Apple doesn’t currently sell the M1 MacBook Air, meaning its price at third-party retailers is constantly in flux. But in time for back-to-school season, (and ahead of Prime Day next week), Apple and Walmart have announced that it’s being sold at a surprising new starting price of $649. These aren’t refurbished or preowned laptops, either — at least, not according to the listing.
Of course, this is the M1 model, the first Apple Silicon MacBook — which means it uses an older chassis than the newer M2 or M3 models. This is also the base configuration, meaning it only comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Walmart has all three colors on offer at this price too — Space Gray, Silver, and Gold.
But should you really buy this older model? After all, it’s from 2020 and nearly four years old.
The M1 MacBook Air was officially removed from the Apple Store earlier this year when the M3 MacBook Air entered the lineup. The M2 MacBook Air took the place of the M1 as the $999 entry-level option, meaning I finally felt good about no longer recommending the older model. Despite the great performance and battery life of the M1, even by today’s standards, the new price of the M2 MacBook Air made it a better overall value.
But then, Apple announced that its new software AI features, Apple Intelligence through macOS Sequoia, are backward compatible with the M1. All of a sudden, that affordable laptop became a lot more attractive — especially if you could find it for a good price. And $649 does the trick.
Premium laptops at $649 are fairly uncommon, even on the Windows side of the aisle. One of our favorite budget laptops to recommend, the Buy at Best Buy , comes in at a solid $800 price, but it has 512GB of storage.
Unfortunately, Walmart doesn’t offer larger storage or memory options under this deal. But as a starter laptop for a student or someone that doesn’t need their computer for much, this is about as good as it gets.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.