this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Woah, this is new! A version of Mac OSX running on a iPhone/iPad CPU.
Not new, the Apple Silicon Developer Transition Kit had an A12. And of course the M-series is based on the A-series, so in a way they've always been iPhone/iPad chips.
They're clearly going for the same thing on all devices at some point. There's a lot of money to be made locking shit down and keeping your users hostage.
So a glorified tablet?
If its the full macOS, I don't think we can say that. That's what makes this so interesting as it is a first of its kind.
Now, if it performs like a dog compared to an equivalent spec M3 or M4 Macbook Air, then we probably could call it a glorified tablet.
Performance wise it's an interesting one. I think from a price and energy standpoint it sits squarely against windows ultrabooks with a Snapdragon X, for example, a Galaxy Book 4 Edge.
Based purely on benchmarks, the A18 Pro is weaker than that, plus you have only 8GB of RAM.
However - I have a Surface Pro X with the original SQ1, with roughly 40% of the performance of these... And even at that level, the problem is Windows on ARM, not the performance. It only lets you down for things it's clearly not meant to do, like video editing.
Another alternative I see for that price is a windows laptop with an i5-1334U, which theoretically gives you a raw performance within 2% of the A18 Pro.
Given that at this price Linux compatibility is an absolute lottery, would I sacrifice half the RAM for having an OS that isn't Windows? Yeah there's not much to think. W11 will probably eat half the RAM on telemetry alone, and Apple's BS is easier to put up with than MicroSlop's...
I'm not sure we can use the "Windows x86 vs Windows ARM" analog for this new unit from Apple. MacOS Tahoe is a native ARM OS on both the high end and now this low end unit. With Windows its a completely different CPU architecture.
Apple has to know this is going to cannibalize its low end (8GB/256GB SSD) Macbook Air line. So will Apple discontinue the low config Air or is there some other differentiator that still makes the low config Air compelling?
It’s a Chromebook alternative.