> that extra "inch" is $800!

This is hardly an accurate conclusion. To start with, the screen on the 13" has 4M pixels (2560x1600). The screen on the 14" has 6M pixels (3024x1964). Technically speaking you are buying 50% more screen. The new screen is more dense, but the screen itself is pixels and you are getting 2M more (50% more) pixels. In addition to the actual better quality LED design which is the "Liquid Retina XDR". The new screen is also able to deliver 1000 nits of sustained brightness, with 1600 nits of peak brightness. That is compared to the 500 nits offered on the cheaper model. So again this is double the brightness (even more than that considering peaks). If that weren't enough, the 14" comes with adaptive refresh up to 120Hz. Again, this is double the 60Hz of the 13".

So that's a hell of a lot more than just 1" of screen.

Furthermore, you are comparing the base model of the MacBook Pro 14" to the base model 13", which aren't comparable. The 14" base model comes with 16Gb of RAM and a 512Gb SSD. If you compare the equivalently spec'd 13" model with the 16Gb RAM and 512Gb SSD then you are looking at $1,699.

So for equally spec'd machines, it is $1,699 for the 13" and $1,999 for the 14". This means the price difference is a mere $300.

But even that isn't comparable. Because the $14" comes with the M1 Pro chip compared to the M1. I won't rehash that, but its a significant upgrade in CPU.

So you aren't paying $800 for 1" of extra screen. You are only paying $300 for the difference which offers a major screen upgrade, in addition to port upgrades, keyboard upgrades, and a major CPU upgrade.

One minor note in case others aren't aware - the M1 to M1 Pro is surely a big improvement, but the base 14" does not have the same M1 Pro as the base 16" - it has a lower-binned version of the M1 Pro that only has 8 cores instead of 10, and has a 14 core GPU instead of 16. The arrangement of the cores and the GPU core count is still an upgrade over the 13" MBP with M1, but it's not the full M1 Pro with 10 cores and 16 GPU cores.

Apple should hire you to upsell folks who are considering the 13" -- you just converted me, too.

If you are considering the 13", also take a good look at the air. The difference is $300 and you basically only lose an hour of battery life and the touch bar.

https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/?modelList=MacBook-Pro-14,...

*win a lack of touchbar :)

You could've just said that the 14" doesn't have the touch bar :D

Yep. I've been waiting for this announcement, and the touchbar was 100% the deciding factor for me being a continued customer. No matter what else they did, if they had insisted upon plaguing me with another touchbar, my next computer would not have been a mac. Now I can finally get an M1 system with a reasonable amount of RAM, yay.

Probably need a few more days to let all the information sink in. But generally speaking Apple tends to simplify their product lineup over time. So I would not be surprised if there will be a 14" M1 Pro with 8GB Memory and 256GB Storage starting at $1499 in the future once they amortised some of the cost with higher price model. As mentioned in the post below, if you know BOM cost and list out things on the new 14/16" MBP the price is actually quite competitive.

The more interesting question is what happen to the sub $1299 price category. MacBook Air or MacBook? And how would it be designed?

Jobs' Apple tended to simplify the product lineup. Cook's Apple tends to rationalise product lines based on manufacturing lines, which is why you still see vestiges of older SKUs stick around—because the tooling cost for the motherboards, chassis, etc has already been amortised and it's cheap to keep it going.

> really prefer the new 14" macbook pro to the much cheaper 13" (that extra "inch" is $800!)

It's a $300 difference from the 13" with equivalent SSD & memory specs (nevermind you different CPU and screen size).