$599 MacBook With iPhone Chip Expected To Enter Production This Year (macrumors.com) 122
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today reiterated that a more affordable MacBook powered by an iPhone processor is slated to enter mass production in the fourth quarter of 2025, which points towards a late 2025 or early 2026 launch.
Kuo was first to reveal that Apple is allegedly planning a more affordable MacBook. In late June, he said the laptop would have around a 13-inch display, and an A18 Pro chip. Kuo said potential color options include silver, blue, pink, and yellow, so the laptop could come in bright colors, like 2021-and-newer models of the 24-inch iMac.
This time around, he only mentioned the MacBook will have an unspecific iPhone processor. Apple recently introduced the A19 Pro chip, which has 12GB of RAM, so it will be interesting to see if the lower-cost MacBook uses that chip instead. The entire Mac lineup has started with at least 16GB of RAM since last year, with the only option with 8GB being the MacBook with an M1 chip, which is sold exclusively by Walmart for $599.
Kuo was first to reveal that Apple is allegedly planning a more affordable MacBook. In late June, he said the laptop would have around a 13-inch display, and an A18 Pro chip. Kuo said potential color options include silver, blue, pink, and yellow, so the laptop could come in bright colors, like 2021-and-newer models of the 24-inch iMac.
This time around, he only mentioned the MacBook will have an unspecific iPhone processor. Apple recently introduced the A19 Pro chip, which has 12GB of RAM, so it will be interesting to see if the lower-cost MacBook uses that chip instead. The entire Mac lineup has started with at least 16GB of RAM since last year, with the only option with 8GB being the MacBook with an M1 chip, which is sold exclusively by Walmart for $599.
What's the difference between tablet and phone? (Score:2)
Re:What's the difference between tablet and phone? (Score:4, Insightful)
The software is shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Motorola tried something similar with the "Atrix" device about 10 years ago and there was absolutely no market for it, and it died within a year.
The only people that want a fully converged device like that are the people that don't understand that doing real work with a computer still needs real wattage. Even the best that Nvidia can do with the Jetson Orin Nano still has the SoC using ~12W under load, and it has a proper heat sink / fan on it in able to disperse the heat.
If all you are doing is email and
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
In those 10 years laptops like the MB Air and even Windows laptops have gotten so thin and light that it's barely any more burden to carry it around than a dock and keyboard and other accoutrements to make a phone into a laptop to say nothing of what say an iPad Pro can do which is the real device that blurs the lines.
Plus people have come around to the idea that phones are good at being phones and computers are good at being computers and trying to make either cover the other you end up with something wors
Re: (Score:2)
, yeah your phone + desktop display probably gets the job done. Anything more than that and you're better off with a higher spec device.
If I have to lug around a screen (and full keyboard),
might as well call it a laptop. And the CPU is not the
issue anymore: the hungriest apps are not going to be
the "desktop" apps, it's the "mobile" apps that it's
already running.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If all you are doing is email and browsing and maybe some light document editing, yeah your phone + desktop display probably gets the job done. Anything more than that and you're better off with a higher spec device.
The point you are missing is that for email and browsing and some light document editing, an iPhone plus desktop display plus keyboard _does_ get the job done. For very little money. And for heavier document editing, all you need is a bit of patience.
Re: (Score:2)
Why not do something like having a MacOS hypervisor running in the background, that would activate when the phone was docked? Thereby giving the user a desktop experience on their phone and would revert back to iOS when in mobile mode....
Now fix the keyboard and make the screen fold out
to be about double the iPad size, and increase the
storage significantly... and you get the device they
are advertising (except unfortunately the screen
and keyboard don't fold and not touchscreen mode).
Maybe 6 years from now, though.
Re: (Score:3)
You can do that with any modern phone but people don't do it....
Consider this the 'celeron' of Apple. Some people want an Apple product because they want an Apple product, they don't do any real productivity work on it. For $599 it will have a crap (for apple) monitor and something worse than the butterfly keyboard and will probably get 30 hours of battery life, and will give all the fanbois/apologists yet more things to declare 'total dominance' over any other choice.
Re: (Score:2)
You can do that with any modern phone but people don't do it....
Kiiiinda I guess, but somehow everything is shit.
Re: (Score:3)
Pixel? Samsung?
Re: (Score:2)
Pixel?
