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Let's see. I know they are playing the long game, but you're grossly underestimating how big the market for cheap stuff is. Even if it's subsidized by spyware.

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).

Every time I see the selection of cheap laptops/tablets/phones I wonder "why even try to combat climate change?".

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 know many people with cheap laptops running for >5 years. Vendors like Asus have stepped up their game considerably.

On the other hand, people using cheap devices usually don't rely on them so much, so the higher consumption is compensated by the lower overall usage, or have made the real environmental savy choice.

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.

I checked, they have 8 under 400euro, all of which are celerons or chromebooks -- generally much more limited than a modern iPad.

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 haven't seen an $400 laptop you can upgrade the memory for. Perhaps they exist, but I've never seen one.

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.

My Asus 1215B, came with 4GB, I have upgraded it to 8GB, 300 euros was its selling price 10 years ago, bundled with a Linux distribution.

I've bought a number of them over the years. Refurbished last-generation Thinkpads are generally on the order of $400-$500.