Greg Lippert on Apple's MacBook Neo: What the critics are saying - 'Haven’t we just seen the swoon?'
on Apple's MacBook Neo: What the critics are saying - '”And no worry about margins. Again, more details coming.” History AAPL swoons in June, leading to a summer low around the 4th of July week. It’ll be interesting to watch sales estimates of the MacBook Neo during the June quarter. Can they prevent the June swoon? Equally (maybe more so) interesting is how Apple management characterizes ’switchers’ during the June quarter’s earnings discussion. Will it be higher than previous quarter’s rates?'
on Horace Dediu: Apple's jui jitsu AI strategy - 'Yes, Apple’s catbird position, with its *uncannily apt* hardware offering, appears to be more serendipitous than not. Serendipity is a good thing, but one should not rely on it for success.'
on Apple's MacBook Neo: What the critics are saying - 'I’ve done some casual estimates. The Neo price expands Apple’s available market to increase sales by at least 25%. More details in a later post, after some clean up. And no worry about margins. Again, more details coming.'
on Apple's MacBook Neo: What the critics are saying - 'I think the Neo is being introduced primarily as a safety conscious alternative for education. As AI begins integration into schools, who is going to offer a secure and private environment, free of malware? Hint—it’s not Chromebooks. Additionally, Apple Intelligence guardrails will ensure third party data collection doesn’t occur.'
on Apple's MacBook Neo: What the critics are saying - 'John, this isn’t necessarily ‘light computing’ – https://x.com/stalman/status/2031507292454269171'
on Apple's MacBook Neo: What the critics are saying - '@Greg At the moment they are not interchangeable. For the Neo they took advantage of the pretty good single core speed to build a laptop that provides light computing which is good enough for a lot of people. The M series SOCs provide much higher multicore speeds, much more RAM and storage, much higher internal bus speeds. I don’t think Apple would have built an A series chip for the NEO, but they took advantage of the fact that having amortized the development of this for the iPhone they now had a very inexpensive chip to use for this laptop.'
on Horace Dediu: Apple's jui jitsu AI strategy - 'Maybe I’m a liberal, but I don’t think Apple would have run those embarrassingly overpromised AI ads if they weren’t in panic mode. Their AI was well established—Siri, aka “shocked when it works.” Their AI leader did not believe in LLMs. I think they fired him. Three years after his incompetence was exposed. Bottom line: Apple failed to invest in the most transformative computer event in history, while ALL of their competitors did, so they were forced to use a competitor’s AI. I agree that Apple may now be in the catbird seat. I only dispute the claim that it was planned this way—because genius. It reminds me of the New Coke episode, where the CEO was accused of planning the uproar over replacing the original Coke, which resulted in greatly increased sales. “We’re not that dumb, and we’re not that smart.”'
on Apple's MacBook Neo: What the critics are saying - 'A guy judging Apple by the standards of WinTel. I can’t wait to hear what he says if he actually reviews the device. And how much crow he eats if/when this sells out.'
on Apple's MacBook Neo: What the critics are saying - 'Here is one of the “caveat” reviews from Rich Woods at Makeuseof so you dont need to read it http: // bit. ly/47Ccy9g “Please don’t preorder the MacBook Neo” “It won’t sell out. No need to preorder” “The announcement is filled with red flags. No one has used an A18 Pro” “In my career, I’ve read hundreds of laptop / silicon press releases. The MacBook Neo press release has tons of red flags. And no, that does not mean that this is a bad product. None of what I’m saying mean it’s a bad product. But you should be skeptical of it, and you should wait for testing data before spending your hard-earned dollars.” “If it’s good, just buy it when it comes out” And the article ends with: “So maybe, just wait and see some real testing data before buying a MacBook Neo.”'
on Apple's MacBook Neo: What the critics are saying - 'What is the future of the iPhone and M-series chips if they are interchangeable? Is it only that the lowest tier Macbook gets phone chips or is something more afoot? Fifty years in, it’s hard not to think it might be the latter, but I don’t understand where this could be going. Guesses?'
on Premarket: Apple is red - 'Apple supplier Corning is up $8.76 or 6.80% at $137.83. UBS raised its price target on the shares to $171. Corning reached its current all-time high of $162.10 on February 25th. The shares are recovering from a recent pullback in price. Apple is now up $0.94 at $260.82 as we approach the final few minutes of trading in today’s session.'
on Apple's transition from China to India nears its halfway mark - 'Would that it were that simple, Digant! This is all about the oligarchs controlling the world’s hydrocarbon combustion addiction. Our President is their vassal, but he’s far from alone.'
on Apple's transition from China to India nears its halfway mark - 'Because historically India was surrounded by rivals ( China and Pakistan) or rival funded by the US (Pakistan). When those two are your rivals the only third one that is strong enough to oppose them (historically) were Russia and Iran. Even today, India still has lot of Russian equipment in its military. And trust me, the US is no long term ally'
on Mac cultist Leander Kahney interviews the prolific David Pogue (video) - 'I’m uncertain but leaning positive. There was a period after the success of his For Dummies etc. work that it felt like his ego went up while his quality went down. I’ll probably still have to buy it, just like Jobs biography. 🙂'
on Apple's transition from China to India nears its halfway mark - 'While moving a large portion of its production to India is not “cost-free” can someone see a major hit to margins? Seems like Apple has those well under control for now. This has shocked many analysts over the years. Many negative thesis’s about Apple revolve around how their margins will be squeezed by competition , shortages etc. I haven’t seen Apple take a long term bet that has hurt their margins. Somehow they seem to stick to producing products with profit margins that are impressive or even better. It will be interesting to see how the numbers work out with the Neo line. And if history is any guide Apple will look for solutions to fix any margin bottlenecks that arise while at the same time maintaining high quality design for their products. And yes they do benefit from the margins on the software side of the business compared to hardware margins. A truly good mix of business opportunities in the same company.'
on Horace Dediu: Apple's jui jitsu AI strategy - 'l couldn’t agree more with Horace. Except on Deepseek. The media, pundits and analysts almost always talk about the difference in claimed training costs and how Deepseek set a new standard, but there is pretty substantial evidence that CHATGPT model distillation was employed in Deepseek’s development (i.e., it was trained on vast amounts of output from ChatGPT). If true, then you don’t get Deepseek for $6M if you don’t first spend $100M to get ChatGPT. It’s like pointing to the costs of making a generic drug and then being alarmed that the company that developed the original drug didn’t do it for the same low cost. Science has always been seeing something new when standing on the shoulders of those who’ve made the prior advances, and that applies equally to the costs of those new discoveries being dependent on the prior expenditures that built the base you’re now standing on. A lot of time and money are spent on investigating what turn out to be dead-ends, and generally only in hindsight does a research path appear to be clear and obvious.'
on Premarket: Apple is red - 'In dollar amounts, Apple is still the number one stock for Berkshire Hathaway.'
