Other than Microsoft nobody even makes decent laptops in the Windows world. I am typing this on an Lenovo Yoga, it has decent screen and keyboard, but the touchpad is horrible. Samsung makes good laptops but my keyboard gave out after just 2 years. Most other laptop makers have horrible industrial design. Dell XPS 17 was pretty good, but now they have weird keyboard.
The best laptop is now significantly cheaper than the horrible ones. Incredible achievement by Apple, and a major challenge to Windows laptop makers.
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/configure/surface-lapt...
- Chromebooks in EDU cost approximately $290 (+- $10) per unit.
- The Neo costs $499 per unit for schools.
- For the cost of 10 Neos, I can buy 17 Chromebooks. Yes, this is a numbers game. The goal is every student has a device.
- Schools using Chromebooks to log in. If you want reliable Google logins on macOS, you have an additional big spend up front, along with per-seat licensing costs.
- This doesn't even factor in MDM and app cost comparisons.
If apple products are even a tiny bit more durable I wouldn't be surprise if it's more cost effective to switch to the neo for a lot of institutions
And knowing how laptop makers treat keyboard repairs, the keyboard switches are easy to damage beyond repair and expensive to replace, making them a target for "problem" kids in school districts with a dysfunctional penal system.
The screenshot in that Reddit post more or less looks like ours. Schools generally repair these, if they have the technicians. And everyone is cannibalizing parts out of last generation models. It's like a Jawa shop.
> Apple can only compete if they provide bulk deals which bring the overall cost in line with chromebooks.
I've never seen, nor heard of Apple providing competitive prices, even in quantities of ~10,000 units. They haven't even gotten close and they've largely given up on the idea of Macs as a standard K12 school device. ~$250 iPads are still strong in low primary grades and special education, though.
I reckon even an iPhone pro is better value than an average android phone. Same with iPad vs Android tablet.
Because they last 3 possibly 4 times longer. A decent Apple laptop purchased 4 years ago is still basically a top notch laptop. Build quality is amazing. Resale value is still very high.
Replacing a low-resale value $250 Chromebook that is equally sensitive to being dropped, exposed to liquids, or having debris get into hinges and keyboards will be heavily favored over a $500 MB Neo. The Neo’s processor and storage may have better lifetime but it doesn’t mean anything if the equipment ends up bricked.
Schools in affluent areas may favor these for reasons you state. Judging on how students treat textbooks though should demonstrate how short the lifespan would turn out to be.
As an example, my kids try to do school work on one of the house Macs, but there's too many roadblocks so they just use their Chromebooks.
I used to buy my kids Chromebooks for school, but, since the pandemic, the school issues them, so I haven't bought any since.
> Apple stuff they will likely be better made
It depends on what you mean. Apple uses higher quality parts and is more sleek.
Chromebooks are more durable, take more abuse, are very repairable, and parts are cheap and plentiful. These are keys to schools. We're at a point where schools cycle out old models and either keep a bunch around, or strip parts from them, because some parts are interchangeable between generations.
- Low end consumer
- College students
- People who have a desktop computer, but want a cheap portable for on-the-go.
> The "surface" market is minuscule
Probably so, but then again, I see a lot of Surface devices out and about and they are fairly popular with non-teacher education staff. While they aren't competing with Chromebooks or Apple on volume, I'd bet they're doing well.
I think the Neo will sell extremely well.
My kid is on it, every kid hates it and every teacher hates it. You just can't argue with the pricing. I'm amazed at how bad everything seems to old fashioned paper text books.
Every time I help my son I'm amazed how bad it all is. Horrible tiny screen that looks like is from 2000 and then the software is all designed for some Googler who has 2x 30" 5k displays. The usability is atrocious.
Some schools will gladly pay more.
It should also be noted that Washington state schools are still generally heavily Microsoft and Windows, despite Google's dominance.
The only thing I don’t like is the 8GB memory. And it could have the black keyboards of the other Apples.
Another school uses iPads with keyboards for the same purpose, so I'm not sure where the school market is for these. Maybe only older kids, but a lot of edu-tech is expecting some kind of touch/pen input.
I don't really see how it's a competitor if it doesn't have a touch screen.
Also, there are plenty of good laptops from HP, Asus, Lenovo, Acer, and others, the market is not that dire.
I think the Surface is as close to great as you can get. I'm not saying that I know the whole market of laptops, you probably know better. But the Surface is pretty good, which is weird because it seems like Microsoft isn't really focusing on it or even backing away from it.
I agree with the parent, that Macbooks are way ahead in terms of usability, polish and charm for a laptop. And the performance is outright stellar.
Whereas Apple uses smooth acceleration curves
I completely agree. I actually quit like and get along with my Surface Laptop. It's a really nice computer overall, worthy. It's the closest you get to the same polish and usability that Apple has in their macbooks.
