As the only IT person in an 80 person unit, I can say the Neo trounces Dell Latitudes in a lot of ways, those have awful 250 nit screens out of the box, and they are nearly $1,200!
Especially in regards to cars, often getting a bargain is about finding the cars with faults you personally don't care about but most people do, or versions not many are interested in.
Unfortunately the way speculators have inflated the used market means the rare (because no-one wanted it) versions are priced on their rarity not their utility.
Bear in mind thats this 4-7% loss only counts dies that have just one broken CPU unit. There are many other failure modes as well. That just seems very very high.
I've also not really seen any official channels that support this assertion, even apple insider seems sceptical that this is true: https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/04/07/incredible-macboo...
With my logic hat on, Apple contracts chip manufacturing, so I would have assumed that rejects and failed parts would be recycled at source. I would imagine that apple only pay for parts that pass QC. So I suspect that actually these chips are either leftovers (at best) or specifically manufactured using the old tooling.
Not sure why they make the cheaper models cooler than the top tier ones. Maybe it's just too expensive to stock multiple colors of every product. The Neo has minimal customization options for specs so making it colorful is cheaper.
1:1 example, but i'm not sure those were the points being made here.
Perhaps picking Porsche for this analogy wasn't necessarily the best choice: https://investorrelations.porsche.com/en/financial-informati...
So much for "fantastic position it is in today"...
I like colors!
So it's nice to see apple finally bringing a bit of color back.
Kinda hard to take this article seriously...
https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2026/company/porsche-deliver...
How is this different from any other computer product?
Is it? I thought the average for lastest-architecture chips was around 5%.
As such, if you buy a M5 MacBook Air today you are very likely to get software support that lasts until the laptop is physically falling apart.
I prefer actually both to my corporate issue M4 one with MacOS.
I'm not a fan of the Mac UX, but the hardware seems pretty damn good and the lifespan extends with it.
If I'd have no limitations though I'd prefer the Framework, but not very clearly.
https://www.amazon.com/Se7enline-Compatible-MacBook-Protecti...
Sure, the EU pretty much killed its auto car industry, offering the markets to Tesla and Chinese EVs (and there are talks of chinese buying Porsche), but Porsche has a crazy lineup compared to what it used to have: 911, Cayman, Boxster, Panamera, Taycan (the 100% EV), Macan and Cayenne and soooo many different sub-models of those (GT4, GTS, Turbo (S), Targa, GT3 (RS), GT2 (RS), S/T, S/C ...).
They just even announced a 911 GT3 S/C // convertible (heresy for some but I love it). For any Porsche enthusiast, we're pretty much living the golden age of Porsche where you can still buy a normally aspirated, stick shift, driver's car. In 2026: thank you so much Porsche for being sufficiently crazy to still do that in 2026, in an era where people are paying subscription to receive OTA updates for their EVs.
And any Porsche enthusiast knows that the early 1990s were nearly the death of Porsche. It was a close call.
BTW to anyone saying the modern Porsche aren't "real" Porsche cars, I send them love from my 911 Carrera from 1988. You can both love old and new Porsche cars.
On the other hand, for students and schoolkids once you've solved "cheap", it's a plus to also tweak for "fun".
Speaking of market segmentation - this may vary by country but on https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ (US site accessed from EU VPN) if I scroll down a bit, what gender do you think the "blush" color is most associated with? Is it coincidence that the laptop is being held in a hand with painted nails? (And a wedding ring.)
One of the last jobs I did for them before moving onto a very early streaming video company in 2000 was opening up this pristine "Oxford Blue Metallic" (stock Landrover colour from the time, mine is that colour) 32" TV and fitting a VGA adaptor board to it so the customer could play videos and games from his PC on his new telly directly. It had a scan line doubler in to reduce flicker, which I guess was the precursor of "Mexican Soap Opera Mode" in modern TVs, and that allowed it to display 1280x720x50p smoothly.
It looked fantastic but I don't know that it was £3700-in-early-2000s-money fantastic - or about seven grand today.
Imagine paying three and a half grand for a telly, even if it was sprayed the same colour as your 80 grand Range Rover.
But the Boxster didn't try to replace the 911 on day one. Or even go after the other 300ZX/Supra/whatever 2+2s on day one. It was instead nearly a whole-cloth "what if pure 2-seater convertible driver's car, but the best possible version" upscale-Miata initially, which wasn't an existing segment at all, and being roadster-first was a key separator from the also-2-seater Corvette.
