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Cook: "Mac just had its best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers."
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)
isn’t what cook is pointing out actually the most important thing?
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.
The reporting and headline are even worse. “Best launch week ever” says nothing about sales.
Maybe PC manufacturers will finally get a wake up call to stop making plastic shitboxes. Maybe Microsoft will get a wake up call too. Though, I kind of doubt it as the incompetence in PC land is comical.
Arguably, only Apple is able to pull this off, due to huge investments in their supply chain and fully ordering out entire factories.
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.
Oh I think Microsoft got the memo:
This is Microsoft’s plan to fix Windows 11 https://www.theverge.com/news/897834/microsoft-windows-11-qu...
Plastic shitboxes are a very lucrative segment of the laptop market. I don't think the $600 Macbook will be displacing $200-$300 Chromebooks anytime soon.
I truly despise the few recent generations of laptops vendors like Lenovo has put out. Plastic clips instead or (or in addition to) screws, flimsy on-board connectors, plastic bottom covers. At the same time the thermals are still horrible enough for them to ship them with accelerometers that trigger throttling to excessive heat.
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.
Tahoe/iOS26 are still the most godawful buggy pieces of software Apple ever created. I counted 0 net improvements and countless new bugs.
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.
To a new customer it doesn’t matter how Tahoe compares to previous MacOS, it matters how it compares to current Windows.
> It doesn't matter how much cheap hardware you throw at the unwashed masses.
> Apple Announces New Mac Sales Record Following MacBook Neo Launch
> Tahoe/iOS26 are still the most godawful buggy pieces of software Apple ever created.
What is everyone seeing that I'm not? I like Tahoe/iOS26, I haven't noticed regressions with it.
> Apple is having their Windows ME moment.
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.
0 improvements is unfair
This doesn’t excuse the issues, but the mainstream alternative, Windows 11, is infinitely worse imho.
> Tahoe/iOS26 are still the most godawful buggy pieces of software Apple ever created.
Someone hasn't been around for very long in the Apple era, not even counting things before NexT took over.
Buggy as well as severe UX regressions. It is so unfortunate that their software division is underperforming when their hardware team is outperforming. Craig Federighi, get your act together!
Well, I remember a time where I had to restart my PowerMac 7200 a lot because of some bug in MacOS 8...
Edit: Apple turns 50 this year
> It doesn't matter how much cheap hardware you throw at the unwashed masses.
> It's all about the software they would say.
Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is even worse in this regard.
What’s so bad about it? I haven’t noticed anything different.
I only need Apple ecosystem integrations, Docker, a bunch of CLI tools, Homebrew, and VSCode with Claude.
What are you talking about? How is breaking sales records chickens coming home to roost? Does that phrase not mean the consequences of a bad decision are being realized? If anything isn't this story the opposite, and people aren't that bothered by the software regressions you're concerned about?
I actually liked the Design of Neo more so than the Air. It is just more practical. I also like thin bezel rather than no / minimal bezel.
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.
> 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.
Part of me thinks this is a bad sign for Apple. They have always been a premium brand. I'm not a business major, but it just feels like a bad thing when premium enters low-end markets.
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.
It's not really that low end though. Cheap Windows laptops and Chromebooks start at less than a third of the price. It's more mass market.
They dominate the premium market.
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.
> it just feels like a bad thing when premium enters low-end markets
Depends on your money situation. For some people, spending 600 bucks on a laptop is a lot, even in the US
I'm not a business major, but it just feels like a bad thing when premium enters low-end markets.
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 have made something that can more easily be adopted by schools for students.
They are creating countless customers for life.
Who knew, people just wanted Apple to make cheaper products.
People have been asking for iPhone SE to come back for what feels like decades, maybe they will do that next.
Cheap Apple products is a long term net negative. Apple's justification for their price on high ticket items is not their technical edge, is the "cool people have it so might as well pay a premium for it". Lululemon did something similar to appeal to the masses and it backfired a few years after, opening the door for competitors that had nothing on them a few years back.
The iPhone SE was merely rebranded to iPhone (n)e. Exact same thing. Exact same product category.
> "best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers"
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.
It's a fitting analogy as macOS has since become bloated beyond belief.
Huh the neo can't really be the driver of this right? As it's barely out and I think not yet physically available in most places.
The headline hints at a causation that I don't think exists.
This was fully expected. They just fully exploited their economies of scale and entered the low end market. They are going to grab a lot of market there from windows
This is how you extrapolate one fluff marketing tweet into a full article, watch and learn. I also had the best sales this season
Uh yes generally corporations emphasize their success.
That's a shame, although I'm not sure what I would recommend instead
Neo is wily popular, but don't expect it to generate significant profits for Apple (disclosure I'm a AAPL shareholder). I assume the profit/profit margin on Neo is paper thin.
The profit margin is probably better than you think. The iPhone 17e sells for the same price, and the neo is certainly less expensive to manufacture.