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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”
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
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
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

It's a special config. Never seen it at retailers.
 
uOpt said:
It's a special config. Never seen it at retailers.
Click to expand...

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.....
Click to expand...
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.
 
An update on how the Neo is affecting sales: Apple's fiscal Q3 (calendar Q2) results show a 29% jump in net Mac sales (that's money, not units).

Now, given that Apple also had a spring Mac update last year, it's pretty clear this is the Neo driving demand... and with a lower price, that means a lot of volume was necessary to boost sales that much higher. It's no wonder Apple reportedly decided to restart A18 Pro production and up its shipment targets.

I'm really curious to see what happens in the back half of the year. The price hike to $699 doesn't help, but then Windows vendors are in the same position. And we haven't seen the effect of back-to-school (and back-to-work) purchases yet. I'm not expecting runaway sales, but this performance could reflect things going forward.
 
Besides the mini's selling like hotcakes to people doing local AI, I don't know of another trigger for a big sales jump for macs.
 
Aurelius said:
During its earnings call, Apple explicitly said the MacBook Neo was a major factor in Mac sales growth.
Click to expand...
Hard to argue with a $600 Mac that is better built, has better speakers, and a better screen than any of its competitors. Apple is really flexing on the market.
 
madpistol said:
Hard to argue with a $600 Mac that is better built, has better speakers, and a better screen than any of its competitors. Apple is really flexing on the market.
Click to expand...
The Dell XPS 13 is pretty good, but it's becoming clear what the limits are: the 8GB version is a no-go (unless you only use a few browser tabs at most), Core Series 3 fights to match an iPhone chip, and the absence of a headphone jack is odd in a budget Windows laptop.

Microsoft just today said it was working to improve Windows performance on 8GB of RAM this fall, which is great... but won't help a college student who needs a laptop before September.
 
Aurelius said:
During its earnings call, Apple explicitly said the MacBook Neo was a major factor in Mac sales growth.
Click to expand...
The question is, did it hurt Macbook Air sales? They did quickly raise the price to $700.
 
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DukenukemX said:
The question is, did it hurt Macbook Air sales? The did quickly raise the price to $700.
Click to expand...
That'd be difficult to answer for certain. Probably to a degree, but the people who have the budget for an Air aren't usually going to step down even with their own price increases to deal with. And you can't count on refurbs meeting your budget and feature expectations.

Either way, I doubt Apple is complaining. The money isn't just in the upfront price of the system — it's in the ecosystem purchases and long-term loyalty. Someone who buys a Neo might keep buying Macs for years while paying for iPhones, AirPods, or services like Apple Music. If anything, the lower initial price could help by reeling in students and other customers sooner than usual.
 
DukenukemX said:
The question is, did it hurt Macbook Air sales? The did quickly raise the price to $700.
Click to expand...
The Air went up that same day by $200 , so look more a general rise of price than wanting to push sales back into the Air segment.

We do not have perfect segment granuliarity in margin, but overall hardware gross margin did not move I think, stayed at 40%, if that would have been a tell of canabilisation vs net new ratio.

Also the big boost is in dollars, if it was in unit we could suspect more canabilisation than gain, but that should have drop the average price and still an impressive in $ rise occured, so more sales than usual is a must.

They had like during the 2021/2022 moment omre than half of mac buyer being first time buyer and in education half the Neo sales were replacing PC/chromebook previous deal:
https://www.benzinga.com/markets/te...books-by-the-thousands-apple-just-named-names
 
zehoo said:
Dell Faces Pricing & Distribution Struggles With Its MacBook Neo Competitor, The XPS 13; Base Model In South Korea Going For $1,400, Double The U.S. MSRP
Click to expand...
As much as some like to critize Tim Cook, he's an operations (and particularly supply chain) genius. Apple gets the great deals, keeps inventory at just the right levels, and knows how to approach different countries.

At this point the XPS 13 is the promising college sports star who fumbles with their first big league deal. The stats suggest they should thrive (a touchscreen! Two full-speed USB-C ports! Backlit keyboard!), but you soon realize that they're ill-equipped to handle the majors (8GB is unacceptable in Windows, Core Series 3 isn't really faster, no headphone jack, some models aren't ready yet, inconsistent pricing). The MacBook Neo is the player who got drafted simply because they have a strong work ethic — they're the better athlete in real life because they always show up and give exactly what you expect.
 
