This makes Windows on Apple M1 devices more attractive. I wonder when Microsoft will take up Apple on their offer to create a bootable OS for their hardware.
The obvious disadvantage is the consumer will get Mac OSX for free with the hardware, and won't be too keen to pay much more to Microsoft. Apple will end up earning most of the revenue.
The strategic disadvantage is that as windows users move to M1 based macs, sales of PC hardware will drop, since the PC ecosystem is hobbled by a lack of deep integration, lower performance CPU's, lower profit margins, less R&D, etc. If volumes of sales drop too, it could trigger a cascade effect (fewer sales causes less R&D causes less desirable products causes fewer sales). That could kill consumer PC's entirely, which would be very bad for the future of Windows.
For this to happen Apple would have to fill in MANY, MANY niches, especially cheaper ones. Apple does not and will not fill those. Well, "never say never", but I don't expect them to sell a $400 laptop, all accessories included (so no sneaky $400 laptop with semi-mandatory accessories which bring the price to $700).
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Also, HA HA. I've checked and I was right. As far as I can see the cheapest one is $329, BUT with 32GB of storage, which is absolutely ridiculous in 2020. 128GB costs $449, and even that's barely enough storage. The keyboard is $159 (!). So the minimum usable laptop replacement from them costs $610, and I'm probably missing some accesories you need and which probably increase the price even further.
Let alone the fact that for the rest of the world Apple products are 10-20-30% more expensive. So this combo probably costs €700 ($800+) in Europe.
Bait and switch.
I don't know if you've noticed, but Apple did release iPhone SE2 which is an almost-flagship at medium price. An iPad with a slightly different iOS and a cheaper than $129 keyboard (there are $50 bluetooh keyboards that work with the iPad, not by apple, that are comparable to the keyboards that come with $300-$400 laptops), perhaps they'll call it "iMac SE" or "iPad SE".
The processor inside last years iPad is a slower, more limited version of the M1. Apple could, and I believe would, release a cheaper Mac-compatible machine, just like they did with the iPhone SE.
It made no sense to do so before the real Mac switched to apple silicon (Intel's offering are both expensive and inefficient for this use). Now it makes perfect sense. It make take a year or two, but it's the logical progression.
Apple are playing the very long game. Saying "you barely have multiple windows" is indication you are not looking farther than the end of 2021.
I doubt Apple wants to be in that market, it's a gross market (low margins, tons of support costs, etc.).
Just to give you an example, French PC site, laptop section for €400 to €600 (they also have 10 or so under €400):
https://www.fnac.com/PC-de-400-a-600-Euro/Par-prix/nsh93675/...
So about 230 (!) products in total, for a single site. In poorer countries, you can find even cheaper laptops.
Similar thing for phones, a $400 phone is not cheap. A $100-150 phone is cheap, like the Huaweis, Honors, Xiaomis, Oppos, Vivos, etc of the world (you don't even get those in the States).
You've got these bottom of the barrel machines that fail very soon, and barely have enough performance as it is. It makes more sense to save up, buy something twice the price and use it for much longer.
It's like the boots theory of wealth. You buy cheap shit over and over again, instead of buying something good that will last many times longer. The sad thing it doesn't just affect you, it affects everything and everyone.
I've never encountered an iPhone owner that didn't bring a charger in their backpacks.
Do you see old people like my father charging their sub 100 € smartphones at Starbucks or young people with shiny high end smartphones?
My father use his smartphone so rarely that the battery lasts exactly as advertised: 2+ days on standby (I believe it's ~60 hours).
He uses no app, except WhatsApp twice a year and Maps, has no background service running, takes a few pictures of his niece and that's it. How much power can he consume? How much is he contributing to the climate change compared to me, his son, that starts the day at 9 am and at 18 is on 20% battery?
An I don't even use the smartphone that much, but hey, WFH, slack and teams are constantly checking for new messages, that friend sent you a message in IG, of course I'm gonna check my timeline. Look, a new notification, Amazon is delivering the package, let me check on the news if the streets are still closed today because they are shooting that Tom Cruise movie (it really happened few days ago!)
Etc. etc. How much of this could be saved?
On the opposite side, the construction workers who renewed my house all used old phones like Nokia 3330 because they need something though and durable that won't die on them after a few hours, in environments where electrical power is not granted, so they go for the thing with the longest battery life on the market which is also the cheapest option and, in the end, the most power efficient.
400euro to 600euro is actually $480-$720 -- which already includes your $600 "iPad + Keyboard + more" straight in its middle. A whole M1-Mac is $1000, which is 825eur, not such a huge stop from 600eur and delivers a ton more.
