[snowwrestler]

It's a long play because engineering those cases (including thermal) is very difficult. So Apple typically uses the same case through several revisions of the internals, to defray the costs.

What this means is that the very first model released with a new case is usually underpowered, because the chips are not quite as powerful and power efficient as the (upcoming) chips the case was optimized for.

For this and other reasons I tend to not buy the first version of a new Apple product.