Apple to Launch 'Low-Cost' MacBook Series Next Year to Rival Chromebooks

[ipaqrat]

Yes, they can. The advantage that Chromebooks have over Apple for schools that are using Google Classroom, is that Google owns the OS, Google owns the browser, Google owns the search engine, Google owns the application. Apple stops at the OS.

It is easy to sell school district administrators on an environment where everything except the maker of the actual device is all within one infrastructure. A fancy Pages (or Powerpoint) presentation with lots of shiny baubles and beads will sway most school district administrators. Most of which are technologically challenged.

Case in point with the current district in which I reside. All the school board members were given/assigned/forced with new laptop computers to use during board meetings. One year later only one person is using the laptop, the others are back to shuffling paper.

Errr... nah... Apple does not stop at the OS. Apple owns ALL the same components. Apple devices can be locked to customized "skins" of the App Store, and disallow ordinary software installation entirely. In particularly tight-fisted scenarios, any device can be locked to Apple's productivity, creativity and coding apps (which are not all, admittedly, best in class, or even good). Apple devices can be locked to iCloud for storage, mail and messaging. Extended management tools also enable admins to configure secure enclaves, firewalls, VPNs, ipsec tunneling and peripheral connections.

All the parts are in place for Apple to replicate a truly tight silo, with very little left out, or left to chance. Question is why now? Apple's previous attempts at this were case studies in fail.

 

[DanneP]

Is it realistic to make a MacBook cheaper than the $999 ($799) Air M1 13"?

Well, a MacBook with A15, 6GB RAM, 128 GB SSD, and a 30 Wh battery would save Apple a few bucks and still be a pretty decent Internet browsing/Word/Youtubing machine.

I'd love it. But it has to have >=13" retina, aluminium body, one external monitor, and a trackpad as good as the Air M1.

 

[Haiku_Oezu]

It’s interesting but I don’t buy it
Especially if DigiTimes is reporting it

 

[El Szomorito]

My daughter has a Chromebook because she works at the local school and they gave her one. I looked up the Geekbench 6 score and it was a third of her iPhone 8 and about 1/20th of her MacBook Air. I think that Apple would need to cut the number of cores in half or more to not blow Chromebooks (used in schools) out of the water.

More like take away all the performance cores. Wonder what the battery life would be

 

[Black0ut21]

My kid has a Chrome book for school it's the ugliest thing I've seen. The screen is all blurry Hevy. They need something if they want the EDU sector

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Compared to other devices on the market, the SE models are not exactly low cost. If we do see a MacBook SE, I don't think that it will be any less than $799. I base that off the price of the M1 powered iPad Air and Magic Keyboard starting at $749 with 256 gigs of storage.

You still forget: iPad Air has a touchscreen, Macbook does not. Completely different market of who buys iPads. For the things that schools would want to do, there's lots of things macOS does that iPadOS doesn't.

 

[Analog Kid]

I got excited by the title and then got to this part: "According to DigiTimes' industry sources"...

 

[Lioness~]

How about 12-inch Macbook in original chassis with M1 CPU? That could be lowcost.

Brings back memories of the 11 inch MacBook Air - I loved that little guy. An M1 with 8/256 and retina would be very nice.

YES ♥️

Please give us a M3 MacBook 12"
Exactly, perfectly and the portable Mac I want now.
I really hope Apple have heard my wet Mac-dreams.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

All the parts are in place for Apple to replicate a truly tight silo, with very little left out, or left to chance. Question is why now? Apple's previous attempts at this were case studies in fail.

The market is shifting. With the recession and inflation people are not buying new computers like they were before. PC sales have shrunk a lot across the entire market. People are getting thrifty and looking for lower cost alternatives so doing a Macbook SE made out of plastic would be the prime opportunity to attract new customers who may be looking for new computers in these uncertain times, which in turn means new people in the Apple ecosystem.

Also Apple's done low cost successful stuff. The iPhone SE and Apple Watch SE are great examples. Course we can't forget the Mac Mini

 

[Analog Kid]

Seriously guys, make it out of plastic.

And don't apologize...

 

[El Szomorito]

$

599 is still double the average Chromebook price.

It'll work if it will last double the average Chromebook.

 

[raythompsontn]

Apple owns ALL the same components

Locking to the certain apps in the App Store or using Apple productivity apps is just part of the equation. Google classroom goes well beyond just the apps. The ability to post assignments, complete assignments, watch multiple students on classroom while doing assignments, timed assignments, etc. Google classroom is fairly expansive in what it offers teachers.

Apple has no search engine, Google does.

If Apple has anything comparable, I have not heard of such an environment.

At one point in time Apple was basically giving computers to schools and classrooms. Somewhere that stopped. Google went into the schools and classrooms with full force. Apple did nothing. Google provided a complete environment, including cheap laptops, Apple did not.

Could that change with a cheap Mac laptop and an end-to-end solution for assignments, tests, monitoring and security? Apple has the resources but may be late to the game.

 

[pshufd]

Locking to the certain apps in the App Store or using Apple productivity apps is just part of the equation. Google classroom goes well beyond just the apps. The ability to post assignments, complete assignments, watch multiple students on classroom while doing assignments, timed assignments, etc. Google classroom is fairly expansive in what it offers teachers.

Apple has no search engine, Google does.

If Apple has anything comparable, I have not heard of such an environment.

At one point in time Apple was basically giving computers to schools and classrooms. Somewhere that stopped. Google went into the schools and classrooms with full force. Apple did nothing. Google provided a complete environment, including cheap laptops, Apple did not.

