What explains upmarket Apple’s low-priced MacBook? A chip crunch more than market opportunity

Apple’s strategy seems straightforward: A cheaper laptop puts it in direct competition with Google’s Chromebook, now a mainstay of classrooms globally, plus a whole universe of Windows-powered laptops. It could lock in the next generation of Apple laptop users.

Yet Apple could have justifiably made that kind of move at any point in the Chromebook’s almost 15 years on the market. Instead, Apple stayed firmly dedicated to its premium reputation and price point. A confluence of reasons made 2026 the right time for a cheaper MacBook.

The Mac product line, which missed analysts’ expectations last quarter, needs a sales boost. Increasingly, as more Americans worry about affordability, Apple is competing with itself.

The market for refurbished Apple products is booming. Back Market, a leading marketplace that puts Apple products front and centre, reported last month that gross merchandise value rose 32% in 2025 compared with the previous year. The market for old smartphones is growing faster than the one for new models and Apple products make up more than half of that demand.

With belts tightened, what many consumers are saying is that they don’t mind using hardware that’s a little behind the curve. So now Apple is putting its older hardware into new products: The MacBook Neo runs on the A18 Pro chip first used in 2024’s iPhones. That’s not a slight—it’s a capable chip, but it also means Apple can squeeze the cost savings necessary to bring the Neo into budget territory.

It’s also an interesting bet by Apple that demand for serious on-device AI use—such as those clever agents we’re hearing so much about—is and will remain for a while a niche and nerdy pursuit of little interest to the casual MacBook buyer.

Like the Chromebook, the MacBook Neo will offload much heavy lifting to the cloud, among other compromises. “The keyboard is a bit flimsy,” according to one first impression. The base model has just 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM, compared with 512GB and 16GB for the base MacBook Air. A refurbished old MacBook Air might be a better deal, The Verge argues, if you can get one.

Which brings us to the next reason the MacBook Neo exists: shortages. Just as Apple was announcing the new products, Intel’s chief financial officer was on a different stage at a Morgan Stanley event warning that memory chip supply issues would persist through 2027. AI companies—as has been covered extensively—have sewn up much of the production capacity of the few makers of memory chips in the world, driving up the cost of components for everyday electronics.

For this reason, IDC estimates the global market for smartphones will decline 12.9% in 2026 year on year, while laptop shipments will be down 11.3%. The brunt of this will be felt by more budget brands, like Lenovo, or manufacturers of cost-conscious Android devices. Apple is now ready to swoop in for those consumers who will browse the aisles at Best Buy and quickly realize that dropping $500 on a Windows laptop doesn’t go as far as it did last year. “The MacBook Neo will reshape the entry-level laptop segment,” IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo said.

Is Apple immune to those cost pressures? No, and were it not for the MacBook Neo, the headlines on the company’s product lineup might be more focused on the across-the-board price increases for its premium laptops in the face of global economic turbulence and that memory crunch.

The base price for the new MacBook Air, for both 13- and 15-inch models, has increased $100. MacBook Pro models with the more powerful M5 Pro chip start $200 higher than the previous generation, while the cheapest configuration for the most powerful M5 Max chip begins $400 higher.

Given the computers’ performance upgrades, customers likely won’t see that as a bad deal. An extra hundred bucks is easier to swallow for those with budgets stretching beyond $1,000, and even $400 won’t seem prohibitive for customers who require the computing power those components offer.

Like an airline cranking up the price of business class to keep economy seats affordable to the masses, Apple is leaning on its premium customers to eat the costs that make a budget MacBook possible. Taxing the rich to help tackle the affordability crisis, you say? Now there’s a compelling idea. ©Bloomberg

The author is Bloomberg Opinion’s US technology columnist.