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Prince Valiant said:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTCdW_ZZt70
https://www.techpowerup.com/352178/macbook-neo-burns-through-ssd-cycles-at-an-alarming-rate

Not sure if Duke or Erek have posted this somewhere, magic Apple memory :rolleyes:. Summary of the gist of it on TPU.
Click to expand...

Ty,​

​

“MacBook Neo Burns Through SSD Cycles At An Alarming Rate​

by Cpt.Jank Today, 09:43 Discuss (3 Comments)
Apple's affordable MacBook Neo was a shock to the system of many a Windows laptop OEM when it launched in March 2026 with enough performance for just about all casual computing tasks and home PC use. However, it seems as though the MacBook Neo's 8 GB of RAM may pose a longevity risk, because of how often the laptop runs out of memory and is forced to use the swap file on the SSD to compensate. In recent SSD longevity tests, the YouTube channel UFD Tech found that the MacBook Neo could burn through a significant portion of its SSD lifespan with Swap usage alone.

Using an SSD burn tool, UFD Tech found that the 256 GB MacBook Neo burned through an estimated 5% of its overall lifespan after 20 TB, projecting a rated lifespan of around 414 TB, while the 512 GB saw a projected rating of around 1521 TB. The Brett, the host of the YouTube channel, then went on to use the MacBook Neo for a day to estimate how much data was written to the Neo's SSD swap file as it ran out of RAM throughout the day. Using the laptop as a glorified web portal, running Chrome for research, reading, and communication via WhatsApp and Discord, the MacBook Neo wrote "nearly 900 GB" of data to its SSD in just three hours.“
 
Prince Valiant said:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTCdW_ZZt70
https://www.techpowerup.com/352178/macbook-neo-burns-through-ssd-cycles-at-an-alarming-rate

Not sure if Duke or Erek have posted this somewhere, magic Apple memory :rolleyes:. Summary of the gist of it on TPU.
Click to expand...

I remember warning against this since the Neo runs an OS that clearly needs more than 8GB of ram and will compensate by thrashing the SSD. You know, the soldered on components that will go bad eventually. I hope Neo owners know how to do BGA soldering and have a spare Mac to properly write data onto the new NAND chips.
monty python warned you.jpg
 
erek said:

Ty,​

​

“MacBook Neo Burns Through SSD Cycles At An Alarming Rate​

by Cpt.Jank Today, 09:43 Discuss (3 Comments)
Apple's affordable MacBook Neo was a shock to the system of many a Windows laptop OEM when it launched in March 2026 with enough performance for just about all casual computing tasks and home PC use. However, it seems as though the MacBook Neo's 8 GB of RAM may pose a longevity risk, because of how often the laptop runs out of memory and is forced to use the swap file on the SSD to compensate. In recent SSD longevity tests, the YouTube channel UFD Tech found that the MacBook Neo could burn through a significant portion of its SSD lifespan with Swap usage alone.

Using an SSD burn tool, UFD Tech found that the 256 GB MacBook Neo burned through an estimated 5% of its overall lifespan after 20 TB, projecting a rated lifespan of around 414 TB, while the 512 GB saw a projected rating of around 1521 TB. The Brett, the host of the YouTube channel, then went on to use the MacBook Neo for a day to estimate how much data was written to the Neo's SSD swap file as it ran out of RAM throughout the day. Using the laptop as a glorified web portal, running Chrome for research, reading, and communication via WhatsApp and Discord, the MacBook Neo wrote "nearly 900 GB" of data to its SSD in just three hours.“
Click to expand...
Swap memory is a factor, but this smells of a classic "panic!" piece that makes it sound like your laptop is going to die in months. Think about it: if a 256GB Neo's total lifespan is 414TB and you use 900GB of swap in a few hours, your system would last just under a year and a half before the SSD was completely unusable. iPhone 16 Pro owners would be rioting in the streets right now as they've had the same storage for two years.

