Sounds like the rumors from almost two years ago were true: Apple to Launch 'Low-Cost' MacBook Series Next Year to Rival Chromebooks.
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What to Expect From Apple's Rumored New MacBook With A18 Pro Chip
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The target? It's pretty obviously kids - this has "educational" written all over it. As such, it's probably a good idea, and I'm sure it'll be available as a retail item, but it makes sense for Apple to focus on the educational / intuitional sector again - it used to be a big thing for them but they drifted away from it in favour of prestige retail consumer products - I can fully understand why an education institution would prefer to provide students with a cheap MacBook, with keyboard and touchpad, rather than an iPad + pencil + Magic Keyboard. I also don't think it'll cannibalise the MAcBookAir market too much - people will still want "prestige" toys.
There is a difference: It creates even more confusion for the consumers, especially not tech savvy, who would want to compare A chips and M chips when trying to buy specs that they need. Just a reminder: it is already complicated when comparing older and newer M/M Pro/M Max/M Ultra chips. Not A is added to the mix.
It would make more sense to because then they will be on the same scale at least
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To be fair, the problem with the 12" MacBook was the fact that they couldn't source an intel chip that would fit. Just as the demonised Mac Pro 6,1 was essentially a prototype for the Mac Studio, the 12" Mac was the template for AS MacBooks. Good idea but they didn't have all the hardware to execute the idea effectively. Now they can.
I stated earlier in this thread I'd expect 8 and 16GB configs.
Worst case scenario is 8GB with swap. That's what we have today with M1/8/256.
MacBook Air may come with 16GB, but that doesn't mean MacBook will. This is similar to the expectation that A16 iPad would come with 8GB just because iPad Air did.
It does, but, if this laptop does happen, I'd guess it will be branded "educational" all the way, rather than "consumer", the educational angle will be the distinction between product lines, not the chip. This is the laptop equivalent of the rumoured "Apple Watch for kids". They won't want potential customers to be unsure whether they should buy this or a MacBook Air. They've managed that distinction pretty clearly between the base iPad and the iPad Air already.
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If Apple launches this product they could very well take the A18 Pro and rename it the "M4 Lite" or something like that for use in a Mac. The entire M series branding was created for differentiation given that the M1 is basically an A14X (and the M2 is an A15X, and so on).
I wonder if Apple will extend the year naming system to its chips. For example, maybe this fall's MacBook Pro won't have an M5 chip, but an "M26" instead. You can have an A26 powering the iPhone (and base MacBook), an M26 powering the Air and base Pro, and an M26 Pro and Max for the higher end MacBook Pro and Mac Studio.
This. For better or worse, Apple in 2025 is not the same company as Apple in 1998. They have a far, far bigger customer-base, so I can't see them cutting down their ranges to "four squares" until they are on the verge of bankruptcy again.
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Nah, it’ll probably be plain MacBook just like the low end iPad is just iPad. If the iPhone’s midrange wasn’t already just iPhone they wouldn’t need the SE name.
As mentioned in the article, the M1 Air will probably be discontinued soon because it's too old, so it would be nice to have an updated version that can still be as cheap as it is.
That naming convention only makes sense for the OS portfolio. It's fallout from the regularly delayed features, especially AI. Craig Federighi's team can't deliver all features in September each year and the full features won't be available until next year.
It's entirely different for Johny Srouji's team. The chip is feature complete. It makes no sense to use dates. What if the M5 launches in June and M5 Max or Ultra launches in December? Are you going to date it n or n+1?
But, right now, in 2025, Apple does not need to be saved (financially, at least). That's the difference between then and now.
It depends if Apple wants to support Apple Intelligence on the low-end MacBook. They don't on the low-end iPad. My guess is that it would, particularly if Apple is targeting the education market. AI is going to be a normal part of education, just as the Internet was for the last 20+ years.
I don't do video at all, some image stitching on occasion, but it seems to me that there is enough in an a18/ 8 gb system to do some software or engineering development work. as someone who has worked in scientific/engineering development and testing I could and would use a system of that size. I tend to leave the development system with the client with a the development code/ development notes/ documentation to prevent future conflicts of interest . I suppose word processing can be performed on that system size and I assume the base os xx drivers created by printer manufacturers would work on this system using os xx - so its seems to have a niche in my mind
Are people on macrumors buying computers to compensate for something or what is this? Some of the comments here are bonkers.
Come on, look at the numbers! There is nothing wrong with having a "phone chip" in a computer these days. If you're a heavy user, you probably know that and you don't buy this MacBook iBudget, for everyone else the A18 is perfectly fine in everyday use.
Here are some numbers in Geekbench single-core score which is the most important factor for light desktop work:
M1: 2340
M2 Ultra: 2830
M3 Max: 3070
M3 Ultra: 3247
A18: 3322
Please look at these and say again that the the A18 is a underpowered macOS-unworthy phone chip. And yes, most of the other chips will vastly outperform the A18 in multi-core score but that is pretty much not important for a light desktop/office/student machine.
Come on, look at the numbers! There is nothing wrong with having a "phone chip" in a computer these days. If you're a heavy user, you probably know that and you don't buy this MacBook iBudget, for everyone else the A18 is perfectly fine in everyday use.
Here are some numbers in Geekbench single-core score which is the most important factor for light desktop work:
M1: 2340
M2 Ultra: 2830
M3 Max: 3070
M3 Ultra: 3247
A18: 3322
Please look at these and say again that the the A18 is a underpowered macOS-unworthy phone chip. And yes, most of the other chips will vastly outperform the A18 in multi-core score but that is pretty much not important for a light desktop/office/student machine.
Yay! I hope so too!
Many people are simply stuck thinking M1 is king. It's a 5-year old chip. To them, nothing in the A-series will ever beat it. That's why they're stuck inside the box thinking about the Walmart deal.
In reality, the A18 Pro costs less to produce, runs cooler, and significantly outperforms the M1.
As I have been saying, this sounds like a high quality Chromebook alternative geared specifically towards education. I wouldn't be surprised if this is sold specifically to K-12 education first much like the old school eMac, at stellar prices ($600 or less) and then later going to consumers for $700. As the article said, Apple/Walmart sells the most basic MBA for $650 currently so this is an incredibly realistic product.
Not sure where they are going with this if true. Certainly not going to take sales away from the windows based laptop market, For under £400 it is possible to get a I5 based machine with 256GB of storage and 8GB of ram with a 15 inch screen, sadly it is a Lenovo, but still, can get Celaron based machines for basic work for a lot less
Many people don't realize that the M series is based on the A series and uses the exact same core microarchitecture, the M series just has more cores and can be clocked higher because of better thermals and battery management. There was a lot of hoopla over Apple putting the M1 in an iPad when in reality the M1 is basically an A14X. It was a lot of "Apple is putting desktop/laptop chips in an iPad" when in reality they put iPad chips in desktops and laptops because they were that good (and obviously built off of that for the even more impressive Pro, Max, and Ultra variants).
I’m wondering why Apple wouldn’t use the A19 in this device given the rumors on it make it much more suited for a MacBook than the A18Pro.
I’m going to guess that it’s because they will need all capacity for the iPhone, but they could have just pushed the product release to November or early 2026.
In terms of marketing, M-series was a huge success. It was obviously backed by actual performance too. Because of this, I doubt Apple will rebadge A18 Pro to M-something. Not only would it dilute the M-series brand, there's more lost than gained from people buying A18 than an actual M4.