Over the past few days, I kept refreshing Apple’s Newsroom page at around 9 a.m. Eastern Time to see whether Apple announced the new MacBook Pros with the M5 Pro and M5 Max, based on speculation that we made. Of course, that did not happen. However, yesterday afternoon, I was looking around at other Macs that Apple offers, and I noticed something different this time. Apple changed its design layout when you order a Mac from its online store. I even made a post on it on X, and other people have mentioned this on Reddit as well. I basically checked the order page for any of the Macs every day this week, and I’m pretty sure that Apple made this design change when it launched its Apple Creator Studio bundle on Wednesday. Still, I think it’s deserving to give special kudos to everyone who discovered this design revamp before me.
Going back to this design layout, as you can imagine, it is now in line with the ordering process for other Apple product categories, such as the iPhone and iPad, giving a more consistent feel across Apple’s online store. Similar to how it works when ordering an iPhone or iPad from Apple, the most general basis when ordering a Mac going forward is these steps in order (it may vary between MacBooks, iMacs, and Mac desktops):
- Selecting a model
- Selecting a color
- Selecting a display size
- Selecting a chip
- Configuring the unified memory
- Configuring the capacity (SSD storage)
- Option to preinstall pro apps
- Offer to trade in
- Payment options (pay in full or finance)
- AppleCare Coverage
Although this new layout seems to be more straightforward for configuring any Mac, I could see how some people just prefer the older ordering process, as shown below.
Since the new layout simply eliminates the standard configurations that everyone is accustomed to, it just makes configuring a new Mac a bit more tedious, especially when people know exactly what memory/storage they would need and don’t care about custom configuration. But, at least Apple continues to distribute its preconfigured models of Macs to other authorized resellers such as Best Buy and Amazon, and chances are you could get them at a solid discount, so that’s still an option for those who just want to shop for a preconfigured Mac and don’t care about the extra bells and whistles they could configure when ordering directly from Apple. Still, Apple’s online store would still be the only (and possibly most convenient) place to configure your Mac beyond the pre-configured options. Examples would be to configure the iMac with a Magic Trackpad in place of the Magic Mouse or to configure the Mac mini or Mac Studio with the maximum amount of unified memory it can support, presumably to run several ML models; you just wouldn’t find those specific configurations elsewhere.
This new ordering process for the Mac may be a strong indicator that Apple is preparing to launch the new MacBook Pros with the M5 Pro and M5 Max really soon, but only time will tell. What do you think about the Mac’s new ordering process? Sound off in the comments below.
