Apple's More Affordable MacBook Design Leaks With A Pleasant Surprise
There has been considerable chatter over the past several months about Apple releasing a lower-cost MacBook, perhaps in an attempt to combat the growing army of budget Windows laptops and Chromebooks. If such a thing comes to fruition, there will obviously need to be concessions made to lower the cost, but the overall design could end up being more premium than some might have anticipated.
Bearing in mind that nothing is yet official, rumor has it one of the concessions Apple will make is a shift away from its M-series silicon to an A18 Pro chip, the same as found in the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max. For reference, the A18 Pro is a 64-bit Arm chip with 6-core CPU, 6-core GPU, and 16-core neural engine with support for Apple Intelligence.
In comparison, the latest generation MacBook Air models feature Apple's M4 silicon, while the newest MacBook Pro laptops sport a mix of M4 (M4 Pro and M4 Max) and M5 options.
It's also rumored that the cheaper MacBook will have a smaller display compared to the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. The expectation is that it will debut with a 12.9-inch display, though there is no mention of the type of display (we'd guess IPS over OLED) or specs like the resolution and refresh rate. The only thing we can reasonably assume is that it will not support touch inputs, because that's not a Mac thing (not yet, anyway).
Image edited with Grok for a light blue appearance
All that said, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman claims in the latest issue of his Power On newsletter that one area where Apple will not cut any corners is in the MacBook's build quality. According to Gurman, Apple managed to develop a new manufacturing process that allows it to forge premium aluminum shells more quickly. It's said that the technique is both faster and cheaper than the current process for existing MacBooks.
Additionally, Gurman claims Apple will be targeting both students and enterprise customers, the latter of which is somewhat of a surprise, given the A18 Pro rumor. And as Apple is prone to do on its more value-driven product offerings, the upcoming MacBook is said to come in a variety of "playful colors."
We'll have to wait and see how much of that is true, and perhaps not long—Apple is reportedly aiming for a launch as early as next month. It will also be interesting to see where pricing lands. As a point of reference, the MacBook Air (13-inch, M4, 16GB/256GB) starts at $999, and we've seen it on sale for as low as $738.04 (it's currently listed for $849.99 on Amazon).
