Cook drops Jobs’ glowing ‘bitten’ Apple logo from the Pro, impacting sales

Jobs had the glowing apple on the lid as a mark of premiumness, which many companies such as HP and Dell copied in their notebooks. Even though the company did not give reasons for this change, it can be assumed from Cook’s previous launches of devices, features and services that he intended to change the Apple that Jobs had created in order to suit the company’s future.

Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks about the 25th anniversary of the Macbook during an announcement of new products Thursday. (AP)

On Thursday when Tim Cook launched the new MacBook Pro he made a statement by dropping the glowing "bitten" apple from the device's lid -- a one-of-its-kind departure from Steve Job's design philosophy.

Jobs had the glowing apple on the lid as a mark of premiumness, which many companies such as HP and Dell copied in their notebooks. Even though the company did not give reasons for this change, it can be assumed from Cook's previous launches of devices, features and services that he intended to change the Apple that Jobs had created in order to suit the company's future.

For example, Cook launched the large screen iPhones, Jobs was against. He also introduced the Apple Pencil, arguably a stylus-like device that Jobs hated.

However, there is more to the Pro that will never resemble its predecessors and the list is not a happy one for consumers looking top upgrade after paying an 'onerous' price.

"The MagSafe -- the charging point of a MacBook which is magnetic in nature has been dropped along with the glowing logo and this is going to impact sales," Vishal tripathi, research director at Gartner said adding that "Apple should have learnt its lesson with the new MacBook that it launched earlier without the logo as sales of that device was also affected."

"Nearly 95% Apple consumers are aspirational buyers but several consumers simply didn't want to buy the MacBook because of the missing logo. The high price of the device is also going to be a deterrent in the country," he explained adding that the glow logo must have been dropped to make the MacBook thinner.

Tarun Pathak, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research also said that Apple had gone wrong with the pricing in India. "Apple has gone way wrong with the pricing in India and reminds us of similar hiccup during pricing of iPhone SE which at one point was costlier the iPhone 6," Pathak said adding that "initial reviews suggests that most of the excitement went down as Apple announced the pricing for the same."

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However, consumers' problems doesn't end here. "Apple has also dropped the SD card slot now which was really popular among photographers. Also, the lack of a direct USB port will cause problems for them," Pathak observed. The new MacBook Pro comes with Thunderbolt ports (Type-C) which can be doubled as a charging ports, HDMI or USB.

"The company also didn't announce any other cable or accessory along with the new notebook which will confuse consumers. In fact, consumers who bought the new iPhones will also face a problem connecting to it. All the consumers will have to buy splitters to use other devices along with the new Mac," another industry expert explained adding "that this was an aberration to the iPhone 7 which comes with a 3.5 mm to lightning jack splitter to ease consumers with the transition."

The expert also pointed out that some users need the function keys and to avail them on the Touch Bar needs a few steps. "The new Mac is more of a problem for consumers and with the huge price tag will attract a very few customers here in India which is not in sync to Tim Cook's strategy to make India the second biggest market outside US," he added.

Also, local retailers also said that their MacBook sales target are being revised by the company due to the high price. "Our targets are being revised. Also, after the stock of the old MacBook Pro is exhausted, Indian buyers will only have the Air notebooks under the ₹1 lakh price bracket as a purchase option. All other products will cost consumers over ₹1 lakh," a local retailer explained.

A guest points to a new MacBook Pro during an Apple media event in Cupertino, California. (Reuters Photo)

A guest points to a new MacBook Pro during an Apple media event in Cupertino, California. (Reuters Photo)

Apple on Thursday launched three new variants of the MacBook Pro at at starting price of ₹1,29,900. While the 13-inch MacBook Pro starts ₹129,900 and features a 2.0 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.1 GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage, and ships right away, the 13-inch Pro with the Touch Bar starts at ₹1,55,900 and features a 2.9 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3 GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. The Touch Bar 13-inch MacBook Pro will ship in two to three weeks.

On the other hand, the 15-inch MacBook Pro starts at ₹2,05,900 and features a 2.6 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.5 GHz, 16GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. The 15-inch, which will also come with the Touch Bar and Touch Id, will ship in two to three weeks, Apple said in a statement.