No joke, $700 for an M1 MacBook Air (via Daring Fireball) might be the best deal for any Mac in the history of the company. They’re going to sell a bunch of these at Walmart.

@manton Tempted. My five-year-old MBP is working surprisingly well but.

@codemaclife @manton I have the same and i couldn’t agree more. They’ll sell out their whole stock by the end of next week.

@manton Now $650 at Best Buy!

@manton @gruber The M1 Air is still in the official catalogue (translation: not discontinued) for some price-sensitive regions. Here are some pictures from South America, and the highest priced one is just 850 bucks (US$650 + 19% of sales tax)

@manton @gruber Wondering if Apple plans to shoehorn an M2 chip into this form factor when the M4 Air’s come out, as part of this deal.

Either way, a win-win for all. Way to go Apple.

@manton I wish they had a 16GB version. I’d buy that.

But my M1 Mac Mini w/8GB of memory is getting pushed to the brink.

@lwtong @manton Oh, like a “MacBook SE”?

@manton I’m still using M1 MacBook Air as my daily and love it. Base spec too, works great. (My tasks are fairly basic.) Got it from Apple refurb. But yeah, $700 is a great deal for it now.

@manton This is the laptop I use full-time for my work. At this price point, there is no better computer for the vast majority of people.

@manton You can get some very serious well built hardware at a surprising cheap price by going with new-but clearance models.

A client picked up a few Thinkpad P14s Gen 3's this last week for $700 new direct from Lenovo.

-Ryzen™ 7 PRO 6850U
-16 GB ram (12 usable since the GPU eats 4GB).
-AMD 680m GPU
-512GB PCIe gen 4 SSD.
-Backlit keyboard
-Win 11 Pro

Pretty impressed with it at that price point.

@manton @gruber Purchase link:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Apple-MacBook-Air-13-3-inch-Laptop-Space-Gray-M1-Chip-8GB-RAM-256GB-storage/609040889

@manton An entry level Mac shouldn’t cost more than an iPad with keyboard and mouse. I hope they make this permanent and take it worldwide.

@mindofaaronw Absolutely. The MacBook Air is that good I am certain my next device another MacBook Air in a few years.

@manton Apple should have kept it in the family as their most affordable entry level laptop. Just update the Apple Silicon every few generations. Great for education, casual users, people who basically want the equivalent of a Chromebook

@gruber @manton Yes. But I think it'll be plainly called the MacBook (no adjective), mirroring the iPad line up.

iPad/MacBook - You want value for money.
iPad/MacBook Air - You're a discerning customer.
iPad/MacBook Pro - You want the best money can buy.

Assuming this is a multi-year plan, I think Apple will stick with the wedge form factor for now and update the chipset only.

@gruber @manton Apple's strategy with Apple Silicon seems to be:

1. Create different chip SKUs to upsell discerning customers.

2. At the end of the chip's life cycle, repurpose binned chips they've been collecting from Step 1 into as many products possible (hence the "iPad" in the Apple Studio Display).

This Walmart deal to me is about Apple capturing the value back from their binned chips.

@manton At this price point I would get one immediately; but it starts at US$1,200 in Brazil.

@lwtong @manton That's a good prediction, including the name.

@manton This computer is my daily driver and I can basically recommend it 100% of the time.

@codemaclife I’m going to use mine till it stops receiving updates and likely stick with the Air as well. Perfect for my needs!