In Defense of an A-Series MacBook ⭐

Don’t call it a netbook: Apple’s rumored A-series MacBook isn’t just a great idea, it could revitalize the Mac by being truly competitive with the sweet spot of the PC market.

? Apple, netbooks, and what-ifs

Apple almost made a netbook.

This low-cost line of Linux- based PCs revitalized the PC market at a time when Windows Vista was dragging it down, setting off a cascading series of events that would forever change the industry. It forced Microsoft to keep Windows XP around in Starter Edition form as a low-cost, comparatively low-resource alternative to Vista. It triggered a rush to the bottom—in pricing and quality—that undermined PC maker profits and reset customer expectations. And it made Apple, which had just released the first iPhone, blink.

As described in the official Steve Jobs biography, Apple’s former CEO gathered his executive team together in 2007 to brainstorm a response to the netbook. The obvious choice was to simply ape what PC makers were doing and throw together a low-end Mac laptop. Such a thing would cost more than PC-based netbooks, but less than its entry-level MacBook, which started at $1099.

But Jony Ive asked why this machine needed a keyboard hinged to the screen, reviving Jobs’s pre-iPhone dream of a tablet. And so Apple set out to design and build what would become the iPad. When Jobs introduced the iPad in early 2010, Microsoft had just shipped Windows 7, which had been stripped down enough to support netbooks. And so he did what Steve Jobs did and crapped all over Microsoft’s aspirations despite having almost gone down that road himself.

“If there’s going to be a third category of devices [in addition to phones and laptop], it’s going to have to be better at these kinds of tasks than a laptop or smartphone,” Jobs said at the iPad launch, having just listed several common computing activities. “Some people have thought that’s a netbook. The problem is, netbooks aren’t better at anything! They’re slow, they have low-quality displays, and they run clunky old PC software. So they’re no better than a laptop at anything, they’re just cheaper. They’re just cheap laptops.”

The iPad wasn’t the only major Apple product introduction in 2010, of course. Apple also shipped its second-generation MacBook Air that year, and this is the model with the iconic design everyone remembers. This MacBook Air came in both 13.3- and 11-inch models, and the latter was as close as Apple would ever get to a netbook, with its tiny form factor and $999 starting price. It was discontinued in 2015, and Apple then offered a more premium 12-inch MacBook that started at $1299. Of course, by this point, Jobs was long gone. And Apple had also bulked out its tablet lineup with Mini, Air, and Pro models in addition to the standard iPad.

?️ Apple Silicon saved the Mac

One of the oddities of history is that Apple was never able to make the Mac a bigger hit. Under Steve Jobs, the company bounced back from near bankruptcy by revitalizing its Mac software using software it had gotten from NeXT, and by revitalizing its Mac hardware, starting with the first iMac, with Jony Ives’s designs. Mac OS X was a technical phenomenon that embarrassed Microsoft’s efforts with Windows throughout the 2000s. And Apple’s hardware designs were so iconic that the PC industry gave up all pretense and just started copying everything it made.

But Mac unit sales never exploded. After the hilarity of Jobs proclaiming that “Apple plus Microsoft equals 100 percent of the computer market” at MacWorld Boston in 1997, when the Mac had about 5 percent market share and Windows controlled over 90 percent of the market, Apple struggled to gain share. It famously switched from the PowerPC platform to Intel x86 in 2005. And then it even more famously switched from Intel to its own Arm-based Apple Silicon M-series chips in 2020. But neither transition triggered a mass exodus from Windows. Mac market share remained flat or only moved slowly upward over the previous 20 years. And today it sits still at about 9 percent.

But Apple Silicon saved the Mac and showed the industry that Arm wasn’t just the right choice for smartphones and other mobile devices. It’s the right choice for laptops and desktop computers, too. Apple’s explosive success with its M-series chips again embarrassed Microsoft’s efforts with Windows, which by this point had become lackluster and more of a side-effort thanks to that company’s focus on cloud computing. Apple has now shipped five generations of M-series chips, as it follows the same annual release cadence that it uses for the A-series iPhone and iPad chips. It has expanded the lineup with Pro and Max variants, and it has brought the M-series chips to the iPad Pro and iPad Air.

The key to this success is Apple Silicon’s Arm-based architecture and Apple’s relentless drive to improve a series of chips that has never been anything less than spectacular. These chips have always been faster than their Intel and AMD counterparts in key areas, but they’re also much more efficient and reliable, and the Macs that use them deliver ungodly good battery life that puts x86-based Windows laptops to shame.

Apple Silicon-based Macs also come with some compromises compared to their Intel-based predecessors and modern x86-based PCs. Their integrated memory architecture helps make them run faster, but that RAM can’t ever be expanded post-purchase. And Apple Silicon-based Macs still don’t offer the discrete graphics capabilities that creators, hardcore gamers, engineers, scientists, and some other power users require.

