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Look up the pricing of “low cost” Chromebook. Do you really think Apple is going to compete with that kind of pricing?

Else, if pinched-budget school is weighing 3-5 Chromebooks vs. 1 “low cost” MB, which do you think will get the order? There’s always a LOT of students to equip. Extrapolate 3-5 to 1 to 300 or 3,000 students and the dollar differences really show.

Want to sell more MBs? Get much more competitive on RAM & SSD. I was literally credit card in hand ready to buy that beautiful, new 15” Air but wanted more than minimum specs. Add some RAM, add some SSD and it’s suddenly at MBpro pricing.

Meanwhile, I also wanted a true PC for old fashioned Bootcamp and was able to buy a fairly loaded gaming PC with 10TB of fast SSD and 32GB of RAM for LESS than Apple charges for only the 8TB SSD upgrade in Macs. One can buy an 8TB stick of fast m.2 at retail for about 1/3rd of that upgrade price right now. Too bad we’re all proprietaried out of even an option of installing it.

Desirable configs are too expensive… by pricing the sole supply of RAM & SSD at many times market rates. That’s great for shareholders if everyone just pays up… but it gave this near-Apple-everything consumer a full stop on buying a spectacular new MB a few months ago.

Maybe it’s time to find a better balance between maximizing shareholder ROI and maximizing consumer value? As is IMO, it feels like it’s 10 for shareholders and 1 for consumers. Yes, pursuit of profit is crucial in every business, but it’s important to not lose sight of the source of those profits. Accumulated goodwill and halo effect has its limits.

“Let them eat cake?” 💰💰💰
Sounds so familiar to my case: bought a refurbished, good as new (1 charge cycle!), 1TB/16 14” M1pro for slightly less than a 512/8 15 mba would cost.
Ssd and ram upgrades are way overpriced: just the upgrade to 1 TB (ie +0.75TB) is more expensive than a PS5 that contains a 0.83TB SSD (and is even faster). Oh and it can play games and includes a controller and all that. And I have seen people in the forums here defending Apple over this…If all weather tyres usually cost 400 dollars to install, but car manufacturer Y charges 1600-2000 dollars for the same tyres (and you have to go via Y to get those), isn’t that a ripoff as well?
 
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This will not make a confusing line-up. Remove the M2 MBP and M1 MBA, and it's pretty simple. Budget, base, pro.

The iPad lineup was fine too until they kept 2 gens of base iPads and decoupled the specs between Air and mini.
 
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I miss dearly my 2009 MacBook plastic unibody.
I would deeply love a recycled plastic unibody design with an M1/M2 on it.

It baffles me they stopped making these.

OIP.eXOXvXopPlo5NERCeBm7ewAAAA


They were low cost, really good, looked nice, and were highly popular. Most people I knew used them because of how good and affordable it was, which is why many have been begging for a Macbook SE so they can get that back.
 
Also,

Apple would never release a macOS device at that price when they're trying so hard to push everyone to switch to iPadOS where they have a very tall and bubbled walled garden.
 
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It baffles me they stopped making these.

OIP.eXOXvXopPlo5NERCeBm7ewAAAA


They were low cost, really good, looked nice, and were highly popular. Most people I knew used them because of how good and affordable it was, which is why many have been begging for a Macbook SE so they can get that back.

Unfortunately, that's the iPad now
But if you think about it: the iPad is cheaper than the MacBook was back then

but the macOS is so much superior
 
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The PC industry is doing just fine lmao. A low cost affordable Macbook ain't gonna ruin the Mac like you think it will since it's just one product out of many others. Did the Mac Mini ruin the Mac when it was introduced? No. It made so many people switch to Mac since there was now a desktop Mac they could afford. (It got me to switch after all)

A low cost Macbook will only bolster the lineup and add even more value to the more expensive Macs, just like the iPhone SE and Apple Watch SE did.

We’ll see. The PC market is doing better today because they managed to claw back a sense of premium computers. There was a long time there where PCs were all cheap plastic and people thought $500 was outrageously expensive for a computer and everything was junk. The MacBook Air and Intel’s attempt to replicate in the “Ultrabook” helped reverse the trend.

