Ultra-Affordable Apple MacBook May Be Inbound As Siri Overhaul Gets Indefinitely Delayed
A new report cites Taiwanese supply chain sources as indicating that Apple's ready to fire a broadside across the affordable laptop market, in the form of a new 12.9" MacBook inspired by the existing Air model. The publication estimates this machine would retail for $599 to $699, putting it squarely in the territory of affordable laptops, where machines with a high build quality are quite rare.
The 12.9" display would be slightly smaller than the 13.6" of the standard Air, and rumor has it that the machine will be powered by an Apple A8 Pro SoC, matching the same one inside the iPhone 16 Pro. That chip has two Everest 4.05 GHz performance cores alongside four Sawtooth 2.24 GHz efficiency cores. Given a MacBook's casing allows for much more thermal headroom than a phone's, it's possible that Apple could tweak the design for higher clocks. There's no word on the amount of RAM or storage, but we're going to guess that given the price point, it'll very likely be 8 GB of memory and a 256 GB SSD. We'd also venture the display probably won't be a Retina model, but for the asked amount, we're not complaining.
A hypothetical render of the hypothetical 12.9" MacBook
DigiTimes claims that some of the new MacBook's components are entering production in Q3, for a likely final assembly at Quanta's facilities in Q4. That would pin a potential release date as early as the start of 2026, if not earlier still. In our opinion, if this machine materializes, it's hard to overstate how aggressive the price point is, potentially sending shockwaves through the non-gaming laptop industry. Normally, for $599 to $699, it's hard to find a well-rounded machine that also has high build quality, a good touchpad, and long battery life. If Apple pulls off this move, it can make this budget MacBook the default choice for most markets, particularly in more price-sensitive areas like Europe and Asia.
Now on the second topic, it seems like Apple's AI division isn't having the best of summers. According to Bloomberg, Apple is delaying its much-touted upgrades to Siri until 2026 at the earliest, with the complete functionality looking to arrive in 2027. The company has been running ads about its Apple Intelligence assistance for six months now, and its presentation on the topic at WWDC 2025 had no shortage of hype, with the company proudly claiming that Siri could use your personal information to answer queries and take actions of many types, as well as control other apps.
However, Bloomberg states that according to its sources at Apple, the Siri/AI project is quite buggy, and that attempts to fix the main issues proved fruitless. Indeed, some employees reportedly think that Tim Cook or the board might have to play dancing chairs with the team in charge of the AI project in a bid to improve the timeline. Apple has long been criticized for not hopping on in earnest into the AI bandwagon, and this latest development indicates the troubles are likely to continue, particularly in the light of the iPhone 17's upcoming release in September.
When Apple presented the iPhone 16 to the world, it claimed it was "built from the ground up for Apple Intelligence", but as it stands, iOS 18 doesn't have much to show for it, and it's likely that iOS 19 will only offer a partial set of the promised features. Some reporters believe that the full experience as currently advertised won't arrive until iOS 20 in 2027. Apple knows this, as it has sent guidance to its AppleCare representatives, tell them that "If customers ask about the timing of these Siri features, reiterate that we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year". Given how many companies are shoehorning AI assistant functionality into every product, regardless of whether it's useful or not, perhaps Apple taking the time to do it properly will be worth the wait?