I absolutely love my M4 macbook pro, it's definitely the best laptop I've ever owned. I had an older macbook pro that I kept way past its lifetime too.
The Surface Laptop you linked to is - 16GB of RAM and 512GB of Storage (no 8GB of RAM option)
The $599 Mac Neo is 8GB of RAM and 256GB of Storage. It doesn't have a 16GB RAM option but a 512GB storage option is $699.
8GB RAM seems to me to be targeting folks who don't run a lot of local apps or multiple big apps
I used an M1 Pro for a couple years to work. 8GB of ram but routinely using 12GB including swap.
Now, I couldn’t keep slack and outlook open so there were limitations but I was able to work. People are underestimating the usefulness of 8GB of RAM.
I guess it is also worth saying that I do my work by connecting to a remote server where I do the actual development and everything else. The Mac itself being a web browser and ssh machine
I mean, look at the colors!
If you think getting more and more RAM solves every performance problem, I've got news for you: People are having beachballs on machines with 32GB and more.
They might not care but they do call us saying "Oh you are good with computers, why is my computer so slow?"
200% is ideal but scaling on Windows has gotten really good. I use 150% on a 4K monitor and it works well.
On the other hand, more money doesn't always mean better computer. I had a Dell XPS 9570 at a previous gig that had a lot of issues: coil whine, bad camera placement, terrible thermals, etc.
Possibly, but I would wait for reviews to make that call. The hardware is slower than other MacBooks; memory may be slower, too, and other hardware may be slightly worse in quality.
I hope this leads to a general decrease in price for laptops, but with the RAM crunch I don't see that happening…
I agree with you, but I’m afraid Apple doesn’t agree with us. The recent MacBooks do not use 200% scaling out of the box anymore. It is a setting that only nerds use. I have no reason to believe that out of the box the default settings on this MacBook Neo will use 200% scaling either.
And those prices don't compute in many European countries, Africa, and most likely other regions as well.
Macbook Neo is also 219ppi vs Surface Laptop at 178ppi. We’ll see about performance, but i’d expect the macbook to be on par or better.
It is also actually 800 euro if you want a proper SSD storage in 2026.
And as mentioed, get out of German economy, into the southern and eastern countries, or over the Mediterrean to see who gets a Neo outside the well in life families, or maybe bundled with a cable TV contract bound to five years.
If your MacBook has a glowing apple, you might be running Snow Leopard. You need to upgrade like now.
I don't know why the downvotes, maybe someone can chime in if there is more to surface laptop? because i am using one laptop, and much prefer to use windows on M4 macbook pro instead.
From my personal experience, Widows users in general don’t mind Windows, but, definitely, nobody I have ever met finds it more desirable than macOS.
Part of it historically was a sort of Visual Studio induced Stockholm Syndrome, where for a long time if you were doing C++ work that was the only sane way to go.
There are some companies that even filter potential employees on this basis.
Also the era when companies were trying to “kill” each other’s devices is no longer a thing.
They all get the reality it’s a multi device world and they need to work within it.
Kids are happy with iOS/Android devices
Google docs solves 90% of Office use cases
Thinkpads.
Or in general any business laptop, like HP Elitebook or Dell Presicion.
But they are not cheap at all haha
If you want performace get a desktop!
Or a MacBook, which is part OP's point. Apple is delivering quality at price points that Windows OEMs aren't (which is sort of the opposite of the phone world).
How is it not already? MBAs with 8 GB of RAM run great. Macs are incredibly good with memory management.
It's third-party apps like Chrome or Teams that eat gigabytes.
You’re already sad if your using Teams, suffering is part the experience.
Last week I met someone who likes Teams. That’s a first for me.
I don't see too many students running Teams.
Developers should have laptops with 1366x768 screens, 4GB if RAM, and dual-core Intel Atom processors. We keep giving them server grade hardware and expect them to empathise with the muggles that run their software on potatoes.
and before that, I used one of the ancient Intel Core M fanless MacBooks (probably the first one) that was fine too, I mean within expectations; you knew what you were buying.
Performance is significantly better with the laptop open vs clamshell, so it's clear that thermal throttling is the main bottleneck. I've been considering doing the thermal pad mod to eke out some extra performance, but I'll probably just save up for a Pro.
This compared to Linux, where desktop environments seem to get noticeably bogged down and stressed out when swapping (the cursor starts stuttering and the shell becomes unresponsive).
Although even KDE does OK on 4gb of RAM in 2026 as long as you only have one instance of Chromium loaded.
With builds running on big build servers.
Of course it's depend on which sites are open but many sites are JS heavy and use lots of RAM as a result.
