Apple Planning to Launch Low-Cost MacBook Powered By iPhone Chip

[oldmacs]

Low cost or 'Lower Cost'?

I think Apple has missed the boat on education - Apple doesn't offer what the Google Ecosystem does in terms of cross compatibility. 10 years of software support for Chromebooks is hard to pass up also given Apple's fairly pathetic long term software support.

 

[SoldOnApple]

This would blur the lines even further for what it takes to be a Mac vs an iOS device.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I used one for years, and it was not as underpowered for daily tasks as the blogosphere would have you believe. The keyboard was the real stinker.

Totally agree - loved my 12"

I don't know how I'd fare with it now, having another 10 years of aging under my belt, but I'd love for Apple to make one again.

It always seemed like a product designed with Apple Silicon in mind (which wasn't an option at the time).

 

[Spike1999]

Surely the Air is meant to fill this void?

 

[Spike1999]

It would need to be £500 maximum otherwise this is a flop.

 

[JSRinUK]

If a product like this happens, a big reason for it existing will be to raise the prices of everything else in the lineup.

It will be used as a new higher entry anchor point, just like what happened with the iPhone 16e

I think this is very likely.

People have often queried the merits of having the base model MacBook Pro without a “pro” chip in it. My guess would be that the current MacBook Air will be positioned where the non-Pro MacBook Pro currently resides and the new “more affordable” option will take the place of the current £1000 MacBook Air.

I doubt we’ll ever see this "Low-Cost MacBook”.

 

[groove-agent]

Yay, return of the 12" macboo-

I'm out.

No compiling my code on an iPad, so I'll end up getting neither of these.

I know, I get sick of swapping out multiple Mac devices to do my daily driving. If I could magically make an Apple device for myself, it would be an iPad Pro that ran MacOS (and pro applications such as Xcode). While I'm dreaming, I'd like to magically create an iPhone with Samsung-Dex like capabilities where you could dock it and use it like an everyday computer. A computer that fits in your pocket? That would be pretty cool.

The whole "we don't want to put MacOS on an iPad because it will ruin iPad" is a cop out, and a lack of innovation in UI/UX design. Yes, it would be difficult, but not impossible. For example, when an app window is on an iPad screen, it uses the iPad UI. When it's dragged to an external monitor, the app window adopts the MacOS UI. App designers would have to ideally program some "responsiveness" to minimize the UI elements on iPad screen but by default, just make it exist on iPad even if the UI isn't perfect. It's better than nothing, and let the user decide if they want to use it on iPad.

Let's face it. Apple doesn't want to do it because they'd rather you buy as many devices as possible. Cha-ching.

 

[NewOldStock]

Better be good or it will get bad reviews of the bottom feeders of laptops and there will go Apples reputation.
The PC side bottom feeder laptops is ruining people expectations of underpowered, underwhelming computer power.
When people see how bad these low end run they will never buy from the brand again.
People still see bottom priced computers and think wow until they use it.
My 2Cts. Gamble.

 

[2ilent8cho]

Guessing this is to uniform their lineup more? On iPad you have iPad -> iPad Air -> iPad Pro , so for portable Mac go MacBook -> MacBook Air -> MacBook Pro.

Just please let it be the little MacBook again, I loved that little machine, just the processor that let it down.

 

[Baslea]

Please don't forget to give the device 8GB Ram because "eIgHT gB oF rAm Is MoRe ThAn EnOuGh": https://www.xda-developers.com/apple-insist-8gb-ram-macs-enough/.

 

[Rogifan]

The iPad lineup has three tiers which allows the pro and air to become more expensive.

So this will just be a way for them to increase the price of existing laptops.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I think this is very likely.

People have often queried the merits of having the base model MacBook Pro without a “pro” chip in it. My guess would be that the current MacBook Air will be positioned where the non-Pro MacBook Pro currently resides and the new “more affordable” option will take the place of the current £1000 MacBook Air.

I doubt we’ll ever see this "Low-Cost MacBook”.

Yep ... it's moving the deck chairs around a bit to ultimately mask an overall price hike.

This is sort of where Apple is "at" nowadays.

The "growth" is largely through lemon squeezing of the existing market.

 

[Rogifan]

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.)

Yes, I am curious who this is for. Wouldn’t an iPad cover what a ‘cheap’ Mac laptop could do?

 

[Rogifan]

I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes the new MacBook a lot of people have been waiting to buy.

I thought the MacBook Air was the Mac for the masses. That brand has such caché, pushing it up market and bringing in something below it seems strange.

 

[Audit13]

I never imagined Apple bringing the words low-cost and Mac together.

I always pictured Apple as a company that wasn't interested in fighting for the lower-end of the portable device market.

 

[Neil J. Squillante]

This seems more a way of driving the production costs of the iPad Air down. I don’t really expect a third, budget laptop line.

Why not? Apple has 4 desktop product lines versus only 2 laptop lines even though it sells more laptops than desktops. This would be better positioned for K-12 as others have noted versus the MacBook, which was more of a niche luxury product.

