Apple could deliver a MacBook surprise within the next couple of years, and it sounds like terrific news for aspiring budget laptop shoppers. As per TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is planning a new MacBook that will be powered by the same chipset as the iPhone 16 Pro.
According to Kuo, the laptop features an “approximately 13-inch display” and might enter mass production in the fourth quarter of 2025, or early next year. He further adds that the company aims to ship anywhere between 5–7 million units of this new machine, accounting for nearly a third of total laptop shipments in 2026.
Those are ambitious numbers and suggest Apple is rather bullish about the prospects of a “more affordable” MacBook with an A18 Pro chip inside, instead of the traditional M-series processor. Either way, the whole idea is pretty interesting for multiple reasons.
It just makes sense
The A18 Pro is a freakishly powerful processor, and it’s the only mobile silicon out there that can handle console-grade titles such as Death Stranding, Resident Evil, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage with ease on a phone. Paired with bigger heat management hardware and battery, I won’t be surprised to see it race against the Snapdragon X-powered Windows laptops.
But the real surprise here is the promise of a more affordable Apple laptop. Is it the long-awaited revival of the 12-inch MacBook? Probably. What I am more interested in seeing is the asking price. Over the past few years, Apple has kept the entry-level MacBook Air locked close to the $999 bracket.
Unless Apple wants a deliberate overlap, the new “affordable” MacBook should ideally start somewhere around $799, the same price bracket that is now a sweet spot for Microsoft’s Surface and other Windows-on-Arm laptops that draw power from Qualcomm’s entry-level Snapdragon X silicon.
An asking price of around $800 would make the rumored MacBook an unbeatable proposition, assuming Apple sticks with its high hardware and performance standards. Will Apple experiment with cheaper materials, such as polycarbonate, to lower the asking price? That’s plausible. We haven’t seen Apple go beyond a metal chassis for MacBooks in a while, so it would be interesting to see whether the company makes a pivot.
What truly matters here is the incredible longevity of Apple laptops. You can still pick up a used or refurbished M1 MacBook Air for around $500-600, and it will run the full macOS Tahoe experience with the Apple Intelligence bundle and no feature cuts.
And from my personal experience, it’s still astoundingly smooth and reliable. If Apple launches a cheaper MacBook around $800 — and factor in the usual student discount on top — there is little doubt that buyers would pick a Windows machine.
But it’s not just the hardware situation where Apple has a leg up. Ever since the Copilot+ breed of laptops has landed, multiple Windows features, such as Recall, have been locked to certain chips that can meet the AI performance requirements at the hardware level. Even Intel’s 2025 batch of enthusiast-class H-series misses out.
On the other hand, a five-year-old M1 MacBook doesn’t water down the macOS experience to date. Also, Apple has lost the “thin and light” laptop race to machines such as the Asus ZenBook A14, so maybe it’s time to reclaim that crown with a reimagined MacBook armed with an iPhone silicon?
A historical performance perspective
If the idea of a MacBook with an iPhone processor sounds ludicrous, look no further than the Windows machines, especially those with Qualcomm processors inside. More specifically, the Windows on Arm laptops and the new breed of Copilot+ machines.
The move doesn’t even surprise from Apple’s own perspective, especially when it comes to concerns about firepower. Apple put a laptop-tier M1 processor inside the iPad Pro years ago. In fact, when Apple announced the M1 silicon, its similarities with the A14 became a crucial talking point.
The microarchitecture was similar, built atop the 5nm process node, and the same kind of unified silicon-on-chip (SoC) approach with fused memory on the same module as the CPU, GPU, and the NPU. Apple borrowed the A14’s Firestorm and Icestorm cores, increased the core count, married it with a beefier GPU, and created the M1.
Back then, the A14 was already performing ahead of x86-based processors, and the M1 only made a bigger jump. In fact, when Apple started preparing for the transition away from Intel (x86 silicon), the Developer Transition Kit offered to developers came kitted with an A12Z processor that was fitted inside iPads back then.
In the years that have followed, Apple hasn’t changed the fundamental approach. The A18 Pro still sits at the top of the mobile food chain, and the M4 silicon packed inside Macs and iPads is no different. If Apple fits an A18 Pro silicon (even paired with its 8GB RAM situation), it would be able to handle the demands of macOS with ease.
Also, if you look at the Windows side, and especially the Copilot+ laptops with a Snapdragon processor inside, you will find some similarities. The Snapdragon X-series processors for laptops now share the Oryon cores with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip for Android phones and tablets.
Apple’s CPU cores outperform the competition across the mobile and laptop segments, and it won’t be surprising to see the A18 Pro-powered MacBook coming out with some impressive performance figures. The biggest dilemma is “if” and “when” Apple puts such a machine on the shelf.
