Apple announces new Mac sales record following MacBook Neo launch

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/20/apple-shares-mac-sales-achievement/

by akyuu • 4 months ago

113 130 4 months ago

65• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

They SAY they got the memo. Colour me very skeptical, but we'll see.

pants2• 4 months ago

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.

bigyabai7• 4 months ago

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-system6• 4 months ago

No, but the $600 MacBooks are coming straight for the $600 plastic shitbox windows laptops.

The competition at this price point is weak.

computomatic• 4 months ago

I have a company-issued plastic shitbox. It’s $1100 and made by dell.

itsmanjeet• 4 months ago

maybe, but performance wise they seem far ahead of typical Chromebooks in same , and with a real OS!

solatic• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

Apple also gets to fund their manufacturing investments using phone and other revenue

Avamander• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

"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.

longislandguido4• 4 months ago

It's a fitting analogy as macOS has since become bloated beyond belief.

ndr426• 4 months ago

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)

tonymet2• 4 months ago

The reporting and headline are even worse. “Best launch week ever” says nothing about sales.

pfannkuchen• 4 months ago

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.

illiac786• 4 months ago

From your point of view it is, but the headline is what Apple is giving them, and it works perfectly well for them: Lots of attention for Apple, zero interesting data.

ibero• 4 months ago

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.

ndr426• 4 months ago

I agree - I just would like to know what a "best launch week ever" means in numbers

cbhl• 4 months ago

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.

longislandguido4• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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!

longislandguido4• 4 months ago

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.

jasonjmcghee2• 4 months ago

0 improvements is unfair

https://github.com/apple/container

longislandguido4• 4 months ago

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.

amluto2• 4 months ago

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.

tracerbulletx• 4 months ago

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?

bigyabai7• 4 months ago

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

ndr426• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

What was that sales record?

jakeydus2• 4 months ago

Yeah, it apparently matters at least a little

bombcar5• 4 months ago

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.

amluto2• 4 months ago

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 :)

bilbo0s2• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

s0rce3• 4 months ago

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.

wincy2• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

mikestew• 4 months ago

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.

kps2• 4 months ago

My Mac is staying releases back, but iOS26 no longer respects light mode. Since I see astigmatic halation, this will be my last iDevice.

treetalker• 4 months ago

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.

simonh2• 4 months ago

To a new customer it doesn’t matter how Tahoe compares to previous MacOS, it matters how it compares to current Windows.

mordv• 4 months ago

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.

ndr426• 4 months ago

I think the target demographic is also young people raised with iPhones. So for them the new interface design is good for similarity (not for older Mac-people). As if apple planed that all along...

nicoburns3• 4 months ago

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.

didip2• 4 months ago

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.

isjdiwjxiwj3• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

This doesn’t excuse the issues, but the mainstream alternative, Windows 11, is infinitely worse imho.

alwillis• 4 months ago

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.

sourcegrift• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

Uh yes generally corporations emphasize their success.

nodesocket• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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

ndr426• 4 months ago

I don't think that apple will be affected more than their peers.

windowsrookie• 4 months ago

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.

bombcar5• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

I suspect they have managed to drive their costs right down and are still maintaining their typical profit margins.

Archit3ch• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

isjdiwjxiwj3• 4 months ago

The iPhone SE was merely rebranded to iPhone (n)e. Exact same thing. Exact same product category.

commandersaki• 4 months ago

No Touch ID though.

LinkSpree• 4 months ago

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.

wolvoleo• 4 months ago

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.

zoogeny• 4 months ago

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.

tim3332• 4 months ago

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_• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

it’s also other gateway to sell subscription services.

ratg13• 4 months ago

They have made something that can more easily be adopted by schools for students.

They are creating countless customers for life.

CamperBob2• 4 months ago

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.

bean469• 4 months ago

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

ksec3• 4 months ago

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.

isjdiwjxiwj3• 4 months ago

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.

ksec3• 4 months ago

What you’re asking for is an Air.

The design of Air and Neo is completely different. Air is non-repairable, worst keyboard, zero bezels. The Neo is easy enough to fix I dont even need to look at the manual.

erelong• 4 months ago

That's a shame, although I'm not sure what I would recommend instead

Apple announces new Mac sales record following MacBook Neo launch

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