The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple has found a way to turn imperfect silicon into perfect margins.
According to the Wall Street Journal has built a tidy business selling cheaper laptops while other gadget makers get thumped by rising costs, but it has largely pulled it off by using chips with slight defects that might otherwise be chucked in the bin.
The trick shows up in the technical small print of the newly released $599 MacBook Neo. Early data suggest the machine is a hit with customers, proving that, when it comes to Apple fanboys, there is more than one being born every minute.
The chip inside the Neo is Job’s Mob’s A18 Pro, the same chip first used in the iPhone 16 Pro two years ago. The difference is that the Neo version has a “5-core” graphics processor.
That is one less than the version inside the 2024 iPhones. In plain English, Job’s Mob appears to have saved A18 Pro chips with a duff graphics core and found them a new home.
Defective cores can be disabled, leaving a chip that still works well enough for another device. In this case, the thing goes into an entry-level laptop rather than a shiny top-of-the-line iPhone for the robe-wearing upgrade congregation.
To be fair, Apple is not the only one to pull this decades-old chip industry trick, but given the huge amount of smugness attached to its products by its fanboys, it does seem a little ironic.
The Journal even says that what began as a salvage job for mobile silicon has become a core part of Job’s Mob’s design strategy. It lets the outfit segment its line-up with creepy precision while squeezing efficiencies that smaller rivals can only stare at through the shop window.
Supply-chain analyst Tim Culpan, who has written about Job’s Mob’s Neo chip orders, said: “If you can take the stuff that doesn’t meet the highest level specs and still use it, you can save money, scrap and time. You can reach a lot more customers you might not otherwise be able to sell to.”
That is the genius of the thing. Job’s Mob can take a chip that failed to make the posh table, turn off the dodgy bit, and sell the result as a fresh product category, selling into a market so cheap it is out of reach.
The punters get a cheaper laptop. Job’s Mob gets another margin stream. The landfill gets less silicon, and the marketing department gets to pretend this was all designed by moonlight in a glass spaceship.
Of course, it is still a laptop powered by an old, slightly borked mobile phone chip, but it still has an Apple logo on it.
Apple, MacBook Neo, A18 Pro, defective chips, chip binning, iPhone 16 Pro, silicon, laptops, profit margins
