Apple says Mac revenue for the quarter ended March 28, 2025 came in at $8.4 billion, beating Wall Street expectations of low $8 billion, according to CoinDesk.
The driver, Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts on the Q2 earnings call, was a faster-than-expected shift toward running local AI workloads on Macs. CoinDesk reports Cook said Apple was caught off guard by how quickly customers adopted the new capabilities. Cook also pointed to “off the charts” demand for the newly launched MacBook Neo and a record number of first-time Mac buyers, partly tied to the Neo.
Supply constraints, not production problems
The bigger surprise was not mainstream consumer demand, but professional and enterprise users. CoinDesk says Cook described the Mac mini and Mac Studio as “amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools,” and added that the company’s recognition of that demand is happening faster than Apple predicted.
That gap shows up in shortages. CoinDesk reports that both the models and related hardware sold out in recent weeks, and Cook said Apple may need “several months” to reach supply-demand balance. He emphasized the issue is a forecasting miss rather than a production problem, with Cook stating “We just under-called the demand.”
Local models pull buyers into the Mac
CoinDesk also ties the spike to the availability of local AI models. It mentions China’s “frenzy” around OpenClaw and says Cook noted the Mac mini became the top-selling desktop in China. The source also points to market signals like school systems reportedly dropping Chromebooks for the MacBook Neo, citing Kansas City Public Schools.
On the enterprise side, CoinDesk names Perplexity as an example of a company adopting Mac as a preferred platform for building enterprise-grade AI assistants. The underlying theme in the source is that workloads are moving toward local, powerful hardware, and Apple’s AI-capable Macs are benefiting from that shift.
Revenue beat, but not yet consistent scale
Even with the quarterly beat, CoinDesk says Mac revenue stayed flat quarter-over-quarter. That suggests the new demand had not yet scaled into a steady, high-volume pattern.
CoinDesk frames Apple’s AI hardware shift as gradual, with neural engines integrated into chips for years. It argues that the release of stronger local AI models made those existing capabilities more visible. It also says early 2025 developer requests for more RAM and processing power helped position the Mac mini and Mac Studio as suitable platforms. The source concludes that supply constraints are likely to persist for several more months.
Note: CoinDesk includes additional discussion of Apple’s longer-term roadmap, but the provided text cuts off before that section finishes.