Apple A14 - 5 nm, 11.8 billion transistors

[Eug]

A14 - First announced for iPad Air.

 

[defferoo]

So they would not be moving to Apple because ARM, but merely upgrading from an older system - so not the case we're looking for.
And there's nothing wrong or rare about using a computer for 5 years. It's pretty normal.

Once again... people either haven't read my original post or don't understand it. Some, like @name99 went into full "you don't praise a Macbook, so you're an Apple hater" mode.

I precisely said that Apple market share will drop IMO, because moving Macs to ARM will repel more people than it will attract into the ecosystem (if any).
This was a pretty simple, behavioral observation (with some arguments) that I could make about a type of potato. But since it was about computers, some people went berserk, because it's just not possible for Apple to lose clients.
And I haven't even said this is would be a business mistake. They may still earn more in the end.

my main issue with your arguments is that you assume people don’t care about any of the improvements that could be made with this transition and essentially dismiss them as things that could increase adoption of the Mac ecosystem. obviously we don’t know what these benefits could be, but it’s fairly easy to think of a few things that would be attractive to someone buying a computer.

 

[name99]

So they would not be moving to Apple because ARM, but merely upgrading from an older system - so not the case we're looking for.
And there's nothing wrong or rare about using a computer for 5 years. It's pretty normal.

Once again... people either haven't read my original post or don't understand it. Some, like @name99 went into full "you don't praise a Macbook, so you're an Apple hater" mode.

I precisely said that Apple market share will drop IMO, because moving Macs to ARM will repel more people than it will attract into the ecosystem (if any).
This was a pretty simple, behavioral observation (with some arguments) that I could make about a type of potato. But since it was about computers, some people went berserk, because it's just not possible for Apple to lose clients.
And I haven't even said this is would be a business mistake. They may still earn more in the end.

I've stated REPEATEDLY that I see the new Mac purchasers to be pulled in by *substantially* lower prices, and have told you where I expect those purchasers to come from (newly emerging middle class, the people outside US+Europe who currently own iPhones but not macs).

Your refusal to engage with that argument, and rather to mock and caricature me tells me everything I need to know...

Your argument is built on the assumption that Mac prices will remain the same as always, high end prices substantially limiting their sales, both in the West and in the emerging world.
And no matter how often you're told that is NOT the plan, that instead we will see a substantial spread in prices (think cheap iPad with a keyboard attached) you insist on simply ignoring that possibility, not even engaging with it.

That's what I mean by being locked in 1995. People like you cannot imagine that Apple, in this space, will become a mass market seller, simply because that wasn't what Apple looked like 20 years ago. Regardless of how iPod sales evolved, iPhone sales evolved, iPad and aWatch sales evolved, you STILL believe that for the Mac it's always 1995.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

I precisely said that Apple market share will drop IMO, because moving Macs to ARM will repel more people than it will attract into the ecosystem (if any).
This was a pretty simple, behavioral observation (with some arguments) that I could make about a type of potato. But since it was about computers, some people went berserk, because it's just not possible for Apple to lose clients.
And I haven't even said this is would be a business mistake. They may still earn more in the end.

I don't disagree with your argument per-se. I expect there will be those who flee the Mac because they rely too heavily on x86 compatibility. I think that is probably a smaller percentage of Mac users than you imagine, and perhaps even a trivial number, because 1) there are also movements towards the ARM ISA in non-Apple segments (servers, Linux, WoA), and more importantly 2) many of the types of workflows one needs x86 compatibility for can be achieved in the cloud. I used to use bootcamp regularly, but I haven't booted into it for almost two years now because accessing a rented machine in the cloud (in my case Shadow) has proved to be far less hassle and far more powerful.

On the flip side, I think you may underestimate the number of consumers who would like to buy a Mac but can't justify the price. I seriously doubt Apple will decrease prices much, but their strategy with the Watch, iPad, and iPhone now revolve around offering lower cost, lower-featured models to get market saturation. It wouldn't be shocking to see a slightly cheaper Mac aiming for that same goal. Even at 899 / 799 for education I expect a lot of potential buyers might bite. Especially if the entry model is more performant than the current entry Macbook Air, which it probably will be. For better or worse, a Macbook also carries a lot of cultural cache, and plenty of parents might be more willing to spend 799 for their kids college laptop.

