Apple device spec bumps are nothing new. Steve’s Apple did them all the time. He just didn’t tease them with iconic taglines that carry historical weight. Yesterday Tim Cook tweeted a teaser that said “there’s something in the Air” hearkening back to the 2008 unveiling of the original MacBook Air. We all sort of knew that what would be announced would be minor. New iPad Air and MacBook Air models have been rumored for awhile now. I tweeted how it irked me that the company would use such a sacred tagline for something as uninteresting as a spec bump to a processor we already have in several devices. While we did not get a new MacBook Air, today we did get a new iPad Air and a new base model iPad. The iPad Air is almost entirely unchanged, except for the M3 chip. We’ve had M3 devices now since fall 2023. The base model iPad is also almost entirely unchanged, except for the A16 chip. They’re not even bringing Apple Intelligence to it. The first time we saw the A16 chip was in 2022. Both devices come in the exact same colors. Apple did not even bother to make new hero marketing images for these products. I find that extraordinarily depressing as someone who loves to dissect every inch of apple.com after a refresh. These are parts bin products through and through. I should be surprised that they used a historically powerful teaser for a historically boring refresh. But frankly, I am not. The past few years have been awfully weird for Apple. I know many of us are feeling it.

My favorite product spec bump to compare any current and future Apple spec bump to is the February 2008 MacBook refresh. So many people forget that it happened because of the MacBook Air unveiling a few weeks earlier at MacWorld. The company brought the latest, most powerful Intel chips to the non-unibody MacBook Pro and the white MacBook. That alone isn’t particularly interesting, but they also introduced the multi-touch trackpad to the MacBook Pro for the first time and gave all models the illuminated keyboard. I sort of see this as the historical baseline for what a spec bump should be. They made the product more powerful, extended an existing quality of life feature to all customers, and brought a quietly huge new hardware feature to a product without completely re-engineering it. They did a similar thing in 2015 when they introduced the 12-inch MacBook, bringing the new Force Touch trackpad to the Retina MacBook Pro as well as faster chips, longer battery life, faster flash storage, among other things. Apple’s spec bumps have historically been more interesting than a single generation CPU swap. There are odd outliers here and there, but the reality is that today’s updates were tremendously disappointing. And apologists, before you cry “oh well they redid the Magic Keyboard” remember that it is largely the same except for a handful of small features they are oh so graciously bringing from the iPad Pro’s Magic Keyboard to the cheaper one. It doesn’t do anything a Magic Keyboard for iPad couldn’t do yesterday.

So yes, I am annoyed. I want to see them take bigger swings more often. Maybe I am just too nostalgic, but the difference these days is unmistakable in my view. Hopefully the MacBook Air that we get tomorrow is a bit more interesting, but my expectations are that it will be identical to the one I am typing this on with a slightly faster chip.