(The iPhone or iPad were arguable Apple's Boxster "entry-level that ends up dominating sales and growing into full blown new product lines" anyway, except that the comparison eventually falls down because the form factor difference with the Mac is much more of a fundamental separation. So maybe Apple's Boxster is instead the laptop in the first place, which wiped out most of their desktop workstation business by the early-2010s at latest.)
Porsche AG is part of the Volkswagen Group that is owned by Porsche SE.
either way car manufacture is not a big profit game
It’s stuck in Catalina, but I still get updates.
Most apps run fine on it.
Apple kit lasts a long time.
Until it broke, I was still using my 2018 iPad just last year.
The problem is that you can't buy them. All of these "interesting" 911s are limited production in practice even when not limited editions per se and are sold to most favorite clients only, a good chunk of whom then immediately flip them with delivery mileage---i.e. playing Ferrari games without the Ferrari name. I respect and like Porsche the car manufacturer, and I have put a lot of track miles on my 991.2 GT3 RS across the US, but I despise what their sales model has become.
/rant
Funny that each end of the transaxle lineage were saviors
I’d still pick the MacBook Pro because it has an SD card slot which any photographer is going to want. I don’t need something that blends in at a board room.
I don't see anything wrong here except the price ;)
Near 2000 everything came in wild colors. I fondly miss bright red motherboards even, or orange ones.
From what I can see, one can expect about 80-90% yield per wafer, the bit that that doesn't make sense is that the "binned" narrative implies that of those broken parts of the wafer, 25-50% are usable with just one GPU disabled.
To me that sounds wrong, and far too high.
More color choices that there are Pokemon games.
I also have a 2007 Intel mac with firewire that I use for some audio stuff that's still going strong with just an SSD swap.
I sure wish it was as easy as a battery replacement on a Framework laptop (with an original part).
I know the Neo has easier battery replacement (not glued in), but still it has an iFixit rating of 6/10 whereas the Framework 12 has a 10/10.
.. as long as you avoided the emoji keyboard era, or never used an emoji keyboard laptop outdoors or even with your windo open :)
I have laptops much older than the ~2018 that work perfectly. But not only the 2018's keyboard broke, but to add insult to the injury they used a display cable that was too short in that generation and that broke too.
That is Cook's legacy :)
Within a span of a year, out of my dozen coworkers who have the exact same laptop, half of them went down with similar issues.
I got my old G1 X1 Carbon for somewhere between 900 and 1100 from memory. Theres a fair discount in there mind, but its not a discount I could possibly hope to replicate these days.
(I think that was 1600 dollars partner pricing - charity discount - volume discount (hopped on an order for 12 already identical already going through) - tax incentives)
The cheapest Gen 13 Carbon currently available is ~ 2600 in the same currency, and that's already discounted by 9%, and has a shittier OS (Ships with Home edition instead of Pro), I doubt that would get below 2200 even with partner/channel pricing.
If you add "Winflation" that is, Windows 7/8 running perfectly smoothly on the Gen 1 with 8 Gig of memory, the replacement thinkpad being one that runs Windows 11 comfortably would be the $3150 in the same money, for its 32GB memory. Again doubtful it would go below 2700 or so even with channel.
Macbook NEO is funnily enough 900 bucks landed for me, with 8 gig of memory. I am betting the user experience of the thing is as good or if not better than my old carbon.
I subsequently swapped the logic board from the iGPU to the dGPU + max performance CPU model, swapped the top cover for a magnesium one, HDD->SSD, and installed a better WiFi module. Also had to replace the screen once because I suck and broke it.
I remember back in the day it wasn't that unusual for intel to sell quad core CPUs and dual core CPUs that exactly the same hardware-wise, but the dual-core ones didn't pass the QA to be sold as a quad-core.
In fact they sold many functional quad-core CPUs as dual-cores with 2 cores disabled and you could unlock the extra cores with some magic if you got lucky and got one that passed the quad-core QA.
Battery life is nice, but I doubt there's that much market yearning for a cheap laptop with long battery life. People who really need large screen for long work without wall power either go at x64 (which can reach 12 hours on mid range now), or change their workflow to use Android tablet. The ubiquity of USB charging port that can power the laptop (or at least top it up while standing by on lunch) also means even if an x86 laptop may not last an entire day, the owner don't have to suffer the inconvenience of carrying around the power brick.
Seems the thing most people are into, these says, is “bumper stickers” on their laptop lids. I suspect neutral colors work best for that.
I’ve found that I tend to replace my primary development machine every 3 years or so. Since retiring, I don’t travel much, so I got an M4Pro Mini. Works great, and I still have my M1Max MacBook Pro (my previous development machine), for when I want to hit the road.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/some-macs-are-gettin...