 

[blckgrffn]

🤔

You have seen what they are charging for iPads with keyboards now, right?

With their current pricing structure, at least as of a couple years ago, Apple laptops were like the iPhones of that space - low volume but a huge portion of the profit available in the space.

Part of their cachet is that they cost premium. They could have priced the current Air at $700 and topped it out at $1k but they didn’t. There are plenty of presumably middling margin Windows based laptops of reasonable quality in that space.

The people I know who have MacBooks are middling in their love of them - particularly when they are fumbling through their stack of dongles or are on their 3rd thunderbolt dock that they need to interact with they need to do their jobs. Adobe not being on Linux and iMessage integration seem to be the biggest sticking points for them staying, not CPU performance.

Anyway, CPU cost might have been a solid part of their BoM but if they had wanted to pursue a larger audience through lower prices they could have done that in the past. Apple needs to make more profit and making their BoM less and keeping prices the same seems to fit nicely with that.

I wish I had access to data, but based on on the audience I know a lot of people won’t care at all about the ARM transition. They are buying a Mac to replace their Mac or because they love aesthetics or the being in the cool kids designer/graphics pro club or they loathe Windows but still need mainstream application support. Apple obviously has research into this too, they are doing way more branding (Apple Silicon) than they were previously, so maybe people want to know there is a brand presence behind the CPU after all.

I am not bullish on this change doing much beyond growing margins, which is fine. That’s all the stockholders really care about.

The proof will be in 2021/2022 I suppose.

 

[name99]

I don't disagree with your argument per-se. I expect there will be those who flee the Mac because they rely too heavily on x86 compatibility. I think that is probably a smaller percentage of Mac users than you imagine, and perhaps even a trivial number, because 1) there are also movements towards the ARM ISA in non-Apple segments (servers, Linux, WoA), and more importantly 2) many of the types of workflows one needs x86 compatibility for can be achieved in the cloud. I used to use bootcamp regularly, but I haven't booted into it for almost two years now because accessing a rented machine in the cloud (in my case Shadow) has proved to be far less hassle and far more powerful.

On the flip side, I think you may underestimate the number of consumers who would like to buy a Mac but can't justify the price. I seriously doubt Apple will decrease prices much, but their strategy with the Watch, iPad, and iPhone now revolve around offering lower cost, lower-featured models to get market saturation. It wouldn't be shocking to see a slightly cheaper Mac aiming for that same goal. Even at 899 / 799 for education I expect a lot of potential buyers might bite. Especially if the entry model is more performant than the current entry Macbook Air, which it probably will be. For better or worse, a Macbook also carries a lot of cultural cache, and plenty of parents might be more willing to spend 799 for their kids college laptop.

Why expect that the prices will be that high (say $800) in say two years, once the initial ARM Mac market is saturated?
Apple doesn't compete with $350 laptops today, because to get to that price point on an Intel chassis require compromises Apple isn't willing to make.

But compare a $1000 macbook with the cheapest iPad:
The MBA screen is slightly larger, but slightly lower quality with lower pixel density. Probably not much price difference there.
The battery has to be substantially larger for the MBA. And you need cooling.
Intel gets a large cut, of course.
DRAM is 8 rather than 4GiB, storage is 256 rather than 32GiB.
Some iPad stuff (most obviously the rear camera, but also the touch part of the touch screen) can be dropped.

Start with 2022's iPad cheap (in 2022 probably using an A14, maybe 6GiB RAM, min of 64 GiB storage?) Maybe use the same panel maybe a larger 13" panel. Add a keyboard (without the fanciness of being able to tear it off like a Magic Keyboard).
I'm sure you can get this to $500 *easily* with Apple's expected markup. Maybe even down to $400 if Apple really wants to go low, and is willing to accept a more boxy look, or less prestige materials than unibody aluminum.

Economically I don't see what the problem is, if our target is something like
- will compete with $350 laptops in 2023
- will be much the same as today's MBA in functionality (and quite a bit better in performance).
Remember this will be the MacBook SE. If you want better functionality buy a MacBook. If you want the best, buy a MacBook Pro. Like the iPad or iPhone lines...

