Apple Readies Cheaper Mac to Rival Chromebooks

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00:00So this is an interesting one. I'm a MacBook user. I also have a Windows-based PC that I use

00:06through work. The main thing is the price differential in the market. MacBooks are

00:11typically very expensive relative to a much broader range of available Windows or other

00:17operating system-based PCs. I think there's a place to start. Tell us about what we know

00:21from the reporting about a new cheaper MacBook. That's right, and thanks for having me. Yeah,

00:26it's really interesting. This would be a pretty big departure from what we've seen from

00:29Apple before of the more premium standpoint with computers, but this would bring it down to a

00:35lower end, probably in the $600 to $800 range. It would be more targeted towards students,

00:42small businesses. It wouldn't be able to do everything, but you'd be able to surf the web,

00:47some documents, some light editing, and it would really open up the market for a lot of people who

00:52might have an iPhone but aren't ready to make that jump. Some MacBooks start at $999 to your point.

00:58These are pretty expensive computers. Do we know anything about the timeline for this,

01:04Samantha? Like, is Apple going to surprise us with this this year, or when do we expect to hear

01:10about it? We're expecting it soon, but it's not eminent. So it's in development. It's already in

01:16production. So we're thinking the first half of next year, probably in the spring, maybe somewhere

01:23between maybe March and June. What has Apple done to, you know, like, sometimes I reflect about how

01:29Apple does something in the iPhone, or it might do it in the wearables category, or even the iPad,

01:34and then it'll say, how do we apply that to a different category like MacBook? Is there any

01:39reporting on, like, how there's a technology transfer that they have got the cost down,

01:43or are they going to the playbook that they've done? Like, a base version iPhone took a long time

01:48to get after having many premium models. Yeah, it's interesting you say that. So my colleague,

01:54Mark Gurman, is reporting that some of the components would obviously be a lot cheaper,

01:59making the price go down, but they might use an iPhone chip, which is very advanced at this point,

02:05and exceeds some that we're seeing in the earlier M chips that are in some of the MacBooks. So they

02:11would be able to take an iPhone chip, put it into a device, and really open it up there. Also,

02:16in other ways, you know, people might not need, you know, certain features, but they are still

02:22looking for battery life. In some cases, they're using an iPad with an external keyboard, but that

02:28really increases the price, too. This would be able to take everything, boil it down, and give people

02:33perhaps an entry point into the ecosystem that they haven't been able to enter before.

02:37I should say that an Apple spokesperson declined to comment on our reporting. Now that's out the

02:43way. We should probably acknowledge the other side of the competition, which is the Chromebook and

02:47other laptop PCs. They are providing more competition to Apple. Exactly. Yeah. So there's

02:55been a lot of success around Chromebooks with Google. I mean, a lot of schools have students using these

03:01devices. Of course, you have Dell and HP as major players as well. A lot of people who

03:07can't afford a premium device will go to these very strong products. So it definitely will, you know,

03:14have a new player involved and it'll really increase competition. We saw some dips yesterday

03:21as far as stock with those related companies as well.