Walmart begins selling the Mac for the first time: M1 MacBook Air for $699
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
Purchased new, it is a nearly 4 year old laptop after all.
So we'll see how long the M1s are for sale at Walmart or anywhere, but these computers should be supported until 2029.
If such price point was available in here i would try it.
When I covered IT hardware companies on Wall Street, I heard Apple's CFO say that his company could release a $799 computer "but we don't want to".
Around the same time, at an investor dinner with the Dell CFO, an attendee asked how sales were of a $299 computer on Dell's print catalog cover. The CFO replied, "the problem with advertising a $299 computer is that people want to buy it".
Edit: There have been a number of comments linking to reviews suggesting really poor battery life, however these reviews clearly mention 12th gen Intel processors, with an onboard nvidia GPU in one instance. None of these reviews pertain to the laptop I mentioned above, which features a Ryzen 6850U.
[1]: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m1-vs-amd-ryzen-...
Nobody remembers that brand as being "IBM's laptops", they don't have that to borrow value against, they should take care of the ThinkPad line's reputation.
The Mac just works. The only time the touchpad doesn't work is when you need pixel precise selection like in photo editing, and even then it outshines all Windows touchpads.
All Windows laptops I've had look outdated after two years. I've had three Macbooks, the previous two 5 and 7 years, and both didn't look outdated, not even used
The body, magsafe, touchpad, no stupid privacy settings, disk encryption, no OS licensing - this laptop works for me. With Windows it's always waiting for the time that it doesn't work like expected or doesn't work at all.
is a trope that's been around for what... 15 years now? And unless you're someone who KNOWS they need the RAM (gamers, certain types of creatives, people doing certain types of development), it's proven out over and over again, they probably don't need the RAM!
You might be an exception, sure, but you're not "most people".
But if you can get more RAM for the same price, how is that not better?
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P-and-W-Series-Mobile-...
> So, I get maybe, maybe, 2 hours battery life on my TP P14s Gen 3. It's only a few months old. I've had the battery replaced once but it hasn't helped.
https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/macbook-air-2020-m1
> On the Tom's Guide web browsing battery test, the new MacBook Air lasted an epic 14 hours and 41 minutes.
Let’s assume Tom’s full of shit and the real life battery life is 50% of what their test claims. That’s still almost 4x longer battery life than the thinkpad.
It’s not just 8GB of RAM and extra storage.
> It has the nvidia card, touch screen, i7-1260p, 32GB, all drivers and bios up to date including windows 11
This is not the same laptop I was pointing to. The i7-1260p is much more power hungry than the 6850U, and having a nvidia GPU is definitely going to eat up battery as well.
-The MacBook air M1 screen is amazing: 2560 by 1600 and 227 pixels per inch. The Thinkpad cannot compare
-The MacBook has an ultra low power but similarly performant M1 CPU and don't forget it runs so freaking cool it doesn't even need a fan!!
I'm never going back to an actively cooled laptop ever again. Those days are in the past for me.
it’s so close to being the perfect lower-midrange laptop but the 1 external display (without closing the lid) is a dealbreaker for tons of people. The 15” chassis can handle it just fine for the burst loads the MBA is designed around, and the M3 pro is reduced in scope over the earlier variants already.
The impulse reply is “but they want you to buy the MBP!” and surely that’s missing the whole point of the laddering strategy? Why miss a chance to slot in one more tier to grind people upwards?
but yeah the MBA are literally such a good laptop that they can do this job of peeling people away from x86 while running fully passive, it is a little silly how badly the x86 stuff comes off in comparison. Some laptops check some of the boxes but the apple is just a killer laptop, great KB and trackpad, ok speakers (MBP is definitely better but air is also better than the average tinny laptop speaker), solid screen (MBP is better tho), well-supported Unix environment, etc.
Nowadays, I do far better with a 34" or 49" widescreen format. My home monitor is 32:9 and far better than any 2-monitor setup - even though my machine could easily do 3x external monitors + display.
> you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
The battery life on those laptops is not great and Lenovo’s quality is pretty subpar nowadays.
I have had two different Lenovo ThinkPads with broken hinges within a year and another with a SSD that died within 18 months.
It’s sad to see what they’ve done to the ThinkPad brand.
https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_P...
On that note, Lenovo leadership is being super short sighted in diluting the ThinkPad brand with these models. Didn't they use to have the IdeaPad as the product line made of less durable materials?
- a 15" 1080p (!) screen
- 6 hour battery life (vs 18h)
- plastic frame (vs aluminum)
- inferior cpu performance (Intel Core i7 1255U vs M1)
Though it does have some pros:
- 16gb of ram (vs 8gb)
- 1tb of disk (vs 256gb)
Seems like the M1 MBP is a great option and I'm glad it's more accessible.
