[HN Gopher] Apple announces new Mac sales record following MacBo...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple announces new Mac sales record following MacBook Neo launch
Author : akyuu
Score : 78 points
Date : 2026-03-21 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macrumors.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macrumors.com)
| 65 wrote:
| 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.
| imeron wrote:
| 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...
| baal80spam wrote:
| They SAY they got the memo. Colour me very skeptical, but
| we'll see.
| rocketvole wrote:
| I mean, a lot of the issues that they says they'll fix can
| be patched with third party tools. They won't get rid of
| ads or tracking, or anything significant. affect their
| bottom line.
|
| As someone who has never owned a mac, the only reason I
| would buy a pc at this point in time is to install linux on
| it.
| jrmg wrote:
| I liked Ars Technica's snarky take:
|
| _If you were eating in a restaurant and the head chef came
| out from the back multiple times to loudly proclaim that
| the kitchen was deeply committed to the quality of the
| food, would you find that reassuring? Or would you start
| wondering why the chef felt the need to keep saying it?_
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/microsoft-keeps-
| insi...
| pants2 wrote:
| Funny how their plan to improve Windows 11 is basically to
| make it more like Windows 10.
|
| Apparently they already brought back "never combine taskbar
| buttons" which is why I left W11 in the first place, but
| seems like they have a long way to go.
|
| I really can't believe they thought W11 was a good idea. And
| putting copilot in notepad... Come on now.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Yep, they could literally have done nothing with their
| Windows 10 codebase and it would fulfil most if not all of
| their targets.
| bigyabai wrote:
| 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.
| kube-system wrote:
| No, but the $600 MacBooks are coming straight for the $600
| plastic shitbox windows laptops.
|
| The competition at this price point is weak.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Which was formerly challenged by the $700 Macbook Air, to
| little avail.
| wat10000 wrote:
| What $700 MacBook Air?
| bigyabai wrote:
| Costco and other in-person retailers marked down the M1
| MBA to $799 and then $699 while reducing their stock.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It doesn't make sense to compare MSRP of one product to
| sale prices of another. I'm sure the Neo will see similar
| discounts in those situations too.
| s0rce wrote:
| My M4 Air was $750 on black friday 2025. I bought it
| after I cracked the screen on my M1 and the cost to
| repair was half the cost of the much newer computer.
| kube-system wrote:
| At $950 it has historically been pegged at the #1 spot on
| Amazons best sellers in the laptop category. It has been
| recently unseated by the Neo.
|
| Wait until retailers start discounting the Neo.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| One of my kids had a college visit recently. Everyone had
| Macbooks.
| nickjj wrote:
| > The competition at this price point is weak.
|
| Is it though?
|
| 6 months ago for $575, I picked up a 15" 1080p IPS display
| laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H (8 cores / 16 threads), 32
| GB of DDR5 RAM, Radeon 680M iGPU that can use up to 8 GB
| VRAM and a 1 TB NVME SSD with a backlight keyboard, a bunch
| of USB ports and HDMI port. It weighs the same as a MBP and
| comes with a 2 year manufacturer warranty. It's upgradable
| to 64 GB of RAM and 2 TB SSD. It has Windows 11 but all of
| the parts are compatible with Linux if you want to go down
| that route.
|
| It's from a brand I never heard of, Nimo N155 but I took a
| gamble and so far I couldn't be happier. The only problem
| now is there's major shortages and prices are jacked
| because of the RAM situation. The same model is $700 today
| and much harder to find, even their official site is out of
| stock on this model.
| kube-system wrote:
| All of those specs are orthogonal to the gripes people
| are referring to when they call a laptop a "plastic
| shitbox"
| bigyabai wrote:
| Apple sold high-quality plastic laptops for a very long
| time, so evidently there's _something_ there.
| out_of_protocol wrote:
| Do note that in current economics 32GB of RAM alone will
| cost something like $400
| didip wrote:
| What you just described is not better than Macbook Neo.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Sure it is. It's even better than the M-series, I bought
| a similar mini PC for my home theater and it's flawless.
| simonh wrote:
| Also Apple are masters of the up-sell. Someone who knows
| $600 windows laptops are crap might just buy a cheaper
| Chromebook because crap is crap, but they might spring for
| another few hundred bucks for something they have
| confidence is actually pretty nice and has brand Cache.
