The Mac isn’t carrying its weight. In fact, it’s Apple’s lowest-selling product line, sitting behind even the Apple Watch. And despite macOS being a standout platform, it lags far behind Windows where it matters: worldwide adoption.
Apple needs a fresh angle, and the rumored budget MacBook might be the first real chance to rewrite the Mac’s trajectory.
Mac is Apple’s weakest product category
The Mac used to define Apple. Today, it’s a distant also-ran. The iPhone is Apple’s biggest offering by a wide margin, with about 230 million units sold in 2024. Next is AirPods, with about 66 million of these wireless earbuds going out last year. Roughly 57 million iPads sold in 2024, followed by around 40 million Apple Watches.
Well after all of those comes the Mac, with approximately 23 million units heading to customers last year.
The situation is somewhat different when revenue gets factored in — Mac jumps up to second place. But low unit sales make it clear that Mac isn’t performing nearly as well as it could.
A comparison with Windows PC sales makes that weakness even more obvious. At approximately 23 million units sold in 2024, Mac made up only about 9% of the global personal computing market (by shipments) in 2024.
That low figure might be acceptable if it were part of a strong growth thread, but it’s not. True, Mac sales have increased slightly. A decade ago, macOS made up 7% or 8% of the market, and a decade before that, the figure stood at about 5%. But even the launch of Macs powered by Apple’s powerful M-series processors in 2020 has been insufficient to move the needle much.
iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and AirPods are all winning their respective product categories (or close to it). Mac isn’t even close. Change is required.
Apple needs a budget MacBook
Concept: Google Gemini
Apple computers do as well or better than their Windows rivals in the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index. It’s clear macOS itself isn’t flawed. But Apple’s product strategy for selling the Mac to consumers needs a serious fix.
The majority of computers (laptops and desktops) going to average consumers for everyday use — education and standard home office tasks — are priced at less than $1,000.
The only Mac in this product category is the Mac mini at $599. The problem with that is, notebooks outsell desktops by two to one, and about 90% of all Macs sold are MacBooks. But there’s no budget macOS notebook. The most affordable is the MacBook Air, which starts at $999.
Historically, Apple concentrated on the premium price segment. And in one sense, that’s worked. There are millions of happy MacBook users, and Apple has raked in lots of cash. But there are plenty more potential customers who simply cannot afford a macOS notebook. They are losing out, and so is Apple.
Rumored low-cost MacBook will mark new approach for Apple
That’s about to change. Hopefully. Apple is working on its first low-cost MacBook, according to Bloomberg. The new Mac, code-named J700, is reportedly in testing and early production, with the goal of launching in the first half of 2026.
To keep costs down, the computer will supposedly use an Apple A-series chip — the same type currently going into iPhones. Don’t scoff, as that chip will make it more powerful than high-end Macs sold a few years ago. That’s fast enough for the budget MacBook to “browse the web, work on documents or conduct light media editing,” reports Bloomberg — exactly what consumers need for home use. It’ll have an LCD screen around 13 inches in size and sell for about $600.
The affordable offering will undoubtedly bring in a rush of fresh customers. Anyone currently forced to buy a Windows laptop because they need something cheap can soon get a MacBook instead.
While there’s no exact figure, it’s safe to assume that millions of iPhone users rely on Windows PCs rather than Macs. iPhone holds roughly 60% of the U.S. smartphone market, and Windows still dominates the PC world, so statistically, an iPhone user is far more likely to own a Windows laptop than a Mac. That’s a massive pool of potential customers for a lower-cost MacBook.
Schools and businesses will be interested, as well.
One computer won’t rocket Mac sales into the stratosphere. But it’s going to give Apple a sizable bump in the global market for PCs. The Mac-maker sat perpetually behind HP, Lenovo and Dell while mostly offering computers priced above what most consumers were willing to pay. A competitively priced notebook will change that. And follow-up budget MacBook models will surely keep the momentum going for years to come.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.