This is the spec sheet for the Pixel 10 [google.com]. Please point where it says it has Thunderbolt.
Samsung?
This is the spec sheet for the Samsung Galaxy S25. [samsung.com] Please point where it says it has Thunderbolt.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What phone has a Thunderbolt connection?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Back when the iPhone was introduced I was convinced that within 10 years computing would be mostly done this way; connecting your portable computer (smart phone) to a dock that turned it into your home computer. I'm surprised that this idea never gained traction. I can understand why some markets would have avoided this (extreme gaming for one) but for many people this phone and dock setup would easily be enough for daily computing needs. I also envisioned tablets that were nothing more than a screen and ex
Re:What's the difference between tablet and phone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Back when the iPhone was introduced I was convinced that within 10 years computing would be mostly done this way; connecting your portable computer (smart phone) to a dock that turned it into your home computer. I'm surprised that this idea never gained traction.
I think there have been a few reasons for this.
I think the biggest one is that nobody could meaningfully agree on a form factor. Now, *I* always thought that a great option would be to have a 'zombie laptop' that had a keyboard, trackpad, webcam, and a battery, with a slot to slide your phone into. The phone would connect to the peripherals and give a 12" screen and a keyboard, while charging the phone in the process.
The devil, of course, was in the details. Even if Apple made such a device and molded it to the iPhone, the problem then became that a user couldn't put their phone in a case, or it wouldn't fit in the clamshell's phone slot. There would also need to be adapters to fit the different sized phones, or different SKUs entirely with per-device slots, which then also pigeonholes Apple into a particular physical form factor. That begets the "use a C-to-C cable" option, which is better, but makes it ergonomically annoying to use if one isn't sitting at a desk. A wireless option solves both of these problems, but kills both batteries in the process. Finally, there's the price point: the cost for the end user would need to be low enough that it doesn't just make sense to have two devices, AND the first-gen owners would likely feel some kind of way if they were stuck with their old phone because it meant buying a new clamshell. It works well on paper, but pretty much any real-world testing would show the shortcomings pretty quickly.
Supposed that was solved somehow...while the Samsung Fold phones are helping justify time spent in adding a multi-window interface to Android, try installing Android x86 on a VM for a bit and watch what happens. It's been a while since I tried, but the experience was pretty bad - the inability to open e-mails in new windows was particularly infuriating; many apps take exception to having multiple concurrent instances for side-by-side usage, and window focus gets pretty tricky to navigate. It *can* be done, but it ultimately felt like all-compromise, no-improvement.
Finally, there *is* such a thing, at least to an extent. Many, MANY apps are just frontends on a website. iCloud is like this, the whole Google ecosystem is like this, Salesforce is like this...for a solid number of apps, there is a browser-based frontend that works just as well, if not better in at least some cases. Data is commonly synced with Google or iCloud or Dropbox. The number of apps that are worth running on a phone, without a desktop or browser analogue, that would justify a user getting a clamshell to run that app in a larger window...is small enough that it is seldom worth dealing with all of the *other* compromises involved.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, all good points as to why this never took off. As a technology teacher for 18 years I would somewhat try to predict the future of hardware/software to give students ideas on where to look for the next big thing. I missed the mark on this one. I like your zombie laptop idea. That still sounds like a promising avenue to look into.
Re:What's the difference between tablet and phone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because Apple doesn't allow you to run the software you want to on your phone.
Go ahead and fire up Xcode on your iPhone. I'll wait.
Re: (Score:2)
Apple would have to merge iOS and Mac OS for you to be able to run the apps back and forth. I don't think software developers would want that either because they're going to want to sell you the software twi
Re: (Score:2)
Apple would have to merge iOS and Mac OS for you to be able to run the apps back and forth. I don't think software developers would want that either because they're going to want to sell you the software twice too if they can.
Either merge (which is hard work) or keep completely apart. But if the iPhone is the only thing with a CPU, making it display things on an external screen will be hard.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why not just plug your phone into a monitor/keyboard/Ethernet dock via a Thunderbolt connection?
That would work, except the SSD is too small,
the screen is too small, those aren't full keyboards,
and uh oh yeah WRONG OPERATING SYSTEM.
Phones won't run 90% of the apps I use.
But CPU-wise, it would be plausible.
