A brief history of surprisingly cheap Apple products

The MacBook Neo’s $599 price is notable, but hardly unprecedented.

[Photos: Apple, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]

Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In.

Apple may have perfected splashy product-launch keynote events, but it’s never been wed to them. In terms of sheer quantity of new stuff, this week was about as eventful as it gets. And yet the company chose to dispense its announcements via press release over three days.

Monday brought the iPhone 17e and a new iPad Air. Tuesday offered new MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros, plus a couple of displays. In each instance, the advances were incremental: faster chips, beefier specs, and other updates that are welcome, but not exactly memorable.

But on Wednesday, Apple concluded its slow-roll product-fest with something genuinely new—a “one more thing” in the tradition of its events of yore. That was the MacBook Neo, the mythical cheap Mac portable that Apple watchers—including me—have been fantasizing about for literally decades.

The MacBook Neo’s press release calls its $599 starting price a breakthrough, and it is. Or at least it’s a landmark in the history of cheap Apple stuff. In the past, MacBooks have often dipped below $1,000, but this one will be accessible to Windows users who might never have even considered buying a Mac until now. For schools, the Neo starts at $499, giving Apple a shot at chipping away at the Google Chromebook’s huge market share in education. (Until now, the iPad has borne the brunt of that effort.)

Apple’s association with premium experiences at premium prices is so enduring that it’s easy to lose track of the fact that it’s not the whole story. The company has often introduced products whose low price, like the Neo’s, helps define them. But what’s happened once they’re out in the wild has varied quite a bit.

The Neo reminds me most of the Mac Mini, the pint-size desktop that Steve Jobs revealed at 2005’s Macworld Expo conference in San Francisco. Initially selling for $499 at a time when the next-cheapest Mac was the now-obscure $799 eMac, the Mini’s minimalism extended to shipping sans accessories. Jobs called it a BYODKM computer—as in “bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse.”

Claire's went from tween mall icon to bankrupt — twice?

© Fast Company