Ask Paul: March 6 ⭐

Happy Friday! It was a week of Apple news, so I'm not surprised that this was top of mind for readers. Let's dive in.
"Everyone Expected Apple to Raise Prices on Its New Macs. What It Did Instead Was Much Smarter"

It raised prices on everything.
? Bite of the apple
helix2301 asks:

They say on all the blogs that is Apple way of competing with Google and Microsoft in K12 market. But they are already doing that with iPad.

I see the MacBook Neo as a confirmation that the iPad has failed in education use cases. What these institutions want are not so much "real" computers but rather less distracting devices with a dedicated keyboard and pointing device. The iPad just screams casualness and entertainment, and not learning. And the software it runs is too different from the software one will run as an adult getting work done in the future.

But regardless of where anyone lands on that, I don't see the MacBook Neo making big inroads in schools per se. I see it as targeting mainstream users, many of whom will be students. But the purchase point there is them or their parents, not schools. Or, as Apple puts it, the MacBook Neo is "for students, families, small business owners, new Mac users, and more."

I also see the MacBook Neo as a confirmation that its "iPhone halo effect" has not extended to the Mac to the degree that Apple had hoped. If you look at Mac market share today vs. 5, 10, or 15 years ago, the needle hasn't moved much at all. The Mac had 9 percent market share in 2025 compared to 7.9 percent five years earlier. The iPad dominates the tablet market. Apple's customers are buying Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple TV, and whatever else, which helps lock them into the ecosystem. Why hasn't the Mac benefitted as well?

This is a bet on Apple's part that the problem is a combination of the price and the value it provides compared to the PC side. The MacBook Air at $999 and up (now $1099 and up) is a great value, but that's still the premium part of the laptop market. And with Snapdragon X-based laptops like the HP OmniBook 5 significantly raising the bar in the $500 to $800 range, that $1100 MacBook Air seems even further away from the mainstream. It made some sense when $600 to $800 PCs were all crappy. But now they're not.

People are also saying that Apple being behind on AI is really hurting them as they are putting off release new products because of the behind ai.

I don't see Apple being behind in AI hurting them at all. It just had its best quarter, ever. As important, Apple isn't throwing money at AI like the rest of Big Tech. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft will all spend $200 billion, $185 billion, $150+ billion, whatever on AI this year. Apple spent $12 billion last year and that was less than the previous year. Sitting this out, purposeful or not, seems to have paid off.

Related to this, digitalguy asks:

I wanted to hear your perspective on the MacBook Neo (although I think I saw in one of your comments that...