But Apple has again gotten an assist from the PC industry, which remains eager to copy anything Apple does. PC makers have been shipping soldered-on, non-upgradable RAM in their products for years now. And Intel and AMD have aped some of Arm’s and Apple’s best ideas in their x86 chips, and their integrated graphics have improved to the point where mainstream PC laptops are capable of playing even the most punishing game titles with good quality and performance.

And then Snapdragon X happened.

? Enter the dragon

Microsoft doesn’t get enough credit for understanding early on that Arm was the future of the PC, in part because of the timing: This came to light during the build-up to the doomed Windows 8 and RT, the latter of which was a stripped-down, Arm-based version that disappeared from the market quickly. After a lull of a few years, this effort was picked up again by Terry Myerson’s Windows 10 team. But Windows 10 on Arm, and then Windows 11 on Arm, went nowhere fast, in part because of their reliance on Qualcomm chips that were originally designed for phones.

I’ve written so much about the historic turnaround we witnessed with the shift to the Nuvia-based Snapdragon X chipset that repeating it all here is pointless. But how we got here is notable: Apple announced its shift to the M-series processors in late 2020, when it released the first Arm-based MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini models. Those Macs were so good that it forced Microsoft’s and Qualcomm’s hands. Qualcomm announced it would acquire Nuvia for $1.4 billion in January 2021. And then it spent the next two-plus years adapting that company’s datacenter Arm chips into “new internally designed CPUs” that could power premium Windows laptops. And Microsoft stepped up its efforts to improve Windows 11 on Arm dramatically on the software side, most notably with the incredible Prism x86 emulator.

The first generation Snapdragon X processors blow all of Intel’s and AMD’s x86 designs out of the water from every imaginable angle. But as I’ve noted many times, they have never quite matched the epic performance and uptime numbers that Apple achieves with its M-series chips. They are, as I put it, “in the ballpark,” but don’t misunderstand that as damning with fait praise. Compared to the previous phone-based Qualcomm chips, the Snapdragon X series is a revelation. And all you need to know about that is that Qualcomm has now shifted its flagship phone-based chips, which sell in the billions, over to the Snapdragon X architecture too.

Snapdragon X is a miracle, but Qualcomm has defied expectations by evolving these PC chips in what appears to be a slow burn fashion. It announced the first Snapdragon X Elite chips in late 2023, but didn’t provide silicon to PC makers until early 2024, with the first laptops shipping mid-year. In the year that followed, Qualcomm pushed Snapdragon X down market in response to PC maker requests, first with the Snapdragon X Plus and then with the 8-core Snapdragon X Plus and the entry-level Snapdragon X. Qualcomm didn’t announce the Snapdragon X2 until September 2025, and the first PCs based on this new generation of chips won’t ship, vaguely, until sometime in 2026.

The evolution of Snapdragon X seems slow because Apple has shipped the Apple Silicon M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max, M4, M4 Pro, M4 Max, and M5 since the initial Snapdragon X reveal. (And it will no doubt ship M5 Pro and M5 Max variants before the first X2 PCs arrive.) But it’s important to remember that the Snapdragon X outperformed everyone’s expectations and this family of chips is still dramatically “better” than any x86 chipset. (Better being subjective to some degree, but broadly true regardless.) It makes sense that Qualcomm would expend more time and effort adapting its best-selling and high volume phone chips to this architecture than it has evolving the relatively low volume PC chips.

Here’s the thing. Between the low-end Snapdragon X and now MediaTek’s new Kompanio Ultra 910, Apple’s competitors in the PC space—meaning, Windows PCs and Chromebooks, respectively—now have viable Arm-based chipsets that are eating away at its competitive advantages. Yes, they are “in the ballpark” and don’t threaten high-end Apple Silicon chips, at least not yet. But these platforms have a virus-like tendency to expand broadly. And it’s only a matter of time before Arm-based PC platforms catch up across the board, or at least restore the competitive normality that has sidelined Macs for years. They will be good enough. Good enough technically and with lower prices.

Apple can pretend that it is not influenced by this competition. But the firm has two paths it could take. It could ignore Snapdragon X and a growing list of PC-based Arm architectures that will soon include graphics king Nvidia. Or it can respond. And it is my belief that this suddenly viable competition is what triggered Apple to start thinking about an A-series MacBook. A Mac that can be to the higher-end M-series MacBook Air and Pro what the low-end Snapdragon X is to the Snapdragon X Elite: A shockingly good experience at a much more reasonable price point.

? Misunderstanding the A-series MacBook

Critics of Apple using “an iPhone chip” in a Mac are missing the point. The A-series MacBook that Apple is actively developing now isn’t like a netbook in any way, and it isn’t about Apple suddenly giving up its premium positioning in a race to the bottom for unit sales.