| computomatic wrote:
| I have a company-issued plastic shitbox. It's $1100 and made
| by dell.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Case in point, your company could have afforded a Mac but
| chose otherwise.
| bombcar wrote:
| The problem has always been no direct "I want a Mac but
| Windows" laptop - before the switch to the M1 the best
| way to get a "Mac quality laptop" that ran windows was to
| put windows on a Mac.
|
| Go to Best Buy or walmart and fondle the Neo and then do
| the same with the other Windows laptops. Even though they
| may perform better (nay, even be better), they certainly
| do not _feel_ like a premium product.
|
| Phones got this right; there are shitty Android phones,
| but the premium models feel like an iPhone.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Microsoft could probably put Windows on the M series macs
| if they wanted to. Windows for ARM exists, and Apple very
| specifically made the bootloader unlockable on the Apple
| Silicon laptops.
|
| I guess they might have to write a lot of the device
| drivers (including the GPU driver) themselves though, and
| there probably isn't much incentive for them to do that.
| bombcar wrote:
| Microsoft Surface laptops are the closest you can get to
| a "Mac with Windows" in quality/thought (that I've found)
| and the ARM CPU not being able to use x86 printer drivers
| is infuriating.
|
| Otherwise, decent.
| OJFord wrote:
| Microsoft doing that would be wild.
|
| You used to be able to put it on Macs _yourself_ , i.e.
| just install it the way you would on any computer, or
| equivalently put Linux on it. Now, see (all the work that
| has to be done by the team of) Asahi, except there's no
| Windows equivalent.
|
| If MS did 'Asahi-Windows'... I don't know whether I'd
| expect Apple to sue or to make ads making fun of it, but
| it would be a wild time.
| s0rce wrote:
| I have a semi-decent Lenovo Thinkpad T14 and its still meh.
| Prefer my M4 air.
| itsmanjeet wrote:
| maybe, but performance wise they seem far ahead of typical
| Chromebooks in same , and with a real OS!
| solatic wrote:
| 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.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Apple also gets to fund their manufacturing investments using
| phone and other revenue
| Avamander wrote:
| 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.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > "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.
| longislandguido wrote:
| It's a fitting analogy as macOS has since become bloated beyond
| belief.
| ndr42 wrote:
| 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)
| tonymet wrote:
| The reporting and headline are even worse. "Best launch week
| ever" says nothing about sales.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Doesn't it mean that it sold more units in its first week on
| the market than any past Mac? How does that say nothing about
| sales? It's literally about sales numbers, they are just
| using a relative metric instead of an absolute metric.
| ibero wrote:
| 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.
| ndr42 wrote:
| I agree - I just would like to know what a "best launch week
| ever" means in numbers
| bombcar wrote:
| Relatively well-founded estimates will start to appear in a
| month or so. It's unfortunate they don't give exact model
| breakdowns, but everyone _knows_ that the Mac is a hobby
| for them.
| cbhl wrote:
| it doesn't give a sense of how much the Neo moves the needle
| or grows the pie though. Mac and iPad are each 8% of Apple's
| business. iPhone is 50%.
|
| for Apple to focus on fixing things in macOS again (as
| opposed to just backporting stuff from their other lines) Mac
| would need to grow by a lot.
| longislandguido wrote:
| 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.
| lateforwork wrote:
| 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!
| longislandguido wrote:
| Such as new screenshot dialog in iOS, where one click has now
| become three, because we've hidden the primary controls under
| two pointless single-fold menus.
|
| I wonder if someone got a raise for that.
| lilytweed wrote:
| The new screenshot flow is mostly to provide extra surface
| for Visual Intelligence. I've found it extremely useful for
| stuff like ingesting event details and doing Google Lens-
| esque searches.
| wincy wrote:
| I like the new dialog? I basically always crop the image
| when screenshotting so the new UI results in less button
| pressing for me. How often do you need to capture your
| entire screen? I almost always want to focus on something.
| jtbergman wrote:
| This can be changed back to the old version. Just search
| screen capture in settings and disable Full-Screen
| Previews.