The iPad hardware is perfectly capable of running full MacOS, and when apple figures out the market segmentation that extracts the maximum revenue, they likely WILL introduce a cheaper Mac to take any money they are currently leaving on the table.
It makes sense to me that it will actually be marketed as an "iPad with keyboard that can run Mac apps", rather tnan a Mac, for the purposes of market segmentation and support (People expect more support from Apple for Macs than they do for iPads, and that factors into the price).
Prediction is hard, especially about the future. But Apple has proved (with iPhone SE, the new M1 Macs, and in other cases) that they are willing to attack any market segment currently held by others.
When they do it, if they do it - they'll do it by cannibalizing sales from others, not from themselves.
I hope you mean recently... like in the last 2-3 years. Because it's a recent trend and I personally hate it. Wasteful as hell.
But it used to be the norm, especially on cheaper laptops.
At that point who knows if tablets as a form factor survived.
To be clear, I think that a tablet (not specifically iPads which are expensive in their segment as any other Apple device, there is no cheap option) could replace most PC nowadays, but to reiterate what's already been said: Apple is not present in too many places, for a reason.
To make an example: I work for a company in Italy with 14 thousands employees.
The laptops they give us software developers today are gonna be the accountants PCs of the future. Unless they break before. In that case they are replaced by the supplier with something with similar specs but new. Probably it will be a different brand, depending on what's available at the moment.
It's not imaginable that a company like this, which is relatively small if we look at the real giants of the World (including many in Italy as well), will replace every PC with tablets, not only for monetary reasons, but because they had to re-train thousands of employees. Being in Italy I'm sure that only talking about it would end up in a strike. No kidding.
But even assuming that it would happen, they would buy cheap Asus tablets.
But even assuming it would be iPads, does this software the company has been using for 15 years runs on it?
The answer is most certainly "no, it doesn't".
Battery life and power efficiency is not a factor in such environments, they prefer to plant trees, be part of a renewable energy consortium or power the offices with solar panels, that they can also spin in PR, than buy Apple devices because they have an incredibly power efficient CPU. It doesn't really matter to them.
And I tell you this knowing that I work there because I know that ethically speaking they are vastly better than the average. They really do care of many small things that many others don't, but Apple ARM CPUs aren't one of them.
That’s your cheap computer right there.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25384346
Just because it could be cheap doesn't mean it will be cheap.
1) Deep integration with what? I do not feel that I am missing anything. So far can do anything I want.
2) What low performance? Depending on money spent desktops and laptops perform just fine. M1 is a good chip but new AMD is faster on single core and on multiple cores it will wipe the floor with M1. So far M1 is more power efficient. I am pretty sure given time AMD/Intel will catch up to that if there is good ROI on that particular quality.
Having Windows running on ARM Macs could deliver a helpful push here and also keep Windows relevant for Mac users. On the other side, there is no greater risk, as Apple isn't taking over the PC market any time soon. Apple will likely increase their market share, but even then it is just a fraction of the total market.
With Intel based CPUs, Windows support was an important feature and selling point so Apple created Bootcamp. Windows ARM is far less appealing that its x86 counterpart was 15 years ago, so Apple didn't add Bootcamp. With their hypervisor it seems like Windows will run just fine in a VM instead.
I'm not sure Microsoft is interested in selling a version of Windows that runs atop MacOS as a child OS. As things currently stand, Windows running on the Mac embarrasses the heck out of the Surface Pro X. That's without decent driver support. How would Microsoft look if the fastest way to run Windows on ARM was as a child OS on a Mac?
What will happen is Microsoft will introduce a shiny new Surface in a barrage of marketing which rips off most characteristics of the M1 Macbook. It will contain an SoC which is a vaguely rebranded off the shelf one. It'll be entirely held together with glue and tape and receive a 0 rating on iFixit. There will be no support network in most countries other than North America where the support will just be terrible anyway. The software situation will be a shit show universally with bugs, slowdowns and problems galore. All the app vendors will refuse to poke it with a 6 foot long shitty stick. Eventually CTOs will buy a few, they will die within 6 months and be left in a corner in the office until their spicy pillows inflate enough to cause alarm and go in the WEEE bin for recycling. Microsoft will puff up its chest like a pigeon and strut around declaring victory. The outcome of this will be all OEM vendors finding an even cheaper way to shift no brand OEM ARM laptops to the lowest bidders via the retail channel now they don't have to pay Intel any money. They will be stuffed to the brim with crappy user experiences and barely working software while microsoft takes their cut from the windows license as it always has done.