I don't doubt that it will sell well (I ordered one myself) but I really dislike this kind of marketing. I would like to get some numbers not "best launch on a Tuesday in a year that ends on 6..."
Edit: (Apple stopped reporting sales numbers in late 2018)
a product created for the strategic purpose of expanding into a new clientele is doing exactly that. that is the win.
put another way, if the statement he said was “best launch week ever for Mac customers.” that does not speak to the entire reason for the existence of this product category. in essence, THAT would be the pointless statement.
for Apple to focus on fixing things in macOS again (as opposed to just backporting stuff from their other lines) Mac would need to grow by a lot.
It also comes in the worst political climate for their competitors. Dell, HP, and others announcing large supply chain investment anywhere but the US would be insane. Making that supply chain investment in the US would make a $500 price point impossible.
Microsoft and Intel threw their OEM partners under the bus and they're going to have a very, very difficult time getting out from under it.
This is Microsoft’s plan to fix Windows 11 https://www.theverge.com/news/897834/microsoft-windows-11-qu...
Apparently they already brought back "never combine taskbar buttons" which is why I left W11 in the first place, but seems like they have a long way to go.
I really can't believe they thought W11 was a good idea. And putting copilot in notepad... Come on now.
The competition at this price point is weak.
Recent ThinkPads have soldered WiFi chipsets as well. Leaving only the cellular modem and the NVMe storage replaceable. I have a T14 that has a slower WiFi chipset than my T440p. Almost none of the benefits of PC but all of the downsides.
I hope Apple eats into their market share hard.
I still haven't found any concrete evidence but I think the Key travel on Neo is at least 1-2mm higher than Air and Pro. And back to the good old MacBook Pro Early 2015 era keyboard.
If it could make the trackpad completely silent and an A19 Pro with 12GB, double the SSD speed would have been perfect. Would have loved M5 with 16GB Memory but I guess that eats into Air.
What you’re asking for is an Air.
The design of Air and Neo is completely different. Air is non-repairable, worst keyboard, zero bezels. The Neo is easy enough to fix I dont even need to look at the manual.
Apple is having their Windows ME moment.
It doesn't matter how much cheap hardware you throw at the unwashed masses.
It's all about the software they would say. The chickens have come home to roost.
> Apple Announces New Mac Sales Record Following MacBook Neo Launch
What is everyone seeing that I'm not? I like Tahoe/iOS26, I haven't noticed regressions with it.
macOS is much better than any alternative and Tahoe and iOS 26 seem perfectly fine?
I’m not that opinionated though - I don’t really care that much. But the part that sucked was installing it on a 2020 intel MacBook Pro. It basically made it unusable to the point of being ready to throw it out. Going back from Tahoe breathed so much life into it that it was fairly upsetting to see Apple release it. It reminded me of early iPhone updates that would basically brick older devices due to the performance impact.
I don't hate Tahoe myself, but I don't particularly love it, either. I can still get done what I need to do with an OS, but along with a bunch of other paper cuts in recent macOS versions (looking at you, System Settings) on top of Liquid Glass, I can see why folks are upset.
As someone who lived through the early days of Windows, macOS Tahoe and Windows ME aren’t in the same universe.
> It doesn't matter how much cheap hardware you throw at the unwashed masses.
It's meaningful that a product line that's 41 years old had its best launch for customers new to the platform. That's unprecedented in the computer industry.
You shouldn't have to cope with one to get the other.
The concept is great, and I would love to ditch OrbStack for it. (OrbStack is slick. But their everything-shares-one-kernel-and-they-don’t-give-privileged-access model falls apart as soon as you try to do anything that doesn’t fit in their not-amazing sandbox. Even user namespaces don’t appear to work.) But, other than the actual core mostly working, Apple Containers was a buggy mess, and it was the only thing that made me frequently reboot the whole machine.
Someone hasn't been around for very long in the Apple era, not even counting things before NexT took over.
To say Tahoe is the worst only reveals how few of the releases of MacOS X the poster actually used.
I wonder if someone got a raise for that.
Edit: Apple turns 50 this year
Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is even worse in this regard.
I only need Apple ecosystem integrations, Docker, a bunch of CLI tools, Homebrew, and VSCode with Claude.
People weren't that mad about the butterfly keyboard or the 16" Macbook Pro that idled near it's junction temp. That doesn't mean they were good products, it means that the majority of Apple customers fail to evaluate the products they're buying based on quality.
"Just avoid holding it that way." - Steven Jobs
But on the other hand, this is kind of the culmination of them owning their hardware stack. They can avoid the commoditization race to the bottom since they are the exclusive owners of a significant amount of their hardware vertical, From chips to enclosure. Perhaps that will let them retain the margins that were previously driven by a consumer base that prized prestige over price.
While my intuition is that this may be the last big cash grab that Apple squeezes out of their premium image, they did have a massive hit back in the day with the original iMac (the CRT based one). They've defined "cheap and premium" categories before.
Tim Cook, as CEO of a public company, is incentivized to deliver shareholder value.
Entering this market with a good product does just that.
Beyond that, this is an entry point for people to use Apple products. It can be bridge to get this consumer to buy more premium hardware and software later on.
Depends on your money situation. For some people, spending 600 bucks on a laptop is a lot, even in the US
Microsoft's malevolent stewardship of Windows has handed the market to them on the proverbial silver platter. It's only reasonable for Cook to take advantage of their generosity.
They are creating countless customers for life.
People have been asking for iPhone SE to come back for what feels like decades, maybe they will do that next.
Reading this line made me think of the old I'm Mac / I'm a PC commercials. This may be fresh on my mind because Justin Long and John Hodgman are selling Ozempic now.
The headline hints at a causation that I don't think exists.
2) They will generate more profits than the hardware itself. You're not counting services and ecosystem. Now you got a new matching iPhone to go with your Neo, and an iWatch, an iPad, an iPencil...
I think this may actually be the first real Halo product they have that will do this for Mac, because it is a Mac.