The boring answer is that people won't usually hit swap memory that hard, and those that do probably aren't looking at a Neo in the first place.That and major Windows PC vendors are putting out brand new 8GB systems... and Windows' memory handling is considerably less elegant. If I was shopping in this price bracket, I might get the Neo simply because it's better-equipped for running into RAM limits.
 
People habe always been warning that saving money on RAM in Macs might financially backfire because it threatens the SSD.

That is as old as non-replaceable SSDs in Macs.
 
OK, I just finished my procurement for the year.
It's not that the Neo is a better laptop than the similarly priced Dells.
It's that Windows 11 is just that much worse on lower-end hardware than macOS is.

Dell is worried about the Neo, and they made that very clear to me during my conversations with them; though, funny enough, if you are leasing, Apple uses Dell Finance for that...
But Dell is very upset about how poorly Windows 11 works on budget hardware because it is hurting their sales.

So I fully believe that Microsoft will fix Windows 11 performance, probably just call it Windows 12 to escape the stigma. but it won't be because of Gamers or enthusiasts; it will be because Dell, HP, and Lenovo are having too difficult a time selling hardware at consumer-friendly prices.
 
My M1 Mac mini still works fine if I turn it on. 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage. They had the same thing said about the lifespan of the drive in that when it came out.
 
Lakados said:
OK, I just finished my procurement for the year.
It's not that the Neo is a better laptop than the similarly priced Dells.
It's that Windows 11 is just that much worse on lower-end hardware than macOS is.

Dell is worried about the Neo, and they made that very clear to me during my conversations with them; though, funny enough, if you are leasing, Apple uses Dell Finance for that...
But Dell is very upset about how poorly Windows 11 works on budget hardware because it is hurting their sales.

So I fully believe that Microsoft will fix Windows 11 performance, probably just call it Windows 12 to escape the stigma. but it won't be because of Gamers or enthusiasts; it will be because Dell, HP, and Lenovo are having too difficult a time selling hardware at consumer-friendly prices.
Click to expand...
To Microsoft, the cries of unhappiness from small-time, less-than-trillion-dollar companies like Dell, HP etc. is like a mosquito buzzing in the ear of an elephant. Microsoft receives more money from AI investment in the time it takes to read an email than HP gives Microsoft in a quarter.

And on top of that: any company built on Entra ID, Microsoft 365, Windows etc. isn't going to switch unless the cost of re-training, cancelling windows-specific subscriptions, completely re-tuning their network is less than what they'd save in hardware costs in the financial year. Microsoft has you by the balls, and they know it. They can fart out a minimum-viable-product and the only financial choice is to pay them for it.
 
KazeoHin said:
To Microsoft, the cries of unhappiness from small-time, less-than-trillion-dollar companies like Dell, HP etc. is like a mosquito buzzing in the ear of an elephant. Microsoft receives more money from AI investment in the time it takes to read an email than HP gives Microsoft in a quarter.

And on top of that: any company built on Entra ID, Microsoft 365, Windows etc. isn't going to switch unless the cost of re-training, cancelling windows-specific subscriptions, completely re-tuning their network is less than what they'd save in hardware costs in the financial year. Microsoft has you by the balls, and they know it. They can fart out a minimum-viable-product and the only financial choice is to pay them for it.
Click to expand...
Maybe they will, maybe they won't.
But if Microsoft ignores them for too long, they will be forced to look at options that don't include Microsoft, because they don't have the operating headroom to just give up that market segment.
I am sure Linux would love that situation, but it would be the start of a slippery slope.

You have Sony already stating they aren't porting their titles to PC; Steam is the bulk of the PC game sales, and Xbox is struggling, having been saddled with Billions in acquisitions.
If PC's start shipping without Windows, that hurts Xbox, and Investors won't like that.

So yes, at some level Microsoft can tell the OEM's to suck rocks, but it could have lasting implications down the line, especially with the EU already looking for reasons to ditch Windows and O365.

It's just not a move I think Microsoft should make, and I am sure at some level they know that too.
 
zehoo said:
My M1 Mac mini still works fine if I turn it on. 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage. They had the same thing said about the lifespan of the drive in that when it came out.
Click to expand...

Yeah, same with our M1 8GB iMac, works great and it's been my tester for Golden Gate, no issues so far throughout the betas.
 
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