Could that change with a cheap Mac laptop and an end-to-end solution for assignments, tests, monitoring and security? Apple has the resources but may be late to the game.

 

[Mousse]

I'm seriously interested in it if it'll run a lean version of OSX. Heck, I don't even mind if it's an older (Big Cats) version of OSX. Just so long as it's not locked down tighter than Uncle Scrooge's purse strings. Not interested if it's locked down like a chromebook or iPhones/iPads, my interest will go to zero faster than Mexican water through a first time tourist.

A chromebook is only interesting because you can install Linux on it.

 

[dante_mr]

Locking to the certain apps in the App Store or using Apple productivity apps is just part of the equation. Google classroom goes well beyond just the apps. The ability to post assignments, complete assignments, watch multiple students on classroom while doing assignments, timed assignments, etc. Google classroom is fairly expansive in what it offers teachers.

Apple has no search engine, Google does.

If Apple has anything comparable, I have not heard of such an environment.

At one point in time Apple was basically giving computers to schools and classrooms. Somewhere that stopped. Google went into the schools and classrooms with full force. Apple did nothing. Google provided a complete environment, including cheap laptops, Apple did not.

Could that change with a cheap Mac laptop and an end-to-end solution for assignments, tests, monitoring and security? Apple has the resources but may be late to the game.

Couldn’t schools just use Google Classroom and the Google suite on these rumored low cost MacBooks?

If anything, a Mac might be a better investment for schools because the device can “grow” with the student. If it lasts anywhere like current Macs do.

Students in say, middle school or even grade school could use Google’s suite or similar platforms and then move on to more traditional computing and advanced CS with macOS. A M1 Air, for example, is more than enough for AP CS.

 

[dante_mr]

You want kids to work with the web development, then Chromebooks are superior to any Macs.

How so? I only just started getting into web development, and the boot camp I’m using (The Odin Project) actually strongly recommends using macOS or Linux over Windows and even Chromebooks (unless it supports Linux).

And so far learning web dev has been great on Mac.

Edit: also, it seems that any Unix-based OS (like Mac) is strongly recommended for web development because they work natively with a lot of web dev tools (I’m a beginner so if any web developers can confirm that would be great).

 

[Bodhitree]

It’s pretty unlikely that Apple would do this… it would involve a lot of compromises, new and different software to make something competitive.

 

[GLS]

Couldn’t schools just use Google Classroom and the Google suite on these rumored low cost MacBooks?

Yes, they can. There's no OS limitations on where Google Classroom works, or whatnot. Where Apple lost the classrom (and it's happening to Microsoft as well) is the manageability that Google offers for fleets of Chromebooks. It's trivial to setup, configure, well...everything. Nothing Apple offers even comes close to managing 1000 ipads, for example...not to say 1000 Macbooks. You need third-party solutions that cost yearly on top of the device purchase.

With Google, it's $33 one time for a device and you have full management over it from then on.

Now, yeah, there's an argument to be made over build quality of a $200 laptop over any Macbook, and then you have the built in obsolence (Chromebooks have a built in expiration date, look it up) you have to deal with. Still, a school can spend $200 on a device + $33 one time and still come out miles ahead vs a Mac that is not easy to repair (many schools have in house Chromebook repairs, and the various OEMS provide tools, training and parts) and you have to pay a yearly fee to Meraki, Jamf, etc to manage the device.

There's not one reason that Google has taken over K-12, but several. And Apple missed the boat long ago, even if they produced cheap hardware.

 

[t0rqx]

They had one which was the 12". Which sucks. Time to do something with iPadOS and iPad. Feels like Apple is stepping into the "crap devices territory (again)".

 

[raythompsontn]

Couldn’t schools just use Google Classroom and the Google suite on these rumored low cost MacBooks?

Probably as most of the stuff is browser based. Even the documents, spreadsheets, presentations I have seen kids create have been done using browser based applications, not the Google installable applications. I don't even know if the installable apps are installed on the Chromebooks.

Since everything is stored on Google servers, the device could probably get by with 2 gig of memory and 128 gig of location storage, or lower. The display does not need to be top of the line as the Chromebooks I have seen have really lousy displays in terms of brightness and clarity. The $100 tablets sold on HSN have better displays.

 

[bkendig]

The reason that Chromebooks are popular is that they're dirt cheap. $150-$300 for a basic model with 4-8 GB memory and 64-128 GB storage. Give it a laptop-class CPU, a touch screen, and the ability to flip the keyboard behind it to make it usable as a tablet, and that puts it into the $500-$600 range.

No way is Apple ever going to release a laptop for $600 or less.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

I really doubt Apple will be releasing a low-cost Mac. MacBook Air + Mac Mini is already cheap enough. However, a more of a compact size is needed.

 

[jouster]

Schools are beginning to regret their investments in Chromebooks. They usually come from the manufacturer with two years of support left and the school has to pony up licensing money and prepare to buy new Chromebooks 2 years later. Apple and Microsoft should team up to eradicate this plague on education. Affordable MacBook with free or low cost access to Microsoft 365.

They are also less sustainable and more likely to create e-waste.

 

[Mega ST]

Great move by apple and the right thing to do. Apple needs the mass market as well not only the luxury end. Last year's silicon is perfectly fine for education purposes while the Apple OS is perfect for centralised maintenance. It sounds like this might be a great carry on book for students and everybody as well? I hopefully might have some M3 MBP by then.

 

[MichaelDroste]

If they can do $499 list it would be great!!!