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?
The problem
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.”
Making it cheap
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.
Making it cool
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.
Our tools shape us
“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.
Success
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.