New MacBook With A18 Pro Chip Spotted in Apple Code

[Lounge vibes 05]

If so, this may ONLY be available through education channels and not at retail.

it seems very unlikely this would just be for education if it actually comes in bright pink, yellow, and blue. if Apple was making some computer completely dedicated at the education market as low cost as possible, I don’t think color options would be on the list of important factors and selling points.
clearly there is something about this computer not being said yet, either it just has a shockingly low price or it truly is the return of an ultra portable.

 

[ttyRazor]

I don't get it.

CPUs don't make up a very large line item on the bill of materials (the screen is probably more expensive). And if the point is "cheaper Macbook Air," why not keep selling M2s? Or build out of plastic?

A new 12" Macbook would at least be carving out a new category. (and I would buy one, like, immediately)

((I always thought those old 11" Macbook Airs from the Intel days were ridiculous, but also ridiculously popular))

We don’t get a breakdown of the cost difference between Apple Silicon SoCs, but the price difference between the base iPad and iPad Air suggest it’s probably somewhat significant. This likely won’t be quite that dramatic a difference, but the gap in size and complexity between A-series and M-series CPUs, which are physically larger and have a lot more cores and I/O, is probably pretty substantial. M-series would also need more battery and larger and more complex motherboard for that extra I/O, so extra costs beyond just the SoC itself.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Instead, we'll get a gimped computer that is far too close in price to the latest Air.

Yep! Exactly right.

Every aspect of every product lineup is Tim "Cooked" to specifically make you constantly think about going up a tier in one way or another.

He's like the tech equivalent of the people doing the science to make potato chips irresistible.

 

[StoneJack]

1

I love the idea of a tiny 10" Mac that is small enough to take anywhere and also powerful enough to plug into a large monitor and use as a desktop.

12.9 inch

 

[q64ceo]

Apple's probably doing this to test the waters for a lower cost computing iDevice independent of the Mac brand. I really don't see Apple hanging on to what we call macOS for more than 10 years now.

 

[StoneJack]

Yep! Exactly right.

Every aspect of every product lineup is Tim "Cooked" to specifically make you constantly think about going up a tier in one way or another.

He's like the tech equivalent of the people doing the science to make potato chips irresistible.

it means he does good job as CEO by upselling

 

[SRLMJ23]

MacBook Air Education Edition or maybe just, iBook?

I think this will be strictly for the education sector, not a consumer laptop. Just my two cents!

 

[zombierunner]

iPads with M chips and MacBooks with A chips ... bonkers

 

[ttyRazor]

Could be a great option, M1 Macs are still decent for the vast majority of users, and the A18 slightly outperforms the M1 with less power consumption. Could power a series of budget Macs with legendary battery life.

Or they bring the cost down further with a smaller battery and roughly the same run time.

 

[turbineseaplane]

it means he does good job as CEO by upselling

No disagreement on the financial success part of being a CEO.

I'm just not someone who believes in over indexing on that one metric to this degree.

 

[pshufd]

I'd love to see it in 10 - 12 inches.

I may buy a 9 inch UPMC this week for travel. These are not cheap devices and Apple should get back into the UPMC market. I'm sure that there are people who would like a 12 inch MacBook or 11 inch Air.

 

[ttyRazor]

Ngl, this seems like a weird idea.

Unless they’re going into the education space again and need to get into striking distance of chromebooks or something.

Guess we’ll see.

It’ll probably take more than just that to crack into the education market again. It’s not just the cheap hardware but the software with easy fleet management targeted at Chromebooks they’d need to replace.

 

[StoneJack]

I'd love to see it in 10 - 12 inches.

I may buy a 9 inch UPMC this week for travel. These are not cheap devices and Apple should get back into the UPMC market. I'm sure that there are people who would like a 12 inch MacBook or 11 inch Air.

12.9 inch

 

[StoneJack]

It’ll probably take more than just that to crack into the education market again. It’s not just the cheap hardware but the software with easy fleet management targeted at Chromebooks they’d need to replace.

Microsoft Teams is most they need at school.

 

[pshufd]

Who is this for!
someone who wants macOS is just going to get the already quite affordable M4 or even M3/M2 MacBook Air, all which have came with 16 GB of RAM by default for the last nine months and could be found for as cheap as $650.
The people who don’t care are just going to get the iPad.
so who is this for?

Someone who needs to run desktop software that doesn't require a lot of horsepower and is on a tight budget.

Someone asked in r/FidelityInvestments if Active Trader Pro could run on an iPad. The answer was no. It's an x86 program which runs on Windows or macOS via WINE. I think that this would be better for a 10-12 inch MacBook than another 13.

 

[ttyRazor]

iPads with M chips and MacBooks with A chips ... bonkers

They’re not all that different aside from core count and I/O, and the M4/A18 cores got to the point where they can get roughly the same performance as the M1 generation with fewer, faster cores.

 

[jmonster]

> MacRumors can now reveal

Wait, what? Macrumors was withholding this information but now that it's public they can disclose it?

This is pretty solid evidence to me that this publication is essentially owned by Apple... not that that would surprise anyone..

 

[svish]

Looks like it will launch by April of next year. Waiting to see the device. If priced correctly, it will surely be a very successful device for Apple.

 

[jz0309]

I believe it when Apple announces it.

 

[FrozenDarkness]

I wonder how they'll pull the price down. 16GB RAM and 256GB of storage seems as a foregone conclusion for AI. The chips itself can't be that cheap if they're using the newest and greatest.

 

[Eric_WVGG]

I wonder how they'll pull the price down. 16GB RAM and 256GB of storage seems as a foregone conclusion for AI. The chips itself can't be that cheap if they're using the newest and greatest.

If it runs iPadOS then 8GB is plenty. (and RAM isn't actually expensive)

Ming-Chi Kuo is wrong about software stuff all the time.

 

[ChrisChaval]

I could see this occupying the $999 slot as just MacBook.

and pushing the base mb air back to 1199

hard sell though with the m4 mb air still around for 999 and less

with the next redesign prices may go up as usual, but may stay there for good this time with the introduction of a lower priced mb

 

[FrozenDarkness]

If it runs iPadOS then 8GB is plenty. (and RAM isn't actually expensive)

Ming-Chi Kuo is wrong about software stuff all the time.

why would it run iPadOS?

 

[Eric_WVGG]

why would it run iPadOS?

Why not? It has a menu bar and runs windows now. Anyone looking for a sub-$1000 laptop probably doesn't care about running Xcode or anything that requires an M-series CPU.

 

[poematik13]

I still miss my 11" MacBook Air. If they made another tiny Mac laptop I'd be down! 13" doesn't quite get small enough though...

They replaced their tiny macbooks with ipads.