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| 0 improvements is unfair
|
| https://github.com/apple/container
| longislandguido wrote:
| Maybe we can go back to a world where we decouple new under-
| the-hood features from complete UI fuckery.
|
| You shouldn't have to cope with one to get the other.
| amluto wrote:
| I wonder if it's time to try this again. Last time I tried
| it, it was intensely buggy, not to mention almost every
| feature I wanted.
|
| The _concept_ is great, and I would love to ditch OrbStack
| for it. (OrbStack is slick. But their everything-shares-one-
| kernel-and-they-don't-give-privileged-access model falls
| apart as soon as you try to do anything that doesn't fit in
| their not-amazing sandbox. Even user namespaces don't appear
| to work.) But, other than the actual core mostly working,
| Apple Containers was a buggy mess, and it was the only thing
| that made me frequently reboot the whole machine.
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| I certainly haven't done anything outside of general happy
| path but i swapped out docker for it and it "just worked" -
| and i got more battery life
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| 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?
| bigyabai wrote:
| > and people aren't that bothered by the software regressions
| you're concerned about?
|
| People weren't that mad about the butterfly keyboard or the
| 16" Macbook Pro that idled near it's junction temp. That
| doesn't mean they were good products, it means that the
| majority of Apple customers fail to evaluate the products
| they're buying based on quality.
|
| "Just avoid holding it that way." - Steven Jobs
| dd8601fn wrote:
| It's the customer who is wrong... for being happy with
| their purchases!
| ndr42 wrote:
| 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
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > It doesn't matter how much cheap hardware you throw at the
| unwashed masses.
|
| > Apple Announces New Mac Sales Record Following MacBook Neo
| Launch
| olyjohn wrote:
| What was that sales record?
| jakeydus wrote:
| Yeah, it apparently matters at least a little
| bilbo0s wrote:
| This.
|
| Maybe it's not the cheap hardware? I don't know?
|
| But when you put the following assertions out there:
|
| > _Tahoe /iOS26 are still the most godawful buggy pieces of
| software Apple ever created_
|
| and
|
| > _It doesn 't matter how much cheap hardware you throw at
| the unwashed masses_
|
| with the market data being what it is.
|
| I guess I'm just saying those statements definitely go
| under the old Abe Lincoln admonition that at times "Both
| _may_ be, but one _MUST_ be, wrong. "
| bombcar wrote:
| > 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.
| amluto wrote:
| Indeed. In the NT 4.0 era, pre-Mac OS X, it was fun to watch
| Mac fans extoll the virtues of their OS while rebooting
| multiple times per day :)
| tim333 wrote:
| I remember taking my Mac OS 7 laptop to the dealer because
| it wouldn't start up and they said it had crashed 273
| times. It was a few months old.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Heck the first version of MacOS X on that titanium power book
| that flopped up and down like a 5 and a quarter inch floppy
| was maddening.
|
| To say Tahoe is the worst only reveals how few of the
| releases of MacOS X the poster actually used.
| furyofantares wrote:
| > 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.
| s0rce wrote:
| Its slightly worse in my opinion but I don't have huge issues
| with it. Still way better than Windows 11 on my work
| computer.
| wincy wrote:
| Yeah, and using macOS fresh is 100x better than the out of
| box experience for Windows Home. It took me nearly two hours
| to get that in what I'd call a usable state, disabling "world
| polar bear day" logos on the search bar and dumb stuff like
| that.
|
| macOS is much better than any alternative and Tahoe and iOS
| 26 seem perfectly fine?
| someotherperson wrote:
| The icons in the menu bars are rough, the spacing isn't great
| and the inconsistent window borders aren't great.
|
| I'm not that opinionated though - I don't really care that
| much. But the part that sucked was installing it on a 2020
| intel MacBook Pro. It basically made it unusable to the point
| of being ready to throw it out. Going back from Tahoe
| breathed so much life into it that it was fairly upsetting to
| see Apple release it. It reminded me of early iPhone updates
| that would basically brick older devices due to the
| performance impact.
| jakeydus wrote:
| To be fair MacOS (and all apple software) is so heavily
| optimized for their current hardware. It is unfortunate
| that Intel macs are left behind, but my 2019 intel mac was
| capital-S Struggling with macos already in 2022. The
| M-series was such a leap forward. It's a server under my
| desk now.
