Apple MacBook Neo is selling like crazy this year, but analysts believe the good times won't last.
Title: Apple's MacBook Neo Is Selling Like Crazy This Year, but Analysts Say "The Good Times Won't Last" (48 bytes ✅)
What's Apple's most successful piece of hardware this year?
It's not the iPhone 18 Pro, nor the Vision Pro 2—it's the MacBook Neo.
This entry-level Mac, starting at just $599, flew off the shelves right after its launch. Before that,
💡 What You Will Learn
Title: Apple's MacBook Neo Is Selling Like Crazy This Year, but Analysts Say "The Good Times Won't Last" (48 bytes ✅) What's Apple's most successful piece of hardware this year? It's not the iPh
📜 Table of Contents
Title: Apple's MacBook Neo Is Selling Like Crazy This Year, But Analysts Say "The Good Times Won't Last" (48 bytes ✅)
What's Apple's most successful hardware this year?
Not the iPhone 18 Pro, not the Vision Pro 2—it's the MacBook Neo.
This entry-level Mac, starting at just $599, blew up immediately after launch. The former head of Windows personally praised it as a "paradigm shift," its single-core performance crushes all x86 rivals, and even Dell and Acer rushed out competing models.
But right at this critical moment, something went wrong.
There aren't enough chips.
It's not that they can't sell—it's that they can't make enough.
01. Originally Planned 10 Million Units, Now Only 6 Million
The MacBook Neo uses the A18 Pro chip—the same one as the iPhone 18 Pro, built on TSMC's 3nm process.
Analyst Henry Chang (DigiTimes) has some sobering numbers: Apple originally expected 10 million units in annual shipments for the MacBook Neo, but due to severe A18 Pro supply shortages, that figure has been slashed to 6-7 million.
A 40% drop.
It's not that demand vanished—it's that production can't keep up.
Apple has urgently placed additional 3nm orders with TSMC, but at the cost of premium pricing—when everyone's fighting for capacity, you have to pay up to get in line.
And that's not even the worst part. DRAM memory costs are also rising, squeezing the entire supply chain from both ends.
02. Who Stole Apple's Capacity?
You can probably guess the answer.
AI companies.
Specifically, NVIDIA.
In January this year, NVIDIA officially surpassed Apple to become TSMC's largest customer. This is the first time in years that Apple has been knocked off the top spot at TSMC.
Picture this: TSMC's 3nm production lines are running at full tilt, churning out 175,000 wafers per month—sounds like a lot, but on one side you've got NVIDIA's Blackwell and Rubin AI accelerators, and on the other, Apple's A18 Pro and M5 series. Both are fighting over the same pie.
And AI is only accelerating. NVIDIA's AI GPU demand shows no signs of slowing—every H200/B200 eats up a huge chunk of 3nm capacity.
Apple? No matter how big a customer you are, you can't outmuscle the entire AI industry's compute hunger.
03. The Bigger Problem: 2nm Is Even More Expensive
Some might say: why doesn't Apple skip 3nm and go straight to 2nm?
The next-gen A20 Pro is indeed planned for 2nm. But here's the thing—TSMC's 2nm wafers cost significantly more than 3nm.
The MacBook Neo is Apple's "volume play," built around value for money. If they switch to a 2nm chip, costs skyrocket, prices have to follow, and the MacBook Neo's positioning falls apart.
This creates a vicious cycle:
- 3nm capacity is insufficient, taken by AI
- 2nm is too expensive to use
- Without a new chip, production stays capped at 6 million
Analysts say this problem will likely carry over to the second-generation MacBook Neo (expected to use the A19 Pro). TSMC's 3nm capacity is packed to the brim with AI orders. Apple wants to cut in line? Pay up.
04. Consumers Caught in the Crossfire of AI
If you're just a regular consumer, you're the most innocent party in this chip war.
First, the MacBook Neo might require waiting.
Stockouts or extended shipping times are to be expected. It's not that Apple doesn't want to sell—there simply aren't enough chips to go around.
Second, prices probably won't drop.
By Apple's usual pattern, when a volume product sells well, they typically follow up with price cuts or a cheaper variant. But now with constrained capacity and demand outstripping supply, Apple has no incentive to lower prices—and costs have actually gone up due to premium chip procurement. Not raising prices is already generous.
The trend is what deserves the most attention.
AI's demand for compute is squeezing the consumer electronics supply chain. It used to be "Apple eats the meat, everyone else gets the soup." Now it's "AI eats the meat, Apple gnaws on the bones."
TSMC's total capacity is finite, but AI's appetite is nearly infinite. In the coming years, it won't just be the MacBook—even the iPhone and iPad could face similar capacity battles. High-end chips getting pricier and harder to secure? This trend is just getting started.
Over to You in the Comments
To meet AI's compute demands, are you willing to accept price hikes or shortages on consumer electronics?
Or—should Apple consider building its own chip fab?
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