Why is this news? I am a proud Apple fan, but I don't think a slight bump in their cheapest laptop needs to make the front page of HN. I feel like I am missing something.
Because people browsing https://news.ycombinator.com/newest decided to click on the upvote button. It seriously only takes 3 upvotes for something to end up on the front page.
This opinion might be unpopular, but I've found over the past decade or so that any reasonably sized tech community seems to have a huge hard-on for Apple. I saw it on Engadget in the early days, reddit as it grew, now HN and so on.
They're a cool company and all but I agree, fortunately things like this have a way of sliding off the HN frontpage fairly quickly.