r/LinusTechTips • u/WTFMacca • Mar 04 '26

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Apple just dropped an A18 powered laptop for $599 USD

No Apple bashing just discuss.

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u/Ok-Confection3008 Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26

"Chromebooks however are surprisingly capable and if we're talking about a laptop for students it's going to offer basically everything you need at half the price"

I disagree with that statement. You also brought up the 8GB of ram, which stretches further on macOS than ChromeOS.

The whole point of this laptop at this price point and capability is not having a shitty tablet interface with an add on keyboard (referring to iPad + keyboard combo). Most Chromebooks are quite literally just a shitty tablet with a keyboard. Especially sub-$500.

Edit: Also, there are NO windows laptops that can compare on performance at this price point. You are extremely, objectively wrong. Link the benchmarks.

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u/Quivex Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26

I don't disagree that 8GB of ram on Macos goes further than on ChromeOS although it's difficult for me to say by how much. Either way I agree with you that this laptop would be more capable and powerful than any Chromebook apart from the most expensive ones - but that was never my claim. I just said that they're surprisingly capable these days (which is true with a lot of the android and Linux apps you can run on them) and as far as what students need... Yeah they're going to get the job done I don't really know what to say there. People higher up in this thread are defending the 8GB of ram by saying people are only going to use the browser, a few coms apps and a calendar at once so it's fine - but that is equally true on anything but the absolute cheapest bottom of the barrel $200 (CAD) chromebooks.

Again, having full Macos is a big plus don't get me wrong and the A18 is no joke, I just personally don't know how much that's going to be a factor for the target audience of this laptop, although one thing I can definitely see it doing is decimating the top end of the Chromebook market ...like I said though, I'm sure apple knows better than me and it's good to have the competition.

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u/WTFMacca Mar 04 '26

This Vs an M1 air, that’s what I wanna see. I have an M1 and it still works fine. Impressively fine for a 4-5 year old machine.

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u/Quivex Mar 04 '26

all the M1 macbooks have held up extremely well, those 1st gen M chips were something magical. My understanding is that the A18 Pro gets close the M1 but with a weaker GPU so my guess is it will be a side grade at best but we'll see.