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Cheaper MacBook powered by iPhone chip coming in 2026, per new report
- epolanski 11mo agoWhat's the point? This would only cannibalize their higher tier sales with a low margin product. I don't get it. This company is visionless.
- zekrioca 11mo agoYes, Apple is visionless.
- ggm 11mo agoThey're anything but visionless. This is a departure from an upwards sell trajectory but if it sold in volumes, it goes to the classic quote "quantity has a quality all of it's own" -usually taken in context it means giving up the quality drive, but in reality it's neutral to the other product line. It may cannibalize SOME of the existing market, yes. all of it? I don't think my peers on M4 boxes with 32GB+ are going to go for this any more than they did when the Air came out and they had powerful boxes.
- Reason077 11mo agoPeople who buy high-end MacBook Pros are still going to buy MacBook Pros. The idea here is to pick up sales that would otherwise go to cheaper PC laptop brands, by competing at a lower price point than the MacBook Air currently does. Right now, Apple still (quietly) sells the MacBook Air M1 at $599 to keep a toe in that lower-end market, but I doubt many people who are considering a Pro or an M4 Air are persuaded to choose that instead.
- epolanski 11mo agoPeople who bought MacBooks and were forced into MBPs now can go back to MacBooks. The argument goes both ways.
- whynotminot 11mo agoMaybe they should only offer MacBook Pros, then.
- spurgu 11mo agoIt doesn't change anything with their higher tier sales. Those are bought for a reason that a lower tier device cannot satisfy. My worry (from Apple's POV) is that all the people who buy the cheapest Mac (currently for $1k) will instead go for this new "base model". And I suspect there's a large cohort of people who "just want a Mac".
- walterbell 11mo agoGoogle is converging ChromeOS and Android in 2026 Qualcomm Arm laptops by HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.
- baq 11mo agocreative destruction at work.
- phantasmish 11mo agoProbably to take back a bunch of the education market, which was lost to Chromebooks.
- ruralfam 11mo agoNot disagreeing re: vision for quality software and new products. However this segmentation is pretty good. Most everyone buying a Macbook today wants "M" performance. Most everyone who does not care about "benchmarks" and is price sensitive (likely a surprisingly large number of folks), is put off by MB pricing. So you gimp the processor, lower the price, take a bit of a margin hit on net profit for hware, but capture lots of sales and canabalize virtually no "M" sales. Plus I would guess the Apple has done enough market analysis to understand that the folks buying this new Macbook are likely to want to subscribe to something Apple offers which will offset the lower hware margin.
- epolanski 11mo ago"Most everyone" is pointless anecdotal talk. Most of the people I know have a mbp cuz their company buys it and they couldn't care less about a powerful computer if it wasn't for working or gaming (but that's not Apple's turf anyway).
- tim333 11mo agoI'm guessing firstly it won't be a lot cheaper and secondly it may appeal to the very large number of people who buy cheaper windows laptops.
- epolanski 11mo agoAnd who cares about such a segment? There's very little money to make there. It's highly competitive, the audience is budget oriented, in fact not sure if they are why would they consider the cheap but sure pricier MacBook.
- tim333 11mo agoThere's a lot of them though. Apple's sales are about 22 mil macbooks/yr, total laptop sales are like 260 mil, or about 9%. In phones Apple have about 27% and a cheaper phone in the $599 16e. I don't see why they shouldn't go for a similar strategy to the phones.
- znpy 11mo agoIt would be nice to see a renaissance of 12” laptops
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- gchamonlive 11mo agoInteresting. If they'll come with a cutdown version of the os like the iPads, it'll limit the target audience and the success of the device. On the other hand if it'll be powered by a fully fledged MacOS it'll make it more arbitrary the decision not to have the same features on iPads.
- brendoelfrendo 11mo agoI already have an M3-powered iPad Air; Apple currently produces iPad hardware that could, theoretically, run full MacOS. The decision is already about as arbitrary as it gets.
- bluescrn 11mo agoSeems such a waste, such a powerful device held back by an OS chained to an App Store and still so touch-centric. iPadOS has certainly got a lot better over recent updates, but there's no sign of 'apps' catching up with serious desktop software any time soon.
- seec 11mo agoAnd Apple doesn't really want to anyway, they get to profit from both side this way. The iPad could be a fantastic machine but as is, it makes no sense for most workflow. It seems to be stuck at being a fancy notepad or expensive drawing tablet for hip artists (real pros use the much larger and more convenient Wacoms anyway).
- walterbell 11mo agoJIT workaround helps UTM VMs and iSH/ashell (Linux emulation), https://onejailbreak.com/blog/stikdebug-ios/ https://onejailbreak.com/blog/stikdebug-ios/ > StikDebug works around those restrictions by using a local VPN profile to manage the JIT process securely within the app. Once you approve the VPN configuration, StikDebug can communicate with sideloaded apps and activate JIT automatically when you launch them. This means that users on iOS 26 can finally enjoy the same performance benefits that developers used to unlock only through Xcode or jailbreaking.
- hyperhello 11mo agoI don’t really get it, from a consumer perspective, unless the idea is mass education sales. They already sell enough Macs for economy of scale to kick in. Calling it an iPhone processor doesn’t explain anything by itself, and wouldn’t save much money. Is the screen cheaper? The keyboard? The SSD? I suppose the point would be to farm and beta test a base of new, cheaper, slower, less reliable components, and then find the path to making them acceptable for retail.
