Archive for March 4, 2026

Wednesday, March 4, 2026

MacBook Neo

Apple (Hacker News, MacRumors, Slashdot):

MacBook Neo starts with a beautiful Apple design, featuring a durable aluminum enclosure in an array of gorgeous colors — blush, indigo, silver, and a fresh new citrus. Its stunning 13-inch Liquid Retina display brings websites, photos, videos, and apps to life with high resolution and brightness, and support for 1 billion colors. Powered by A18 Pro, MacBook Neo can fly through everyday tasks, from browsing the web and streaming content, to editing photos, exploring creative hobbies, or using AI capabilities across apps. In fact, it’s up to 50 percent faster for everyday tasks like web browsing, and up to 3x faster when running on-device AI workloads like applying advanced effects to photos, compared to the bestselling PC with the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5. Providing up to 16 hours of battery life, MacBook Neo allows users to go all day on a single charge. A 1080p FaceTime HD camera and dual mics make it easy to look and sound great, and the dual side-firing speakers with Spatial Audio deliver crisp, immersive sound. MacBook Neo also features Apple’s renowned Magic Keyboard for comfortable and precise typing, and a large Multi-Touch trackpad with support for intuitive gestures, enabling smooth and precise control.

[…]

And starting at just $599 and $499 for education, MacBook Neo is Apple’s most affordable laptop ever, providing an unprecedented combination of quality and value.

The base model has 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD. For $699 you can get a 512 GB SSD and Touch ID. Both models have one USB 3 port and one USB 2 port (both with the USB-C connector). At 2.7 pounds, it’s the same weight as the MacBook Air.

All in all, this looks like big improvement over the M1 MacBook Air (except that it can’t run Sequoia). It’s the same price as the iPad Air (sans keyboard) and iPhone 17e. I don’t know why this took so many years, but I think it’s going to be a hit.

Jason Snell:

No $599 Mac laptop is going to exist without compromises, but they’re surprisingly minimal, in my opinion.

[…]

If you’re wondering if an iPhone processor can really drive a Mac, let me reprint this chart that I posted last year[…]

The A18 Pro is faster at single-core than the M3 and slightly faster at multi-core than the M1. The biggest limitation is the 8 GB of RAM, which is fine for many uses, but not for Xcode.

Mario Guzmán:

They were so, so close! The Citrus should have been a Key Lime instead. Leave the Indigo as is and boom, you’d have the iBook G3 SE colors from 2000. 😄

Previously:

Update (2026-03-04): John Siracusa:

The A18 Pro in the MacBook Neo is 19% faster than the M2 Ultra in the Mac Pro in single-core performance (Geekbench 6).

The MacBook Neo starts at $599.

The Mac Pro, which is still for sale, starts at $6,999.

Colin Cornaby:

The display has a resolution of 2408x1506. It uses an A18 Pro CPU - same CPU used in the iPhone 16 Pro. The iPhone 16 Pro Max has a 2868× 1320 display.

If a game runs well on an iPhone 16 Pro, it should run well on a MacBook Neo. The display resolutions are nearly the same.

Andrew Cunningham (MacRumors):

The screen is also a bit of a step down from the MacBook Air’s 13.6-inch 2560×1664 screen. Apple says it’s a 13-inch LCD with a 2408×1506 resolution and 500 nits of maximum brightness. It does not support the P3 wide color gamut or Apple’s True Tone technology, unlike the old M1 MacBook Air. It has rounded upper display corners like the current MacBook Airs and Pros, but doesn’t include the notch. The MacBook is also capable of driving a single external display—up to 4K at 60 Hz, disqualifying it from powering Apple’s 5K Studio Displays.

Stephen Hackett:

Here’s a list of what separates the MacBook Neo from the $1099 MacBook Air, besides their sizes[…]

Rui Carmo:

I know a bunch of people will disagree, but this is the most relevant Mac announcement in years[…]

[…]

I would swap my iPad Pro for it in a flash (if it had a 12” display, that is). And that is probably exactly why it is that big.

M.G. Siegler:

I still stand by it: this is the smartest move Apple has made in years.

[…]

I’ve long been baffled by the notion that Apple would cede the education market – one they long dominated when I was a kid – to cheap Windows devices and more recently, Chromebooks. Yes, they clearly thought the iPad could be the answer there. But that always felt a bit off. Sure, the iPad is a brilliant device and great for some things in classrooms. But for a lot of work, including school work, you’re going to want a “real” computer. Try as they might with keyboards and trackpads, Apple has not been able to morph the iPad into that real computer. And they keep insisting they don’t want to! (Even if their constant tweaks suggest otherwise.)

That’s fine. But again, it doesn’t work in the classroom. Even if it works 90% of the time, it needs to work 100% of the time for students. And the MacBook Neo can. Finally.

Mr. Macintosh:

The Neo no longer includes a physical indicator light. macOS now displays the camera in use indicator in the menu bar whenever the webcam is active.

I’m interested to see what my Apple security researcher friends think about this. Hopefully Apple has implemented protections to properly isolate this new webcam notification.

Update (2026-03-05): John Gruber:

The MacBook Neo looks and feels every bit like a MacBook. Solid aluminum. Good keyboard (no backlighting, but supposedly the same mechanism as in other post-2019 MacBooks — felt great in my quick testing). Good trackpad (no Force Touch — it actually physically clicks, but you can click anywhere, not just the bottom). Good bright display (500 nits max, same as the MacBook Air). Surprisingly good speakers, in a new side-firing configuration. Without even turning either laptop on, you can just see and feel that the MacBook Neo is a vastly superior device.

