Remember when Steve updated the Steve grid to include the Mac Mini and MacBook Air.
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Apple to Sell Low-Cost 12-Inch and 13-inch MacBooks for $700 or Less
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We're only talking a couple hundred bucks difference in price point aren't we between this lower priced MacBook and the MBA? By the time it launches the M1 chip will be 4-5 years old and just like the iPhone SE recycled the older/surplus chips of earlier iPhones I'd expect the new MacBook to do the same for older M-chips.
Add a high quality plastic body (cheaper than machined aluminium), a lower quality LCD (somehow marketed as 'Retina' regardless) and I don't think it's far off the lower price point.
I do think the MBA becomes a little less relevant though. For what I use my current M2 MBA for I expect I'll be able to do all of it on a lower cost MacBook just fine.
I doubt that. I get 10 years use out of my Apple laptops. Just shipped my 2015 mbp to my friend who needed a new computer. My 2010 mbp, retired that in 2022.
This Lenovo Yoga Book was slick, very light and very thin. It felt quite premium and solid because of precise very sturdy metal hinges (they looked unbreakable). It felt positively different to hold it in your hands from the normal laptops. When closed it felt like one unbreakable very solid compact metal piece. And I think it was not too much expensive for what it . Ports: micro USB, mini HDMI, audio jack, micro SSD and some versions with LTE sim slot. Anyway I wish that Apple could get inspiration from that.
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Generally the SE products don't use old CPUs though. The iPhone SEs are almost always old chassis, old cameras, old screens, but recent or current SoCs.
The current A* lineup is almost as fast as the M1, plus has newer architecture, plus runs at lower power.
I just don't see the argument for "just give us old M1s in a cheap laptop"... that is what they're doing selling the old M1 MacBook Air already.
Time will tell.
Bring back the white plastic laptops, you cowards!!!
Nope. Air should be premium LIGHT AND SMALL, Pro should be premium PERFORMANCE. Normal Macbook should be a cheap, plastic one with lower display resolution at 14".
Ahh, right. Sorry, it's been quite a while. Between the iBook and the various MacBooks, there was quite a parade of white plastic laptops coming from Apple before they finally settled into the unbody aluminum style.
Off topic, but I remember people being really pissy when they dropped the name "PowerBook"
The stuff people get worked up over! Things really don't change.It will forever frustrate me that somehow Steve Jobs sold "simplified product matrix" as something is good for customers, when it was primarily done to save Apple money, reduce customer choice, and funnel customers into successful products.
A simple small product matrix results in less customer choice.
It is good for Apple, but it isn't necessarily good for us.
I will gladly accept a more complicated product line of various price points than Apple only offering a few profitable SKUs with limited user choice.
The simple product grid was marketing, nothing more.
They already did with the butterfly keyboard machines
Because Google sells data, they need people to use their services, not their hardware. So they don't care that people who had a chromebook as kids will never go near another one ever, if they keep using gmail and google search. But right now Apple is still in the selling hardware business, they can't destroy their brand with useless junk like that. Another factor is that while google buys the cpus, Apple makes them, which means there's a negligable cost difference between an a16 and an m2. Their marginal cost is only the cost of the extra silicon and what tsmc charges. Going anywhere under 8GB ram or 256GB ssd is also a minimal cost saving. Where they can save big is the body and the display.
Disagree. Apple is much, much larger now than when that grid was introduced and can now offer customers 3 tiers of products, instead of just 2 now.
Remember the iPhone 5C?
Yeah, nobody does. Because it didn’t sell. Plastic is over. Done with.
Is the Apple Watch SE plastic? No
Is the iPhone SE plastic? No
Why would a MacBook SE be plastic?
The big cost is larger screens, larger batteries, which is why prices go up as Apple pushes bigger phones & laptops.
Using previous generation designs keeps costs very low; just stick a modern underclocked (or fewer cores) 3nm M3 in a 13” MacBook Air and you’ve got a $749 device with good $$ margins.
Maybe a new M3 Lite cpu?
nearly everyone i went to school with had those black and white macbooks, seems like a weird product to not have any true successor, but this could really take off. it'll be interesting to see what kind of compromises it makes over the air/pro, but a 12" or smaller is really missing from the lineup right now
Just branding 😉Isn't that what the A17 Pro is?
Gotta have an M chip in a macOS product
That's definitely one way Apple can do it. I'd recommend the following;
iPad SE, iPad, iPad Pro
MB SE, MB, MBP
iPhone SE, iPhone, iPhone Pro
AirPods SE, AirPods, AirPods Pro
It would provide consistency in their branding across their major product lines.
If that was true they wouldn't have made the iPhone SE or the Mac Mini. They say a lot of things that are all excuses for them to make the decisions they do, but the fact of the matter is they'll follow the path that makes them more money, which in this case because of inflation is more affordable Macs, especially since a low cost Macbook has been the #1 request for everyone for years.
One could argue in favor of a 3x2 grid, especially since Apple itself pretty quickly moved in that direction after introducing the Mac mini.
A 12" MB with A17 Pro, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD shouldn't have an issue starting at $599 / $699
If i could buy an 11 or 12-inch MacBook, I would sell my iPad and current MacBook in a minute. Ironically that's most likely the reason I can't buy an 11 or 12-inch Macbook.
This right here. There was a time when the 12” MacBook was basically ubiquitous. I think bringing a product in this class back into the lineup is good. Apple’s base prices have shot upward over the last decade. Entry level hardware is important to offer.