| mikestew wrote:
| Compared to Windows? Tahoe is probably fine. Compared to
| previous versions of macOS/OS X? Nothing deal-breaking for
| me, but there are all kinds of little things that just don't
| have the polish long-time macOS users are accustomed to.
| Sibling comments have already listed a few things, but take
| the grab points of the window corners, which don't actually
| match the window borders. A minor thing, IMO, but not very
| "Apple-y" to let something like that ship. The menu icons are
| another: they add clutter, they don't add a lot of value, and
| they look like crap. Again, not a huge deal, but c'mon,
| Apple, UI is supposed to be your thing.
|
| I don't hate Tahoe myself, but I don't particularly love it,
| either. I can still get done what I need to do with an OS,
| but along with a bunch of other paper cuts in recent macOS
| versions (looking at you, System Settings) on top of Liquid
| Glass, I can see why folks are upset.
| kps wrote:
| My Mac is staying releases back, but iOS26 no longer respects
| light mode. Since I see astigmatic halation, this will be my
| last iDevice.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| I run light mode on my iPhone and haven't noticed it
| switching to dark mode in any way. Do you have the
| automatic mode selection enabled accidentally?
| treetalker wrote:
| Start noticing all the text on top of text (caused by "liquid
| glass"). Then please don't hate me for pointing it out to
| you.
| vlozko wrote:
| I was seeing this in the Xcode debugger. Didn't realize
| this was a Tahoe issue, not Xcode.
| simonh wrote:
| To a new customer it doesn't matter how Tahoe compares to
| previous MacOS, it matters how it compares to current Windows.
| mordv wrote:
| Makes me think if it was carefully calculated strategy, so
| Windows users would feel more familiar with new os.
| Everything in MacOs is frustratingly unusual for windows
| users, but at least annoying bugs are there. And you google
| how to deal with it, getting familiar with the os.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > 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.
| didip wrote:
| 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.
| isjdiwjxiwj wrote:
| It's mostly UI and UX issues introduced by Liquid Glass,
| nothing as extreme as people are making it out to be but
| pretty annoying in their own right.
| oompydoompy74 wrote:
| This doesn't excuse the issues, but the mainstream alternative,
| Windows 11, is infinitely worse imho.
| sourcegrift wrote:
| This is how you extrapolate one fluff marketing tweet into a full
| article, watch and learn. I also had the best sales this season
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| Uh yes generally corporations emphasize their success.
| nodesocket wrote:
| 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.
| rishabhaiover wrote:
| I wonder if this move is to grab customer base as much as they
| can before the supply chain crunch dents Apple manufacturing
| for the first time ever
| ndr42 wrote:
| I don't think that apple will be affected more than their
| peers.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| The talk for 20+ years has been about "halo" products - people
| buying iPods would be introduced to the Mac, same with the
| iPhone, etc.
|
| I think this may actually be the _first_ real Halo product they
| have that will do this for Mac, _because it is a Mac_.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I suspect they have managed to drive their costs right down and
| are still maintaining their typical profit margins.
| Archit3ch wrote:
| 1) The way to manufacture things cheaply is to do it at scale,
| and Neo has that in spades.
|
| 2) They will generate more profits than the hardware itself.
| You're not counting services and ecosystem. Now you got a new
| matching iPhone to go with your Neo, and an iWatch, an iPad, an
| iPencil...
| yalogin wrote:
| 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
| hammock wrote:
| 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.
| isjdiwjxiwj wrote:
| The iPhone SE was merely rebranded to iPhone (n)e. Exact same
| thing. Exact same product category.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| 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.
| isjdiwjxiwj wrote:
| > 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.
|
| It's because of the Neo. It is very much out. And it is very
| much available everywhere. Not sure why you think otherwise.
| zoogeny wrote:
| 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.
| tim333 wrote:
| 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.
| cianuro_ wrote:
| 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.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| it's also other gateway to sell subscription services.
| ksec wrote:
| 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.
| isjdiwjxiwj wrote:
| > 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.
| erelong wrote:
| That's a shame, although I'm not sure what I would recommend
| instead
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-03-21 23:01 UTC)