In advance of tomorrow’s Apple media event, rumors are swirling about a sub-$1000 laptop – with most sources pegging it at an $800 or $900 price point. This would be a $200 to $300 drop from the current cheapest MacBook – but perhaps more importantly, it would also be the first time for an Apple laptop to break into a 3-digit price.
Of course, there are plenty of sub-$1000 laptops on the market already – you can buy Dell’s Inspiron line at prices from $499 up, and if you’re willing to compromise down to the “netbook” level of machine, with a 9-inch screen, you can find pricing under $400. But those cheaper machines are not, of course, Macs.
As a happy Mac owner already, the new price point isn’t much of a temptation to me – we’ve already got two MacBooks in the office, and being developers, we’re unlikely to go for a low-end notebook in any case. But I wonder whether it will contribute significantly to Apple’s ever-growing share of the laptop market.
If you’re not yet a MacBook user, what do you think? Could a new, cheaper Mac laptop tempt you to switch? Or are you firmly committed to some alternative, despite the pressure to join the cool kids?
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