So then the question is does Apple want to do this, given it's possible? And that's why I bring up this long history of Apple doing PRECISELY this across all its new product lines, once they get settled and start to saturate the high end market...

 

[blckgrffn]

Why expect that the prices will be that high (say $800) in say two years, once the initial ARM Mac market is saturated?
Apple doesn't compete with $350 laptops today, because to get to that price point on an Intel chassis require compromises Apple isn't willing to make.

But compare a $1000 macbook with the cheapest iPad:
The MBA screen is slightly larger, but slightly lower quality with lower pixel density. Probably not much price difference there.
The battery has to be substantially larger for the MBA. And you need cooling.
Intel gets a large cut, of course.
DRAM is 8 rather than 4GiB, storage is 256 rather than 32GiB.
Some iPad stuff (most obviously the rear camera, but also the touch part of the touch screen) can be dropped.

Start with 2022's iPad cheap (in 2022 probably using an A14, maybe 6GiB RAM, min of 64 GiB storage?) Maybe use the same panel maybe a larger 13" panel. Add a keyboard (without the fanciness of being able to tear it off like a Magic Keyboard).
I'm sure you can get this to $500 *easily* with Apple's expected markup. Maybe even down to $400 if Apple really wants to go low, and is willing to accept a more boxy look, or less prestige materials than unibody aluminum.

Economically I don't see what the problem is, if our target is something like
- will compete with $350 laptops in 2023
- will be much the same as today's MBA in functionality (and quite a bit better in performance).
Remember this will be the MacBook SE. If you want better functionality buy a MacBook. If you want the best, buy a MacBook Pro. Like the iPad or iPhone lines...

So then the question is does Apple want to do this, given it's possible? And that's why I bring up this long history of Apple doing PRECISELY this across all its new product lines, once they get settled and start to saturate the high end market...

After Apple creates a $150 iPhone for developing markets I will believe they will pursue the sub $500 space for laptops. That's a crazy low margin space and way, way out of character for Apple.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

I am not bullish on this change doing much beyond growing margins, which is fine. That’s all the stockholders really care about.

The proof will be in 2021/2022 I suppose.

I think that's a perfectly reasonable position, even if I disagree. I look forward to seeing how this all plays out.

I'm sure you can get this to $500 *easily* with Apple's expected markup. Maybe even down to $400 if Apple really wants to go low, and is willing to accept a more boxy look, or less prestige materials than unibody aluminum.

I'm not as sure as you that $500 is possible with their current margins, if only because even entry level Macbooks will presumably in this hypothetical 2022 period still use much larger amounts of RAM, storage, etc.. That said, you're probably right that they could get pretty low with good margins. I think my expectation is somewhere between your and @blckgrffn's: I expect they will lower prices on an entry model in the next few years, but I think if Apple wants a Macbook to "compete" with a $350 laptop, they'll expect it to compete while costing at least $600, because I think @blckgrffn is right that part of the premium cache is price. That said, I happen to think that even a $700-$800 Macbook would be highly likely to sell very well and probably expand Apple's market share. @blckgrffn, you're right that they could have done that already, of course, but the "cheap" iPad strategy and the "cheap" iPhone strategy are both relatively new, and further streamlining the Macbook production pipeline with Apple Silicon could be the obvious time to introduce that strategy to the Mac.

 

[name99]

After Apple creates a $150 iPhone for developing markets I will believe they will pursue the sub $500 space for laptops. That's a crazy low margin space and way, way out of character for Apple.

And yet Apple sold iPod Shuffle's. And sells an iPad for $350...
It's ONLY a crazy low margin space if you're putting together a PC using PC parts and PC methodology...
Explain to me where I am incorrect in my iPad vs MBA comparison.

Making a cheaper phone (without compromising the experience) is a lot harder. For a start manufacturing is more difficult, and you have to include the modem.

 

[Doug S]

I have said before I don't think Apple will lower Mac prices due to the ARM change - especially if they plan to invest enough in it to stay nicely ahead of Intel/AMD on the performance front. I still think that's the case for new product introductions - the new ARM Macs will slot in at pretty much the same price points as the x86 Macs they replace.

