MacBook Neo at 4599 yuan is selling like crazy! But Apple is almost out of stock.

Over the past couple of days, as I followed the news about the MacBook Neo, my first reaction wasn’t that Apple had launched another budget laptop, but rather that it felt like a beginner’s god-tier item in an RPG suddenly showing up in the main city shop: the price is low enough, the stats are tempting enough, and the result is that players rush in all at once while the merchant’s warehouse gets emptied first. As Apple’s most affordable laptop at the moment, it has pushed the starting price down to 4599 yuan, and that number alone is enough to spark discussion. The problem lies precisely here: it’s selling too fast, and that has instead pushed the supply chain to its breaking point.

Right now, the clearest signal is no longer the buzz on forums, but the fact that delivery times on Apple’s official website have started to slow down. Based on current information, the latest shipping date for pre-orders on Apple’s official site has already been pushed back to April 30, meaning consumers will have to wait at least two weeks. This kind of delay usually points to one thing: it’s not that nobody is buying, but that front-end orders have already outpaced back-end inventory preparation. For a new machine that has only just built momentum through its “low barrier to entry,” strong sales should have been a good thing. But once waiting in line for delivery becomes the norm, word of mouth can quickly shift from surprise to anxiety.

More importantly, what’s holding back the MacBook Neo isn’t the chassis or the storage, but the inventory of its core component: the A18 Pro chip. According to reports, actual sales of this machine have significantly exceeded Apple’s expectations, and chip supplies are already close to running dry. It uses a custom version of the A18 Pro with only a 5-core GPU integrated. Compared with the full-power 6-core GPU version in the iPhone 16 Pro series, there is a slight difference in graphics performance, but in exchange it lands in a price range with real impact. In other words, this time Apple seems to have taken a piece of gear that should have been sold at a higher price and forcibly stuffed it into the budget pool, only for players to clear the shelves.

As for how the story unfolds next, Apple is actually standing at a very delicate crossroads. If it chooses to keep ramping up production, it will have to face the reality that TSMC’s 3nm capacity is already running at full load, and rising foundry costs are almost certain to happen, potentially even feeding through into the retail price. If it decides not to place additional orders, then the MacBook Neo could face the risk of going out of stock at any time, and might even become an unusually short-lived generation in Apple’s hardware history. There is also a more practical option—one that looks very much like a standard move in the business world: cut the 256GB version and keep only the 512GB version priced at 5299 yuan, using a higher average selling price to stabilize profits.

From a consumer’s point of view, my advice is straightforward: if you had already set your sights on the 256GB version at 4599 yuan and genuinely need to replace your laptop in the near future, then you have to accept the reality that “waiting in line” and “possible changes” may coexist, because what comes next will likely be either more expensive or harder to buy. On the other hand, if you were already planning to go for the 512GB version, then even if Apple adjusts its strategy, the impact on you won’t be that great—it’s just that the whole value-for-money conversation will cool off quickly. For the laptop market as a whole, this situation is also quite thought-provoking: what truly turns a new product into a breakout hit is never just the brand, but that exact moment when “the price suddenly feels within reach.” Once an Apple laptop starts to have that kind of appeal, a supply crisis is almost the hidden Boss that inevitably comes with it.