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New 12.9-Inch MacBook Could Launch This Year Starting at $599

Digitimes and Kuo are only speculating on the price. Only Apple knows. The supply chain can only guess based on the Bill of Materials.

That being said, with tariffs being applied and going by the Walmart pricing and spec sheet for the M1 Air, I'm guessing $799 for a 8 GB RAM, 256 GB storage base unit.
 
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CyberBob859 said:
Digitimes and Kuo are only speculating on the price. Only Apple knows. The supply chain can only guess based on the Bill of Materials.

That being said, with tariffs being applied and going by the Walmart pricing and spec sheet for the M1 Air, I'm guessing $799 for a 8 GB RAM, 256 GB storage base unit.
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it cannot be $799 it will not sell while you have M4 Air with 256 16 gb ram at $999
 
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Something not right about this rumour.

Children / teens have grown up in a touch-screen first world. I don't think students are the market for this (considering that price point will lack a touch screen), but I can't work out who is.... corporate environments? maybe the IT managers of today/tomorrow are Mac-first (as opposed to natural Microsoft users) and this is for them?
 
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I don't care if it's cheap - it is finally an ultra-portable device running macOS. This is a complete game-changer compared to the limited iPadOS, which does not support serious work. Basically the successor of the Macbook 12'' with a better processor.
 
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This could be good for travelling or commuting (if you already have a larger device at home or office but don't want to carry it around). There's definitely crossover with iPad but I've always found typing on an iPad a bit awkward (and the keyboard accessories add a fair bit of weight).
 
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Lwii2boo said:
I would love to be wrong but I do not believe one second that the company that charges desktop wheels and monitor stands for close to $1k and still continue to charge atrociously expansive upgrade on RAM / Storage on macbooks will canibalize its MBAs which sell pretty well with someing lower end at 599. 599 is just too competitive, Timmy wants a juicy margin. 799 maybe but 599 is copium
Once again I would love to be wrong but you don't become a trillion dollar company by canibalizing your product line.
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I suspect they will happily give away some margin if it helps them sell more services.
 
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I wonder if it will have a noticeably inferior screen. In the early days of Intel Mac notebooks, at the low end there were some real stinkers in terms of viewing angles etc.
 
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If I still had my M1 Mini-based desktop system I would have grabbed one of these as a complementary travel companion. It would have been perfect in that role.
 
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Innovati0n said:
Apple has yet to raise the price of a single product despite all the "rumors" and fear mongering of tariffs causing price increases at Apple.

I'm not going to get into the whole discussion of tariffs in general since this is not the place for it, just staying on Apple only and replying to your point.
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Apple also made a massive effort to import as much as it could before tariffs began to apply and a product refresh is the obvious moment to change pricing to incorporate tariffs.
 
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Good.

This will be absolutely massive and effective at killing the disgusting and disposable Windows/Chrome cheapbook market by HP, Dell and Google.

It’s amazing how many terrible options are sold by them at places like Walmart and Costco for people who don’t know any better to keep a fast upgrade turnaround when they get “slow” because they provide - for example - some slow ass HDD instead of an SSD.
 
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Bye bye mid range Chromebooks and pcs.

This will be such a bargain.

It is clearly aimed at school (and college students) who don’t need the oomph.

ie light productivity/creativity & edu web apps.

As for no TB3. Most people just don’t use it.

I’d be tempted to get one if it wasn’t for my ageing eyes (again, another clue it’s aimed at most school and college students…)
 
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MayaUser said:
ipads run ipadOS..this has to run Macos and probably with built in 5G
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The recent Mac-ification of iPadOS might suggest something different. Its not implausible that Apple might launch a laptop, sans touchscreen that runs the iPad operating system. Every app currently available would be 100% compatible with no extra input from devs needed.
 
vertsix said:
Dawg, these are NOT gonna be made for people looking to load up LLMs, VMs or do any editing work on.

It’s made for grandma looking to buy a laptop so she can post nonsensical posts on Facebook and see what her grandsons are doing.
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But that's javascript so you need 128 Gb ram to open facebook and gmail at the same time!

Seriously, it all depends on how they cripple the device ram wise. I do most of my work on desktops and the laptop is something I use when I don't have access to the comfortable choice. So if they do a low end laptop that can still (slowly) handle my work environment in a pinch, I might get it.
 
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MayaUser said:
yes for 599 makes sense otherwise ..probably with 256ssd and 8gb ram but for $400 more you get double the ram and storage and far better performance M4...it will be hard to chose for people...for students probably easy choice if this will get $499 with back to school
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And for 400 more you get this and for 400
more that, and suddenly you spend 2k instead of 600$. ✌🏻👍🏻
 
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nottorp said:
But that's javascript so you need 128 Gb ram to open facebook and gmail at the same time!

Seriously, it all depends on how they cripple the device ram wise. I do most of my work on desktops and the laptop is something I use when I don't have access to the comfortable choice. So if they do a low end laptop that can still (slowly) handle my work environment in a pinch, I might get it.
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My guess is they’ll find a middle ground between 8 and 16GB RAM, which is, 12GB and conveniently what is rumored for the A19 Pro chips for the iPhone 17 series.
 
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Mity said:
What exactly would it be used for? To serve as a modern netbook? Isn't that what people use non-pro iPads with a keyboard case for?
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Some of us are allergic to such nonsense. We need a real machine with a real OS. Maybe that's my age, or having taught through the nightmares of the iPad for the classroom disaster. A lot of kids live on their phones, which is such an incredibly awful web experience. This could be just what Apple needs to get them using MacOS.
 
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frou said:
I wonder if it will have a noticeably inferior screen. In the early days of Intel Mac notebooks, at the low end there were some real stinkers in terms of viewing angles etc.
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My 2017 was like vaseline had been smeared on it. Such a terrible display.
 
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