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It's always surprising when companies don't understand that people what inexpensive, quality goods. The original Ford Maverick retailed for $19,995, Ford absolu
by everdrive 4mo ago
It's always surprising when companies don't understand that people what inexpensive, quality goods. The original Ford Maverick retailed for $19,995, Ford absolutely could not keep up with production. Ultimately, they raised prices both because they could and in order to reduce demand because they could not actually product enough units.
- echoangle 4mo agoThey probably know that but don’t want to cannibalize their more expensive products.
- asdff 4mo agoA lot of the buyers were never going to be buyers for the more expensive products.
- alooPotato 4mo agothat doesn't, on its own, alleviate the cannibalization concerns
- asdff 4mo agoIf they don't make this product at this pricepoint, a competitor does and that also cannibalizes potential higher sku macbook sales to a degree. Every chromebook sold is a potential macbook neo customer and apple let google eat their lunch for years.
- echoangle 4mo agoYou can afford to lose a lot of low-value low-margin buyers for not losing one high-value high-margin buyer.
- MikeNotThePope 4mo agoI’m guessing the Neo attracts a lot of new Apple customers, many of which will become subscribers of higher margin Apple services & apps in the App Store.
- jug 4mo ago”If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will." — Steve Jobs
- Crunchified 4mo agoJust so you know, the original Ford Maverick started out at just under $2,000 in 1970.
- sethops1 4mo agoThat would be $17,165 adjusted for inflation to 2026.
- thinkingtoilet 4mo agoI would happily buy a laptop with medium specs but apple build quality. I don't know if the Neo's build quality is on par with their other laptops but if it is it's probably my next laptop.
- wyre 4mo agoFrom the reviews, my impression is that the Neo has Apple's build quality, but they cut some costs to save on machining the chassis, and the trackpad doesn't have the haptic motor.
- fooker 4mo agoThere really is none. There were, if I recall correctly, one or two generations of Dell XPS that came close but they started cheaping out on materials almost immediately after it. The old-ish ThinkPads were great if you want a rugged laptop, but that's not really because of better build quality, there were just more material.
- alsetmusic 4mo agoI bought one for my partner after my favorite tech podcast reported positively on the build quality. It's excellent and also her first Mac. Feels just as good as my MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. They preserved the Apple experience. When I finally convinced my father to get a Mac ~2005/2006, he left me a voicemail saying that all he'd done was take it out of the box and he could already tell that it was a good purchase.
- varispeed 4mo agoPoor quality comes from the fact we have outsourced manufacturing. Nobody knows how to make things properly. Here in the UK you won't even find competent sheet metal fabricator (except for military or when you have more money than sense, but then whatever you want to sell will be dead in the water because of unaffordability).
- the_other 4mo ago> Poor quality comes from the fact we have outsourced manufacturing. My experience with software development suggests this is not the main driver. The main driver seems to be management not caring about quality, UX, long term maintainance costs, externalities, and by viewing customer service as a cost rather than as branding.
- varispeed 4mo agoSoftware development is not the same by any stretch of imagination.
- vablings 4mo agoConsidering that Apple laptops are made by Foxconn in China that firmly proves your argumentation false. People do know how to make things properly the problem is all those people are in China for a laundry list of reasons as long as my arms in a circle
- fooker 4mo agoAt its peak, Apple accounted for 70% of Foxconn's business and there are plenty of Apple folks directly working with them. It's an artifact of geopolitics that Apple and Foxconn and separate legal entities.
- GeekyBear 4mo agoDell has just announced an 8 Gig of RAM version of their XPS laptop and the PR surrounding the launch is pretty funny. > "Apple's MacBook Neo is a capable machine, and its arrival confirms that there's real appetite for premium quality at accessible prices," said Dell. Who could have known that people wanted quality AND affordability?
- drnick1 4mo agoIt is shocking that the XPS14 now starts at $2,000.
- mmcnl 4mo agoMade me buy a MacBook Air instead. Waited for a long time because I was not a fan of macOS, but Apple is quite cheap in all segments nowadays. A well-specced MacBook Pro these days is cheaper than a ThinkPad X1 Carbon. The MacBook Air at ~$1000 price point with 16GB/512GB is also incredibly hard to beat in price, and even if you pay the premium for a Windows competitor (crazy sentence) you actually get a less than premium experience: worse build quality, worse display, worse battery life.
- philistine 4mo agoApple's chip count in their laptops is insanely low compared to the competition. They're reaping the rewards of their continued investment in simplicity. People are appalled that they don't use standard M.2 storage; Apple's thing is bespoke and incompatible. Evil Apple's trying to prevent us folks from upgrading our laptops!! Nope. They use standard chips without a dedicated controller, because it's all controlled directly on the M-series chip, saving them a bunch of money. Which that, with the Macbook Neo, they absolutely pass the savings down to you.
- jwagenet 4mo agoIf you use wintel, unless you need bleeding edge, buy 3 year old Dell Precision refurb on eBay for a third of that.
- 4mo ago
- brikym 4mo agoIt's more like they don't want paradox of choice. Think of how many windows or android products are out there. Frankly I hate thinking about buying them in case I screw up and get it wrong. Apple understands this.
- NetMageSCW 4mo agoThey used to (Steve Jobs did) but the iPad lineup says they’ve forgotten some of it.
- GeekyBear 4mo agoThey have the cheap one, the little one, the premium consumer one, and the Pro.