Re: (Score:2)
Why not just plug your phone into a monitor/keyboard/Ethernet dock via a Thunderbolt connection?
That would work, except the SSD is too small,
the screen is too small, those aren't full keyboards,
and uh oh yeah WRONG OPERATING SYSTEM.
Phones won't run 90% of the apps I use.
But CPU-wise, it would be plausible.
I mean, Thunderbolt in phones isn't a thing, but the rest? iPhone 17's SSD is 256GB which is the same size as our standard corporate laptops (and without the 100GB of Windows bloat) so claiming "SSD is too small" is an odd claim to make. If you're docked to external peripherals, "screen too small, shitty on screen keyboard" is similarly a strange complaint. "Wrong OS" is only applicable if you have some specific application stack you need to run. If it's just "I sent email and push spreadsheets around"
Gonna sell like hotcakes (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, this is a shot across the bow right at MS as I would bet the build quality and battery life will exceed what you can get from a $600 wintel machine.
Honestly will be a fantastic option for all those non-techy family members who we're all a little apprehensive about giving Windows to and for those of us without the skill or patience to transition to some flavor of Linux (which this hardware will still be nicer than).
For doing online browser stuff and media consumption the only reason not to recommend something like a Macbook Air has been the price. Complain about Apple all we want (and we should) but even the cheapest MacOS system is a very functional everyday user machine. There's a reason the decline of Windows has tracked the uptick of Mac systems, people like them. Gotta accept and acknowledge those facts if we want to change opinions on this.
Re: (Score:3)
You are correct. The only better timing would have been in August right before school.
Re: (Score:3)
This is an attempt to get into the Chromebook market, particularly education. Schools aren't going to tell parents that they need to buy a $1,500 Macbook, but a $250 Chromebook isn't out of the question.
It will be interesting to see how badly crippled it is by software lockdowns. Mac App Store only? Or even iPad OS.
Re: (Score:2)
I live in semi-rural eastern Tennessee and our schools have 1:1 laptop policies with district provided and managed equipment. What school district out there is requiring parents to buy devices like that in this day and age?
Re: (Score:2)
I heard Linus of Linus Tech Tips talking about being required to buy 3 Chromebooks for his 3 kids. He lives in Canada.
Re: (Score:2)
What makes you think a company known for over priced accessories with high margins would in any way preserve features and build quality when attempting a low level budget device?
In fact we know what it will look like, Apple has done this before with other products such as the iPhone 5C, a device that said less "high build quality" and more "look we can make cheap plastic crap too". The iPhone 5c was a flop to the point they never released individual sales numbers, and proceeded to cancel the device lineup.
Re: (Score:2)
2013 was a long time ago, Apple's production chains have only gotten better, FoxConn and others have built a lot of manufacturing capacity.
I am not saying this will be the same quality of a top end Macbook, for whatever we think of that, but in terms of fit and finish and feel I bet it will be similar to an Air and that feels nicer than most cheap windows laptops.
They've also been prepping their customers for this for a long time. When we say features what do we mean? This is going to be a keybaord, trackp
Re: (Score:2)
For doing online browser stuff and media consumption the only reason not to recommend something like a Macbook Air has been the price.
Chromebooks are still cheaper. Granted, I know we hate the cloud here on /., but the average non-techie buyer is just going to see the price tag and that the Chromebook handles basic computing tasks just fine.
I know inflation has been a bit out the wazoo lately, but $600 still buys a fairly decent entry level PC laptop. This seems to me more like Apple attempting to hold the line, since in this economy there are probably more than a few Mac users still rocking some Jurassic era hardware and Apple doesn't
$599? (Score:4, Insightful)
They can barely make a phone at that price point.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm not buying it. Apple knows better than the play in the sub $800 laptop space, because there is no profit margin in it.
Plus, "Apple Intelligence" doesn't seem to play well on systems with less than 16 GB of RAM. It would be a bad look if the hot new software feature they're promoting doesn't work on all of their new devices.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is a market share grab. Perfect timing with the Windows 10/11 fiasco happening right now.
Re: (Score:2)
They can barely make a phone at that price point.
I agree Apple's phones are overly expensive, but - there is a cost associated with miniaturization and having to engineer for smaller space. Making a $599 laptop should be easier than a $599 phone with equivalent computing power.
