Apple is developing a more affordable version of the MacBook, and it’s said to be on the market in less than two weeks. This will be one of the most unique Macs from Apple, because there is nothing like it before.
We’ve rounded up everything we know about the budget MacBook ahead of its March debut.
Design
Rumors about the MacBook’s design make it sound a lot like the MacBook Air. It will have an aluminum chassis in various colors and a 12.9-inch or 13-inch display, depending on the rumor.
It’s possible that the budget MacBook will have a thin and light design, as it will use a lower-power A-series chip that doesn’t require much heat dissipation, but that’s yet to be confirmed. Apple used to have a 12-inch MacBook with a slim design and a low-power Core M chip, and it has been hinted that this new MacBook could be something of a revival of that machine.
Thinner and lighter usually means more expensive Apple products, so a super thin design might not be what Apple is optimizing for. Making a budget MacBook thinner than a MacBook Air could confuse the MacBook line.
For the low-cost iPad, Apple keeps the price down by using older display technology that isn’t as thin, so we can see the same strategy with the low-cost MacBook. A thicker chassis and super-efficient chip could mean long battery life, which would be ideal for educational environments.
Colors
The MacBook will be available in a selection of fun colors, and Apple tested light yellow, light green, blue, pink, silver, and dark gray. Bloomberg. Not all of these colors are likely to ship, but it looks like we’ll be getting at least four of them.
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo thinks the MacBook will be available in yellow, silver, blue and pink, which would be the same colors Apple offers for the iPad.
A series chip
The most consistent rumor we’ve heard about the MacBook is its planned chip. Rather than the M-series Mac chip, Apple plans to use an A-series chip. The budget MacBook is expected to use the A18 Pro chip, which Apple first introduced in the iPhone 16 Pro.
The A18 Pro uses a second-generation 3-nanometer process. It has a 6-core CPU with four powerful cores and two efficient cores along with a 6-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine for AI-based tasks. In the Geekbench benchmarks, the A18 Pro averages a single-core score of 3451 and a multi-core score of 8572. In comparison, the M4 iPad Pro gets a single-core score of 3694 and a multi-core score of 13732 (Apple’s next MacBook Air will use an M4 chip).
The A18 Pro outperforms the M1, a chip that Apple kept for several years in the cheaper version of the MacBook Air. The MacBook A18 wouldn’t be too far from the M4 Mac/iPad chips in terms of single-core performance, but the difference would be in multi-core performance.
A MacBook with an A18 chip would be more than powerful enough for everyday use like browsing the web, creating documents, watching videos, and even light photo and video editing. It won’t be ideal for system-intensive games or tasks like 4K video editing and 3D rendering, but it can handle almost anything an iPhone or iPad can do.
Apple is developing a low-cost MacBook with students in mind, and it looks like it will be Apple’s equivalent of the affordable Chromebooks that students often use.
RAM
Macs start with 16GB of RAM, but the iPhone 16 Pro has 8GB of RAM, which is the minimum for Apple Intelligence. We can expect the A18 Pro MacBook to have at least 8GB of RAM so it can support Apple Intelligence, but it is possible that Apple will give it the 16GB that all Macs have.
Storage
The MacBook Air starts with 256GB of storage, but Apple might launch a budget MacBook with 128GB.
Ports
The A18 Pro chip in the iPhone 16 Pro models does not support Thunderbolt, so the MacBook will be limited to USB-C (10GB/s) and not offer Thunderbolt speeds. This will limit display connectivity, so it’s likely that the A18 Pro MacBook will only support one external display.
Naming
It is not really clear what Apple will name the cheap Mac notebook. We have a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro, so it’s entirely possible that it will be called “MacBook”. Apple has used the MacBook name several times in the past and it is not currently used.
Price
Prices for the MacBook Air start at $999, and the budget MacBook is expected to be much lower.
Apple probably won’t want to undercut the price of its iPad too much. The low-cost iPad with the A16 chip starts at $349, and the iPad Air with the M2 chip starts at $599. A price between $599 and $799 might make the most sense, as it wouldn’t be as expensive as the MacBook Air or iPad Pro, but would come in at or just above the price of the iPad Air.
$599 would be on par with some of the highly rated Chromebook options that people often buy for school use, while $699 or $799 would be in the same general price range but with a slightly more premium price tag. $599 is also the price of the iPhone 16e, Apple’s most affordable iPhone, which uses a slightly less powerful A18 chip.
Launch date
Rumors suggest that the low-cost MacBook will be unveiled at or just before a special Apple experience held in New York, London and Shanghai on March 4. Apple could announce the MacBook in a press release before this experience.
Select members of the media have been invited to the mini event, which is likely to give them a chance to try out the new MacBook and other new devices.