The common complaint in this thread about the 8GB of RAM is "But chrome..." well I think I see the problem then.
That's why I try to support native whenever I can. Even if a web app might do something better, I'd rather pay for a native app from an indie dev when I can than have yet another chrome tab I have to have open all the time.
macOS at least still has somewhat of a native-app first culture and dev base, so I try to support it when I can.
We should be developing efficient software, not assuming our customers can just pay for more RAM forever.
Personally this looks really compelling for students - I did something similar, dinky 4GB ram 2 core laptop with crazy good battery life - because I don't care about specs at all, LMS's and note-taking apps in school are not heavy. I just NEED to be able to work all day long, when lecture halls lack outlets. If I needed development weight I would just use an IDE plugin to remote to a desktop in my dorm.
Are there any similar laptops around this price range with comparable battery life? My impression is the market around ARM laptops is pretty small. If so this is a standout for this use case.
Why would you want an iPad?
The Neo can run iPad apps and it's small enough that it can be used in most situations where you'd typically use a tablet (bed, couch, etc).
Homework for things like algebra and later calculus definitely is interesting to do on an iPad, as the ratio of time spent thinking:writing is high while you're learning.
But pure notetaking where the thinking:writing ratio is very low? I'd much prefer to type than write on a screen.
The OneNote app sync is quick enough that I could type lecture notes on the laptop, and then quickly switch to the same document on my iPad to sketch out a diagram. It was overkill for sure, but very useful
I just wish they'd let us run MacOS on iPads.
In theory yes, but in reality barely any developer (at least the mainstream ones) make their app available on MacOS, and nobody enjoys interacting with a touch-screen optimized app with mouse/trackpad
Reading whole books on a laptop tends to produce a ton of neck strain.
At this point, there are more people taking notes on an iPad + Apple Pencil than on physical notebooks in my lectures
Talk to Gen Z some time. They prefer tablet devices to laptops.
iPad + voice, this seems like my new lifestyle choice and it looks like it’s going to work out too.
I think human beings need to move away from sitting at the typewriter like it’s 1930. We’re more than this.
blink code to codeserver
- USB 3.0 10 Gbps with DisplayPort support
- USB 2.0 480 Mbps
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/04/macbook-neo-features-tw...
I'm going to get a Neo for my wife once it's available in my country.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a future product with 2x USB 3.0 10 Gbps with DisplayPort support on the next generation, A19 Pro or A20 Pro maybe, if the product has enough success.
$699, 8 GB RAM, 512 GB, Touch ID
Honestly pretty fantastic product and price.
This is clearly targeted towards education but I think I will happily replace by MacBook Air M1 with this :)
Touch ID is nice but I’m fairly sure if you have an Apple Watch then you don’t need Touch ID - the MacBook will unlock if you’re in proximity. I even have an 11inch MacBook Air 2011 that unlocks with the Apple Watch and that doesn’t have Touch ID either.
As someone who started on a PowerBook G4 which was like some kind of unreachable holy grail with a base price of about £2500 (2002 pounds mind) this does make me happy.
Would be nice to have a 12GB or a 16GB ram option even though typing Arts essays and talking to ChatGPT in a browser is never going to need that, and this is Apple’s new first step on their infernal pricing ladder.
Citrus looks cute. Might treat myself.
The pink “Blush” colour is going to sell like hot cakes to the Legally Blonde crowd this upcoming fall semester.
Yeah, the move to Watch auth reopened the Macbook to the good old PowerBook System 7 days as far as effortless use goes. Touch is still great for escalation, 1Password, etc, but being able to be logged in by the time the screen is open is significant.
A friend has M1 with 8GB of RAM (the old design!) and she's perfectly happy about it still. Bought it in ~~2019~~ 2020!
The M1 and A18 seems rather similar, but I might be concerned that the integrated GPU isn't as capable as the one in the M1. I guess they picked the A18 because they make them and because the NPU much better and Apple cares more about AI than I do.
I’m not sure they do. They love their AI chip, but that might be where the live ends.
I can imagine schools buying them for their students and then taking them after the semester is over and then giving to next but also reselling it at a very nice value if they might want the next line of product at a decent price.
Also this not only applies to school but normal people who buy the Macbook Neo too
And even after that, yes, children are absolutely hard on their tablets I agree but they operate and the resale value of those could be decent aside from a very few IMO. There is a way to create a culture of preservation or atleast steer things that way but yeah I agree it can be hard.
IMO that form factor was perfect for a small, low end laptop, it just needed a more power efficient chip, and a screen with smaller bezels.