It's of the reasons why thin, light laptops cost more than thick, heavy laptops - especially back when they first went mainstream.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
They can barely make a phone at that price point.
Actually, Apple still sells the iPhone 13. We don't know what they're actually charging for it, since it's only sold through carrier partner channels to prepaid carriers, but they do still offer an inexpensive phone. Retail, it's $200. [walmart.com] They've been doing this for awhile, where ostensibly "discontinued" models continue being produced for a bit longer for a second life as prepaid phones. Apple has a lot more baked-in profit margin in their pricing than you might realize.
Re: (Score:2)
They can barely make a phone at that price point.
Sure they can, they just don’t want to.
Re: (Score:2)
Buy they can make an 11-inch ipad and sell it for $350. Are you really suggesting that they can't put that into a clamshell form factor for $600?
Completely locked down I'm sure (Score:5, Interesting)
I strongly suspect this cheap laptop will be locked down. No root, no exception to only allowing signed apps. This will be wildly successful. If you need "developer" access you'll need to buy a MacBook pro.
Hope I'm very wrong but every version of macos on the last few years has been stepping towards this sort of thing.
Perfect for kids - Hope it runs Roblox! (Score:3)
I am surprised Apple hasn't done this before. In our house, my wife and I run macs. One kid has a chromebook. One has a cheap Windows laptop. Why? because macs are expensive and the chromebook barely gets use and the windows laptop is just a gaming machine and honestly mostly runs Roblox Studio, occasionally games that are also available on consoles.
We'd love to replace both with these and just run Apple stuff...single family iCloud account, share peripherals more easily...no need to troubleshoot windows stupidity...no need to worry about what ads Windows is serving my kids.
This is the smartest thing I've read about Apple in a long time. It's smart to focus on luxury, but given how weak Windows and Android are ATM, why not make a power play to expand the userbase...especially for families like ours where we gladly pay for premium Apple devices for ourselves and professional use, but stick to budget devices for kids...ensuring that we're locked in even longer and moreso.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of kids already have a Chromebook for school though. If they want to play Roblox their parents can spend an extra hundred or two on a premium model. It's going to be hard for Apple to break into that.
The kids will want to upgrade (Score:2)
The smart money doesn’t bet much on Kuo (Score:2)
Am I the only person to recognise his name and know that he has a decidedly mixed record when it comes to predicting future Apple products? He gets it right about 70% of the time, so a little better than a coin toss, but not something I’d use for making money.
Re: (Score:2)
I believe you're thinking of Mark Gurman. Ming- Chi Kuo tends to have a better track record... although still not perfect. Gurman's predictions are definitely like a coin flip.
Re: (Score:2)
Agree Gurman is worse, but I looked up Kuo's track record and 70% is what he manages, ie little better than a coin flip.
Basically an iPad without a touch screen (Score:2)
Or maybe (if it exists) it's just an iPad and this analyst is wrong.
iPhone to a display (Score:2)
At this point Apple could, but they won't, create a hypervisor so that when it sensed it was plugged into a dock or monitor
What we really want... (Score:2)
Is to take our phone and plug it into a usb or thunderbolt hub and have a full desktop OS, 100%, plus mobile apps integrated. Then we unplug and have the phone be 100% mobile. Then we go to work and plug in, going back to a full desktop. Then we go to the bathroom and plug it into a laptop skeleton with integrated hub, getting the desktop. One device to rule them all.
Perfect for the CEO (Score:2)
A low power locked down laptop with amazing battery life and few attack vectors that includes cellular connectivity akin to an iPhone?
The perfect CEO laptop.
If so, wouldn't buy it. (Score:2)
Will not contain an A19 chip. (Score:2)
Apple recently introduced the A19 Pro chip, which has 12GB of RAM, so it will be interesting to see if the lower-cost MacBook uses that chip instead.
This sounds like a product line designed to use up old inventory. Now that they are not making iPhones with A18 chips in them anymore, what are they going to do with the thousands of chips they have in stock? I don't see any "iPhone lite" products for sale. So ya, this thing will not have an A19 chip in it.
Macbook already uses iPad CPU (Score:2)
My iPad Air from 3 years ago has the M1 chip in it.
That's the chip that was in Macbook Pro (and the
desktop Macs) not that long ago.
So we're talking about an M1 (or better) laptop.
So this new entry-level Macbook doesn't so radical
now that you know that, does it?