But I am swayed by name99's argument that Apple could pursue the same strategy with Macs that they do with iPhones and sell older hardware for less as a way of broadening the consumer base. So for instance they offer an A14 based product (Macbook Air or whatever) at the same price levels as the x86 Macbook Air currently sells for. A year later they offer an A15 based version at that same price, but keep selling "last year's model" for $100 less, just as with the iPhone.

Then at some point they add an 'SE' model (this would only apply to lower end stuff, there won't be an SE version for anything on the 'Pro' line, but it would make sense to have one Macbook and either the Mini or iMac offered at a discount in the 'SE' model trim) that maybe cuts out a few features, includes less RAM/storage, uses an older CPU or whatever.

Apple already has form in continuing to sell Macs with CPUs that are rather long in the tooth. Even if you ignore the Mac Pro I'm sure they've gone longer than two years with some models on multiple occasions, so at least this way you'd get something in return for buying the model with "last year's CPU". The lower priced SE model would serve to bring new people into the Mac ecosystem, and as their services business grows the more people in that ecosystem the better for them.

 

[Doug S]

After Apple creates a $150 iPhone for developing markets I will believe they will pursue the sub $500 space for laptops. That's a crazy low margin space and way, way out of character for Apple.

What hardware does a laptop have that an iPad doesn't other than a keyboard and touchpad? They sell an iPad for $329 now, how much do you think a keyboard costs?

 

[blckgrffn]

What hardware does a laptop have that an iPad doesn't other than a keyboard and touchpad? They sell an iPad for $329 now, how much do you think a keyboard costs?

What does that do to the value of the rest of their lineup? They are always showing keyboards with much higher level iPads.

The question is not if they could, but why would they? I am certain that Apple would like to sell iPads for more but the education market has stiff competition from Chromebooks.

Only Apple really knows - I think it has a lot to do with whether they are pursuing growth in terms of service revenue (appears uptake has been struggling given the new bundles) so focus on growing their user base or if they want to continue to make revenue from their hardware.

And how many people buying $350 laptops are going to sign up fro $20 per month bundles for services? IDK, it's just such a different demo. And heck yeah there is a demo for Apple customers.

 

[Eug]

I don't think Apple will lower prices much (if at all) on Macs when they go Arm.

However, they could offer other things like higher performance and longer battery life, and even more premium features.

Maybe all Arm Macs will go with USB 4 with Thunderbolt 3 for example. Or at least the 2nd gen will. In the meantime they may "just" have TB3. Or maybe they'll introduce cellular Macs. They'll probably reintroduce fanless Macs.

 

[Doug S]

And how many people buying $350 laptops are going to sign up fro $20 per month bundles for services? IDK, it's just such a different demo. And heck yeah there is a demo for Apple customers.

First you said $500 laptop, now you are saying $350 laptop. Are you going to talk about $200 laptops next?

Apple's cheapest laptop is currently $999. There's plenty of room for them to offer cheaper configurations without going to $350, or even $500. You don't think they can't make healthy margins even at $500, when they're able to make money selling iPads for $329 that have more complex displays (higher resolution & touch) and have to engineer everything to fit in a smaller space than a laptop's form factor allows?

They seem to believe selling $399 iPhones and $329 iPads helps their ecosystem - whether they believe (or have evidence for) that's because those people buy services, move up to more expensive models for their next purchase, or expand into other products like Macs or Watches I don't know, but they wouldn't have introduced an SE2 if they didn't think the SE was worth it. Those lower priced products certainly haven't hurt their overall profitability.

The SE2 doesn't compete with the cheapest smartphones, but it does compete with the midrange. A less expensive laptop need not compete with the cheapest laptops in the market, but they might decide to compete with the midrange (which I'd say is probably $500 to $900, give or take)

 

[name99]

What does that do to the value of the rest of their lineup? They are always showing keyboards with much higher level iPads.

The question is not if they could, but why would they? I am certain that Apple would like to sell iPads for more but the education market has stiff competition from Chromebooks.

Only Apple really knows - I think it has a lot to do with whether they are pursuing growth in terms of service revenue (appears uptake has been struggling given the new bundles) so focus on growing their user base or if they want to continue to make revenue from their hardware.

