Rumor: Apple to go after Chromebooks with low-cost MacBook
Could this be the return of the 12-inch MacBook?
Aaron Lee, writing for DIGITIMES:
“Apple is reportedly developing a low-cost MacBook series to compete with Chromebook models in the education sector that could be released as early as the second half of 2024, according to industry sources.”
The rest of the piece is behind a paywall that I don’t have access to, but that’s enough information to get our imaginations going.
History is the biggest reason to doubt this rumor. Apple has never tried to be price-competitive with low-end Mac laptops. When the industry was begging Apple to join the netbook craze in the mid-2000s, Apple instead released the MacBook Air. That first edition was pricy, but it remade the PC laptop industry. The last generation 11-inch MacBook Air retailed for $899, which was probably the lowest priced laptop from Apple not specifically helped by education market pricing.
The biggest reason to think there could be something to this rumor? The education market is big, and it’s swung heavily to Chromebooks because they’re just so cheap compared with MacBooks. Apple has had some success marketing iPads to education, but the laptop form factor just refuses to die, and to make an iPad into a laptop requires pricy accessories.
What might a low cost education-aimed Mac look like? I think this could be the revival of the 12-inch MacBook. A smaller screen size with barebones specs would separate it from the MacBook Air line and allow Apple to price it lower. How low would they go? I’d be surprised to see it retail for less than $799. (But maybe sell for $699 exclusively to the education market?) By the time this would ship the M1 MacBook Air would likely be discontinued. A $799 12-inch MacBook with an M1 chip, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD and a single USB-C port might fit the bill.
A MacBook at that price point wouldn’t decimate the Chromebook market for education by any means, but it would definitely get more Macs into more schools. Potentially a lot more.
Wild, wild, wild area of speculation: what if it shipped with iPadOS instead of macOS? There’s a rich world of apps for iPadOS, and an iPad is often a child’s first computer these days. I consider this a low probability of happening, but there’s enough sense to it that I thought it worth mentioning.