It will be like an old refurb Macbook Pro off Ebay,
same price point -- except it's new, and updated
in many ways, even probably a refresh of the
Silicon ("M") CPU. And you can get AppleCare.
This will help differentiate the Macbook lineup.
(Just above, so
Re:And (Score:5, Insightful)
So? 99.9% of laptop users will never upgrade their RAM anyways. This is a budget laptop. It doesn't need to be upgraded. It's made to do the basics, like a Chromebook. For someone on a tech website, you're certainly completely out of touch with technology needs.
Re: (Score:2)
Replaceable memory is not just to provide upgradability, it allows buyers to shop memory pricing.
" This is a budget laptop. It doesn't need to be upgraded."
Odd, that's never been a description of budget laptops previously.
" For someone on a tech website, you're certainly completely out of touch with technology needs."
Takes one to know one. and you're replying to an AC.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because for a long time a big part of the value proposition of a mac was being able to do a mid-life upgrade on HD and RAM to be able to stretch its useful life to ~6-7 years. Of course that hasn't been true in a decade, but people still feel bent over paying Apple's prices for additional RAM and storage at purchase, which are about 4x retail rates.
Re: (Score:2)
That'd never been the value proposition of a Mac. They already had longer lifespans than the average PC with no need to do such upgrade. Appe never touted such as a key buying feature in anything other than the pro desktops.
Re: (Score:2)
They already had longer lifespans than the average PC with no need to do such upgrade.
There are countless millions of Win 10 users running machines so old they can't run Win 11 (7 + years old), how long before Apple drops os support for a system? Isn't it about the same timeframe? The current macOS is the last to support ANY Intel Macs, and it only support a handful of models.
Re: (Score:2)
Because for a long time a big part of the value proposition of a mac was being able to do a mid-life upgrade on HD and RAM to be able to stretch its useful life to ~6-7 years.
My main computer is a Mac Mini from 2009.
Does everything I need, including my little
software development projects.
Syncs with my (new) iPhone and iPad.
The only problem with it is no (security) updates.
But I run Firefox, live behind it's firewall, and the
most dodgy thing I ever do is trust the Python repos.
I'll upgrade when the main board someday croaks.
At which point I'll buy another one (maybe new,
maybe a has-been refurb off Ebay), plug my Time Machine
drive into it, and pick up where I left off the day befo
Re: And (Score:2)
It also depended on low speed interfaces to processors. You used to be able to accelerate computers which came with a 68k chip by slapping a daughterboard with a faster CPU on it into the CPU socket. That's not practical today.
Side note, anyone want a radius accelerator for Mac SE?
Re: (Score:2)
So? 99.9% of laptop users will never upgrade their RAM anyways.
Only because they can't. The problem is not that they don't want to, it's that they don't understand. The end result is someone buys something budget, quickly find it was never their use case in the first place, and then buy the better device not knowing why it was better, but hey it runs good and the old device is now e-waste.
Education would be a better result than contributing to a product that is perpetuating a product waste cycle.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not even remotely true. Even when laptops had upgradable RAM and hard drives, less than 1% ever did so. The reality is that most just buy a new machine. You're forgetting that you're not the average user.
Wander over to your HR department and ask everyone how much RAM their home computer has. Bet not a single one would even be able to tell you what RAM is and what its function is. Those are average users.
Re: (Score:2)
So? 99.9% of laptop users will never upgrade their RAM anyways. This is a budget laptop. It doesn't need to be upgraded. It's made to do the basics, like a Chromebook. For someone on a tech website, you're certainly completely out of touch with technology needs.
Upgrading budget laptops is how you save.
I have a cheap Asus gaming laptop for travel. It cost me £550 and most of that was for the RTX3050. I was able to pop the back off, add in another 8 GB of RAM, doubling the original and replace the 512 GB SSD with a faster 1TB for less than £100, the next model up that had the same amount of RAM was over £200 more expensive (but it did have a 3060 to be fair).
A lot of budget laptops are deliberately underspec'd to force people afraid to upgrad
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
> This allows for reduced thickness and reduced cost, which is what most people want
Reduced thickness? No, I think pretty much everyone agrees laptops are as thin as they need to be. Any thinner and they'll slip when you're typing on them, and we want some thickness to keep them robust.