I’m just afraid Apple is going to sacrifice quality and it’s going to hurt everyone.
 
For the price of a used high-performance MBA, you can get a piece of garbage made of cheap components with obscenely low storage! Deal of the century!
 
I will remove my 14-inch MacBook Pro and 15-inch MacBook Air off the desk if the 12-inch Mac notebook made a comeback.

No you won't. The display and speaker quality of the 14 inch is too good, and of course it also has a much beefier chip than the low cost Macbook will, and has a proper heatsink unlike the cheap Macbook will probably lack.
 
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I just feel like Google has the advantage because no one wants to use Apple Classroom.

If they opened up Apple Classroom, I bet it could help.
 
Sounds so familiar to my case: bought a refurbished, good as new (1 charge cycle!), 1TB/16 14” M1pro for slightly less than a 512/8 15 mba would cost.
Ssd and ram upgrades are way overpriced: just the upgrade to 1 TB (ie +0.75TB) is more expensive than a PS5 that contains a 0.83TB SSD (and is even faster). Oh and it can play games and includes a controller and all that. And I have seen people in the forums here defending Apple over this…If all weather tyres usually cost 400 dollars to install, but car manufacturer Y charges 1600-2000 dollars for the same tyres (and you have to go via Y to get those), isn’t that a ripoff as well?

I was ready to buy on launch day. My existing MBpro had a dying battery and was nearing the vintaged list. So I thought I would downshift to MBair and save any heavier lifting tasks that I might do on a new MBpro for when I could get back to a loaded Mac Studio.

But I punched in my target specs and was staring a MBpro price for a MBair. That froze the easy purchase and sent me off to look at various MBpro deals that were everywhere at the time... some with better specs for lower pricing.

The pricing frustration led me to deciding to attempt a battery replacement myself. If it worked, I'd keep the old MBpro for a while longer and if it failed, I'd buy "something," though that was much more open than ever before to not necessarily remaining in the walled garden. The "surgery"- while not easy with thoroughly glued-down batteries- was a success: $55 instead of above $2K.

Is my old MBpro as good as a 2023 Air or MBpro? Nope. But more than $2K is still in my pocket and the work is getting done. Bonus: I still have full Windows (not ARM Windows) available on the same machine too when some client needs me to do something that only works in Windows.

The new battery sent battery life back to (what seems like) better than new: much longer than I expected/recalled. So I'm probably good now until about 2025 or so... no matter what might roll out next week... or in 2024.

If the value proposition doesn't improve by then, I may look into the hack to run modern macOS on vintaged hardware and/or go PC laptop for "the road," where I generally need at least some Windows functionality anyway. In all prior purchases for the last approx. 2 decades, I would have never given that a thought. So why now? Because pricing- especially those upgrades- is just too relatively high IMO.

This rumored "cheaper MB" if specs are basically chopped down to deliver the lower price would entirely miss the point... which is not preserving maximized and ever-growing margin but to deliver more value for the price paid. But that's just me. Others likely feel very differently. Some seem to consider fattening margin for the Corp MORE important than value for themselves. I presume they are just more shareholder-minded than consumer-minded... seemingly like Apple Inc. themselves these days.

Now bring on that $2K iPhone and that "starting at" $3K MB and that "starting at" $4K iMac. We'll pay anything if it pleases the Corp. And how soon can we add another $1K to those prices? Shareholders need to feed their families. :rolleyes:
 
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I know there are fans, but a 12in. laptop, particularly a somewhat expensive one (relatively speaking) strikes me as truly absurd. Now an affordable 13in. MacBook could make a killing. A new 13in. with even an M1 chip could make a serious dent in mainstream Windows laptop sales given some people don’t seriously consider a Mac given the price point. But iif one were within reach of their budget, well…

Seriously, for the same price as a current iPad Pro 11 this is doable.
Every other 12in is expensive. That's how a premium laptop looks like, not calling a 15" baking tray Air.
 
Don't do it. The race to the bottom helped put the PC industry in the sad state it is today. I hope they don't start sacrificing standards for the sake of short term sales.
I have no doubt they can do it in a way that doesn’t sacrifice profit margins too much. Apple is good at that. And you know when they say they have a target of $700 that means $799 😉
 
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