Apple is reportedly working on a new, cheaper MacBook using a chip originally designed for the iPhone. Supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo posted on X that the company is planning a new 13-inch laptop using an A18 Pro chip.
The laptop, which Kuo says would launch at the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026, would be Apple's first Mac running on an A-series chip. The A18 Pro, which powers the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, averages in the 3,400s on the Geekbench 6 single-core benchmark and 8,500 to 8,600 in multi-core.
Those single-core scores are only slightly lower than what you see in the M4, which range between 3,400 and 3,700 points on the same test, depending on which Mac they're in. The multi-core score is a lot closer to the original M1 generation, which also falls around 8,500.
This device will also reportedly come in various colors, including silver, blue, pink, and yellow. Some fans have called for Apple to bring the colors from the iMac line to the MacBook, but it hasn't done so yet. Apple's latest experiment with color on Mac laptops has been with the tastefully muted sky blue on the M4 MacBook Air.
Kuo states that Apple is looking to sell 5–7 million units of this product in 2026. It's unclear how much they might cost, but presumably, these would be entry-level laptops that undercut the $999 MacBook Air. They would have to be pretty cheap to compete. The M3 MacBook Air has dropped to $799 new on sale before. Apple's current affordable play is at Walmart, which sells the M1 MacBook Air with the old design, 256GB of storage, and 8GB of RAM for $649.
A lower price might put Apple in a position to compete with cheaper Chromebooks and mid-level Windows laptops in a play for the education market and for those who might only use their laptops for email, web browsing, and other simple tasks.
The reference design is reportedly being supplied by Everwin Precision in Shenzhen, China. Beyond the laptop, Kuo claims that Everwin is building frames for smart glasses due to ship in 2027. Those would feature audio playback, a camera, and video recording like Meta's AI glasses, as well as "AI environmental sensing." Kuo says the glasses will lack display functionality. We'll have to see if any or all of these predictions come to pass.
