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Comment by _fzslm | Hacker News Reader

There is a gap in Apple's offerings. Casual computer users like students probably can't justify dropping nearly a K on a MacBook, so they go for these 400-600$ dell/hp laptops, or a Chromebook. This fits that hole.

iPhone processor is surely cheaper from an economies of scale perspective, they are likely way easier to produce en masse and they already produce bajillions of them for the iPhone.

Over time the price of even a high quality LCD like on the existing MacBook Air will have decreased enormously. Apple is setting up to move to OLED on the rest of the line, so using existing LCD tech is likely to save a lot too

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> There is a gap in Apple's offerings. Casual computer users like students probably can't justify dropping nearly a K on a MacBook, so they go for these 400-600$ dell/hp laptops, or a Chromebook. This fits that hole.

I could say the same about their cell phone lineup. If I have $400 to spend on a phone, what can I get from Apple?

A $400 iPhone would certainly increase market share--but Apple does not seem to want that market. Too low margin, I would think, or maybe too high a risk of "cheapening" their overall brand. Or maybe both.

Why is a laptop different?

One thing that is different is that carriers regularly subsidize phones. I paid 0 for my current phone, an iPhone 13 mini (when it was relatively new), partner paid nothing for theirs, latest pixel.

Now, lower cost carriers do less of this, and you need to get the high end plan, so it’s not good advice for everyone to get the free phone deal. It is one way a laptop is different. A decent chunk of people aren’t directly paying for their phone.

When you say you paid 0, presumably your just paid for it via a monthly contract over several years?

No. Most carriers have free phone promotions regularly. I paid $0. I think the phone before that was also $0. No impact on my bill (since I was already on the unlimited 5g super speed blah blah blah plan, these promotions serve as a way to get people into the all the bells and whistles $80 plans)

Without trade in AT&T has iPhone 16 @ 11$/month * 36 months = 396$. iPhone 16e @ 6$/month * 36 months = 216$. https://www.att.com/buy/phones/browse/apple/

Without any contracts an unlocked (renewed) iPhone 15 through Amazon 400 - 500$.

That off requires committing to a $65/month plan for 36 months instead of paying $25/month with someone like Visible for an equivalent plan. So really you're paying $1836 for that iPhone 16.

Hardly, you could do a one time payment of 500$ in a new iPhone 16e or 730$ for a iPhone 16 with AT&T’s prepaid annual 20$/month plan. https://www.att.com/buy/prepaid-phones/browse/apple/

There’s no free lunch here, cheap plans are noticeably worse in various ways, but like cable companies carriers don’t want to give you a good plan without bundling phone upgrades.

Visible’s $25/month plan mentions unlimited Hotspot for example, but good luck finding they always cap you at 5 Mbits on their website. Suddenly it makes more sense why someone might bump up to their $45/month plan for 3x the Hotspot speed. Even then 15Mbps isn’t that bad, but it’s a long way from 5G could provide.

There are definitely folks who need that hotspot speed but many who don’t. I’m on WiFi most of the time nowadays so switched to MobileX and spend about $5 a month on my mobile plan.

Yea, cheap plans are definitely worth it for some people just not everyone.

I wonder if the play is to be able to differentiate themselves from the other phone manufacturers. Perhaps they think a free bundled laptop (that is cheap enough to make financial sense to include), instead of a wearable or tablet, could get a significant amount of people on the fence to choose Apple. Then again, they could likely get a lot of them by having a cheaper phone; perhaps though, their fear is cannibalization of the higher end iPhone sales? According to their latest statement, net sales of computer were only a fifth of that iPhone sales. I suppose they think it’s a better risk carving out more sales in the computer market over what they might lose on the entry level MacBook Air sales.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2025-q4/FY25_Q4_Consol...

There’s bound to be multiple reasons, heck, it could even just be internal politics. I too am curious.

> so they go for these 400-600$ dell/hp laptops

I feel that these inexpensive macs will increase market share, perhaps this will pressure Microsoft to improve the Windows performance and ad bloat.

Would it be consistent with this plan to continue to make the same M1 Air at the current price, stuffing it with whatever phone processor they happen to have a few extra million of?

Yeah that's one potential route they could take - repurposing the existing M1 air shell and components.

But I actually believe they'll do a completely new shell for this device, and one reason being they could probably save even more money and cut even more costs than the current prod cost of M1 airs.

The budget offering is a used MacBook from the massive aftermarket stock, but I take your point - it doesn't scale and some people are averse to buying used goods.

I imagine this will be the new "MacBook" which has been absent from the lineup since 2019.

And probably still starting with the same 8GB RAM and 256GB storage...

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