[…]

I came into today’s ~~event~~ experience expecting a starting price of $799 for the Neo — $300 less than the new $1,099 price for the base M5 MacBook Air (which, in defense of that price, starts with 512 GB storage). $599 is a fucking statement. Apple is coming after this market. I think they’re going to sell a zillion of these things, and “almost half” of new Mac buyers being new to the platform is going to become “more than half”. The MacBook Neo is not a footnote or hobby, or a pricing stunt to get people in the door before upselling them to a MacBook Air. It’s the first major new Mac aimed at the consumer market in the Apple Silicon era.

[…]

And while the ports aren’t labeled, if you plug an external display into the “wrong” port, you’ll get an on-screen notification suggesting you plug it into the other port.

[…]

8 GB of RAM is not a lot, but with Apple Silicon it really is enough for typical consumer productivity apps. (If they update the Neo annually and next year’s model gets the A19 Pro, it will move not to 16 GB of RAM but 12 GB.)

As I said above, I think 8 GB is OK for this model, but I still object to this narrative from Apple that Apple Silicon somehow makes 8 GB better, that it’s really “analogous to 16GB on other systems.” That even seems backwards because the unified memory architecture means that some of the RAM will be used for graphics rather than apps.

Tim Hardwick:

Apple’s low-cost MacBook Neo is compatible with the company’s new Studio Displays, but its output will be scaled to 4K resolution at 60Hz.

Joe Rossignol:

In short, Apple said MacBook Neo sounds fresh.

“We wanted something that felt fun and friendly, and fresh, and felt like it really suited the spirit of this product,” said Colleen Novielli, a Mac product marketing director, in conversation with TechRadar’s Lance Ulanoff.

BasicAppleGuy:

MacBook Neo v. MBA Size comparison
Height: 1.27 cm (0.50 inch) v. 1.13 cm (0.44 inch)
Width: 29.75 cm (11.71 inches) v. 30.41 cm (11.97 inches)
Depth: 20.64 cm (8.12 inches) v. 21.5 cm (8.46 inches)
Weight: 1.23 kg (2.7 pounds) v. 1.23 kg (2.7 pounds)

Julio Ojeda-Zapata and Adam Engst:

MacBook Neo has a significantly smaller battery than the MacBook Air—36.5 watt-hours versus 53.8 watt‑hours. The smaller battery won’t yield much cost savings, but its reduced weight may be necessary to offset other components that cost less but weigh more.

[…]

Instead of the Force Touch trackpad introduced with the 12-inch MacBook that relies on pressure sensors and a haptic click simulation, Apple advertises the MacBook Neo as using a Multi-Touch trackpad. If that’s the same trackpad as before, it has a physical click mechanism that doesn’t work as well at the edges and is more likely to fail. However, it’s undoubtedly cheaper and still supports multi-finger gestures. It doesn’t support the Force Touch features like deep pressing a file in the Finder to open it in Quick Look, but we doubt many people use them.

[…]

A MacBook Neo is perfectly adequate for writing short papers in Pages, creating presentations in Keynote, analyzing science lab data in Numbers, browsing the Web in Safari, keeping up with email in Mail, and chatting with friends in Messages.

[…]

However, the MacBook Neo isn’t appropriate for all students. We’d recommend that college-bound students stick with the MacBook Air, even if they don’t anticipate needing its full power. It’s hard to predict what might be necessary during college, and a student may find themselves wanting to edit video, produce music, run stats apps, and more.

David Sparks:

I’ve been teaching people how to use Macs for a long time. The number one barrier has always been cost. People want to try the Mac, but they can’t justify the price. That excuse just evaporated.

Warner Crocker:

I support a number of folks, both older and younger, who only use computers in the same basic way they use their smartphones. I’m thinking Apple’s new MacBook Neo, with a starting price of $599 will hit many of their sweet spots.

Victor Wynne:

I was overall impressed with the company managing to bring decent specs and industry-leading build quality to a $599 laptop. I expect holiday sales later this year will be chart topping.

[…]

There being no RAM upgrade beyond the stock 8GBs is disappointing, but not surprising necessarily. I think within a year or two a newer A-series chip will be added, and that will result in a RAM bump to 12GBs like we’ve seen with recent iPhone releases.

Jason Anthony Guy:

I figured $800 would be as low as Apple would be willing to go for its “low cost” laptop. Under $800 seemed improbable. Under $600 was laughably impossible.

Well, Apple went and did it. They built the seemingly impossible: a sub-$600 laptop which—despite its limitations and compromises—is a perfectly calibrated, entry-level computer that’s worthy of being called “MacBook.”

Andy Ihnatko:

To explain it in breakfast terms: Apple can’t get itself excited about making and selling a $6 takeout bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on an English muffin. But it’ll apply an almost terrifying amount of institutional energy towards the development of a $60 hotel restaurant breakfast.

This sort of attitude is usually cited as one of Apple’s strengths. It isn’t. It frequently holds Apple back. “A strip of bacon, a scrambled egg, and a slice of American cheese on a toasted English muffin” is a straightforward and unremarkable piece of design and engineering, but:

It fills a universal need. It’s immensely popular. It’s precisely what millions of people want. It’s relevant and it’s flawlessly aligned. It can be prepared to a high standard, quickly, efficiently, and in large quantities, by an worker with little training, using the facility’s existing manufacturing lines and tooling.

Eric Schwarz:

With the color choices, $499 education price, and being enough computer for many tasks, I suspect these will sell like crazy—K-12 institutions looking to move away or supplement Chromebooks now have a cheaper option, college students on a budget can still get a Mac. The $100 upgrade to double the storage and add Touch ID will probably feel worthwhile for some, but the low-end model hits an incredible price point for any Mac.

Are there compromises? Absolutely, but I think that Apple made good choices on what to cut compared with the MacBook Air. Thinking to a number of past budget Macs, they usually hit a price point, but were quite terrible in major ways.