- All flavors of the MacBook Neo are delayed by 2-3 weeks at Apple’s online store
- You’ll be lucky to pick one up at a bricks-and-mortar Apple store in the US, too, although some outlets do have stock
- The popularity of the laptop seems to have taken Apple by surprise, and rumor has it that supply issues could be a real problem going forward
The MacBook Neo is a victim of its own popularity, it seems, and if you’re ordering the notebook online, it won’t be delivered for quite some time — and there are rumblings that Apple is going to struggle meeting demand going forward.
First off, 9 to 5 Mac flagged up that no matter which configuration of the MacBook Neo (model or color) you select at Apple’s US online store, there’s a 2-3 week waiting time before the laptop ships.
Even if you’re heading to a bricks-and-mortar Apple store, you most likely won’t be able to buy a MacBook Neo there and then. While availability varies as you might imagine, you’ll typically be waiting 3-4 weeks for an in-store pickup to be ready. That said, some stores do have on-the-day availability for the Neo, if you get lucky.
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Checking in the UK, I can see it’s a similar situation for online orders via the Apple website, although you can pick up a MacBook Neo right away in most Apple stores in the country.
Here’s where this gets really interesting — in a very tricky way for Apple — because as MacRumors spotted, we’re hearing from a tech writer in Taiwan (an ex-Bloomberg reporter, Tim Culpan) that the Neo has been way more popular than expected.
The theory is that Apple drafted in A18 Pro chips that couldn’t be used in the iPhone 16 Pro due to having a faulty GPU core. Instead of a 6-core GPU as needed in the iPhone, these chips only had 5-cores, but were otherwise good – so with the faulty core disabled, they were put in the MacBook Neo.
This is a common strategy for chips that don’t make a certain grade, as it avoids the silicon going to waste. However, it means that Apple only had a certain amount of CPUs based on the shortfall with these iPhone chips. That isn’t going to be enough, Culpan informs us, now that sales of the Neo have taken off so strongly, and therefore Apple could be in some hot water here, or so the rumor runs — obviously add plenty of seasoning to this claim.
MacRumors also spotted that Culpan reckons Apple will have a refreshed MacBook Neo next year, built around the A19 Pro CPU (the chip in the current iPhone 17 Pro) and equipped with 12GB of system RAM. That’ll be a useful upgrade on the current 8GB loadout, which while enough for everyday computing on the Neo, doesn’t look so great in terms of future-proofing.
It’s also worth noting that the Mac mini and Mac Studio are now suffering serious delays (months in some cases) when ordered from Apple’s online store — although these delays are reportedly due to the ongoing RAM crisis, rather than demand outstripping supply.
Analysis: will Apple need to get creative here?
While these rumors fit together rather neatly, we must be careful about making too many assumptions. Although clearly there is a problem with supply not meeting the demand for the MacBook Neo, as the laptop’s already lengthy lead times for delivery show.
The question is whether this is more of a blip in the flow of stock into retail, or whether the rumor about the moorings coming loose in terms of a shortfall of CPUs for the Neo is actually true. We’ll only know by keeping an eye on the availability of the MacBook Neo, and seeing whether the current situation continues (or indeed gets even worse).
If Apple is facing a supply issue with its A18 Pro chips as suggested, the company will need to either live with disappointing its customers — not a great idea, especially given how well the Neo has gone down — or crank up production of the CPUs (also with the sixth GPU core disabled, because Apple would have to keep the integrated graphics the same as with existing models).
However, as Culpan points out, the latter is easier said than done, given how much it’ll cost to secure production capacity with TSMC at the drop of a hat. That won’t be easy to square on Apple’s bank balance when you consider that profit margins on the Neo are already thin.
There could be creative ways around that problem, such as a decision to just produce the pricier (512GB) model of the Neo, which has a little more headroom with the profit margins, no doubt. But what Apple doesn’t want to do is lose the momentum it has swiftly picked up with the Neo, which is a threat Microsoft apparently recognizes in terms of making macOS a more meaningful force in the Windows-dominated world of laptops.
Again, it all comes back to the MacBook Neo being something of a victim of its own success; and while we can’t leap to conclusions, the theories behind what might be unfolding here seem plausible enough. Maybe that second-gen 12GB model of the Neo will be rushed out as quickly as possible…
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