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Apple could be looking to bring out a successor to its lower cost MacBook
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims that Apple intends to launch a MacBook using the processor currently in the iPhone 16 Pro, as part of a plan to produce a significantly lower-cost Mac.
Apple has been designing its A-series processors for the iPhone — and originally the iPad — since its A4 release in 2010. Consequently, when Apple Silicon’s M-series was first announced for Mac, comparisons were made between the then-current Intel Macs and the existing A-series processors.
Now according to Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is going to turn that theoretical comparison into reality by making a MacBook that runs on an iPhone’s A-series processor.
Kuo is unusually specific in his claims. He says that this new lower-cost MacBook will:
- Enter mass production at the end 2025 or early 2026
- Have an A18 Pro processor
- Have approximately a 13-inch screen size
- Come in silver, blue, pink, and yellow
The A18 Pro processor is currently used by Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Then Kuo further claims that Apple plans to sell between five and seven million of the devices in 2026. Between this and other MacBook devices, Kuo says Apple wants to get back to the COVID peak of 25 million sold across 2026.
The one area Kuo has no claimed detail on is pricing, but that sales estimate is aggressive, which implies a lower price. If the estimated screen size is correct, that would mean this Mac has the same size display as the MacBook Air, which is already the lowest-cost Mac.
Switching from an M-series to an A-series would certainly enable lower production costs, as the current Mac processors are physically larger and more complex than the iPhone ones. The A-series have fewer CPU and GPU cores, and are not really built for the same heavy workload as a Mac.
That would immediately mean that the low-cost Mac would not be suitable for power users, which then implies it would be much more of a casual or consumer device.
There’s no indication that it would run iOS or iPadOS, but only an implication that it would continue to run macOS in some form.
Having some Macs on the M-series and some on the A-series sounds complex from a marketing perspective. Except Apple already has a similar split with the iPad, and the company always sells on features instead of processor specifications.
If the claim is correct, then this could be Apple effectively bringing back a version of the MacBook — as opposed to the MacBook Air or the MacBook Pro. While it had keyboard issues for many users, and was smaller than Kuo’s claim of 13-inches, the MacBook had a lot going for it at launch in 2015.
And when it was discontinued without a direct replacement in 2019, it was also much missed.
Note that Ming-Chi Kuo is no longer as accurate as he was just a few years ago, but he does have sources in the supply chain, and he has got things right. He now almost never specifies whether his claims are leaks from sources or just his speculation, but equally this claim has more precise detail than usual.