Which also raises another problem with the "thinness" fetish promoted only by laptop marketdroids and the morons who work as reviewers for so-called "tech" websites like Engadget et al: the keyboards on most modern laptop
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or why even buy a computer at all? Let's ignore that the entire appeal of computers is their flexibility.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Its a Chromebook. Think about what's in a flagship phone and a top of the line laptop 10 years ago. Now think about what people are doing on laptops and whether or not they could use that 10 year old one just fine. The "power of a phone" is all relative - in this case it can service the needs of a cheapo chromebook type experience just fine. (Its apple so will cost 2x a chromebook).
I remember there was a phone laptop docking combo a while back that did just this - you plugged the phone into the laptop a
Re: (Score:3)
you plugged the phone into the laptop and just used it there, but it looked clunky as hell
Samsung still has DEX (Desktiop EXperience) available for its phones. You can either plug it into a computer and use the phone like a program within a computer, or you can connect it to a USBC docking station with HDMI, mouse, and keyboard attached and use the phone in a desktop style.
It works decently well enough. I wouldn't want to use it full time but I've used it occasionally (typically when my home internet is out. My desktop doesn't have a wifi card since I use ethernet, so I can't really pair the
Re: (Score:2)
Does expensive shit like Samsung and Apple lack the "USB tethering" feature present in all the cheap android phones?
Re: (Score:2)
Schools would love them... (Score:5, Informative)
If Apple does this right, schools will love them, especially if they have a touch screen, and likely would make a significant dent on the Chromebook population out there.
Then, there is the fact that an entry level laptop is nice to have when traveling and not needing high end features. Back when Apple had their m3 (Intel m3, not Apple Silicon M3) MacBook with a single USB port, the 11" form factor was perfect for long trips, because it could easily be slung into a bag without worry. Having something that small would be nice. Yes, I can use an iPad for that, but I lose a ton of functionality with iPadOS that macOS gives.
If Apple does make this, I'd definitely buy one, just for something for travel.
Re: (Score:2)
Doubt the schools would love them. Schools love the Google ecosystem and particularly how they can be an organization that micromanages what the students can do all while having a supremely disposable device. The price and touchscreens are nice and all, but it's really about the Google infrastructure. It's also a contributor to why a lot of businesses like Windows, the effort invested in *not* letting the user be able to do what they want at the whim of some designated third party.
Besides, the Chromebooks
Re: (Score:3)
Why do you assume that this iPad with an iPhone CPU would run macOS? Seems to me if they use an iPhone CPU you'll get an iPhone OS (iOS)...
Because they are saying it is not an iPad, but rather a "Macbook", and Macbooks run MacOS, not iPadOS?
The CPU in the iPad is perfectly capable of running MacOS, but it doesn't, because it's an iPad. If you stick that CPU in a Macbook, it will run MacOS. Because that's what Macbooks run.
Ir's not an iPad.
We already have those.
Re: And (Score:2)
Or turn it around: why the fuck are people buying phones with such powerful CPUs?
I have a couple of Intel Core Duo powered laptops from 2007 (Win7) and 2008 (macOS 10.11) that I still use, the MBP quite frequently. Theyâ(TM)re fine for a lot of tasks and more convenient than my phone for many things, but vastly less powerful. Itâ(TM)s not the CPU that will hold back this rumoured device but the amount of RAM or local storage.
Re: (Score:2)
Or turn it around: why the fuck are people buying phones with such powerful CPUs?
To do fancy photo editing in high def instantly.
Not to mention AI photo editing.
Don't really need it for text messaging,
or even for streaming video and games.
I guess.
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot must be full of mods who turned down investing in Apple in the 80s.
Re: And (Score:2)
It used to be for their flexibility. Now it's more of a utility. Just web browsing, printing, etc.. This will help them enter the school required throw away device arena.
Re:And (Score:5, Insightful)
It's "so complicated" because with almost any other laptop manufacturer you can add RAM after the fact, and not have to upgrade everything else in the system that you don't need upgraded just to get more RAM.
Want more than the anemic (rumored) 12GB? Well instead of spending $100 to toss out a shitty low-denisty SODIMM and replace it with a 16GB module, you get to spend $800 more in order to get a completely different laptop model with far more spec than you actually need in every other aspect of the system, and a price that you may no longer be able to afford. Yay?
