Apple’s current entry-level laptop is the $999 MacBook Air, but analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes Apple is aiming to launch an even more affordable model soon.
He writes on X that Apple will go into production in late 2025 or early 2026 on a new MacBook model that will be powered by the A18 Pro chip, rather than an M-series processor. This is the same chip used in the iPhone 16 Pro line. The machine may feature colorful casing options, including silver, pink and yellow.
Unfortunately, it isn’t yet clear how much more affordable this model will actually be. Kuo says Apple is targeting production in the 5-7 million unit range for 2026, which would represent a significant portion of overall Mac laptop shipments. This suggests a pretty dramatic price point to attract such high volume of sales.
While all Apple Silicon Macs to date have used the higher-powered M-series line, an iPhone chip is certainly powerful enough to capably run a mobile Mac desktop experience.
On Geekbench, the A18 Pro chip’s single-core clocks in at around 3539, trailing only slightly behind the M4 chip found in the Mac mini. There’s a bigger gap on multicore (8772 for A18 Pro vs 15000 for M4), but for a lower-end machine, an average Mac user might not even notice the difference. Many essential computing tasks remain mostly single-core bound affairs. The A18’s multi-core score approximately rivals the original M1 chip from 2020, of which many people still use to this day with adequate performance characteristics.
The success of the new MacBook will revolve around price, and how much cheaper it is than the Air to justify the performance gap. Apple has never ventured lower than the $999 starting price of the Air before, so this would be uncharted territory for customers and the company alike.
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