And how many people buying $350 laptops are going to sign up fro $20 per month bundles for services? IDK, it's just such a different demo. And heck yeah there is a demo for Apple customers.

This is precisely the sort of answer we get when people model Apple based on their theory of how "evil company works" rather than history and reality.
If Apple were obsessed with selling only high priced items, why sell the low-end iPad? Why sell the various cheaper iPhone models. Hell why sell MacBook Air and not just MacBook Pro?
If your argument is "but Chromebooks compete with iPad", well, yeah, and Chromebooks and $350 laptops also compete with MBA.

Finally are you being serious or are you trying to score snark points? WTF do $20 Apple bundles have to do with what we are discussing?
If people see value in those bundles they will buy them, otherwise they won't regardless of what Apple HW they buy! I own many many Apple devices -- and my one Apple subscription is 99c a month for the minimal iCloud storage above free. The rest of the services are not of value to me. That may change, but no-one's forcing you to buy them!

You can engage in snark or you can engage! If you insist that there's a specific Apple demo, then why do you insist that that same demo, the middle class outside the West, that buys iPhones, will not buy a Mac at a price that fits their budget?

 

[mikegg]

I don't think Apple will lower prices much (if at all) on Macs when they go Arm.

However, they could offer other things like higher performance and longer battery life, and even more premium features.

Maybe all Arm Macs will go with USB 4 with Thunderbolt 3 for example. Or at least the 2nd gen will. In the meantime they may "just" have TB3. Or maybe they'll introduce cellular Macs. They'll probably reintroduce fanless Macs.

Apple is transitioning into a service company. They want to sell subscriptions. In order to sell subscriptions, they need to have a bigger install base. This is why they’ve been pushing cheaper iPads and iPhones into the market.

Heck, you can get an $900 MacBook Air now.

Apple will certainly pursue the same strategy for Macs once they transition to ARM and don’t have to give Intel a huge cut. I fully expect to see $600-$800 Macs in the next 3 years that will substantially outperform any AMD or Intel laptop in the same bracket in speed and battery life.

Apple’s strategy is quite simple. Their SoC give their hardware a performance advantage at any price range. Their walled garden OSes give people a consistent experience. Now they will sell those people subscriptions to services like Music,TV, News, iCloud, and others.

 

[Eug]

Apple is transitioning into a service company. They want to sell subscriptions. In order to sell subscriptions, they need to have a bigger install base. This is why they’ve been pushing cheaper iPads and iPhones into the market.

Heck, you can get an $900 MacBook Air now.

Apple will certainly pursue the same strategy for Macs once they transition to ARM and don’t have to give Intel a huge cut. I fully expect to see $600-$800 Macs in the next 3 years that will substantially outperform any AMD or Intel laptop in the same bracket in speed and battery life.

Apple’s strategy is quite simple. Their SoC give their hardware a performance advantage at any price range. Their walled garden OSes give people a consistent experience. Now they will sell those people subscriptions to services like Music,TV, News, iCloud, and others.

US$800 seems reasonable. US$600 seems unlikely in the next 3 years, unless you're talking about an edu-specific Mac mini or something.

 

[Roland00Address]

Apple is transitioning into a service company. They want to sell subscriptions. In order to sell subscriptions, they need to have a bigger install base. This is why they’ve been pushing cheaper iPads and iPhones into the market.

Yep it is no longer about revenue or profits but instead about stock price. Wall Street gives a 2x to 3x marketup for similar revenue and similar profit when it comes to stock price if it comes from a routine subscription instead of discrete sales for Wall Street trusts subscription revenue more than individual purchases. This is because with individual purchase you may decide your current hardware is good enough, or you want the new thing with a new form factor instead of the old form factor and so on. Subscription revenue of X dollars predict higher future returns than discrete revenue of X dollars in the future, for subscriptions have a more reliable turnover year over year.

One reason why apple stock was so good 2009 to 2014 was once the iPhone became a success in 2007 and 2008, apple decided to expand the market beyond AT&T in the US, and also to other markets beside the US. So part of this time is Apple was making contracts with carriers such as Verizon, T-Mobile, etc but also other countries. Part of those contracts was the carrier would agree to pre-buy so many iPhones and then resell those iPhones to their customers as part of signing up for a 2 year contract.

