As stated since 2017, as soon as Apple move to their own Silicon now known as Apple Silicon, there is no reason why they cant have a MacBook SE for $699 all while keeping the same margin. ( Edit: Although in typical Apple fashion, low cost probably mean $799, which still would allow them to claim this is a historical new low cost MacBook, as the previous was $899 MacBook Air 11". Probably worth pointing out in case anyone dont know, Apple already sell an M1 MacBook Air with 128GB storage at $799, but it is only to education only. )
I am just surprised it took them this long. Although the sales of Mac were so good I guess they had zero reason to play this card until now.
Why sell MacBooks for $699 when you can sell them for $1200?
Now they have probably hit the limit for the number of $1200 laptops they can sell, so probably want to broaden their market position (being careful not to cannibalise the number of $1200 laptops they are selling).
They have to be REALLY careful. I have a MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM and an M1 for personal use, work insisted on getting a 16" MacBook Pro M2 with 32GB of RAM and it's completely wasted.
There is zero reason for me to have anything but the cheapest MacBook Pro/Air, in fact the smaller screen size mean I'm more likely to use it outside the office, meaning I get more use from it. I'm not allow to use it without a monitor an keyboard most of the time anyway, so for most hours of the day the screen size isn't important.
For Go, Python, shell scripting and admin tasks the M1 Air is perfectly fine and if they made a cheaper version that would probably cover most/all of my home usage.
Because of price discrimination. By offering a cheaper product, a producer can capture more producer surplus by capturing users who would never have bought at the previous price point. This also allows the company to sell their higher end product at a greater price because the efficient price moves upwards when the lower demand folks get factored out.
I've actually come to love Chromebooks. We keep one in the kitchen as a general recipe machine/need to pay a bill or whatever. It's cheap, it upgrades itself, the battery is really good, and there's no need for my wife or I to run anything on it outside of a browser.
I don't know why I'd pay a premium for a Mac with that use case. Garageband? I'm certainly not going to be playing games on it.
I've never understood why "I can't see a use for this in my own life" is relevant to whether there is a market for something.
If they release it, I guarantee someone will have thought long and hard over the profitability, there will have been exhaustive market projections, they may even have a long-term strategy with products no-one even knows about yet that dovetails in.
Apple play the long game, they don't release things on a whim.
My brother is a public high school teacher, so I'm somewhat familiar. They're to schools, where the objective is to have something that's cheap, easy to administer, and locked down. They also tie into Google Classroom/GSuite and have limited local storage. Many Chromebooks aren't given to a specific student, but rolled out in carts and handed out during a "computer lab" time.
While a Mac would work, a cart full of Macs is radically more expensive than a cart full of Chromebooks. A family friend is a music teacher that uses Logic, so maybe that's a use case, or iOS development.
Well, I think it all depends on why someone is buying a Chromebook.
Is it because they want a cheap clamshell with a keyboard? (Tablets adjust poorly to this use case.)
Is it because they want a cheap general-purpose computer?
I've seen enough non-institutional users of Chromebooks to see that there is a market for them. (I had one of the original demo units and really liked it.) I can see why Apple would want to get a piece of that market.
That's incorrect. All current and recent-ish Chromebooks get at least eight years from date of release. And with the move to separate Chrome (the browser) from the OS, it will be possible to update the browser even after system upgrades are finished.
Google uses the term AUE (automatic update expiration) for the end of service. They provide a list of AUE dates here:
The model I have has an auto-update expiration in 2030, but that is a common criticism that they don't surface the AUE date when you're buying one. I checked here before purchasing: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en
As part of the Lacros update Google is making, the OS can be updated separately from the browser so they'll continue to receive browser updates even after AUE.
1. Keep in mind this rumor is weak. It's from someone without a track record.
2. I don't believe this a market for Apple. To compete in the Chromebook market, largely education, it's about all about volume and cost (How many Chromebooks can I get per $1,000 I spend?). And the current per-unit cost is about $250.
