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Who is Apple’s MVP?
Johny Srouji, ofc. Apple’s chip chief is making the company look very, very good at the moment.
Take the new M5 Max chip, which, according to leaked benchmarks, appears to be the fastest consumer chip ever made. It even outperforms the M4 Ultra, which previously held the crown.
And then there’s the humble A18 Pro chip in the MacBook Neo, which turns out to be not too shabby either, scoring impressive results in early benchmarks.
People are worried by the lack of RAM in Apple’s new budget laptop. But as reader Chris pointed out in a comment on yesterday’s poll, when was the last time you worried about the same amount of RAM in your iPhone?
YouTuber Andrew Clare thinks the machine will be absolutely fine for most people.
“I created dozens of short videos on my iPhone 16 Pro Max,” he wrote on X. “Shot on iPhone at 4K 60 fps. Edited them fine in CapCut without any issues. Not to mention I use to edit all my longer YouTube videos on my M1 iPad Air, which is in many ways is not on the level of the A18 Pro chip. No issues as well. For those saying the A18 Pro can’t handle editing sit this one out. You don’t know what you’re talking about and you probably haven’t edited on your iPhone before. MacBook Neo will be completely fine for a lot of people.”
Analyst Ben Bajarin thinks Apple could sell 50 million Macs a year, thanks to the Neo, up from between 25 million and 30 million now. See the last X post below.
Also in today’s newsletter:
It’s interesting to see what MacBook Neo configurations and colors are attracting early buyers. One color is already sold out.
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Apple execs reveal why they called the new MacBook “Neo” — kinda!
🔥 DEAL OF THE DAY: This six-pack of Matter-compatible smart bulbs is just $30 (regularly $43), making them just $5 a pop.
Uh oh: Maybe runaway RAM prices are affecting Apple after all.
Today’s newsletter might be mostly about the Neo, but at the other end of the scale, here are the best WFH setups featuring the beastly Mac Studio.
Steve Jobs wasn’t always right. He initially opposed the iPhone App Store — the feature that made Apple billions of dollars last year.
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A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team
A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team
Cult of Mac’s buyback program
Tweets of the day
Wallpaper of the day
One more thing ...
Everything just got simpler. That's been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.
Today’s poll
Results from yesterday’s poll: What's the biggest drawback of the new Neo?
Best reader comments
Subscribe to The Weekender — Get the week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.