The end result was this made apple's numbers projection wise for sales (stock guidance) to be very accurate 6 months ahead but also for 3 months, and a few weeks prior to the final numbers. Carrier contracts as smoothing mechanism making it easier to project sales in the future. Wall street likes it when you beat your numbers but they actually prefer it when your numbers are regular and they in the general area guidance suggest they should be. It makes you seem more like a sure thing and thus you get a higher price per earnings ratio with your stock price.

But Apple can no longer do this, this idea ended more or less around 2014 when all the carriers were offer iphone 6 models and so on. And since that time Apple has been trying their best to become more a subscription company and they actually been doing a good job doing so.

 

[blckgrffn]

This is precisely the sort of answer we get when people model Apple based on their theory of how "evil company works" rather than history and reality.
If Apple were obsessed with selling only high priced items, why sell the low-end iPad? Why sell the various cheaper iPhone models. Hell why sell MacBook Air and not just MacBook Pro?
If your argument is "but Chromebooks compete with iPad", well, yeah, and Chromebooks and $350 laptops also compete with MBA.

Finally are you being serious or are you trying to score snark points? WTF do $20 Apple bundles have to do with what we are discussing?
If people see value in those bundles they will buy them, otherwise they won't regardless of what Apple HW they buy! I own many many Apple devices -- and my one Apple subscription is 99c a month for the minimal iCloud storage above free. The rest of the services are not of value to me. That may change, but no-one's forcing you to buy them!

You can engage in snark or you can engage! If you insist that there's a specific Apple demo, then why do you insist that that same demo, the middle class outside the West, that buys iPhones, will not buy a Mac at a price that fits their budget?

Cut the rage bro. The comments above directly address what I am talking about. If Apple wants their margins on hardware, they will stay premium. If they want growth based on service subs, they will grow their base. Maybe there is a happy medium but I see it more as one or the other.

That’s zero snark, 100% seriousness.

And I believe that status quo is more likely than change because Apple as a company is really a massive group of people and change is hard and risky and staying the course and playing to your strengths is less so.

🤷‍♂️

What is with this “Apple is evil” rhetoric? I am a stockholder. Apple needs to make more profits than they do now so the stock price goes up. End of story. This is not evil, this is reality.

My take on Apples historic success over the last decade is that they don’t chase sales, they trust that their products, their styling and their brand will bring the customers to them. To do what you are suggesting and chase sales in less profitable market segments would be cashing in on their brand and their image, yes. But it seems like it would be a one time deal. A move made out of crisis. You can’t be Walmart brand netbook and Dell and Apple all at the same time. In my view.

I really believe Apple is moving to Apple silicon to minimize their risk (by depending on Intel for year to year improvements to sell product) and to be masters of their own destiny. In order to improve profits. For their stock price.

 

[biostud]

There were some dodgy rumors recently about Apple developing a GPU for 2021. I'm not sure I buy an Apple dGPU next year, but I'm a lot more willing to buy the idea that they have a different GPU core design that would show up in APUs next year with the same A14 perf cores, ahead of the A15's launch.

One of reasons nvidia bought Arm, was to license its GPU IP in the same way as Arm. So maybe the switch from x86 made nvidia realize a new market, that they otherwise would be left out of.

 

[blckgrffn]

First you said $500 laptop, now you are saying $350 laptop. Are you going to talk about $200 laptops next?

Apple's cheapest laptop is currently $999. There's plenty of room for them to offer cheaper configurations without going to $350, or even $500. You don't think they can't make healthy margins even at $500, when they're able to make money selling iPads for $329 that have more complex displays (higher resolution & touch) and have to engineer everything to fit in a smaller space than a laptop's form factor allows?

They seem to believe selling $399 iPhones and $329 iPads helps their ecosystem - whether they believe (or have evidence for) that's because those people buy services, move up to more expensive models for their next purchase, or expand into other products like Macs or Watches I don't know, but they wouldn't have introduced an SE2 if they didn't think the SE was worth it. Those lower priced products certainly haven't hurt their overall profitability.