3. Education institutions could get M1 MacBook Airs for $699, but they don't for two main reasons: 1. they're over twice as much as a $250 Chromebook, and 2. they're far less durable than a $250 Chromebook. And replacement rates are very high in the education markets.
4. One possible way Apple might be able to compete is to make durable, cheap ($499 or less) MacBooks and then commit to ~7 year OS updates. A little more upfront cost, but customers would probably save on long-term hardware and staffing costs.
Right now, we're throwing away perfectly usable Chromebooks because they are on something like a 4 year OS lifecycle.
An international perspective, related to cited educational use -
iPads are huge in Asia for private schools. Chromebooks barely register. An additional $500 over 3 years won't register much in terms of total private education costs; I can see a role where the demand for total Apple products (applebook+iPhone+iPad+iStuff) is complimented, not substituted.
The only thing people are missing here is that it's not just about the hardware, it's about Chrome in particular.
Our school system "requires" the use of the Chrome browser because of the third-party plugins that only support Chrome. The school board thinks the best way to do that is... of course... to buy Chromebooks.
They're awful. Terribly slow, constantly breaking, and a total disaster. I'd love to see MacBooks come into use here, but sadly it's not just about the hardware. The school board has to stop being lured by shitty software vendors.
Jobs scorned the “Chromebook” segment (I can’t even recall what the jargon was... “netbook”?) when the analysts were crying that apple would die without it. There’s a different team on board now but I’d bet the logic is unchanged.
But they aren’t ignoring this segment, rather they’ve differentiated the iPad instead. For you (I assume) and me this is absurd, but then again the Chromebook is pretty useless for most HN readers too.
Different input devices really do need different UI controls, if you want a comfortable and polished experience.
You can just do it anyway and expect the user to 'deal with it', but you end up with experiences that people just don't really like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Tablet_PC
There is something to be said about the laptop form factor and macOS enabling productivity. That said, I would definitely see the guts of an iPad being put in the frame of a laptop with macOS.
Obvious strategy for price segmentation: it runs full macOS but can only install/run apps from the app store, and has no Terminal.app. At a stroke that partitions the market so developers and admin UNIX lover types can't buy them. Pro media users can't either because not enough RAM. But it runs Safari and iLife.
I assume this will be lower cost through plastic casing, M1, and low RAM/storage.
Currently the M1 is sufficient for 90%+ of the population (IMO), it is the RAM/storage that will outdate most Apple computers. If Apple sells this in the $599-799 range with 8GBs of RAM that would be a solid offering for most K-12 schools.
We already have... they've destroyed reparability by soldering in the SSD and the RAM, and they turn into soft-bricked e-waste every time someone donates one and doesn't remove their Apple cloud account first.
They reduced the need to repair due to disk or RAM failure by getting rid of the connectors.
I am not claiming they did this out of the sweetness of their hearts, but I do challenge your first point.
I believe apple could fix the “didn’t log out of iCloud” problem if they want, even if only through through some special apple-only refurb process. They would have to have some way to figure out n if it were stolen or legitimately discarded. But they have no incentive to do this.
When I covered IT hardware companies on Wall Street, I heard Apple's CFO say that his company could release a $799 computer "but we don't want to".
Around the same time, at an investor dinner with the Dell CFO, an attendee asked how sales were of a $299 computer on Dell's print catalog cover. The CFO replied, "the problem with advertising a $299 computer is that people want to buy it".
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I am just surprised it took them this long. Although the sales of Mac were so good I guess they had zero reason to play this card until now.
Now they have probably hit the limit for the number of $1200 laptops they can sell, so probably want to broaden their market position (being careful not to cannibalise the number of $1200 laptops they are selling).
There is zero reason for me to have anything but the cheapest MacBook Pro/Air, in fact the smaller screen size mean I'm more likely to use it outside the office, meaning I get more use from it. I'm not allow to use it without a monitor an keyboard most of the time anyway, so for most hours of the day the screen size isn't important.