I like having a Linux laptop handy eg. with gparted
https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=125036
26 years ago, a Thinkpad 600X cost $4100, which is the equivalent of around $8k today.
https://www.engadget.com/2013-01-02-lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbo...
1600 dollars advertised rate via review channels.
And I have confirmed that I wouldnt have been paying much more at all due to currency conversions. AUD/USD 5 cents off parity.
https://www.exchangerates.org.uk/USD-AUD-spot-exchange-rates...
So its still the case that getting a G13 will cost 2-3 times the cost depending on metric for my G1.
But even looking at the data you quoted, the end of the IBM period shows lots of cheap thinkpads. Look at the R40 prices in your own source.
Heck look at these:
765D $6,500 (street! pcmag.com early 97) street $1,999 PC Mag 1 Sep 1998 (-60%) XGA 13.3 first model beyond 12.1" 765L $5459.16 - $6,779.05 street 11/4/97 pcmag.com (765D without cd/modem) street $1,899 PC Mag 1 Sep 1998 (-60%) XGA 13.3
4500 dollar haircut in 12 months?
Thinkpad 500 500 $1,699 IBM PC Direct (PC Mag 31 May 1994), $999 08/24/94
Sub 1000 dollars in 94?
They are really signals to others.
Sometimes the cheapest product is actually the coolest in the lineup. But that rarely happens by accident.
I saw this firsthand at the Apple Park Visitor Center, waiting to buy a new MacBook Air. I was told by the staff that I would have to wait a bit while they helped a few other customers. I watched as they enthusiastically purchased the MacBook Neo. When it came my turn, I got to chatting with my Mac Expert and they told me that MacBook Neo was selling like hotcakes. Not only were new customers buying their first Mac, but customers with older Macs were, instead of trading up for a brand new Air or Pro, buying MacBook Neo.

As I pulled out my iPhone Pro to pay, a funny question popped up in my head. How did Apple craft a cool laptop that costs half as much as the phone in my hand?
Cut back to Porsche in 1992, and you’ll see a similar story playing out in a very different industry. Back then, Porsche was not in the fantastic position it is in today. Its model lineup was aging. The 911 was essentially a derivative of the original from three decades earlier, and the rest of its lineup was, at that point, decades old as well. Unsold inventory was starting to pile up, and people outside of the company were starting to think that Porsche might have to close up shop.
At that point, Kevin Gaskell was part of the senior leadership at Porsche Great Britain and was promoted to managing director to turn around that division of the company. He has told the story of how their entry-level car, the 968, was a derivative of the 924 from 1976. And being priced at around £34,000, it was unfortunately above a very important number: £29,000. This was the threshold at which company-provided cars for personal use incurred a much higher income tax. Clearly, Porsche needed a cheaper 968.
The problem Apple solved is, of course, different as Apple is not in dire straits. Yet, some of the details line up. As John Gruber wrote at Daring Fireball:
“John Ternus took the stage to address the audience. He emphasized that the Mac user base continues to grow, because ‘nearly half of Mac buyers are new to the platform.’ Ternus didn’t say the following aloud, but Apple clearly knows what has kept a lot of would-be switchers from switching, and it’s the price. It’s not that Apple never noticed the demand for laptops in the $500–700 range. It’s that they didn’t see how to make one that wasn’t junk.”
If Porsche and Apple approached these problems purely as a question of cost, then their solutions would have always felt like a compromise. The key is how they each viewed the problem as an opportunity instead.
The folks at Porsche got together to figure out how to get a 968 priced at £28,995. But instead of starting with the 968 and taking away parts until they had a cheaper car, they took everything out at first — including the air conditioning, electric windows, rear seats, and more. Then they came back with lightweight bucket seats, a racing steering wheel, lowered suspension, and almost nothing else.
Image courtesy of Motor Car Classics
Image courtesy of Motor Car Classics
Apple took a similar approach with MacBook Neo. Inside, it contains the chip from an older iPhone, which likely allows Apple to use some binned CPUs they might already have on hand. The idea of an iPhone chip in a laptop isn’t novel — the original Apple Silicon developer transition kits were actually Mac mini enclosures with A12Z iPad chips inside. Features like Thunderbolt, larger RAM configurations, and extended I/O are absent — but these are limitations of the iPhone chip architecture, not arbitrary omissions.
If Porsche and Apple stopped there, these products would have been nothing but parts bin specials. And technically they are — they take parts from existing products and recombine them to create something new. But what’s important here is that both Apple and Porsche came back and changed the positioning of the product, making it exciting in a way that the rest of the lineup isn’t.
