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New MacBook With A18 Pro Chip Spotted in Apple Code

ttyRazor said:
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.
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Perhaps they could do some software *acquisitioneering* if they need a product in that space.

But yeah, I’m puzzled what the play is here, given Apple’s general ‘profits before market share’ strategy.

If it’s not going for an inexpensive volume product, then perhaps they are getting back to a category that is kind of dead: the very, very light and small laptop computer?

My crazy theory is that they have a skunkworks version of touch-designed MacOS and this is their launch product. It’s so crazy I don’t even really believe it; they’ve certainly said enough publicly about keeping their MacOS peanut butter out of their touch chocolate for a long while now, and recently, too.
 
bluecoast said:
Presumably:

A18 iPad - no multiple user logins.
Ai18 MacBook - multiple user logins.

Apple will have to have a very convincing reason as to why they won’t add this to the iPad.
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It would violate the World cla$$ Apple $afety, $ecurity and privacy™
 
The changes to iPadOS suddenly make a lot more sense now.

Is there a market for a cut-price MacBook that runs iPadOS? If they release an 11" model Id buy one tomorrow. iPad keyboards are too damn heavy. I hope they resurrect the white polycarbonate whilst they're there.

It could also be a computer designed to compete with Chromebooks in education.
 
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The A18 Pro is as fast as the M4 in terms of single-core speed. So an M4/M5 would be necessary only if one is going to go heavy on graphics. It would be interesting to learn what kind of neural processor this new MBA gets. But my iPhone 16 Plus, with a normal A18 chip, handles everything I throw at it just fine. The only question is price. Personally, $599 is about the most I would pay for this new Air. I think that’s possible considering that it will be built completely out of off-the-shelf parts. I’ll bet the screen on what is now the base M4 MBA will be upgraded by the time this new device comes out.
 
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Eric_WVGG said:
We don't know if this is a Macbook yet. That's a marketing term, and Kuo is frequently wrong about that kind of thing.
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MacRumors literally just said they see it as "Mac17,1."

These identifiers were found as early as MacOS beta 15.1.

Not sure why some people are inventing ridiculous ideas like Apple is going to make this thing run iPadOS.
 
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It seems most likely to me that this would replace the M1 Air currently being sold at Wal-Mart and would become the entry level Macbook.
 
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Eric_WVGG said:
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.
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This has a certain ring of sense to it:

“Instead of buying the iPad and the keyboard as two separate things, we’ve just made an iPad with one already built in. The durability of our award-winning best-in-class laptops with the joy and ease of iPad. The new Padbook: we think you’re gonna love it.”

Ok, I’m switching to this idea. It’s as good as any other I’ve seen in this thread.
 
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iPod2001 said:
I think this will become the new entry model for the MacBook instead of the air .
A18 pro has been proven to be faster then M1 and does all basics tasks someone might need to do college or university work .
Priced around £849 would be great value if that’s true but I can see it being more £900 or £949 .
I think when it comes out I will be buying it to Replace my 2020 intel MacBook Air .
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A18/8GB RAM/256 SSD USB-C (no Thunderbolt) only for this, and the base Air gets its storage bumped up to a more reasonable 512 GB? That would provide enough product differentiation.
 
chetzar said:
Those production costs may have come down some since the A18 is not a "new" chip anymore. It could also be that a surplus of those chips exists. 🤷‍♂️

If they are shooting for a K-12 product this could also be a "loss leader" in hopes those students will purchase a MacBook Air/Pro after they graduate.

I doubt it would be a 12" device, that would increase costs via engineering and tooling. The more they can reuse existing designs and tooling (new or old) the cheaper the product can be made. It could likely be cheaper to keep using MBA 13" chassis & screen vs a 12" variant due to those reasons.

Also makes we wonder if they plan to use panels that were otherwise rejected for MBA's (color accuracy rejections - a device targeted at K-12 does not NEED a screen with the same degree of accuracy as MBA or MBP). Could be a way to reduce waste & decrease costs.
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Could be. Though I'm 100% certain Apple won't release a loss leader 😂
 
Plerf said:
This has a certain ring of sense to it:

“Instead of buying the iPad and the keyboard as two separate things, we’ve just made an iPad with one already built in. The durability of our award-winning best-in-class laptops with the joy and ease of iPad. The new Padbook: we think you’re gonna love it.”

Ok, I’m switching to this idea. It’s as good as any other I’ve seen in this thread.
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Sorry, but it has zero sense to anyone familiar with Apple.

1) It's the same reason why Apple TV doesn't let you run macOS even though it has HDMI out. Apple makes custom hardware and software. They package what they see as the perfect combination. This isn't a PC.

2) Apple makes far more profit from the iPad + Magic keyboard combo. They sell touch and ability to detach as a feature to the customer.
 
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I don’t think it will run iPadOS. You can already buy a cheap iPad and keyboard for much cheaper than this will be. They will probably cut costs by reusing the old MBA chassis and the iPhone chip. That is EXACTLY what Apple does for the cheap iPads- use and old design and chip.
 
TMRJIJ said:
I don’t see them doing that. The MacBook Air absolutely kills it at the $999 price point, especially with education discounts.
They probably should consider the MBA as the mid-tier in the lineup and make the low-Tier MacBook around $799
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Apple could quietly kill the lowest storage skus for the 13" and 15" MBAs while they introduce this new entry-level model. It's not an unheard-of strategy - they re-priced the Pro Max iPhone the same way.
 
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nicolas17 said:
There were Apple Intelligence files with an H17P variant (that's the A18 Pro) for devices Mac17,1 iPhone17,1 iPhone17,2 iPhone17,3 iPhone17,4.
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Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but that doesn't make sense with regard to iPhone17,3 (iPhone 16) and iPhone17,4 (iPhone16 Plus) both of which use the A18, not the A18 Pro.

So I'm not sure that's definitive proof with regard to Mac17,1.

Also, if Mac17,1 is an eMacBook 13" with A18 Pro, then what is Mac17,2? Will the M5 family still have the Mac17,x identifiers?
 
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