[0]: https://www.walmart.com/ip/ASUS-VivoBook-15-15-6-Touchscreen...
It's so hard to know if it's a good quality device or if it'll feel like a cheap plastic toy, but if it has survived being on the show floor at Walmart it's probably pretty durable.
No point on a laptop. Some point if the laptop has a tablet design (removable keyboard or fold-underneath keyboard).
I have a touchscreen on my laptop. Pretty useless to be honest when I used a Windows 10 VM (pointer pass-through) and really useless in Ubuntu.
Presumably Windows 11 has better support?
Performs well, excellent build quality, decent screen, strong battery life, small form factor... Checks most boxes for many people!
I run an i9 MBP 16" as my main battle station and I really do think the UI experience on the M1 is snappier. One day I'll have the excuse to upgrade to the latest M* version for that too and Im looking forward to it. With the M1 you will never hear the processor fan kick on because there isn't one because its not even necessary. Im no AAPL fan boi here but this is a no-brainer 200%.
* Apple doesn't want to break the $999 barrier on their own site, so the M1 Air is just gone
* Apple still has them (or can easily make them) where $699 is a fine price, and so is selling them to Walmart - will they appear elsewhere?
* This will be quite competitive when next to the standard laptops Walmart stocks in-store (usually a few Chromebooks in the $150-300 range, Windows for a bit more but sometimes even a $1400 one).
* The M1 has a lot of life in it, it's now 3+ years old - and works great for me still. They can probably juice it as long as they want just by adding some RAM.
I wonder if this is a "one off" or if Apple will start doing this permanently - the Apple Store is for this generation and last, and everything else, even if still made, is for partners. I don't know when Apple actually stops making various phones.
Then when I travelled for a few months I only took the Air with me, and it’s incredible how I could pretty much do all of my day to day development on it. The single core performance being pretty much the same is such a huge win.
After having a £3000 Surface Book 2 for a few years which is truly one of the worst devices I’ve ever owned, the M1 Air is by far the laptop I’ve got the most value out of.
All of this to say that the M1 MBA at $699 feels like an amazing deal. I don't really have a need for one, but it feels like they're giving them away.
It's the storage and RAM that are potentially limiting on this offering (and I don't even know if Walmart lets you choose upgrades there, but Apple always charges unbelievable amounts for them).
I think even being a few generations old the CPU is likely to actually be fine for quite a while, even for some (but not all) specialty uses (like development).
Of course, sometimes refurbished M1s will appear.
Home Depot? Walmart? Target? They all can do this, with some acceptable variation.
Costco? They don't even know. I wouldn't be surprised if they literally don't know what's on the floor.
Should be very comfortable with 8GB - my FreeBSD x64 desktop rarely uses more than 4GB during operation of Emacs, heavy Chrome usage, syncthing, etc.
The US seems like extremely expensive for certain products, but also extremely cheaper for other products.
Hasn’t missed a beat; my only “want” would be an even small form factor
Is this purely Apple offloading their surplus discontinued Macs to Walmart?
For Mac users who want to run current/recent versions of macOS on old Macs, I've successfully used OpenCore Legacy Patcher to run Sonoma on a 10-year-old Mac mini.
Kind of an "unstoppable force meets immovable object" problem here.
It may have looked like a compromise, but I feel certain that Apple walked away from the negotiation feeling that they got exactly what they wanted.
My first question though: How long will Apple continue to manufacture M1s for sale at Walmart? The M1 has a ton of life in it for normal users. Yes, 8GB, but that's still plenty for most people doing most things.
My guess is that this is a big-retail liquidation of devices Apple is ready to move on from, and not a new long-term price point. We'll see!
Tons of families will notice a $700 Mac, and Walmart already sells iPhones and watches, so they have worked together.
> My guess is that this is a big-retail liquidation of devices Apple is ready to move on from, and not a new long-term price point. We'll see!
I think this may have staying power. It provides a nice way of selling to a lower tier segment without impacting their higher tier offerings. It provides an on-route to the Apple computing ecosystem for those on slightly lower incomes who would otherwise have to go with the equivalent Windows laptop. Winning at that level gets people deeper into the Apple ecosystem earlier, and more likely in the future to stay in that ecosystem if their economic situation changes (classic example would be budget conscious students)
I think it's brilliant that "last year's model" (iPhone, iPad) drops down the good-better-best chain with every product refresh. No new R&D or tooling, still a great product.
There will always be a steady supply of last years' models. And customers to buy them. Apple just has to feel confident that a $700 M1 isn't cannibalizing their $1200 M2s or the upcoming M3s.
Apple selling a modern laptop for $699 is indeed worthy of curiosity as it relates to the consumer tech landscape -- which is a theme for this website.
It might not interest you, which is fine, but in that case keep scrolling! Not every post about consumer tech is "promotion".