A cheap MacBook powered by an iPhone chip? Here’s how it could work

Macworld

Apple’s most affordable new laptop is a $999 MacBook Air. For a lot of people, that’s still too expensive, especially when compared to Chromebooks and budget PCs. But Apple may finally be doing something about that.

According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple plans to release a brand-new MacBook model that’s designed for the low-cost market. The laptop will not use an M-series chip, but an A18 Pro, the same chip found in the iPhone 16 Pro. Kuo believes it will have a 13-inch display and come in blue, pink, silver, and yellow.

Kuo claims that the new laptop will become available either at the end of this year or the beginning of 2026. Apple has established late fall as the timeframe for the MacBook Pro releases, and the company is expected to update that laptop to the M5 this year. If Apple doesn’t release the new A18 Pro-based laptop at the same time, the company could launch it alongside the M5 MacBook Air update in 2026, which usually arrives in the first quarter.

The use of an A18 Pro is interesting. It’s an iPhone chip, but Apple’s A- and M-series chips are based on the same general architecture–the M chips take advantage of the MacBook’s size and are more equipped to handle larger processing tasks. An A18 Pro MacBook will be able to do everything a M-series MacBook can, but it will be slower. In our past reviews, the A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro has a Geekbench Multi-Core score of 8048, while the M4 MacBook Air’s score is 14680, but it will still be plenty capable.

A16 Pro vs. M-series chips: Geekbench 6.4






Results are expressed as Geekbench scores. Higher scores/longer bars are faster.

In fact, compared to all of the base-level M chips, the A18 Pro is even slower than the M1 that was released five years ago, though the difference is nominal. Even if Apple can improve the performance of an A16 Pro in a MacBook, it will feel like an M1 MacBook Air–which isn’t bad at all. Even today, an M1 MacBook Air is a good laptop for a lot of people who only use it for basic tasks such as email and web browsing.

The use of a 13-inch display is also interesting. While the display will likely be similar to that of the 13-inch MacBook Air–an LED backlit panel–what will Apple do to maintain the profile difference between this laptop and the Air? The 13-inch Air is 0.44 inches (1.13 cm) thick and weighs 2.7 pounds (1.24 kg). At first, it would seem as though Apple would need to make this new laptop thicker and heavier to avoid negating the Air’s airiness, but that may not be the case because Apple could emphasize the Air’s mix of performance and portability.

Offering the new laptop in blue, pink, silver, and yellow brings back memories of the iBook and its candy colors. But that also raises the question: will these laptops have aluminum cases? Kuo doesn’t offer details on the case material. Apple ditched plastic laptop cases years ago, but that doesn’t mean it won’t return. Plastic is cheaper than aluminum, and Kuo reports that Apple’s goal is to sell 25 million MacBook units a year, which would be a 5 million increase. To move 5 million units, Apple may have to bring the price significantly lower, and plastic may allow the company to do that.

MacRumors reports that there may be references to this new laptop in the code of Apple Intelligence. Kuo doesn’t offer any more specifics about the laptop, though if this rumor holds up, we should hear more about it in the coming months.