I expect them to have an iPad that can fill this niche for $400 when you include a keyboard. Perhaps they already do.
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.
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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.