If you’ve been thinking about picking up one of the best MacBooks, you may want to wait until next year, especially if the MacBook Pro is out of your price range and the MacBook Air just doesn’t have enough ports.
Even though Apple discontinued its MacBook line back in 2019, rumors have begun circulating that the company could add several new low-cost MacBooks to its offerings in 2024.
While DigiTimes was the first to report on this last month, a new blog post on South Korea’s Naver claims that the iPhone maker is currently developing both a new 12-inch and 13-inch MacBook. Besides providing a cheaper entry point for potential Mac users, these new MacBooks could directly compete with the best Chromebooks in the education market.
One of the ways that Apple became the tech giant it is today is by getting Macs into schools when it was starting out. Now that Gen Z prefers the iPhone over Android though, giving students a Mac instead of a Chromebook or even a Windows laptop would make a lot more sense.
Even if you’re not a student, these new low-cost MacBooks could be the best laptop for you and your budget as they’re rumored to sell for $700 or less. As Apple has yet to announce them or even confirm their existence at this point, like with all rumors, you’d be best to take this one with a grain of salt. Still though, if a new MacBook is sitting on your wish list, you might be better off waiting instead of trying to pick one up on the cheap during Black Friday.
Outlook: Apple never should have killed the MacBook
The MacBook Pro is an excellent machine for getting things done while the MacBook Air offers a lot of power in an extremely portable package. These two laptops have professionals and business users covered but what about everyone else?
This is where the MacBook fit into Apple’s lineup before it was discontinued a few years ago. Not everyone needs all of the additional power that MacBook Pro offers and some people would rather have more ports instead of the portability of the MacBook Air.
At the same time, not everyone wants to bring a $1000+ laptop with them when working out in public. Sometimes, a cheaper, less powerful laptop is perfect for the task at hand like answering emails or doing coursework for university. Plus, if your MacBook gets stolen or damaged, it’s a lot cheaper and easier to replace than a much pricier MacBook Pro.
We’ve heard rumors of Apple launching a cheaper MacBook for years now but with the sudden downturn in MacBook sales, now seems like the perfect time to bring this discontinued laptop back from the past. It could also be a way to win over Windows users that are used to spending quite a lot less on a budget laptop.
With Apple’s ‘scary fast’ event scheduled for next week, we could see this low-cost MacBooks revealed sooner rather than later. However, with its new M3 chips being the focus of the event, that seems unlikely but you can’t blame us for hoping.
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