The SE2 doesn't compete with the cheapest smartphones, but it does compete with the midrange. A less expensive laptop need not compete with the cheapest laptops in the market, but they might decide to compete with the midrange (which I'd say is probably $500 to $900, give or take)

FWIW, $350 was the quoted number from another post, $500 was a line I saw as point where in the industry you get into the weird sub-brands, like Gateway. An equivalent to the $150 new cell phone market, where you can get Motos and Samsung’s but also weird Alibaba imports and versions of phones from MVNOs that have basically no data sheets. It’s a weird market segment with low customer loyalty and probably poor retention, as the demo tends to be chasing price even at the expense of value.

And that is the mercenary demo that I just can’t see Apple pursuing. Whether that line is drawn at $350 or $500 or even $700 I don’t have the exact market expertise or data to say.

Maybe with a big leadership and direction change Apple could go that way, but it seems
Like they would need to underperform for a couple of consecutive quarters to drive that change. And honestly, I would expect them to shake up the iPhone or iPad strategies before going crazy on the Mac side of things simply because those changes would have the impact for such a larger change than tweaking at the Mac recipe.

PC market is shrinking, right? And mobile is growing?

Hence a $150 iPhone before $350(or $500 perhaps) Mac. I could be wrong but that would be a much stronger lever pull for adoption.

 

[mikegg]

US$800 seems reasonable. US$600 seems unlikely in the next 3 years, unless you're talking about an edu-specific Mac mini or something.

I don’t see why not. In 3 years, Apple will have the A17 SoC. They can easily make a laptop with 13in, A15X SoC, 8gb ram and 128gb storage for $600. Basically an iPad with a keyboard. And this laptop will be substantially better than any $600 Wintel laptop.

$400 iPads have been faster than many $800 laptops for years already.

And of course Apple will continue to sell $3000 MacBook Pros. But moving away from Intel gives them the ability to go far below $1000 and still have a very capable laptop.

Apple doesn’t care about being the “luxury” choice anymore. They just want to sell you subscriptions and AirPods. To do that, they have to make you buy their main devices.

 

[beginner99]

I've stated REPEATEDLY that I see the new Mac purchasers to be pulled in by *substantially* lower prices, and have told you where I expect those purchasers to come from (newly emerging middle class, the people outside US+Europe who currently own iPhones but not macs).

I rather see people not using laptop anymore at all. iPhones are already reasonably powerful. If they share the same OS as a macbook all you really need is a dockingstation to which you can attach a keyboard, screen etc. I'm sure apple will gladly sell you their special $500 docking station.

 

[mikegg]

I rather see people not using laptop anymore at all. iPhones are already reasonably powerful. If they share the same OS as a macbook all you really need is a dockingstation to which you can attach a keyboard, screen etc. I'm sure apple will gladly sell you their special $500 docking station.

Two problems:

1. Apple can make a device significantly more powerful than the iPhone with the space that a laptop form factor gives them. So a Macbook will always be significantly more powerful.

2. If you’re going to carry a docking station with a keyboard and a large screen around, you might as well carry a laptop around.

 

[beginner99]

Two problems:

1. Apple can make a device significantly more powerful than the iPhone with the space that a laptop form factor gives them. So a Macbook will always be significantly more powerful.

2. If you’re going to carry a docking station with a keyboard and a large screen around, you might as well carry a laptop around.

True but this doesn't really fit my experiences / observations at least here with friends and family. Most people aren't interested in tech and writing long forum posts. They usually are mostly fine with a smartphone alone and if they even own a laptop (forget desktops) it's only taken out if one needs to write a document which is rare enough. The power even of the current iPhones i more than enough almost all people need. All they would need is the needed peripherals for "creation" work which happens at home.

So laptops aren't really used in a mobile way besides putting it on the diner table and then storing it in a cupboard and current phones are aleardy good enough for these minor needs.

Only valid point I see is that the laptop in fact is probably easier to deal with than docking and wouldn't really cost much more.

 

[SpaceBeer]

That is so 2016. :d
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/turn-ubuntu-phone-desktop-pc-convergence/

What users need in 2021. is powerful mobile phone that can be attached to touchscreen device in size of tablet, with possibility to add keyboard and maybe also docking station with all the peripherals (monitor, network, mouse...).
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-Padfone-Series.92773.0.html
https://www.asus.com/Phone-Accessories/PadFone_X_Mobile_Dock/