The Laptop Only Apple Could Make

Apple has finally introduced the MacBook Neo, its cheapest laptop ever. The $599 Mac runs on an iPhone chip and comes with some surprising compromises — but it might still be one of Apple’s most interesting laptops in years. Here’s my take on the new Neo.

Instead of calling it just the MacBook again and again, Apple decided that it’s time for something entirely new: the MacBook Neo. This is not just reflected in the product and its name but also in the price. There has never been a portable Mac for $599. The cheapest Apple computer so far was the Mac mini. It’s even more impressive that it’s available for just $499 for students. Either way, it’s well under the MacBook Air, its closest sibling. Apple is off to a good start here.

Macbook Neo: A True Apple Laptop on the Outside

If it wasn’t for the colorful aluminium case, it might be hard for a regular person to discern a MacBook Neo from a MacBook Air. It features the same shape and even weighs the same. It is, however, a little bit taller but a little less wide and deep. In other words: it will take up less space on your desk, but won’t make a real difference in your backpack due to the weight.

Coming back to the case, it’s great to see that Apple has discovered that bright colors exist and can even be used for a Mac. That said, I would’ve loved to see a Cosmic Orange Neo. There’s always next time, one can hope.

iPhone on the Inside

The inside of the MacBook Neo is impressive too – again, for a $599 laptop. Since Apple went all in with their own chips, it has been able to create devices it would never have been able to if it had stayed in Intel’s world. No fan, long battery life, no furnace on your lap? Apple can do it all. Anyone remember the 12” MacBook? Don’t worry, we’ll get back to that one.

On the inside of the MacBook Neo is a binned A18 Pro, known from the iPhone 16 Pro. The Neo has a 5-core GPU, down one from the iPhone 16 Pro and its 6 GPU cores. The CPU is unchanged with two performance and four efficiency cores. The new laptop also only comes with 8 GB of RAM, due to the limit of that iPhone chip. It’s quite possible that future versions of this laptop might get an A19 Pro, which supports 12 GB. Again, maybe next time.

All this goes to show that this SoC from a phone is good enough to power a regular Mac laptop. There have already been comparisons between the A18 Pro in the MacBook Neo and the current Mac Pro with its aging M2 Ultra. The A18 Pro easily beats the single-core score in Geekbench here. Only the M4 overtakes the iPhone chip in this regard.

But even the multi-core score is nothing to be ashamed of. The MacBook Neo still beats an M1 SoC here. Not bad for a $600 laptop and perfectly fine for most regular buyers who just want to surf the web, use Apple Intelligence to correct their mails and documents, or do basic photo and video editing. Of course, we’ll have to wait for reviews to see where the Neo exactly lands in terms of performance.

A 12” MacBook It Isn’t

I said we’d come back to that 12” MacBook. Many people were wishing for a return of this form factor, but the Neo was never going to be that. Back in 2015, the MacBook One, as it was called by some due to its single USB-C port, was positioned between MacBook Air and Pro. At $1,299. It was a premium device with a Retina screen in an even slimmer case than the Air.

While there might be room for a new and really slim 12” MacBook thanks to Apple’s own M-series chips, this isn’t what the Neo is trying to be. It just couldn’t be slimmer, lighter, and cheaper without cannibalizing the current Air. Maybe the 4 trillion dollar company could work on that next for those, who are looking for a stunningly thin and – at the same time – powerful Mac laptop.

Who’s This For?

This brings us to who this laptop is for? Let’s go into pricing. Apple is essentially selling two models of the MacBook Neo. The base model for $599 comes with a 256 GB SSD but without Touch ID. For $100 more, you get 512 GB and that fingerprint sensor. If you need more RAM or more storage, Apple will happily sell you a MacBook Air.

Touch ID and 512 GB of storage sound like the sweet spot for the Neo. For $699, it is more expensive than many Chromebooks, but Apple can pull out the ecosystem card. Especially in the US, where the iPhone has an enormous following even among students, getting a macOS-powered machine that easily integrates with iOS will help sell the MacBook Neo. You can also see this idea by looking at Apple’s website for the new laptop. There’s a whole section telling you about how iPhone and Mac work better together.

But it’s not just for the more price conscious buyers looking for their first foray into the Mac world. I’ve already heard from a number of friends who ordered the Neo to have as a travel companion, because they prefer to leave their more expensive and more powerful Macs at home. Others ordered it to have a couch computer to surf the web or watch videos in the evening. Who wants to buy a more expensive iPad Air that does less?

Not Without Compromises

All this is not to say that the MacBook Neo doesn’t come with a long list of things that are missing compared to its more expensive siblings. A lower price means compromises after all. It’s up for debate if the intended audience will care about these missing things, however.

There’s the aforementioned limit of only 8 GB of RAM. The keyboard doesn’t have a backlight. There’s no Thunderbolt and only one of the two USB C ports supports 10 Gb/s; the other one is limited to 480 Mb/s only. That 10 Gb/s port is also the only one supporting a single external display at 4K60. The internal display only supports sRGB, not P3 Wide Color. It also lacks True Tone. The 1080p camera doesn’t have Center Stage. But there’s no notch, which some might prefer. There are only two instead of four speakers and only two instead of three microphones. AirPods connected to the MacBook Neo don’t support Spatial Audio with head tracking. There’s no fast charging and only Wi-Fi 6E instead of Wi-Fi 7. The trackpad does not support Force Touch, it physically clicks when you push it.

Again, all these, and some even more minor details, probably don’t mean anything to the potential buyers of this laptop. It is a $600 MacBook, almost half the price of the Air.

Maybe the most important differentiator is battery life compared to the more expensive 13” Air. According to Apple, surfing the web is down from 15 to 11 hours. Video streaming is cut down by two hours to 16 on the Neo. But even these numbers aren’t likely to really limit those who buy this laptop.

Conclusion

The MacBook Neo is a good way for Apple to find a lot of new buyers who’d otherwise have gotten a Chromebook or a cheap Windows PC. Although, due to the increasing cost of memory, it remains to be seen how long these devices will be cheap or even exist at all. The iPhone was the gateway drug that gets these people into the Apple ecosystem, with the Neo being the next class of device on the list. Hello Apple garden, as walled as you may be.

It’s also a better deal with a lot more abilities than an iPad. The base model tablet combined with a keyboard is $598, and you only get 128 GB of storage and an 11” screen. You have to start wondering where that leaves the tablet in general.

It seems like Mark Gurman was correct with Apple thinking the new devices will drive a lot of traffic to their stores in the next few days and weeks. There will be a lot of interest in the MacBook Neo.