Apple 2026 MacBook Plans: Affordable Model Could Feature A18 Pro

Apple’s current budget MacBook A18 Pro is the 13-inch Air model. It’s available in Spain for €1,019 (on sale) in the version with 16 GB of RAM, an M4 SoC, and a 256 GB SSD. It’s a “reasonable” price for a Mac, but it’s still far from the average user who wants to spend less than €1,000—a very important and crowded category that generates a lot of money.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has dropped an interesting rumor, claiming that Apple is working on a truly budget MacBook that would cost under 1,075 USD and retain the design and screen size of the 13-inch MacBook Air. It will, therefore, be a version of the latter, but with hardware cutbacks.

The most significant difference between the two laptops will be in the SoC, as the MacBook Air uses the M series , and that new budget model will be configured, in theory, with an Apple A18 Pro chip, the same chip that Apple uses in the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. This chip is quite powerful and has an advanced NPU that is capable of running AI locally, so it’s not a bad move.

For Apple, this would also be a double win-win. On the one hand, it would allow it to create a more affordable laptop capable of competing in a very crowded and lucrative segment: the sub-€1,000 mid-range. On the other hand, it could also use this new laptop to sell off all of its unsold Apple A18 Pro SoCs.

We don’t have the full details or final price of that cheap MacBook yet, but if it is confirmed, it will most likely have 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD in its base configuration, although I don’t dare rule out a version with 8GB of RAM to further reduce the price of that base version.

The Apple A18 Pro has a 6-core ARM CPU (2 high-performance cores and 4 high-efficiency cores) and comes with a 6-core Apple GPU. The NPU has 16 AI cores and delivers 35 TOPs of power.

This new budget MacBook is rumored to go into production later this year, with a mid-2026 launch. Pricing is a mystery, but based on what we’ve seen with the 13-inch MacBook Air and the likely specs of this new, more affordable model, it’s likely to be priced in the $858 – $965 range.