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Apple intros MacBook Neo: $599 with an iPhone chip

sphinx99 said:
What a bizarre review. Every other sentence mentioned MacBook Neo. Not a single word about any of the laptops the XPS 13 actually competes with… you know… Windows laptops. Just Neo Neo Neo again and again.

Then there was this amazing line: “Windows is very intelligent when it comes to memory management”
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I've seen the press release — it explicitly and repeatedly references the MacBook Neo. Between that and having Neos on hand at the showcase, it's pretty clear Dell is nervous about Apple and wants you to talk about how much better the XPS 13 appears to be. That and Dell likely wasn't going to have access to equvialent Windows laptops when some of them were announced at the same time as the XPS model.

The comparisons are fair, but there is the real risk that Dell, Microsoft, Intel, and others are simply drawing attention to Apple. If the MacBook Neo is all you can talk about, why don't I just get a Neo? Clearly you think it's good enough to be mentioned in every conversation. I understand why Dell is doing it here, but it is considered a classic marketing mistake to name your competitors.
 
ND40oz said:
Welp, Neo just went up $100 in price for both configs.

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-neo/

Looks like price increases across the lineup for Apple. Macbook Air starts at 1299 and the Macbook Pro at 1999 now.
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It's unfortunate, but it's also clear Apple has been doing everything it can to delay and mitigate price hikes: buying parts in advance, offering more storage alongside increases, even discontinuing cheaper models while keeping others unchanged.

Everyone else is in the same boat, so it's not as if the Neo suddenly becomes a lousy purchase. But it does make refurbs/clearance look better, and it means Apple won't have as much of an advantage as it did before. If the Neo had stayed at $599 for all of 2026, it would've cleaned house.
 
A victim of their success with the product. Having to make more A18 SoCs in 2026 has upped the price.

*edit
They pretty much raised the prices of everything including ancient almost EOL things they still sell like the current Apple TV that is probably old stock manufactured before the ai bubble. So just blatant profiteering using the bubble as cover.
 
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kac77 said:
Correct.
Apple (AAPL) Implements Price Increases Across Multiple Devices Amid Memory Shortage
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I can't wait for this all to get even worse!

giphy.gif
 
If I had ordered "my" macbook yesterday I could make a killing when it arrives.
 
uOpt said:
If I had ordered "my" macbook yesterday I could make a killing when it arrives.
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As long as you're not ordering directly from Apple, most retailers still have the old pricing and there are still sales on top of that.
 
ND40oz said:
As long as you're not ordering directly from Apple, most retailers still have the old pricing and there are still sales on top of that.
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It's a special config. Never seen it at retailers.
 
uOpt said:
It's a special config. Never seen it at retailers.
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You can get semi-custom configs at places like B and H but it appears they've already adjusted their pricing to match Apple. Apple Premier Partners have access to the complete build to order portfolio but they've likely all followed Apple's price increases since they're just ordering it from Apple for you.
 
I do think Apple tried to delay price hikes as long as possible, but at the same time... there's no doubt that Apple also protects its profit margins whenever it can. If I were Cook I'd have soaked up some of the margin (say, from 38% to 20%) to limit or avoid increases for a while longer.

With that said, I also don't feel much sympathy for the PC vendors that have lived on razor-thin margins for years and now have no breathing room. Acer, Dell, HP and the like are brands where a couple of rough quarters will pose major problems; Apple can ride it out and even take unusual steps to keep on a steady path.
 
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Oh...well....shoot. I will just go mention to my farmer buddies that they can raise their prices and the people will just have to accept it. Foolish people assuming the market dictates a price based on supply and demand.....
 
1.1.2.3.5... said:
Oh...well....shoot. I will just go mention to my farmer buddies that they can raise their prices and the people will just have to accept it. Foolish people assuming the market dictates a price based on supply and demand.....
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If that's the case then Apple wouldn't have made $112 Billion in profits as pointed out by Bernie Sanders. It's also weird he's pointing out just Apple when Windows laptops have been doing it for a while, but whatever. I've had people tell me that Apple's insane R&D budget is fine because their profits are insane, but when I point out the price increase then they had to. In some way, Apple can act like a game console and make selling their hardware cheaper than Windows because they can offset that by their services. Just like the Iran war is causing record profits for oil and gas. DRAM is entering the most profitable cycle in the industry's 50-year history.

Also what supply and what demand? The reason is because of AI data centers, which haven't been built and will likely not get built. Is this DRAM entering into data centers before Hynix, Samsung, and Micron could sell it to consumers? It's fake demand with fake supply but with real price increases.
 
In case people hadn't noticed: free markets are inherently self-destructive.

I rather suspect that farmers in particular are bound to know very well that a free market is an illusion when a few parties have grabbed a significant portion of either the buyers' or the sellers' side of the market in question.
 
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