basically orthogonal, and thus won't be comforted that much by a familiar design.
On the other side, average consumers probably aren't all that anxious due to the arch change, and would be more convinced that something new and exciting was happening if it actually looked different.
> developers on average are probably going to understand that design changes and architecture changes basically orthogonal
If the reaction here to the touchbar is representative, perhaps they didn't want the M1 announcement to be overshadowed by the new feature related whining.
Probably a good mix of both. No need to send out a completely new design along with the new chips, plus the designs are really not that outdated. In any case these are squarely targeted at the "average consumer" market - lower budget, keeps computers for a very long time, places significant value on the higher battery life.
Less reliant on perfect compatibility of enterprise software, which I am sure is something they want a little more time to sort out before committing their higher end lineup.
Yeah one possible explanation I can think of is that they're not 100% confident in how rollout will go, and they want to avoid the situation where people in the wild are showing off their "brand new macs" which are still going through teething issues. There's less chance of souring the brand impression of M1 if they blend into the product line better.
Alternatively, maybe they want to sell twice to early adopters: once for the new chip, and again in 12-18 months when they release a refreshed design.