Yes, but that is partially because this price point Mac hasn't existed before.
Maybe it is too late, but Apple should try.
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Apple's Low-Cost MacBook: Everything We Know So Far
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Maybe it is too late, but Apple should try.
I’m. It not talking about video editing or Photoshop - I mean simply load time for apps, webpages, etc. My MBP is snappy and still feels pretty quick for a 5 year old machine. The MBA is like molasses, by comparison.
No benchmark test can replace my personal experience doing something on my MBP and then having my fiancé ask me to look at something on her MBA and it feeling like I got out of a Ferrari and into a Ford.
I was considering getting the M4 MBA, until she got one - and now there is no way that is happening.
What is “doing something”? Like what?
There’s a reason why benchmarks and measurement tools exist. It’s so we don’t have to trust subjective claims.
If Apple’s intention was to raise the price of Air, they would not have dropped it to $999 this year.
You can’t directly compare iPhone to Mac. One product line consistently ends up with global top shipments every year. The other lags behind Lenovo, Dell, HP.
Typing a Word document. Surfing the internet. Entering data in Excel. Just normal person computer tasks.
Benchmarks can be gamed. Manufacturers can optimize for the benchmarks to achieve artificially high scores when in real-life use cases, the performance isn’t there.
Also, I think my point missed its mark … I don’t believe that the M4 chip is worse than the M1 … I am saying a 5 year old MBP is better than a brand new MBA. So if Apple is going to double down on cheap machines, a brand new, cheaper then a MBA, machine is going to be even worse than that - and if the MBA already sucks, this new hypothetical, cheaper, machine is going to suck even more
Keep the cellular connectivity? No Macs other than prototypes have ever had cellular.
It all sounds nice in theory, but Apple will make it considerably worse in every way possible compared to a MacBook Air to avoid cannibalising MacBook Air sales. So a polycarbonate chassis, slow storage, low res screen, webcam from 2018 etc is my bet. I'm sure Apple has a parts bin of stuff left over from the last decade that they will finally find a use for.
"The plan is the plan until it isn't the plan"
We live in too interesting times to be sure that last years actions say much about next years. :/
Exactly true, and I really hope Apple ships this laptop that is worse in every way... for a reasonable price
No bad products, just bad prices?
Apple doesn't have the best track record on "good prices", but one can still hope.
Better Apple sales are cannibalized by other Apple products.
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I chalk it up to OS bloat.🫤 Hopefully, because the low cost machine will have far less resources, it will come with a trimmed down version of Mac OS. I'm going to pass on it if it comes with the bloated regular version of MacOS or the crippled iPadOS.
Hmmm... I would have figured someone declaring the superiority of an M1 MacBook Pro should know at least that.
Anyhow, AV1 is becoming the new standard for high resolution streaming video, used by Netflix and YouTube and a bunch of other companies, and direct support for AV1 encoding has been added in macOS 26. AV1 is somewhere between 15% and 45% more efficient than Apple's current standard of h.265 HEVC. Currently no Macs support hardware AV1 encoding, but both M3 and M4 support hardware AV1 decoding. M1 and M2 do not. Some people believe hardware AV1 encoding might come with A19/M5 or A20/M6.
Everything you just said is lightyears outside of my pay grade 😂Hmmm... I would have figured someone declaring the superiority of an M1 MacBook Pro should know at least that.
Anyhow, AV1 is becoming the new standard for high resolution streaming video, used by Netflix and YouTube and a bunch of other companies, and direct support for AV1 encoding has been added in macOS 26. AV1 is somewhere between 15% and 45% more efficient than Apple's current standard of h.265 HEVC. Currently no Macs support hardware AV1 encoding, but both M3 and M4 support hardware AV1 decoding. M1 and M2 do not. Some people believe hardware AV1 encoding might come with A19/M5 or A20/M6.
Do you think they would remove Rosetta support for such a budget machine? I would potentially finally upgrade from my Intel mac, but half my apps are still Intel-only and I don't want my whole computer to require hours of updates on day one when I could make those same updates gradually while relying on Rosetta for the apps I have that are still Intel-only compatible.
Regardless of what machine you buy, macOS
*See @DavidSchaub's post and my subsequent post below.
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Apple said that Rosetta 2 will continue in 27 for a fixed set of lower level features to continue to support games, but what that looks like seems unclear
I've since edited my post above, since I was mistaken about macOS 27's Rosetta 2 support. Apparently, macOS 27 will also include full Rosetta 2. macOS 28 will include just base level support which for most people won't be helpful for most of their apps, except as you said for some games. Specifically it's for some old games that have never been updated for Apple Silicon. Quite frankly, I'm surprised they are doing even this.