Report: Apple launches new A18 Pro chip series as MacBook Neo demand exceeds expectations

Without a doubt, the MacBook Neo is a smashing success. Apple talked up the success of the new laptop during its latest earnings call, warning that supply constraints would persist into the current quarter.

Analyst Tim Culpan reports today that Apple now plans to make about 10 million MacBook Neos in total, about twice as many as it originally ordered. This will involve its chip supplier TSMC making a new series of A18 Pro chips to power the machines, something Apple will inevitably have to foot the bill for.

For the first production batch of the MacBook Neo, the company used leftover A18 Pro chips originally intended for the iPhone 16 Pro.

Here’s why: Yield rates for advanced chip production aren’t perfect, meaning some chips come off the line with partially defective cores. The iPhone 16 Pro featured an A18 Pro with six GPU cores. Rather than simply throwing out the chips with a faulty core, Apple kept them in stock and used them in the MacBook Neo, which is advertised as being powered by an A18 Pro chip with five GPU cores.

But, as Culpan reported last month, the company is running out of trashed leftovers. That means it now needs TSMC to make a new batch of A18 Pro chips, to go into the 5 million additional MacBook Neos the company has now ordered the supply chain to build.

Ordering new chips will obviously cost Apple more money than the “free” chips it had for the initial Neo stock. It’s unclear whether the company will simply swallow these costs and have lower profit margins on the Neo in the future, or whether it will somehow pass these costs on to the consumer.

Culpan speculates that Apple could repeat the trick it pulled with the Mac mini, where it will stop selling the entry-level $599 256GB MacBook Neo in the future and only sell the $699 512GB model, which sells for $100 more and has bigger margins. This would allow Apple to better mitigate additional chip costs.

That would be a shame, given that part of the Neo’s appeal is its surprisingly low price. But maybe Apple has other ideas on how to solve this problem. We don’t really know yet. And whatever the solution, it would only be temporary as Apple is expected to launch the second-generation Neo in early 2027 with A19 Pro chips (presumably depending on the iPhone 17 series’ bundled chip releases).