A $699 MacBook May Revolutionize Budget Computing This Spring
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If the rumor mill is accurate, Apple will soon round out its lineup of budget devices with a new MacBook that will effectively match the $349 iPad and $599 iPhone 17e by providing a lower-cost option to appeal to price-conscious consumers and schools.
While Apple was once famously dismissive of lower-priced “netbook-style” laptops, the market and the state of technology have changed enough to make them both a viable option and a good idea.
For one, the successful shift from Intel to Apple silicon means MacBooks no longer risk being trapped in spec-war comparisons to the cheapest Windows machines on the market. However, Apple is also facing growing competition from Chromebooks in schools, which are usurping the iPad as a go-to device for educators, risking Apple’s total displacement from that market.
Fortunately, Apple has a secret weapon in this space. The debut of the M1 chip in late 2020 blurred the lines between the iPhone, iPad, and Mac by unifying them into a common architecture. Suddenly, iPad and iPhone apps could technically be run on macOS. Apple didn’t allow this for iPhone apps, but it did open the door to their iPad counterparts — as long as developers were on board with that idea.
However, this compatibility goes both ways. If an M-series chip can run an iOS app, then an A-series chip from an iPhone or lower-end iPad can also run macOS, and that’s precisely how Apple plans to create its most affordable MacBook ever.
Rumors of a MacBook powered by an iPhone chip first appeared last summer, and they’ve only gained steam since. While analyst Ming-Chi Kuo provided the specs, suggesting Apple would go with an A18 Pro from the iPhone 16 Pro lineup and a 12.9-inch LCD screen to make it a bit more compact, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman gave us the business case: taking the fight to Chromebooks.
This new “MacBook” — likely to have a suffix-less name to match the base iPad and hearken back to the MacBooks of old — is rumored to start at $600, a surprising report in December revealed Apple has also tested an A15-powered version. Some reports believe this suggests Apple has an even cheaper sub-$500 model in the works, but it was more likely just a prototype design that was dismissed.
Regardless of what it turns out to be, it’s bound to be a game-changer. While most $700 Windows laptops are still struggling with battery life, an affordable MacBook based on an A18 Pro will offer flagship-level neural processing (NPU) performance and outstanding battery life at a budget price point.
There’s also reason to believe we won’t have to wait much longer. Gurman and others have already predicted it will launch in the first half of the year, and now a new report from China’s Mirror Daily (via AppleInsider) has offered some additional supply chain insights, nailing down some more specs and even a predicted sales volume.
The report confirms the A18 Pro chip, 8 GB of RAM, which seems like a given for Apple Intelligence support, but also suggests the price will be a bit higher than we’ve heard, coming in at $699–$799. Earlier reports had pegged it as starting at $599, although these are always just best guesses when it comes to supply chain reports, as they can only estimate Apple’s costs and don’t have any way of knowing what Apple will actually set the selling price at.
Mirror Daily also believes that Apple will sell five to eight million of these entry-level MacBooks in the first year, accounting for 22–36 percent of MacBook sales over the same time period. This aligns with Kuo’s analysis from last summer.
It’s also fair to say that $600 was an optimistic number from before component prices began rising. Unlike the iPhone, Apple has more flexibility on setting the price for a product category that doesn’t exist yet. Still, that $599 price seems to be a sweet spot for Apple, as that was the price at which it quietly kept selling the original M1 MacBook Air — not refurbished, but new — likely as a way of testing the waters for a new base MacBook to permanently fill that slot. However, it’s also possible that $599 could be the educational price, which is typically around $100 or 10 percent lower than the retail. That said, even at $699 it undercuts the most affordable MacBook Air by $300.
It remains an open question as to exactly when the new MacBook will be announced. Apple is widely expected to unveil the iPhone 17e this month — possibly as soon as February 19 — with an A18-powered 12th-gen iPad possibly alongside that launch or shortly thereafter. The new MacBook would make for a trifecta of new budget products, which means a release in the next few weeks isn’t out of the question, and we’re also expecting an iPad Air and MacBook Air, which could round out the lineup consistent with Apple’s previous spring refresh cycles.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