For Go, Python, shell scripting and admin tasks the M1 Air is perfectly fine and if they made a cheaper version that would probably cover most/all of my home usage.
Cheapest in stock I see on their site is M2 Air for 899
I got an M1 Air when it came out and an M2 Pro for work, and other than the 16 vs 32 GB, it’s very similar in terms of performance.
I assume it’d be more apparent if i did 3d modeling or video production, but it works very well as a dev machine.
I don't know why I'd pay a premium for a Mac with that use case. Garageband? I'm certainly not going to be playing games on it.
If they release it, I guarantee someone will have thought long and hard over the profitability, there will have been exhaustive market projections, they may even have a long-term strategy with products no-one even knows about yet that dovetails in.
Apple play the long game, they don't release things on a whim.
While a Mac would work, a cart full of Macs is radically more expensive than a cart full of Chromebooks. A family friend is a music teacher that uses Logic, so maybe that's a use case, or iOS development.
Is it because they want a cheap clamshell with a keyboard? (Tablets adjust poorly to this use case.)
Is it because they want a cheap general-purpose computer?
I've seen enough non-institutional users of Chromebooks to see that there is a market for them. (I had one of the original demo units and really liked it.) I can see why Apple would want to get a piece of that market.
Google uses the term AUE (automatic update expiration) for the end of service. They provide a list of AUE dates here:
https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en#zip...
As part of the Lacros update Google is making, the OS can be updated separately from the browser so they'll continue to receive browser updates even after AUE.
Yes, that is exactly why I need one. I'm not joking when I say that is the only reason.
Other applications that run on Windows or Linux have been very confusing to me in comparison. Garageband always felt intuitive.
2. I don't believe this a market for Apple. To compete in the Chromebook market, largely education, it's about all about volume and cost (How many Chromebooks can I get per $1,000 I spend?). And the current per-unit cost is about $250.
3. Education institutions could get M1 MacBook Airs for $699, but they don't for two main reasons: 1. they're over twice as much as a $250 Chromebook, and 2. they're far less durable than a $250 Chromebook. And replacement rates are very high in the education markets.
4. One possible way Apple might be able to compete is to make durable, cheap ($499 or less) MacBooks and then commit to ~7 year OS updates. A little more upfront cost, but customers would probably save on long-term hardware and staffing costs.
Right now, we're throwing away perfectly usable Chromebooks because they are on something like a 4 year OS lifecycle.
iPads are huge in Asia for private schools. Chromebooks barely register. An additional $500 over 3 years won't register much in terms of total private education costs; I can see a role where the demand for total Apple products (applebook+iPhone+iPad+iStuff) is complimented, not substituted.
Our school system "requires" the use of the Chrome browser because of the third-party plugins that only support Chrome. The school board thinks the best way to do that is... of course... to buy Chromebooks.
They're awful. Terribly slow, constantly breaking, and a total disaster. I'd love to see MacBooks come into use here, but sadly it's not just about the hardware. The school board has to stop being lured by shitty software vendors.
Yes, I'd love to vote them out.
I wouldn't be surprised if the school were sold on these plugins on the basis that you can use them using only a Chromebook.
But they aren’t ignoring this segment, rather they’ve differentiated the iPad instead. For you (I assume) and me this is absurd, but then again the Chromebook is pretty useless for most HN readers too.
Currently the M1 is sufficient for 90%+ of the population (IMO), it is the RAM/storage that will outdate most Apple computers. If Apple sells this in the $599-799 range with 8GBs of RAM that would be a solid offering for most K-12 schools.
I am not claiming they did this out of the sweetness of their hearts, but I do challenge your first point.
I believe apple could fix the “didn’t log out of iCloud” problem if they want, even if only through through some special apple-only refurb process. They would have to have some way to figure out n if it were stolen or legitimately discarded. But they have no incentive to do this.
Around the same time, at an investor dinner with the Dell CFO, an attendee asked how sales were of a $299 computer on Dell's print catalog cover. The CFO replied, "the problem with advertising a $299 computer is that people want to buy it".