They shouldn't have released the lower version in the first place because 8GB of RAM with 256GB of storage is useless these days.
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Apple May Drop Base $599 MacBook Neo as Chip, DRAM Costs Climb
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turbineseaplane
macrumors Penryn
Personally I don't think there ever should have been two models.
Put TouchID on there, pick which storage size to go with and just sell the Neo.
Put TouchID on there, pick which storage size to go with and just sell the Neo.
The $599 price ($499 with educational discount) is the reason people are willing to give Mac OS a try. I can't see many people willing to gamble $799 on a "budget" laptop that they don't even know if they will like or figure out how to use.
techfirth
macrumors regular
This would be a real shame if it happened as anything other than a temporary response to a crisis.
Hopefully Apple are taking a fresh look at their supply chain with a SpaceX lens, and asking themselves if they should be making more of their own components to prevent this kind of thing happening.
Hopefully Apple are taking a fresh look at their supply chain with a SpaceX lens, and asking themselves if they should be making more of their own components to prevent this kind of thing happening.
Abydos
macrumors 6502
oy vey, at very least a business must sell its goods for more than production costs, think of economics in thermodynamic system - as long as the energy produced is positive it will continue, when energy is required to continue the system it will cease. the other question is whose greed anyway (mine or theirs)
Alternatively, since Apple has reported it, the demand for the Neo is much higher than their forecasts.
turbineseaplane
macrumors Penryn
Because it's inexpensive.
If that changes, the "demand" will tank.
People haven't been unaware of Macs in the past, they've been turned off by the pricing, especially if it involves taking a risk on an unfamiliar OS.
I'm in a relationship with exactly this type of person.
She has an iPhone & iPad she loves, but work did buy them both, but runs with her Surface laptop because it has Windows and work runs on all that and macOS mystifies her. Side by side, she sees that my Macs are nice, but it doesn't really penetrate beyond that once the pricing is known.
...but she did ask me about the Neo she saw at Costco for under $600 😉
False. I have an M1 MBA in that configuration and find it extremely useful.
CWallace
macrumors G5
The 512GB configuration may be much more popular than the 256GB in terms of sales, so if you can only make so many units due to lack of A18 Pros, it makes sense to devote all remaining production to the more popular model, even if that means a small(er) percentage of the market is "priced out".
Apple would have engineered the neo with the knowledge of what their memory and NAND storage prices were going to be for the initial production runs. The model seems to be more popular than Apple projected and they are exhausting their supply of binned A18 Pro SoCs and they likely would have to pay a significant premium to TSMC to produce new A18 Pros (which then would have to one of the GPU cores disabled).
Like no other PC OEM or component manufacturer has been raising their prices into the mesosphere over the past 12 months. 🙄
I7guy
macrumors Westmere
The lower end MacBook neo is a real draw. For $499 it’s almost a non-brained to try out and potentially make a life long Apple customer.
It would be a shame to axe that model, but with all of the positive press the now has received it probably will continue to sell well.
It would be a shame to axe that model, but with all of the positive press the now has received it probably will continue to sell well.
visualseed
macrumors 6502a
Nonsense.
Tim wouldn’t have even mentioned it if it was simply inventory clear out before a new model, but it’s not
Apple Says Mac Studio and Mac Mini Will Be in Short Supply for Months
During today's earnings call for the second fiscal quarter of 2026, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the Mac mini and Mac Studio could be hard to get for months to come. "We think, looking forward, that the Mac mini and Mac Studio may take several months to reach supply demand balance," Cook said...www.macrumors.com
It’s not an “inventory clear-out”. They’re out of stock because they don’t have the chips. When they do restock, it’ll be with the next generation CPUs, which is why it’ll take months.
joshwithachance
macrumors 68030
visualseed
macrumors 6502a
So if they are out of A18 Pro chips are they just going to kill the product? Or are they just going to string along those prospective buyers for 6 or 7 months? I don't think so. It will have an A19 Pro by WWDC.
TVreporter
macrumors 68030
Bite the cost on the ram hike, and get more users who will sign up for subscriptions - be it iCloud, Apple Music etc.
Now watch them quietly hike the prices of the services to make up for the ram margins.
Now watch them quietly hike the prices of the services to make up for the ram margins.
turbineseaplane
macrumors Penryn
jlc1978
macrumors 604
Hardly, there are plenty of use cases for such a model and an attractive price point makes it the right machine for those use cases. For example, email, web browsing, letter and small document creation, basic spreadsheets, etc. do not need 16gb and 512GB of storage.
It will be interesting to see what happens, part of the equation will be what the mix of the 2 models sales were, which helps gauge the impact of dropping the lower priced model.
Price and change are two big barriers to wider adoption, the Neo helps address the former but the later is still there.
Been there, have the t-shirt.
Wow, what a nice problem to have. Give the executive responsible for the Neo a promotion. Oh they already did.
Anyhow, I was reading that price rises across the mid range pc laptop sector are imminent, due to memory and fab capacity shortages (because of AI data centres).
So I’d imagine that a starting price of $699 is likely going to remain very competitive in this new world.
Anyhow, I was reading that price rises across the mid range pc laptop sector are imminent, due to memory and fab capacity shortages (because of AI data centres).
So I’d imagine that a starting price of $699 is likely going to remain very competitive in this new world.
Not if you’re buying this for education or business where you don't necessarily want users to be able to register a finger print and where you’re not storing loads of data or apps locally.
Dirk Pieters
macrumors 6502
I wonder if Apple will go from A18 Pro to A19 Pro … or to the A19.
A19 is faster than A18 Pro but keeps memory at 8gb.
Turn that around, Apple (and other manufacturers) are feeling the heat of the various shortages - as if rising prices weren't enough, now they can't even put products together to sell them.
Thank you, greed-fueled AI data center bubble.
visualseed
macrumors 6502a
That is a possibility. The A19 also support thunderbolt 5, which is why it's in the Studio Display