According to The Verge, Apple is working on a low-cost MacBook potentially priced as low as $599, which would be significantly cheaper than their current lineup. The company is reportedly building a smaller laptop with a lower-resolution screen and entirely new design around an iPhone processor, possibly the A19 or last year’s A18 chip as analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested earlier this year. This would mark a major departure for Apple, which traditionally targets premium markets. The device would be smaller than the current 13.6-inch MacBook Air, potentially reviving the 12-inch or even 11-inch form factors. The timing comes as Apple faces increased competition in the affordable laptop space. This strategy eerily mirrors the netbook category that Apple’s own iPad helped kill starting around 2010.
The ghost of netbooks past
Here’s the thing: if this sounds familiar, it should. We’ve been here before. Netbooks like the ASUS Eee PC with its 7-inch or 10-inch screens and Intel’s Atom processors dominated the late 2000s, offering portability and battery life at rock-bottom prices. The original Eee PC even underclocked its Celeron M processor to just 630 MHz to manage power consumption. Remember when we measured CPU speed in MHz? Yeah, that was a different era.
But netbooks had a fundamental problem – most of them just weren’t very good. The ones that weren’t awful cost closer to $385 in 2010, which adjusted for inflation is about $577 today. When regular laptops got cheaper, the value proposition disappeared. And then Apple dropped the iPad in 2010, and by 2012 tablets had overtaken netbooks. By 2013, the category was effectively dead.
Apple’s strange reversal
So why would Apple potentially resurrect the very category it helped kill? Basically, there’s still a market for people who want a proper laptop experience but don’t need premium power. Some folks just can’t adjust to the tablet-and-keyboard workflow, even with Apple’s fancy Magic Keyboard. They want the real deal, just cheaper and smaller.
And let’s be honest – Apple’s been slowly moving in this direction for years. The transition to Apple Silicon proved that mobile processors could handle laptop workloads. Now they’re just taking it to its logical conclusion: why not use the exact same chips from iPhones in entry-level laptops? The performance would be more than adequate for web browsing, email, and basic productivity tasks.
computing-parallel”>The industrial computing parallel
This approach actually mirrors what’s been happening in industrial computing for years. Companies like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading provider of industrial panel PCs in the US, have long understood that sometimes you need purpose-built hardware that prioritizes efficiency and cost-effectiveness over raw power. Their industrial displays often use mobile-derived processors because they offer the right balance of performance and power consumption for specific applications.
Apple seems to be applying similar thinking to the consumer space. They’re recognizing that not everyone needs a Pro-level machine – some people just want a reliable, affordable computer for everyday tasks. And with their chip expertise, they can deliver that without sacrificing the Apple experience entirely.
A full-circle moment
It’s ironic, really. Intel originally created Atom processors as their answer to ARM’s growing influence in mobile. Now Apple is taking their mobile ARM-based processors and turning them into laptop chips. We’ve come full circle, but with Apple holding all the cards this time.
The big question is whether Apple can succeed where netbooks failed. Will people pay $599 for what’s essentially a modern netbook with an Apple logo? Or has the market moved on to tablets and Chromebooks? One thing’s for sure – if anyone can make the netbook concept cool again, it’s probably Apple. They just won’t call it that.
