As early as tomorrow, Apple will be unveiling its highly anticipated low-cost MacBook. It’ll be powered by an A18 Pro chip, offer a slightly smaller display, but still hit on all of the core Mac features people know and love.
The biggest point of debate has been the price point. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple believes it’ll be an ‘incredible value,’ and may even convince a lot of Windows and Chromebook users to switch.
MacBook rumor recap
We’ve been hearing about Apple’s first lower-cost MacBook offering for nearly a year now, but to recap, the budget MacBook will offer the following:
- Smaller 12.9-inch display, likely with lower brightness and no True Tone support
- Aluminum chassis, with a number of ‘fun’ color options
- A18 Pro chip from iPhone 16 Pro lineup, possibly 8GB of RAM
- Reduced storage options, potentially only offering 256GB and 512GB
- Much lower starting price, as low as $599
It’s all sounded quite exciting – and we should be seeing it as soon as tomorrow, when Apple is set to kick off a week of announcements from Monday, March 2 through Wednesday, March 4.
Apple believes it’ll be an ‘incredible value’
According to Gurman, Apple internally believes it’ll be an “incredible value” – potentially driving loads of PC and Chromebook buyers to switch ecosystems:
Internally, the low-end MacBook is being described as an “incredible value,” with Apple believing the launch is going to drive a serious number of switchers from Windows machines and Chromebooks. It could even compel iPhone users without computers to buy their first Mac.
Gurman also reports that there might be a lot of demand on launch day, with retail employees being warned that they may need to work longer hours – akin to what would happen on an iPhone launch day. There’ll also be ‘an entire table dedicated to one of the new products,’ likely the new low cost MacBook.
Only time will tell if this new MacBook will truly be a hit. Personally, while I do think the new MacBook will be highly compelling, I don’t think anything about the rumors really suggests it’ll get a lot of day one hype from consumers – it might be a slow burn. Apple seems to think otherwise though, so perhaps there’s a key detail we’re not seeing yet.
Wrap up
As a refresher, Apple will launch this new low-cost MacBook and other new Apple products as soon as tomorrow. The company will kick off on Monday with an online announcement, followed by additional announcements on Tuesday, and a final announcement accompanied by an in-person media event on Wednesday, March 4.
It isn’t clear exactly how the announcements will play out, but the major rumored announcements are iPhone 17e, the low-cost MacBook, a new MacBook Air with M5, a new MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max (and the current design), as well as iPad and iPad Air refreshes.
My favorite Apple accessory recommendations:
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