Apple’s MacBook Neo appears to be a triumph of strategic disruption that has already cast shock waves across the industry — and that energy is still playing out.

Approximately 55,000 MacBook Neo computers have been sold every day since it was introduced in March, according to IDC data (as first noted by TechCrunch). In fact, it looks as if Apple sold 1.1 million of these Macs in the first 20 days of sale, the analysts said.

There’s no real reason to imagine that level of demand has declined very much.

MacBook Neo: Millions sold

After all, not only do these Macs continue to dominate Amazon’s US laptop charts, but supply chain rumors claim Apple has doubled its manufacturing orders. “MacBook Neo shipments have come in better than expected, with the 2026 shipment forecast raised from 5 million to 10 million units,” Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said recently. 

IDC’s March data may not capture the larger extent of the demand, as IDC analyst Navkendar Singh pointed out that MacBook Neo shipments “began to spike from early April”, which suggests demand has accelerated since then.

MacBook Neo demand exceeded expectations across multiple nations, including in India, where the company shifted 18,000 of them in the opening weeks.

Doing the business

Apple has also instructed processor maker TSMC to manufacture additional A18 processors specifically for its affordable laptop, while earlier speculation has claimed the company has been using ongoing memory price increases as a strategic competitive tool.  (The Neo starts at $599, with a pricier model set at $699.)

By expanding the potential customer base for Macs with a lower cost Neo, Apple is aiming a claim at the biggest-selling part of the PC market. And it is doing so even as rapidly increasing component prices force others to choose between higher product prices and profitability, or much-reduced margins in to compete at the same price. levels

That’s a losing battle; competitors for the most part can’t hope to match Apple’s bargaining position when it comes to the cost of components like memory because they don’t have the same scale. That means that even when component costs increase for everybody, Apple pays less, because it orders more. 

That scale means that for many component suppliers, it’s Apple’s business that keeps the meat on the table while other customers merely contribute the gravy. So, suppliers are happy to make deals with Apple to secure that main course — to continue the analogy — but are less likely to match those deals for dessert. As such, Apple is expected to be the only laptop vendor to see growth this year.

Apple’s great game

IDC’s figures confirm Apple’s strategy is working, with strong demand for the Neo, and, indeed, all Apple’s new laptops. At the same time, the researcher predicts overall global PC shipments will decline 11.3% this year, with a painful 20% sales drop envisioned for Q4. 

“We’re not seeing any relief to the memory shortage situation before the end of 2027, which means prices will continue to rise and PC manufacturers will struggle to maintain full product portfolios for the foreseeable future,” Jean Philippe Bouchard, vice president of devices and consumers at IDC said in a statement.

“The introduction of the MacBook Neo is putting real pressure on the entire PC ecosystem,” added Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s Consumer Devices Trackers. 

Competitors are already responding with new devices equipped with ARM-based processors and aggressive promotional pricing. But none truly match what Apple has with MacBook Neo, and all must reach profitable scale to compete long-term. 

None have yet done so.

The strategy makes sense

“The MacBook Neo launch stands out as one of Apple’s most strategically important recent Mac releases,” Counterpoint analyst David Naranjo said. 

Apple is directly targeting customers that previously saw its products as too expensive. That allows it is also to aggressively build business in parts of the market such as education that tend to be more resilient to economic headwinds. MacBook Neo is also enjoying strong demand across the enterprise.

Both these parts of the market give Apple’s competitors their lunch. “The competitive pressure from the Neo is providing a partial offset to broader price increases, keeping some low-cost notebook options alive,” Ubrani said. “But the overall trajectory for average selling prices (ASPs) is firmly upward. IDC forecasts ASP growth of 17% in 2026, and even as memory capacity expands over the next two years, pricing is unlikely to return to 2025 levels.” 

Apple’s control over its processors, along with its strategic approach to component purchasing, means it should be able to maintain its existing Mac price points for a while. “Apple’s vertical integration (own silicon, own OS) gives it more levers than competitors reliant on third-party chips and Microsoft licensing,” Hexnode CEO Apu Pavithran told me recently.

So, while PC makers either exit the market or raise prices in pursuit of profits, MacBook Neo will continue racing off the shelves, particularly to large enterprise and education customers. 

The endgame? 

The Neo is more than a lower-cost Apple notebook. It’s a hugely disruptive product that is already driving noteworthy change across the PC industry; it’s forcing competitors to make difficult choices between cost and price — even as they grapple with the existential challenges of memory shortages, component price hikes, and raw materials costs. 

That’s not bad for a product that costs your local school just $499.

Just a reminder: the original $399 iPod cost only slightly less when it was first introduced, before subsequently disrupting the music industry.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, Mastodon, and follow The Core.

Apple surprised everyone with the power and performance of the M1 MacBook Air when it launched the laptop in late 2020. And more than five years later, those Macs show no sign of slowing down, handling everything users care to throw at them.

The Mac still boots almost instantly, races through daily tasks, offers battery life that puts even some newer Windows laptops to shame and, perhaps most importantly, still gives millions of users no compelling reason to upgrade. 

Why the MacBook Air is still going strong

The M1 wasn’t merely better than the Intel Macs it replaced. It delivered a dramatic step forward. Silent, fast, and with remarkable energy efficiency, these laptops have proved themselves to be more reliable and longer-lasting than almost any other notebook.

Apple has continued to deliver impressive improvements ever since the M1 Macs first appeared. The recently introduced M5 MacBook Air delivers double the multi-core and 50% better single-core performance than M1; that means it provides similar performance to the MacBook Pro of around three years ago. 

