dongwoo8363
macrumors newbie
iPad having M4, MacBooks having A series. đź’€
Apple Planning to Launch Low-Cost MacBook Powered By iPhone Chip
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AppliedMicro
macrumors 68040
30% commission as “Services” revenue.
And if Apple have been somewhat failing to position iPads with Magic Keyboards as laptop replacements for education.
It would “encourage” developers to distribute their apps to the App Store.
Dev work? This is certainly not targeted at serious developers (or designers).
It’ll be for the 80% of people that browse the web, watch some music, do some “Office” work, etc.
unregbaron
macrumors 6502
This could be great, a step up from an iPad and case but smaller than MBA.
OS X Dude
macrumors 65816
Not in the UK - iPad is dominant by a country mile.
AppliedMicro
macrumors 68040
Wondering about external display support:
👉 Does any A-series chip support external displays at full resolution?
Don’t think so.
👉 Does any A-series chip support external displays at full resolution?
Don’t think so.
Yah any low-cost Mac is going to sell like crazy. The trick is to make sure its actually cheap, like <$500
But thats what the iPad is for.
AppliedMicro
macrumors 68040
In the eyes of many, it didn’t do that very well.
With lack of a PDF reader, inferior keyboard, inferior mouse pointer, application menus, etc..
Granted, iPadOS 26 may improve that quite a bit - but iPad keyboards are still way inferior to MacBook built-in ones.
IndigoQuack
macrumors member
Y'know, I might well be tempted by something like this.
I'm still rocking a mid-2012 MBP 13" as my main Mac (running Sequoia 15.5 thanks to OCLP) so even an A-series powered Mac would absolutely blow the doors off my current setup.
I had been intending to (finally) upgrade to an M4 MBA at some point this year, but perhaps I'll hold off for a while.
Sign me up for a MacBook Helium! (Love that name suggestion from 'bbzzz' upthread)
I'm still rocking a mid-2012 MBP 13" as my main Mac (running Sequoia 15.5 thanks to OCLP) so even an A-series powered Mac would absolutely blow the doors off my current setup.
I had been intending to (finally) upgrade to an M4 MBA at some point this year, but perhaps I'll hold off for a while.
Sign me up for a MacBook Helium! (Love that name suggestion from 'bbzzz' upthread)
teleteven90
macrumors newbie
Never 499. Expect something like 899... maybe 799. But that's it. Apple will never be a "low cost" manufacturer
I wonder if they'll limit the ram to 2 Gb so no one doing real work on it could consider it...
What, you want Firefox with uBlock Origin on your iPad? You're not happy with daddy Apple's protection?
What, you want Firefox with uBlock Origin on your iPad? You're not happy with daddy Apple's protection?
AppliedMicro
macrumors 68040
You can get refurbished ones starting at $709 - or $759 for last year’s M3 Air - from Apple (in 16GB RAM configs).
This is exciting, I've been hoping for an A-series based "MacBook SE", it makes a lot of sense.
If they can hit a ~ÂŁ600 price point it'll open up the Mac to a lot more people.
The MacBook Air is insane value at ÂŁ799-899 (on sale at 3rd party retailers), but that's still more than a lot of people can manage or justify.
A model like this would save a lot of people from having to "make do" with a slow and clunky Chromebook/Windows machine.
If they can hit a ~ÂŁ600 price point it'll open up the Mac to a lot more people.
The MacBook Air is insane value at ÂŁ799-899 (on sale at 3rd party retailers), but that's still more than a lot of people can manage or justify.
A model like this would save a lot of people from having to "make do" with a slow and clunky Chromebook/Windows machine.
HouseLannister
macrumors 68000
iPhone 16e is $599 with 8GB RAM and 128 GB. Not getting any cheaper than this.
Sounds like this will be iPad internals in a MacBook body. So it should be super thin and light.
And like the basic regular iPad, it’ll be suitable for what the vast majority of people would use a Mac for - the web, light productivity, light photo and video editing & casual gaming. Which the A18 should be fine to do on a Mac.
It may only have 8GB and 128GB to start with too. 128GN is actually fine for casual users who use cloud storage imho.
Likely they’ll save even more costs by using the rumoured WiFi Bluetooth apple chipset. And maybe this Mac will have 5g. At a price. Talking of which…
The pricing will be interesting and it depends what Apple sees this machine as competing against.
If it’s just to get the people that think that $999 is too high and want to pay $100 less, then the pricing is simple.
But it may be there to occupy the premium end of the mid range of the pc laptop & premium Chromebook market. If so, $799 makes more sense. And you might want to get a bigger SSD. And maybe 5g - extra $$$ for Apple.
And I’m sure that there will be at least a $100 discount for education.
And like the basic regular iPad, it’ll be suitable for what the vast majority of people would use a Mac for - the web, light productivity, light photo and video editing & casual gaming. Which the A18 should be fine to do on a Mac.
It may only have 8GB and 128GB to start with too. 128GN is actually fine for casual users who use cloud storage imho.
Likely they’ll save even more costs by using the rumoured WiFi Bluetooth apple chipset. And maybe this Mac will have 5g. At a price. Talking of which…
The pricing will be interesting and it depends what Apple sees this machine as competing against.
If it’s just to get the people that think that $999 is too high and want to pay $100 less, then the pricing is simple.
But it may be there to occupy the premium end of the mid range of the pc laptop & premium Chromebook market. If so, $799 makes more sense. And you might want to get a bigger SSD. And maybe 5g - extra $$$ for Apple.
And I’m sure that there will be at least a $100 discount for education.
AppliedMicro
macrumors 68040
iPad mini is $499 at those specs.
“Vanilla” iPad starts at $349, albeit with 6GB of RAM.
And A17 will be 2½ years old when this MacBook releases.
That said, I believe it could be $499 - but only after discounts.
klasma
macrumors G3
The iPads have three tiers, so why not the MacBooks?
chucker23n1
macrumors G3
If true, I'm guessing this will be a $349 iPad-like equivalent. The iPad is to the iPad Air as this new MacBook is to the MacBook Air.
So we can expect things like:
So we can expect things like:
- A18 (or maybe even A16) instead of M4
- Worse screen coating
- No P3 wide color
- Fewer mics and speakers
- Worse camera
- No Apple Intelligence support
- No Touch ID
- One USB-C port (before you protest: that's perfectly fine for the iPad, too!)
DaniTheFox
macrumors 6502
Isn’t this precisely what the iPad with iPadOS is? (For that, the iPad must also be available in a 13-inch model, and it should come with an A18 chip and a special kind of keyboard.)
klasma
macrumors G3
The regular iPad isn’t lighter than the iPad Air, so why would this one be?