Investing in new gear can be a tricky proposition; buy at the wrong time, and you could miss out on innovative features, better performance, price drops, and more. –Wired (The WIRED Guide to Upgrading Gadgets)
Not to mention heartbreaking as well.
An incredibly useful resource. An article to point family, friends and acquaintances to when they ask about this topic.
In regards to the upcoming retina(?) MacBook Air 12" and redesigned MacBook Pro 15"1... When will the two products launch?
It's hard to tell. I was under the impression that launching the rMBA late 2014 and the redesigned MBP 15" mid 2015 made the most sense (after all, the new paradigm is for the MBP to follow on from the design and hardware innovations from the MBA line of Mac portables).
The delay of Broadwell (and the subsequent delay of Skylake) complicated things and potentially pushed the rMBA to a 2015 release (which led to an unsatisfactory 2014 rMBP2 refresh, with no change in the graphics card) and the MBP to a late 2015/early 2016 release (thus resulting in yet another 'unsatisfactory' minor refresh for the rMBP in its current hardware).
The heart wants a early/mid 2015 MBP redesign release (however, that could potentially put early adopters at a disadvantage, if the hardware with the first version is inadequate, leading to the iPad 3rd–4th generation problem.) but the mind says that late 2015/early 2016 (lockstep with the Skylake release) is more likely.
The special relationship that Intel and Apple have cultivated (with the threat of Apple shifting OS X over to its ARM-based processors in the backdrop) could potentially lead to (There's been rumblings about how the desktop versions of Skylake has been delayed in favour of the mobile versions) an early laptop-release (or even an Apple-only release, to repair the gulf in the relationship between Intel and Apple).
Who knows.
1. 3 years after the Retina MacBook Pro has been released... It feels unnecessary to append 'retina' to the MacBook Pro name.↩
2. Alternatively, I have to use the 'rMBP' name for now, as the cMBPs are still currently sold (they do have an astonishing amount of longevity: same design 7 years after the first release of the unibody MacBook Pros.) online.↩