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Just give me a macbook air with retina display and a relatively low price and I will be standing in line outside the Apple store on day 1 with the hundreds of other people waiting to buy one. FINALLY, a macbook air that a person can actually read numbers on when using a larger Excel spreadsheet.
 
I'm hoping this low cost notebook is launched along side an updated non touchbar Macbook Pro. Come on apple, update the non touchbar like you did the touchbars. Please.

Sure — as soon as Intel comes out with a suitable chip to update to.

Apple could make a minor update that essentially just replaces the keyboard, but they're probably waiting until they can get a newer CPU. There isn't one (not with 15W and an Iris Plus).
 
This will probably be my next computer. I’m hoping for a MacBook shape with a 13” retina screen, new keyboard

Processor and ports are fairly irrelevant for me but some nice ram and storage upgrade options might be nice.

Too much bezel on the MBA - it’s needs more than just a retina screen.
 
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I don't see why the Air even exists anymore. Maybe because of MagSafe and the non-dongle USB port, and keyboard.
Looks like you do see why;) Also price.

Overlooking the real reason the Air is so popular—it’s $999.
If anyone is paying $999 for a base MBA, they need to have their head examined. It's still a decent laptop, but $999 is crazy. The base MBA can be had for $849 all day long. Even for older hardware (that's still viable), $849 is fair imo.
 
I don't see why the Air even exists anymore. Maybe because of MagSafe and the non-dongle USB port, and keyboard.

Magsafe, better battery life, keyboard, sd card + USB ports, price snd so on. It's their best all round laptop. The only downside is the screen (besides the fact its outdated). Update the screen, processor, change the thunderbolt for USB-C and it would be great.
 
If only people remembered how slow, clunky, and expensive laptops were back in the day. See: https://pifflelab.com/2012/07/22/computers-the-1990s-you-paid-how-much/

$999 for an amazing laptop (opposite of Chromebooks) seems inexpensive to me. How much should we expect for minimal money?

I remember when my then fiancee/now husband surprised me with a laptop for Christmas back when I was in grad school in 1999/2000. It was a Dell Inspiron with a 14" screen; it cost $1000. It was super thick, heavy, and clunky, and even at that price didn't have the top-of-the-line specs but still had very decent specs that were considered great back then--when I took it to school, all my fellow grad students were wowed by it...this is when practically no one had laptops, and I was actually the only grad student in a roomful (we all shared a big room with individual cubicles that served as our offices) that had one.
 
12" MB should already been priced at $999 after 3 years. First year $1299, second year $1149, now $999. This laptop product line is a mess.

13" & 15" MB + 13" & 15" & 17" MBP – that is the way it should be. MB with super-thin bezels to match 11" & 13" MBA, MBP thicker with great cooling and upgradable hardware. Problem solved.
 
I don't see why the Air even exists anymore. Maybe because of MagSafe and the non-dongle USB port, and keyboard.
Price is the only reason. I suspect Apple will combine the MBA, rMB and non touch bar rMBP into one line of consumer notebooks at a range of price points. I still think there will be something about these notebooks that aren’t just a MBA with Retina display. I doubt the new notebooks will have a MBA style chassis.
 
For home/consumer use and most office work, you could easily go back to 2012 and have all the CPU power you need, but faster’s always better and newer machines are of course faster. Even marginal year-to-year improvements eventually add up, and quad-core is the new dual-core. (For iPhone, I’d say “good enough” happened a few years ago with the A9/2GB platform of the 6S/SE.)

Yeah the CPU in the Air is old, so is the one in the Mac mini but they’ve been sufficient for the targeted user base.

Exactly. Don't need the spec out the Facebook Air. Literally only needs to load some form of microsoft office and safari.
 
What appears stubborn and foolish to us is a long game strategy for Apple.
The consumer portion of Apple’s notebook line is a mess right now. I still wonder what the point of the 13” non touch bar MBP was, and was Apple expecting the 12” rMB to be entry level consumer machine? If so why hasn’t the price come down and why is the 13” MBA still in the line up?
 
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If only people remembered how slow, clunky, and expensive laptops were back in the day. See: https://pifflelab.com/2012/07/22/computers-the-1990s-you-paid-how-much/

$999 for an amazing laptop (opposite of Chromebooks) seems inexpensive to me. How much should we expect for minimal money?

Well you pay several thousand for one that breaks if a spec of dust gets under the keyboard... so with Apple these days I’m not sure what to expect for an “expensive” 1000 dollars.
 
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Would love you to be right and us to see a Macbook at say £949 once you factor in exchange rate and VAT but can't see Apple lopping off £300 overnight.

They've got themselves in a bit of a mess with pricing and names and specs. Be interesting to see how they solve/price the bottom end of their laptop line up and hopefully it will be sooner than later.

Apple lopped hundreds off the Air when they updated the form factor (including an extra USB, just what the MB needs) a couple of years after introducing it. Hopefully history will repeat itself.
 
All Apple had to do was slap a retina screen on the MacBook Air and updated the processor for it to retain the “greatest laptop ever made” title.

Apple are such stubborn fools sometimes.
This whole conspiration was needed to adhere to Timbo’s “Post-PC” misheap
(to become an idiosyncrasy)
 
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All Apple had to do was slap a retina screen on the MacBook Air and updated the processor for it to retain the “greatest laptop ever made” title.

Does seem like a no-brainer - people love the Air.

Hard to figure out what this machine will look like. It would have to have a single USB-C, a really poor quality camera, and be heavier than the MBP to not cannibalize sales of existing rMB and MBP.

Well, neither the MacBook or the non-touchbar MacBook Pro got an update at WWDC, so the whole lower end of the laptop range is ripe for a re-shuffle.

I'm wondering if the non-TB MacBook Pros are for the chop: even if the "starting price" of the new low-cost machine is $999, the options could easily take it up to the $1300+ range...

However, the other alternative might be an updated nonretina machine at a lower price: bear in mind that most of Apple's competitors offer 1080p entry-level options: even "premium" ranges like the Dell XPS13 start out at 1080p before moving up to 4k.
 
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