Apple reportedly working on a cheaper MacBook with iPhone chip — analyst says to expect A18 Pro in a 13-inch laptop

The M4 MacBook Air in sky blue. (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

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.

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Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and BlueSky @andrewfreedman.net. You can send him tips on Signal: andrewfreedman.01

13 Comments Comment from the forums

DougMcC

I would be shocked if it's true. Why would Apple take on that compatibility burden when they could just use an older MX chip? Devs are more expensive than chips.
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Alvar "Miles" Udell

I wouldn't be shocked if it were true as a way to fill the gap between the iPad and MacBook Air, primarily to fill the need of the Chromebook market as stated, but also to appeal to people who primarily want an inexpensive entertainment device but also the more utility of a laptop for other tasks, such as a device for when they are traveling where it getting lost or damaged isn't as much of a big deal. The question though is what OS would it run since Apple refuses to unify their ecosystem around one universal OS.

I also wouldn't be surprised if this was an offshoot or redevelopment of the rumored iBook we heard of a little while back where it was a docking station for your iPhone so you could have basically a MacBook for office work ease of use and just take your iPhone with you.
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JamesJones44

DougMcC said:
I would be shocked if it's true. Why would Apple take on that compatibility burden when they could just use an older MX chip? Devs are more expensive than chips.

macOS and iOS run the same kernel, there likely isn't much if any changes required from the software side (Apple already did this with the A12z Apple Silicon transition Mac Mini). My only guess is to why Apple would do this instead of just using an M1/M2 is due to the NPU being much beefier in the A18 Pro, otherwise it doesn't seem to make much sense to use the A18 Pro over an M1/M2
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joytech22

DougMcC said:
I would be shocked if it's true. Why would Apple take on that compatibility burden when they could just use an older MX chip? Devs are more expensive than chips.

The original dev kits for OSX ARM were using the A12Z Bionic. Moving to the A18 Pro is no different to Apple than birthing a new M-series chip - they've already got everything they need to make it work.

As for not using an older MX chip, it could be any combination of reasons. They'd have to pay to re-establish manufacturing on the older process node, the higher TDP, slower NPU etc.. They are still manufacturing the A18 Pro and it is technically equivalent to M1 in terms of performance. They'd also get bulk discounts - M-series don't sell anywhere near the numbers as A-series.
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JamesJones44

joytech22 said:
The original dev kits for OSX ARM were using the A12Z Bionic. Moving to the A18 Pro is no different to Apple than birthing a new M-series chip - they've already got everything they need to make it work.

As for not using an older MX chip, it could be any combination of reasons. They'd have to pay to re-establish manufacturing on the older process node, the higher TDP, slower NPU etc.. They are still manufacturing the A18 Pro and it is technically equivalent to M1 in terms of performance. They'd also get bulk discounts - M-series don't sell anywhere near the numbers as A-series.

The N5 node is still a high production at TSMC and costs less than the N3E used by the A18Pro. The A18Pro is likely already done with volume production as it will likely be phased out with the iPhone 17 lineup, which is probably in final production now or pretty close given the launch is just 2 months out. The NPU is the only really big reason to use the A18 Pro over an M1 or M2 (35 TOPS vs 11 respectively).
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Mr Majestyk

Apple will do anything to avoid making iPad Pro too good, and would rather put a phone CPU in a laptop than MacOS on the iPad.
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das_stig

£300 or less 8GB/2556GB would not be too objectable to my wallet for 18 hours battery usage. Only problem I can see with it being Apple, everything soldered or supergunk glue, so no upgrade or repair path.
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wurkfur

My ex-wife was given an allowance from her employer to purchase a laptop to run her dual monitor workstation at home. It had a simple USB C dock with all the devices attached. I told her not to get a Macbook Air, but she really wanted an Apple and there's nothing I could say otherwise. She made the purchase and of course it doesn't run the second display. For the same money a much better Windows laptop could have been chosen.
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JamesJones44

wurkfur said:
My ex-wife was given an allowance from her employer to purchase a laptop to run her dual monitor workstation at home. It had a simple USB C dock with all the devices attached. I told her not to get a Macbook Air, but she really wanted an Apple and there's nothing I could say otherwise. She made the purchase and of course it doesn't run the second display. For the same money a much better Windows laptop could have been chosen.

Both the M3 and M4 MBA supports duel monitors, was this an old purchase?
Reply
ezst036

DougMcC said:
I would be shocked if it's true. Why would Apple take on that compatibility burden when they could just use an older MX chip? Devs are more expensive than chips.
Apple would take on that burden because Microsoft is at a rare weakness moment. Now is the time to strike and strike HARD.

Windows 11 is basically Windows Vista or Windows ME revived and Microsoft is going all-in to shove it down people's throats. Having an unpopular product and doubling down with unpopular corporate activities is not a mixture for success. Well, it is a mixture for success by Microsoft as a gift for Apple to unwrap, anyways. "Here you go! Want this?"

Linux is not quite yet ready for such a thing and even moreso, has no real market leader to make it happen. The closest to a Linux market leader is Valve and Apple seems to only want to make casual gaming more easy. Apple isn't actually taking the gaming market seriously as a whole.

With Valve providing leadership on the gaming front and Apple pushing forward on every other front, Microsoft has a huge problem on its hands given the weaknesses they are putting on display for the world.
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