The relationship between the Apple Silicon A-series chips and M-series chips is well understood, or at least it should be. These chips share the same architecture, with the original M1 essentially being a fork of the A-series flagship that year, the A14X. This parallel development has continued with each year and chip generation since 2020, with the M5 being based on the A19 Pro found in the iPhone 17 Pro series and iPhone Air.

The M-series chips are beefier, of course, with more CPU and GPU cores, more advanced Neural Accelerators (NPUs), faster and more integrated RAM, and other advantages one would expect on the Mac. But that means that an A-series chip could serve as the brains of a modern Mac, too, even if it were unchanged from the versions used by iPhones. But I suspect Apple will make some changes, creating in effect something that sits between the A19 Pro in the iPhone and the M5.

Put even more simply, where the current Snapdragon X lineup consists of four main tiers (X, X Plus 8-core, X Plus, and X Elite), the Mac will soon be served by four main chip tiers, too, including whatever the A series chip is called, plus the M5, M5 Pro, and M5 Max. (Plus Apple will continue to sell Macs based on previous generation M-series chips, as it does with the A-series on iPhone.) This range of offerings will help Apple expand the range of Mac computers, in this case by scaling down as Qualcomm did with Snapdragon X.

Scaling down doesn’t mean scaling down into the basement. Apple currently sells a single M1-based MacBook Air through Wal-Mart that might be competitive if it just came with 16 GB of RAM despite being five years old. But a new A-series MacBook will be truly competitive with a more modern design and more modern components.

That M1 MacBook Air sells for $650—it’s on sale now for $600—and while I’d be surprised if Apple hit that price point for the A-series MacBook, something between $600 and the $1000 starting price of the MacBook Air M5 makes sense. And it makes sense because there is no such thing as a good Windows PC for $500 or less, a market Apple can ignore just like we do. Instead, the sweet spot is right around $800, the same rough price as the HP OmniBook 5 that I love so much: Right now, these laptops, which come in 14- and 16-inch models, range from $500 from $950.

As a premium brand, the Mac doesn’t have to undercut PC pricing. Indeed, that might be a liability. What it does need to do, or perhaps should do, is provide more value than comparable PCs. And where the MacBook Air arguably achieves that today in the $1000+ market for premium PCs, Snapdragon X is triggering a PC renaissance in the $600 to $1000 range. And this is precisely where the A-series MacBook can slot in. It can meet a need and remove an obvious set of concerns that many customers might otherwise have.

In some ways, one might argue that the Apple Silicon M-series chips have overachieved, especially as new generation chips unfold over time with ever more impressive capabilities. Apple still has a need to scale up to the high-end needs of some creators and other professionals. But as it does that, there’s a gap emerging on the low end too. So as Apple starts only selling Macs with M4 and M5 chips, the A-series chips can fill that need and do so with more efficient silicon. For example, where the M1 is a 5 nm chip, the A18 Pro, A19 Pro, and M5 are built on a far more efficient 3 nm manufacturing process.

This makes so much sense. The A-series is already Apple’s volume chip and adding a single Mac model to the list of devices in which it’s used is straightforward. This chip will be powerful enough for mainstream needs, and more, similar to Snapdragon X. And it can be made more affordably, just as the resulting Macs will be more affordable. Not cheap, but more affordable. It’s an important distinction, I think.

There is, however, one major question mark.

? What about iPad?

Apple just released iPadOS 26, unleashing the power hidden within all iPads and turning each, potentially, into a full-featured productivity laptop. Why on earth would Apple create a new entry-level MacBook at the same time it’s advanced the iPad to meet that need as well?

This one is less obvious to me. But I think I understand the positioning.

I’ve written that the iPad is a nearly perfect laptop for most users, thanks to iPadOS and your keyboard cover of choice. But I used the term nearly perfect for a reason. Those of us who prefer what I’ll call a traditional laptop experience will run into small but annoying issues when trying to use an iPad as a laptop. That’s on purpose and for a good reason: The iPad has always been, and remains today, a touch-first tablet, not a traditional laptop. It’s optimized for those use cases.

Interestingly, the Mac is rumored to be adopting touch screens, which will move that product line one step closer to the iPad, too, and that will help with running iPad apps, as Macs do today. So both product lines are taking steps towards each other, which makes sense in a virtuous cycle sense. The Mac will remain optimized for traditional laptop and desktop PC usage, and the iPad will remain optimized for touch and tablet usage. But there will be overlap.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with overlap: Everyone’s needs and wants are different. And Apple bringing its A-series chips to the Mac is a win-win. It will help those who want the full Mac experience for less. And it won’t impact those intending to go forward with the iPad.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft and Google respond with their respective computing platforms.