For Porsche, that meant racing colors — yellow, red, blue, black, and white — with color-matched wheels and seats. They called it the Club Sport, with large decals applied across the sides. Those changes, both cutting the price and the weight but also changing the way the product looks and is positioned, resulted in something that the market saw with entirely new eyes.
Image courtesy of Alex Harkey/@aloptics11
Apple has been very upfront in its marketing and messaging that price is its most important feature. On top of that, MacBook Neo is offered in new colors like blush and citrus that aren’t seen in the rest of the lineup. Instead of stripping down an existing product and offering something that felt lesser, they created something new from the ground up, earning that name “Neo”.
Both Apple and Porsche used a very hard constraint. For Porsche, it was a tax threshold that put the product below £29,000. For Apple, it’s only $500 for the education market. By working back from that constraint and then being creative with cheap things — color and so on — they created a product that felt cool and different instead of stripped down.
“We shape our buildings and afterward our buildings shape us.”— Winston Churchill
So, these constraints aren’t just corporate accounting decisions. They focus the product, which can then reveal what each of us finds important. The tool acts as a mirror.
In the 968 Club Sport, the lack of air conditioning encourages you to roll down the window and hear the engine. And even though it didn’t have a particularly powerful engine for straight-line speed, for people who wanted something fun to drive in a safe and engaging way, the Club Sport actually ended up being the best option.
Image courtesy of Alex Harkey/@aloptics11
“The Club Sport strips away all the fripperies, builds on the best bits, amplifies the soul and delivers more pure driving pleasure than almost any car we can think of.”— Performance Car, December 1993
And from this base, the 968 CS could inform its driver of what they find valuable and what missing features may actually be essential. When they turn it in for their next Porsche, they’ll have a clear idea of what they want.
The story is similar with MacBook Neo. Its competitors have terrible displays and flimsy enclosures, constantly reminding you of their lack of features.
Sam Henri Gold wrote a beautiful piece that weaves in his own experience with how a machine like MacBook Neo would be perfect for a young person entering a creative profession:
“Somewhere a kid is saving up for this. He has read every review. Watched the introduction video four or five times. Looked up every spec, every benchmark, every footnote. He has probably walked into an Apple Store and interrogated an employee about it ad nauseam. He knows the consensus. He knows it’s probably not the right tool for everything he wants to do.”
That was me when I was 16. I didn’t have the privilege of choosing something exotic. I made do with what was available to me, and in the process found new interests. And just as Sam wrote in his piece, I learned what I would need in the future by bumping up against the limits of the computer in front of me.
When people started to take apart MacBook Neo — such as the YouTube channel TECH RE-NU — there was a revealing realization: it is the most repairable laptop that Apple has shipped in the last ten years. There are no tricky adhesives or sticky tapes that you might see in their more expensive and often thinner products. And all of that is intention, and speaks to who they’re trying to sell to.
Image courtesy of iFixit
MacBook Neo is likely going to be purchased in bulk by educational institutions, and it’s common sense that kids don’t take great care of computers. So easy repairability is a genuine value-add for IT departments — not just a talking point. But repairability isn’t only a boon for institutions. The young have time.
I still fondly remember upgrading the hard drive in my own Mac twenty years ago — cracking it open, figuring out what went where, and feeling like I actually understood the machine I was using. That kind of intimacy with tools is formative.
So, simply having a Mac at all is an opportunity. And for someone with a more limited budget, that driving-focused Porsche is an opportunity too.
The 968 Club Sport didn’t singlehandedly save Porsche — the Boxster probably deserves more credit for that turnaround. Today, it has become a cult classic and is starting to appreciate on the used market.
MacBook Neo seems to already be a hit. Apple has put a product here that truly has no competition from the rest of the PC makers, and I won’t be surprised to start seeing these in coffee shops and schools very soon.
In a way, buying a Neo has the same energy as a young professional buying a 968 CS to enjoy the driving experience. It’s stripped down and doesn’t offer a lot of features. And that’s sort of the point. Hitting up against limitations teaches one about the tool and one’s own capabilities.
And if you look at it purely as a capitalist exercise, the Neo and the 968 Club Sport are ultimately about growing a customer base — many of whom will likely upgrade to more expensive models once their first machine has taught them its limits. The cheap product becomes the on-ramp to the whole lineup.
These products are cool, they’re quirky, and they remind us that the cheap thing can indeed be the coolest.
Thanks to Q for reading drafts of this.