Apple Silicon has improved every single year and is now extremely powerful — so much so that Apple is about to sell 10 million units of the A-series MacBook Neo, a $599 machine with an iPhone-derived chip that delivers more performance than many mainstream users need.

Meanwhile, even when using a nearly-six-year-old MacBook Air, you still experience a fast browser, responsive Office apps, great battery life and powerful photo editing capabilities. 

To the Moon and back

At the high end of Apple’s range, you’ll find Macs so accomplished they can handle almost every imaginable professional task. It means that right now, today, Apple’s product range extends from good enough to simply amazing. 

Despite heavy marketing hype from competitors who boast of their own ARM-based competitors in similar price brackets, those PCs remain compromised in comparison, if only by their use of Windows, build quality, and overall higher running costs.

Think about it: All things being equal, if you gave a typical office worker an M1 MacBook Air and an M5 MacBook Air and asked them which models they were using, how long would it take them to figure it out? 

Sure, a highly experienced Mac user would likely know. But for a lot of people, the difference would be hard to spot because what they do on their computers just isn’t particularly demanding. 

Making people happy is good for business

Surely that’s bad for Apple’s business, right? I think not. It means Apple has created a huge population of happy Mac users who are still having a good time with the Mac they acquired in 2020. Those people tell other people about their experience, which helps evangelize the platform and can’t have hurt MacBook Neo sales this year. 

They also become more interested in other Apple products, which they can afford to invest in instead of investing in the standard PC “upgrade’”cycle. After all, if you have a platform that doesn’t need an upgrade every three years, you can spend your money on something else instead. For consumers, that might be AirPods and Apple services, while for enterprise professionals that investment might become an iPad or iPhone Pro. 

Apple doesn’t mind. It still makes bank.

The company generally finds that giving people what they want is good for business. It boosts customer satisfaction scores, reduces maintenance costs, and builds repeat customers.

That long replacement cycle delivers a second benefit, too. Apple talks extensively about sustainability. With the M-series Macs, it has achieved it. 

Sustainable technology

People use these laptops longer and get more value later when they sell them on. And when they eventually get returned for recycling, Apple can tear the machines down for parts as it works toward establishing circular manufacturing within the next four years.

The M1 MacBook Air might eventually be remembered not just as the first Apple Silicon Mac, but as representing the moment when ordinary people didn’t have to worry about performance anymore. That’s why the product refuses to die — not because it’s immortal, but because for millions of users it still does everything they need. And all the M- and A-series Macs that follow it do exactly the same thing.

One more thing, however: Intel Macs will no longer be supported by macOS 27 when it ships this year. Apple typically ends support for products around 6-7 years after it removes them from sale, so when will it end support for the M1? Potentially, not too soon.

Apple only stopped selling the M1 MacBook Air in 2024, which suggests support could continue until 2030 or 2031. So, if you bought an M1 MacBook Air in 2020, you’ve actually invested in something designed to work for you for a decade. Which PCs can truly deliver that?

No wonder the M1 MacBook Air refuses to die.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, Mastodon, and read The Core.

Intel is invading the physical AI space with a reentry into the robotics market it quit many years ago amid financial struggles.

The robotics strategy is part of the company’s larger plan to establish AI on the “edge,” in which devices have the computing capability to run AI locally. Many devices lack AI capabilities and have to offload processing to the cloud.

The chipmaker said its Intel Series 3 processors are now in 130 edge AI and robotics designs. It also had a design win with SensoryAI, which provides technology for robots that include Ella, a robotic barista made by Crown Digital.

The company’s Core Ultra Series 3 processors are derivatives of chip designs intended for laptops. But Intel has achieved a level of power efficiency for long battery life that allows those chips to be adapted for handheld devices and laptops.

Intel also said it can build advanced robotics chips thanks to its latest manufacturing technologies.

For example, many robotic functions, such as computer vision and real-time controls, can be integrated into a single chip. Previously, functions like graphics and movement and control were distributed among different cores in a chip.

SensoryAI, for example, has a chip architecture that provides the robotic barista — which is more like a robotic arm — with AI capabilities, Intel said.

The main “Avatar” agent handles customers as the main “Ella” agent reasons and executes the task. If Ella encounters errors, it passes on the issue to a Guardian agent, which helps with the recovery. Some issues could include making sense of an order, or cups that might be stuck. 

The three agents are embedded in a single piece of Core Ultra Series 3 silicon.

Intel is displaying some of those robots at the Computex trade show in Taiwan. The company shared a video of a humanoid-style robot from the floor in a X.com post  

This is not Intel’s first attempt at the robotics market. Intel sold robotics chips and kits when it was a dominant chip player in the field, but curtailed efforts in 2021 after Pat Gelsinger took over as CEO and restructured the company to focus on manufacturing.

Robotics is now back on the menu under new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who replaced Gelsinger last year. He has restructured to company to focus on high-growth areas that can generate high returns.

A Morgan Stanley study last year indicated the robotics market could be worth $5 trillion by 2050 — and more than 1 billion humanoid robots could be in operation. 

Robots are seen to improve human productivity and manufacturing output. For example, they could help factories that are facing labor shortages or be used to complete tasks that are dangerous. 

However, challenges remain. There isn’t yet enough real-world data to train robots to do targeted work. And the AI models — generally called world models — they will need are still under development. 

Training robots to do a specific job requires a sequence of events to happen in succession without any errors. Companies are still training robots to spot and understand errors, analyze possible resolutions, and take the right corrective action.