Apple was surprised by the AI-driven demand for the Mac

Apple’s iPhone products and services were the stars of the show in the tech giant’s latest installment, but the Mac has been a quiet success – helped by the growth of AI services.

Investors on Wall Street were involved waiting to see Mac money at a low price of $ 8 billion, but Apple report $8.4 billion in the second quarter ended March 28 – a notable hit for the non-core sector of the tech business. In addition, pre-funding investors believe that Mac sales will be real has been flat year over year. In fact, Mac sales were up 6% year over year, the company told investors. The company’s total revenue was $111.2 billion, an increase of 17% from the same period last year.

Apple has expanded the Mac lineup with recent product launches, including the well-received MacBook Neo. However, these fun, cute computers will only be on sale for a few weeks after pre-orders start on March 4. In fact, most units were shipped in mid to late March, and some orders may be pushed into April when other models are sold out.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts on the company’s Q2 earnings call Thursday that customer demand for the Neo has “taken off” and is higher than Apple expected. He also said that Apple set a new customer record for the Mac, possibly because of the Neo.

Cook said the growth in Mac sales is due to the use of the platform to run native AI models, such as OpenClaw – something that surprised Apple with the likes of the Mac Mini and Mac Studio devices. have sold out in recent weeks.

“These are all amazing AI platforms and tools, and these customer insights are happening faster than we predicted, and as a result we saw more than we expected,” Cook said of these Mac sales. He also said that the Mac Mini was the best seller in China – a market that is was in the OpenClaw frenzy as of late.

However, Mac revenue was down quarter over quarter, meaning the new demand has yet to materialize. Cook said it could take Apple “several months” to meet demand for the Mac Mini and Studio models.

“We’re not at the point where we’re saying this (restriction) is going to end any time soon. And it’s not because of a problem, by any means, other than we just mentioned what we want,” Cook said.

The company’s demand for the Mac was also in play. Apple pointed to several large companies, including Perplexity, who have turned to the Mac as their platform of choice for building artificial intelligence assistants.

He said Apple was “obsessed with the MacBook Neo,” and had seen school systems, such as Kansas City Public Schools, drop Neo Chromebooks.