Mac virgins

In Apple’s darkest days, the company was very much in a death spiral.

Apple’s machines were overpriced and underpowered, and sales dwindled. Apple was losing to the Wintel alliance, which cranked out ever-lower-priced machines that worked just as well but for a lot less. And as the alliance’s market share grew, network effects made it stronger and stronger.

The first iMac in 1998 reversed that slide, and the Mac platform has slowly clawed its way back since then.

For the last few years, Apple’s PC market share has hovered between 8% and 12%. Cupertino has generally outperformed its rivals, thanks largely to Apple silicon.

And with the low-cost MacBook Neo, Apple now finds itself in Wintel’s shoes. Now, PC manufacturers are struggling to compete with Apple.

Tim Cook just announced that the Neo is bringing in more Mac virgins than any other model in history. And there’s more bad news for Apple’s rivals: In the long term, the Neo is even cheaper than entry-level PCs — by a very substantial margin.

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