MacBook Neo Sold Out Through April
by Horace Dediu
I keep holding out that this is not a problem
Apple's MacBook Neo has been a huge hit, and it's still in high demand over a month after it launched. The MacBook Neo is just $599, and with PC makers raising prices because of global RAM shortages, the Neo's low price tag and Apple allure are even more appealing.
Source: MacRumors
NB: Microsoft's cheapest laptop is three times more ex…
…pensive. Selling out is a problem is customers will abandon the purchase and buy something else. I suspect some may but some may even buy another Mac. The Mac Mini and Studio are also in stockout status. It's a windfall for the Mac but the big picture is shown in the graph below. Can Apple bend the blue curve?
As I will argue in a further post perhaps this is one of those pivotal moments.
3 comments
rbgayle ·
I'm thinking we will look back in 10 years and see the current pivotal moment being the use of M5 Mac mini and Studio for edge AI/ML, especially for developing apps. We are already seeing 'hobbyists' doing this. What Errol Brandt (see Youtube below) and others are talking about -- a system to develop in-house AI/ML apps -- could sell a lot of Mac computers, in enterprise and as people essentially have a data center running in their home or business. To my mind, it is the same dynamic between centralized mainframes and distributed PCs over 50 years ago.
Apple's Mixture of Experts approach, coupled with something like Google's TurboQuant, may be the tip of the iceberg wrt Apple silicon and the new on-device AI.
Add in that only the iPhone or the AVP or even Smartglasses, will be able to utilize these apps on-device, and the Windows ecosystem could be toast. Here is Brandt's video for why Apple silicon will win the AI battles. He makes a compelling point.
https://www.youtube.com/@kiraa_ai
FredHS ·
Thanks RB for the thoughts and link.
As a Sun Micro employee from the mid 90's through its demise, I saw them rise to dominance as their architecture powered the dot com boom*, and quickly crushed by Lintel, leveraging the economics of mass unit scale Intel silicon.
No predictions, just pondering.
*at least initially.
FredHS ·
Thanks Horace for the infographic and thoughts.
Ironically hidden in that gentle blue slope, are Apple's silcon tectonic movements.
Neo opens a wide valley, while high-end Macs soar in performance scale that can only be matched by far more expensive and power hungry competitive devices.