 

[ScooterComputer]

WHY?
This just goes to show the chaos from ignorance coming from this Apple Exec team. They're chasing profits (nearing 50% margins), but obviously don't have a grasp of WHY they're not making more money from growing marketshare EVEN WHEN the PC market is in shambles. Just unbelievable. And not a good look. "Floundering."

The answer isn't an 'A' chip; the M2 is sitting there, use IT. Or do a TINY bit of rework and rebadge the A18 Pro as an M4se, to stay on a more recent silicon process. But to right out of the gate tell the customer you're handing them a hobbled Mac is stupid.

Further more, this shows how stupid the "Air" nomenclature has become. What should happen is for Apple to bring back the 12" MacBook chassis, use the newest keyboard and screen tech, throw modern MagSafe on it, employ a left and right Type C port with Thunderbolt but NO AUDIO HEADPHONE JACK, and relabel -it- the "Air". One size: 12inch. If you need bigger, you aren't looking at "air", buy a Pro. Then, take the current 'Air' lineup and make it the "MacBook" again. Like it always should have been. Ship a $799 16/256 M4se version ($699 Edu) (or, better yet, go fro the throat and drop it to $649), and then make the $999 version a 16/512 M5. The base MacBook should NOT 'ladder up' into the Pro pricing tiers like it does, it just muddies the water. There needs to be an interstitial unit of sufficient value and demand if they want to keep a proper 3-product mix.

The problem Apple has selling against the PC market is that people simply ARE NOT SWALLOWING the 256 -> 512 price gulf, the $200 "Apple Tax" for $4 worth of NAND. I see it MULTIPLE TIMES A MONTH where folks walk away from the Mac due to the ridiculous pricing. And they're usually fine… right up until they ask "But you can upgrade that later, right?" "No." Then it is over. They have ancient Windows or older MacBooks that have 256 OR MUCH MORE storage, and they're not going backwards… while at the same time looking at garbage PC laptops that are half the price with 1TB of storage. And ya know what? They're not wrong! Apple is. They don't know that the NAND is only $4, but they aren't stupid… they can see other PCs with 4x more storage for 1/2 the price. That's elementary school math, Tim Apple. Apple has tried—and failed—to position the MacBook 'Air' and 'Pro' as three products across a spectrum… but the Air doesn't go cheap enough, while not having sufficient screen specs at its higher pricing, and the Pro at the low end is otherwise indistinguishable from the Air performance-wise. Dumb dumb dumb.

 

[Janichsan]

More plans to further complicate the model lines and to muddy the product distinctions? Sure, why not?

 

[macbookj0e]

I wonder if this’ll be the return of the standard MacBook? Could be popular if it’s priced right…

 

[antonrg]

Give it an update body of that beautiful 12" MacBook and you've got a customer. My MacBook is still in working condition and I LOVED using it as my portable device whenever I travelled and didn't need to do heavy video/design work on.

 

[blipmusic]

<...>
Let's face it. Apple doesn't want to do it because they'd rather you buy as many devices as possible. Cha-ching.

Absolutely. Money is the be all end all here. This is the single reason we don't have a 12" Macbook or an iPad with the same capabilities as macOS or [insert other technically feasible dream device]. If Apple saw the possibility of more profit in any of those devices over what they already provide, they'd solve any challenges (UI etc).

Though, I think their multi-device ecosystem strategy is also a risk. If I decide to get an Android phone or run Linux on a non-Apple laptop next time, there's also less incentive to ensure my remaining devices are Apple-made. So the longer Apple maintains their stance of device-separation-by-capabilities, the more I may look elsewhere for my next device and if I do, instead of having multiple Apple devices I may have none.

 

[groove-agent]

The current A16 iPad does support playing video on external displays at full 16:9 display size. So in terms of bandwidth and different resolutions it does work. However, non-mirrored UI on a second display (like with Stage Manage) might conceivably not be an option due to limited RAM, or just for product differentiation.

This fits with a WWDC25 rumour that the iPhone was getting proper external display support. Perhaps someone saw that the A series chip (assumed in an iPhone) was getting proper display support and assumed it was for the iPhone, but really it was for this new Mac.

 

[Neil J. Squillante]

Y’all think this is just going to be an A-series chip in a MBA body but it won’t. It will prob have a non-haptic trackpad, no touch id, super low res panel, and one port. It will basically be an iPad screen attached to a Magic Keyboard variant.

Everyone will complain even though it’s not for the average consumer to the point I hope Apple walls these behind purchasing accounts associated with education or similar.

There’s precedent for this — Apple sold the the 17-inch CRT eMac solely to the education sector.

 

[turbineseaplane]

So the longer Apple maintains their stance of device-separation-by-capabilities, the more I may look elsewhere for my next device and if I do, instead of having multiple Apple devices I may have none.

In the same way, Apple are also putting at risk me being a customer by not offering any iPhones that are roughly iPhone Mini sized any longer.

 

[CptnJustc]

I thought this new product will also be underpowered.

"Underpowered" now is materially different from underpowered then. Even with a phone chip, this would likely comfortably handle a far wider range of tasks than those things did.