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MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

macrumors.com

41–50 of 524 posts

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#41
post #8

I wonder what the margin profile is of the Neo vs Air vs MacBook Pro. I have to imagine the Neo is lower margin %, but maybe I'm wrong.

Lower margin, but higher volume. Plus a subset of the buyers will subscribe to Apple Music, buy apps from the App Store, etc. I am surprised that they only do it now, since Mac marketshare growth has stagnated for a long time and it's even hard to grow the iPhone marketshare. Growing the Mac marketshare by making very competitive models is one of the best ways for them to grow and to grow services fees. I think the p…

If they had really thought the iPad could replace laptops they would have tried harder the way Microsoft did with Win 8.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#42

It's amazing you can get an iPad for $349 and a Macbook for $599. Even the plastic 2009 macbook alone was $999 at the lowest. Very strange to see a company do this when everything else just seems to have gone up and up.

I think the craziest thing is that a macbook for $599 that's more powerful than nearly anything they had offered a decade ago (except probably ram amount), and even after adjusting for inflation (which is like 35% from 10 years ago) means the price dropped at least $1500 for a comparable. (People may correct me if I'm wrong)

The ram is the real sticking point honestly. Yes they are more powerful but consider people's use case. My 2012 dual core mbp is still performant for what most people use their computers for: internet, email, office suite, etc. And I shoved 16gb RAM in that thing 10 years ago. I guess they will just swap on the fast ssd so it will be alright.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#43
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably know that but don’t want to cannibalize their more expensive products.

A lot of the buyers were never going to be buyers for the more expensive products.

that doesn't, on its own, alleviate the cannibalization concerns

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#44
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably know that but don’t want to cannibalize their more expensive products.

A lot of the buyers were never going to be buyers for the more expensive products.

You can afford to lose a lot of low-value low-margin buyers for not losing one high-value high-margin buyer.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#45

It's always surprising when companies don't understand that people what inexpensive, quality goods. The original Ford Maverick retailed for $19,995, Ford absolutely could not keep up with production. Ultimately, they raised prices both because they could and in order to reduce demand because they could not actually product enough units.

Just so you know, the original Ford Maverick started out at just under $2,000 in 1970.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#46

It's always surprising when companies don't understand that people what inexpensive, quality goods. The original Ford Maverick retailed for $19,995, Ford absolutely could not keep up with production. Ultimately, they raised prices both because they could and in order to reduce demand because they could not actually product enough units.

I would happily buy a laptop with medium specs but apple build quality. I don't know if the Neo's build quality is on par with their other laptops but if it is it's probably my next laptop.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#47
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the buyers were never going to be buyers for the more expensive products.

that doesn't, on its own, alleviate the cannibalization concerns

If they don't make this product at this pricepoint, a competitor does and that also cannibalizes potential higher sku macbook sales to a degree. Every chromebook sold is a potential macbook neo customer and apple let google eat their lunch for years.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#49

I would like to know how these are on XCode - would love to have the cheapest/most lightweight possible way to build iOS apps (derived from some cross-platform builder like Expo/Lynx/Dioxus) since I have no other use for MacOS. Looking at tech specs, it seems like the one with 512GB drive might be serviceable. I have a very old 256GB Air and I struggle to keep enough drive space open to have XCode installed on it.

you'll hit the RAM limit at some point, and you'd almost certainly want to mod it to alleviate the heat issues that kill sustained performance

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#50
post #24

I ended up getting two (one for each of my daughters). The thing about Apple is that as the "IT" guy for my family, its ecosystem is the one which needs the least attention from me. It really just works. They have used Windows and Linux before (my kids and wife, that is), but something is always not quite right and needs my involvement. These days gone 100% Mac, my interventions are usually initial setup and whenever…

Once the Apple Silicon Macs came out, I converted my whole family from PC to Mac because the price to performance finally made sense.

I'm the resident tech support for my family and some friends, so having them all playing in the Mac ecosystem made it way easier.

My mom's fiance had a $3,000 Windows laptop for doing video editing. And I convinced him to get a $600 base M1 Mac Mini when they were new and he has never gone back. He just upgraded to an M4 Mac Mini last year

I'm sure these new MacBook Neo's are converting a whole other wave of users that have that price point as their cap but need something mobile.

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