Apple has not merely launched a lower-priced MacBook. The MacBook Neo essentially resets pricing expectations from mainstream laptops, and the Windows PC market is now scrambling to find an answer that isn’t riddled with compromises. Concerns are clear, something Nick Wu, Chief Financial Officer at Asus (or ASUSTeK Computer Inc) noted in a quarterly earnings call on Tuesday, calling the MacBook Neo pricing a “shock”. The MacBook Neo went on sale this Wednesday.
He is calling on ecosystem partners including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD to take this threat seriously. “In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product,” he said. The lack of reaction or preparedness is surprising, considering murmurs of a MacBook powered by an iPhone-class chip, have been doing rounds for almost a year.
Wu’s unusually candid reaction notes “ongoing discussions about how we can compete with the Neo.” That indicates an ecosystem that knows the baseline has shifted significantly. “Given Apple’s historically very premium pricing, launching such an affordable product is certainly a shock to the entire market,” says Wu. Asus knows consumers have noticed this too, and will expect Windows PC makers to catch up. That, however, will be easier said than done.
Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, had pointed out to HT earlier that the PC ecosystem, including chipmakers such as Intel, must cater to “the lowest common denominator,” which is the weakest link in the chain.
Priced at ₹69,900 in India and $599 in the US, the MacBook Neo is not a cut-price MacBook Air substitute. Apple is positioning it as a full MacBook experience, complete with an aluminium chassis, fan-less design, Liquid Retina display, up to 16 hours of battery life, and the A18 Pro chip. Apple says it is up to 50% faster for everyday tasks than the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5, while also claiming up to 3x faster on-device AI workloads and up to 2x faster photo editing.
Even without taking those comparisons at face value, the message is clear — this is not an entry-level laptop, but one that sets a new baseline for mainstream computing. That makes any response from PC makers such as Asus, HP and Lenovo more difficult, particularly at a time when memory and storage remain expensive and in limited supply. IDC’s latest analysis expects PC shipments to fall by as much as 11.3% through 2026 due to higher component costs.
Research firm Gartner’s latest numbers from Q4 2025 peg Lenovo (27.2% share), HP (21.5%) and Dell (16.5%) as the PC ecosystem leaders, with Apple’s 9.4% share leading the likes of Asus (6.8%) and Acer (5.8%). Asus’ worry is, this gap may widen if the MacBook Neo sales take off.
For years, Windows OEMs have defended their turf with a familiar checklist — similar configurations across price points, often confusing variants, and lately, more AI stickers pushed by Microsoft. A quick look at laptops around the ₹69,900 mark brings up similarly specced machines from HP, Dell, Lenovo and Acer, typically powered by chips such as Intel’s Core i5-1334U or AMD’s Ryzen 7 7730U. Very little truly stands out.
Even after years, Windows 11 remains a source of frustration, with inconsistent performance, badly timed mandatory updates, and recurring stability issues often caused by Microsoft’s own broken patches. It simply does not feel as polished as macOS.
Apple is asking a more pertinent question — what if the mid-range laptop did not feel like a compromise?
The benchmark numbers uploaded to Geekbench sharpen that positioning. The scores peg single-core performance at 3461 (MacBook Neo) versus 3696 (MacBook Air with M4) and 2346 (MacBook Air with M1), multi-core performance at 8668 (MacBook Neo) as against 14730 (MacBook Air with M4) and 8342 (MacBook Air with M1). Simply put, this is an important illustration of how the MacBook Neo’s A18 Pro lands meaningfully closer to the M4 than to the M1 in single-core performance.
It’ll not be easy for the PC ecosystem to respond to Apple putting a phone-class chip into a proper laptop chassis and achieving performance that is more than sufficient for most potential buyers — a browser overloaded with tabs, multiple documents, video streaming, virtual meetings, Canva and Lightroom edits, and increasingly, AI tasks. Apple’s recent affordability-focused launches, including the iPhone 17e, make it clear this is the mass market it now has in mind.
Intel will attempt to match Apple’s M-series chips in the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, as well as the A-series chip in the MacBook Neo, with its new Panther Lake silicon. HT recently tested the Core Ultra X9 388H chip, with 16 cores built with Intel’s 18A or the 1.8 nanometer architecture, and noted a big step forward in performance compared with the generation it succeeds.
Asus’ Wu does see a silver lining. “The actual impact on the overall PC market still needs some time to resolve. The reason is that in the past, Apple’s faction versus the Intel faction had a somewhat segmented customer base due to software differences. It’s not as easy for users to switch between these 2 ecosystems,” he says.
The challenge is, once consumers realise ₹69,900 now buys a silent, aluminium, long-battery MacBook whose chip behaves closer to an M4-era machine than an M1 from years ago in key day-to-day performance, the old Windows playbook starts looking alarmingly tired.