Apple is expected to refresh the MacBook Pro line this fall, and the rumor mill has already done its job.
New M-series chips, a brighter display, maybe a thinner body.
What the leaks keep glossing over is the number at the bottom of the page, because that is where this story actually lives for most American households.
The entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro already starts north of $1,500.
A meaningful refresh almost never means a meaningful price cut.
It means last year's model slides down a tier and this year's climbs into the space it vacated.
We have watched this movie with phones, tablets, and watches, and we keep buying tickets.
Here is the part that should unsettle you.
A laptop is now treated as disposable in under four years by the companies selling them, while the same machines are priced like furniture.
The average buyer finances one on a carrier plan or a store card and stops thinking about the total.
Perfectly functional machines get traded in for marginal speed gains, then shipped, refurbished, or shredded.
Apple will mention recycled aluminum in the keynote, and it will sound like virtue.
It is a rounding error against the volume of devices this cycle encourages people to abandon.
Students, freelancers, and small-business owners who actually need the horsepower are the ones staring at a configurator where every useful upgrade adds another two hundred dollars.
The real machine costs four figures, and everyone in the room knows it.
Socially, we have decided that owning older hardware marks you as behind.
The refresh cycle is not just a product launch.
It is a status engine, and Apple is very good at keeping it idling.
None of this means the new MacBook Pro will be bad.
It will probably be excellent, which is precisely the problem.
The question is whether we can keep treating a four-year-old computer as broken when it still does everything most of us actually do.
My take: buy the previous generation, buy it refurbished, and let the keynote play to an empty room in your house.
Final Thoughts
The best way to protest a cycle designed to empty your wallet is to simply stay out of it.