It's shitty design and you know it.
Re: (Score:2)
Many laptops already don't have upgradable RAM, and since SODIMMs are limited to lower speeds, eventually no laptops will have upgradable RAM. LPCAMM and LPCAMM2 were supposed to solve this, but by the time they started hitting the market, they too suffered the same fate: they allowed faster RAM than SODIMMs, but were still a clockspeed bottleneck.
It's fine to sell a laptop with slower RAM today, but in a few years, when that faster RAM is the mainstream, it won't be.
Re:And (Score:4, Informative)
It's "so complicated" because with almost any other laptop manufacturer you can add RAM after the fact, and not have to upgrade everything else in the system that you don't need upgraded just to get more RAM.
The people who upgrade ram in their laptops are probably like 1% of the total market. Most are bought by corps or individuals who treat them as an appliance.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You're not wrong, but this is a website populated mostly by that 1%. I suspect that most of the people here do upgrade components or build their own PCs from parts.
You're right, and I understand other slashdotter's passion on the subject, but this is also the same group that does family IT support. There's overlap. I may have a home networking closet. Mom gets hand me down iPads. Dad gets sent to Best Buy not to return with anything under $500. Etc. I'm not messing with anyone else's clunker.
Nobody is criticizing anyone's expandable laptop or gaming PC light show or whatever hobby machine they play on, but stones get thrown the other way at regular users with regular
Re: (Score:2)
You're not wrong, but this is a website populated mostly by that 1%. I suspect that most of the people here do upgrade components or build their own PCs from parts.
For those that want to do that a Mac is not the machine for them.
Re: (Score:2)
The people who upgrade ram in their laptops are probably like 1% of the total market.
More like "frustrated that they can't upgrade the RAM in their laptops". Last time I went laptop shopping, the ones that didn't have soldered down everything were few and far between. You're lucky these days if there's a M.2 slot to upgrade the storage.
Re: (Score:2)
Most are bought by corps or individuals who treat them as an appliance.
Funny you mention corps. I work for a multinational and what our IT does is buy the base level as an appliance and then manually upgrade user RAM on an as needs / as approved basis. Multitasking rarely requires a higher end computer, but always requires more available RAM. Corps definitely play with this stuff.
Re: And (Score:2)
Interesting. Our parent company is an 8,000+ multi-national and that isnâ(TM)t the case. Their standard laptop is a Microsoft Surface. Theyâ(TM)re not a technical company and weâ(TM)re a strange fit in there. I got one of these for my tech writer that I hired a few years ago, foolishly thinking she didnâ(TM)t need something more high end. Doxygen builds were incredibly slow and the machine wasnâ(TM)t upgradable. I found her a spare Acer with more memory and cores and the dox b
Re: (Score:2)
Most are bought by corps or individuals who treat them as an appliance.
Funny you mention corps. I work for a multinational and what our IT does is buy the base level as an appliance and then manually upgrade user RAM on an as needs / as approved basis. Multitasking rarely requires a higher end computer, but always requires more available RAM. Corps definitely play with this stuff.
Mine did too, but it was to circumvent a requirement to get CEO approval for purchases over x. We weren’t a multinational, ut would custom order laptops with no hard drive and hard drives separately so we weren’t below the limit and then put the machines together.
Re: (Score:2)
It's "so complicated" because with almost any other laptop manufacturer you can add RAM after the fact, and not have to upgrade everything else in the system that you don't need upgraded just to get more RAM.
The people who upgrade ram in their laptops are probably like 1% of the total market. Most are bought by corps or individuals who treat them as an appliance.
That's still 3 million people of the ext. 300 million laptops that get sold each year.
And I'm willing to bet a lot of people are like me who buy a lower spec'd model where I can upgrade the RAM and SSD on the cheap saving a hundred quid off the more expensive one.
However that's besides the point, Apple have been openly hostile to people who want to upgrade (and consumers in general) for years. Plenty of other manufacturers to choose from though.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a concept in computing where a certain spec is good NOW, but will not be good in the future. Rather than replace the entire computer many would rather just increase the power of their current one where its lacking.
Also, by preventing outside ram installation, Apple is free to charge whatever premium they want on more RAM. If they're the only way to increase the ram on a machine then if they decide you're going to pay an extra $500 to go from 8gb to 16gb, then you're stuck.