$599 MacBook With iPhone Chip Expected to Enter Production This Year

[JPack]

Unusual the M4 MBA was $799 so quickly. Apple going after market share? Or cost strapped customers forced them to price lower to move product.


A new $599 MBA with iphone chip is a Walmart MBA replacement. The SE of MBAs.

It's growing too slowly for Apple's liking. M1 helped increase market share, but things stabilized since then. It's still stuck at a global 10%.

Chromebook students will be growing up using the Google ecosystem. As they become adults and decision makers, especially in a company, this can negatively affect Apple's growth. This is particularly true if Apple's model of local AI doesn't pan out.

 

[Biro]

If one plans to have only one MacBook, then the base 13-inch MBA is the best value. But I have a 14-inch MBP with an M4 Pro chip, 24GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. It’s my main laptop. But if the new low-price MacBook offers at least 12GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, I’ll pick one up as my main traveling machine.

 

[leonkoum]

I want A18/A18PRO with 15’ display for my needs

 

[DavidSchaub]

So now we have iPads with M4 chips and now Macbooks with A18 chips? Make it make sense!

The iPads have almost always had M* class chips in them. They just used to be called A*X and A*Z SoC

 

[svish]

Think it will start at $699. Education pricing should make it around $50 to $100 less. The colors hopefully will be bright like the iMac. It will probably have only 1 USB C port. MagSafe should also be present. Expecting it to launch in April of next year.

 

[Admiral]

I have been wedded to Thunderbolt since Apple released in 2011. (Wow, time flies.) The 12" MacBook became my favorite travel laptop nevertheless. USB has made enormous strides and now incorporates more or less all of Thunderbolt functionality, so I guess I could learn to compromise again. I will say, though, that releasing deliberately borked products and withholding what should be base functionality to prompt upsell — Thunderbolt 4 on the M4 Mac mini? — is a Tim Apple move. Steve Apple would never have done this.

 

[Bbogart]

I see this VERY popular in education, especially for students, if it will support MacOS.

More options and entry points for consumers = a good choice!

Apple has flaw strategy, asking $200 for Storage upgrade will push people to subscribe to GoogleDrive or OneDrive

 

[Bbogart]

This is one product that I think Apple can actually build unlike the foldable phone.

Now if only they would provide a way to turn off temporal dithering. I'm fine with millions of colors. I don't need billions of colors.

I travel a lot. There is a large population use folding android phone. Especially in Asia. So I think there is a huge market for folding iPhone.

 

[DavidSchaub]

I have been wedded to Thunderbolt since Apple released in 2011. (Wow, time flies.) The 12" MacBook became my favorite travel laptop nevertheless. USB has made enormous strides and now incorporates more or less all of Thunderbolt functionality, so I guess I could learn to compromise again. I will say, though, that releasing deliberately borked products and withholding what should be base functionality to prompt upsell — Thunderbolt 4 on the M4 Mac mini? — is a Tim Apple move. Steve Apple would never have done this.

It's not "borked", it's just right featured for the price.

No bad products, just bad prices (well, sometimes they're just bad)

 

[ghanwani]

I travel a lot. There is a large population use folding android phone. Especially in Asia. So I think there is a huge market for folding iPhone.

It's not about the market. It's about the ability to deliver something that works at a price that makes sense for Apple AND the market. Right now it's a niche category and I already know several people on Samsung that bought 1 or even 2 generations of the Z Flip and then went back to a regular phone. Basically they found it to be a gimmick that lacks durability. That means the economy of scale is not there. In its present form, Apple is incapable of making a disruptive design now that can change that. In the past, when they were innovative, they made smartphones (which already existed as a niche item) go mainstream when they came up with the original iPhone.

Take existing tech and making it cheaper like this rumored MacBook? That is precisely where present-day Apple excels.