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Apple's MacBook Neo has reset the "cheap PC" baseline.
That's bad news for the makers of Windows PCs.
But it might be even worse news for the Chromebook.
I have yet to lay hands on a MacBook Neo. I plan to visit my local Apple Store this weekend to see, touch, and vibe with this product in person.
But I don't need any hands-on experience to know that this is a very big deal for Apple. For as long as I can remember, Apple's strategy has been brutally successful at capturing an enormous share of the high end of the computing device market. It's been able to maintain luxuriously high profit margins for those products, while leaving the middle and low end for PC makers who survive on the thinnest of margins.
Also: MacBook Neo review: My biggest concern with Apple's near-perfect budget laptop
For years, the Mac product line has been the poster child for that strategy. Apple has maintained the price of its least expensive MacBook, the MacBook Air, at around $1,000. It has refused to play in the "cheap PC" market - that segment filled with slow, homely Windows PCs that cost between 500 and 800 bucks.
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