- _fzslm 11mo agoThere is a gap in Apple's offerings. Casual computer users like students probably can't justify dropping nearly a K on a MacBook, so they go for these 400-600$ dell/hp laptops, or a Chromebook. This fits that hole. iPhone processor is surely cheaper from an economies of scale perspective, they are likely way easier to produce en masse and they already produce bajillions of them for the iPhone. Over time the price of even a high quality LCD like on the existing MacBook Air will have decreased enormously. Apple is setting up to move to OLED on the rest of the line, so using existing LCD tech is likely to save a lot too
- hyperhello 11mo agoWould it be consistent with this plan to continue to make the same M1 Air at the current price, stuffing it with whatever phone processor they happen to have a few extra million of?
- _fzslm 11mo agoYeah that's one potential route they could take - repurposing the existing M1 air shell and components. But I actually believe they'll do a completely new shell for this device, and one reason being they could probably save even more money and cut even more costs than the current prod cost of M1 airs.
- kristianp 11mo ago> so they go for these 400-600$ dell/hp laptops I feel that these inexpensive macs will increase market share, perhaps this will pressure Microsoft to improve the Windows performance and ad bloat.
- kristianp 11mo agoSurprising to read the the original M1 Air is still sold through Walmart.
- jrockway 11mo agoHonestly, I'm not even an Apple fangirl and that thing is a great computer. I bought one for work and it served me better than any other $999 computer ever did. It's apparently $599 now? Great value, in my opinion.
- spurgu 11mo agoVery much so. I still have my M1 bought in 2021, haven't felt like there is any need to upgrade to any of the newer ones.
- highwaylights 11mo agoHaving just switched up to the M4 air you're not wrong. Unless you have the 8GB version and it's causing you memory pressure (which it may not be), or you really need that extra display output (I did), it's a wonder machine still 5 years later. Also, that wedge design might be peak laptop. It's just soooo nice when lifting off a surface. I know that sounds ridiculous but the attention to detail that went into that design is next level. Even though I'm not in the market, part of me really hopes the MacBook SE (or whatever they call it) uses the wedge design to clear chassis parts like they did with the SE iphones (although I doubt it).
- endemic 11mo agoAmazon is selling them new for $440; refurb at Best Buy for $330.
- Handy-Man 11mo agoThey are renewed, not new on Amazon.
- highwaylights 11mo ago
- somethoughts 11mo agoI think the reverse offering on the Apple device roadmap would be interesting. A MacPad and a MacPhone. Given its eventually going to be completely the same silicon this would enable them to offer a non App Store experience for people who want to experiment with alternative app stores like Epic. In that way they could keep the average Apple target iPhone/iPad customer within the walled garden of iOS while being able to point specifically to EU regulators that they are allowing alternative app stores on the MacPhone/MacPad platform.
- etchalon 11mo agoThe "MacPad" already exists. It's called the iPad Pro. It uses the M5 chip.
- leptons 11mo agoExcept it doesn't run MacOS, and it doesn't allow you to install any application you want to - only those that Apple allows you to. And you're still forced to use Safari in every browser you install.
- highwaylights 11mo agoFairly confident the CPU has never been the reason you can't install whatever you want on an iOS/iPadOS device. Also not the reason you can't install macOS on it either. If you want macOS, you buy a Mac. You want iPadOS, you buy an iPad. And if you want an iPad Pro that can double up as a Mac in a pinch, you feel awkward while Tim Cook death stares at you until you empty your pockets. In all seriousness though, I have an iPad Pro and a MacBook (as a lot of people here do I'm sure) and it would make a poor laptop. And how do you switch between macOS and iPadOS? I don't see a way to have that not be clunky because of all the different metaphors. I'd rather just have both (actually I'd rather just have the MacBook as the iPad sits largely idle, as I'm also sure a lot of people's do).
- leptons 11mo ago
- amelius 11mo agoMore locked down nanny-ware from Apple. Why the excitement?
- whynotminot 11mo agoIt’s always funny to me when people on hackernews assume that all technology created is intended for their use.
- Gualdrapo 11mo agoI think by "cheaper" they mean "just a tiny bit less expensive"
- vondur 11mo agoHow much difference is there between an M4 chip and something like the A18 regarding pricing? I assume a lower end screen and maybe a plastic body would reduce the price further.
- rasz 11mo agoArent M4 Airs already $800 on sale? Im afraid the low end model will again push 8GB ram.
- risingsubmarine 11mo agoAn 11" version of this proposed A-series chip Macbook is exactly what I would want to see, and would more likely expect to see from Apple's sales perspective, than an iPad that is capable of running MacOS. A tiny Macbook that I can slip into a sling bag is more preferable to me than an iPad for many tasks.
- trial3 11mo agoyup: i would instantly buy something like this if it ran full macOS
- rcarmo 11mo agoAt this rate, someday the iPad will be the more powerful “computer” by default :)
- bluescrn 11mo agoYet something like the Raspberry Pi will still have more 'power' to actually get useful things done, as it's not chained to an App Store, allows you to compile code, etc
- rcarmo 11mo agoWhy not both? https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/09/09/1820 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/09/09/1820
- geodel 11mo agoPhone Chip/Plastic Body/12" 3:2 or 4:3 screen/~400 dollar. I see my family as a customer for it.