Don’t worry, Apple isn’t going all practical

They did it! Yes, last week Apple announced the much-rumored “cheap laptop”, the MacBook Neo. Coming in a variety of almost actual colors, the Neo ships with an A18 Pro processor and starts at just $599, the lowest price ever for a Mac laptop not sold out of the trunk of someone’s car.

And even better? It’s not a piece of junk. Initial benchmarks indicate the Neo bests the M3-based iPad Air in single-core operations, which are pretty much the kind of operations the target market for this device will be doing. So that’s good. The Macalope isn’t a hardware engineer but he’s pretty sure you want hardware that’s optimized for the kind of things you’re going to be doing. That just seems right.

Also, again, better is that because Apple already has a lot of experience and economies of scale built up from having worked with the components in the Neo for years, it’s cheap to repair.

Is there anything this device can’t do?!

Yes. Actually, yeah, there are a lot of things it can’t do. It’s got 8GB of RAM and starts with 256GB of storage, so it’s not a powerhouse. But it’s still darn good.

Reaction, other than a few grumbles about it not having MagSafe and one of the ports being USB 2.0, has been wildly positive. According to Gene Munster, who’s never been wrong about anything, the MacBook Neo could boost Apple revenue by 0.5 percent without impacting margins and give the company great gains in the educational market.

Whether that happens or not, it’s a very attractive laptop at an extremely attractive price.

But… [puts on unnecessary glasses, temples hooves in front of face]… what does it mean?

Because we always have to talk about what everything means, some people have apparently taken the MacBook Neo and the iPhone 17e (also introduced last week) as a sign that Apple is pivoting from being a premium brand to one servicing low-cost markets.

Seriously? Have you met Apple?

Taking a look at the question, Horace Deiu asks, “Is Apple Pivoting?”

Then immediately gets the Betteridge of his own headline.

No.

There. Glad we cleared that up.

First of all, the iPhone 17e isn’t even the first “cheap” iPhone Apple’s shipped (the original iPhone SE was cheaper). It’s not even the first cheap iPhone Apple’s shipped with an “e” after the number.

The Neo is the cheapest Apple laptop ever, but the only reason Apple never made it before is that it couldn’t without making a device that was overly compromised. For years, Apple was told it absolutely had to make a netbook, and the company looked at netbooks and said, “Ew, David,”, which is weird because “Schitt’s Creek” would not come out for like six more years. The company made the MacBook Air instead, which sold like aluminum hotcakes.

If, you know, aluminum hotcakes were something that a lot of people wanted to buy.

In deflating the idea that Apple is pivoting, Dediu makes a great point that the Macalope has surely not given enough attention to over the years.

The problem is that I’ve known many poor people who buy expensive things (actually most luxury brands sell to the less affluent) and many rich people buy cheap things (shunning conspicuity).

It’s obviously not the case that all poor people buy expensive items and all rich people buy cheap ones, but often people who can’t afford to splurge on very large ticket items will splurge on smaller expensive items.

Anyway, if you thought this represented a fundamental shift in Apple’s market positioning, here come even more expensive laptops!

And that’s not all!

There’s a more significant shift underway toward higher-end fare — what I’d describe as “Ultra” products. The company may not use the Ultra branding for all of them (though you do see it on the Apple Watch Ultra, CarPlay Ultra, and Ultra chips), but a number of upcoming items will fall into this category.

Mark Gurman, March 8, 2026

Apple’s been making (relatively) cheap iPhones and iPads for years, and they’re great devices. Only now has the company been able to make a (relatively) cheap MacBook. That’s why it is, not because of some grand shift in strategy.

If you’re still not convinced, just wait until the foldable iPhone comes out. The price is likely to be eye-watering and not in a “tears of joy” kind of way.

Unless you’re Tim Cook.