Below respectively 11 inch MBA vs NEO in cm
- Height: 1.7 vs 1.27 (thickest point)
- Width: 30 vs 29.75
- Depth: 19.2 vs 20.65
- Weight: 1.08 vs 1.23
But you get 1.4 inches extra in screen size due to slimmer bezels, double storage, double pixel density, double ram, almost double battery life and a LOT more CPU, for half the price (even before adjusting for inflation, leading to a further discount).
Only thing they didn't do was keep the taper model, but I think that's a smart move even if it made for a fantastic picture at the time.
I was really hoping for the Neo to be more like the MBA11.
They basically shrank the bezels down. If they made it smaller it would impact the keyboard size, which many people probably would not like.
It's disappointing they finally got the silicon for the "thin and light at all costs" form factor but gave up on the form factor. I just want my clipboard laptop back!
I want a real M-series chip with RAM upgrades, an OLED display, etc.
That seems like a product they could also potentially revive with Apple Silicon.
And indeed it's 13 inch but the dimensions are quite similar, there is a 0.8% difference in width (with the 11 inch being wider surprisingly, due to the bezels) and a 7% difference in height (11 inch being shorter). At its thickest point the 11 inch is. 33% thicker. In terms of volume the 13 inch isn't any bigger.
Just look up the specs.
8GB is STILL perfectly fine for a starter notebook, casual browsing and light work. Noone is going to develop on this after all.
Fantastic value for money.
Honestly what I am (pleasantly) surprised by is the minijack.
I also have a (relatively) beefier mac mini at home if I needed to something more powerful.
For a couple months I was on an 8gb m1 air, it was perfectly fine, even with docker containers. As long as i didn't launch teams....
That said, we are where we are - I wouldn’t buy a machine with only 8GB for any purpose at this point.
“If you see anybody [building electron apps] in a restaurant, at a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere!” - a reasonable person, probably
How anyone could think their chat app or text editor should be able to bring a 32GB 8-core machine to a crawl is beyond me. I can have about 200 browser tabs open, but one discord chat open in the background and I’m stuttering. It’s offensive.
Here I am, running OpenBSD on a 2019 Dell with 8th gen CPU. I'm currently using a bit less than 4GB of with 6GB as caches (for IO?). It's fine for a lot of progamming work (I have built kernel on this). 8GB is a good amount of RAM if you're not using bloated software.
But I would expect you have more choice if it’s a personal computer, including paying the additional cost in memory and performance if the final choice is bloated software.
Because it doesn't have twice the ram. Otherwise it was a no brainer complementary machine, especially for users like me that work primarily on desktop and don't want to bring the much heavier macbook pro around. I've got both the m1 max and m3 max (16") and I absolutely hate carrying them around yet I have to, because even on vacations I may have to log and fix a bug in prod blocking the company so to me, weight is absolutely a primary factor for a notebook, and this would've been perfect at just twice the ram.
The last gen MacBook Air (M4, 16GB, 256GB) was down to $749 with retailer discounts last year. Currently $759 on Apple's certified refurbished site.
Given the ridiculous speed of Apple's almost-on-the-SoC flash storage, 8GB is fine for basic development workloads.
That's the tradeoff you get with soldered RAM and storage... you can't expand it, but the lack of sockets and shorter PCB trace paths gives a lot of headroom on what is essentially high-frequency analog signalling. The longer the traces the more latency, and the more sockets and vias, the more potential for interference.
I don't think that's what this machine is designed for.
On the other hand, Apple pushes Xcode & iPhone development quite heavily to students (and not say Python or JS), so it’s definitely something they care about.
Kids already are well aware of iPhone upgrades. Parents will get them this machine. They'll get going and soon enough be badgering their parents for an upgrade to a more competent machine. That is all by design while being an affordance for people who can only get in at the cheap end.
So IMO in 8GB most types of coding is possible actually.
But regarding Xcode+Iphone simulator, I am not sure if that's possible tho. It's possible to run android simulator on Linux 8 GB with waydroid while being pretty smooth. So theoretically could be possible but I am not familiar with building with Xcode/Iphone simulator.
These things will be running in 5-10 years.
Maybe if you mean running local diffusion models? Surely that's all being done with agents now, like off base Mac Minis which this competes directly with. Maybe web browsing is too much for it, but that is such an indictment…
*Edit*: just read about education discount, so yeah, $499 or lower is more competitive.
But this is going to be vastly more pleasant ergonomically than a Dell mobile workstation refurb. On paper, a Cybertruck has better specs than an old Miata, but I know which would be more fun to zip around in.
I had an M1 Air w/ 8GB when it first came out, and although I haven't used Tahoe on it, it handled anything I threw at it no problem while swapping. Tons of Chrome tabs, mail, music, terminal, VSCode all open without so much as a hiccup. macOS also has really good memory compression compared to Windows.
Trying to do the same on an 8GB Windows machine would be an effort in frustration.
I do wish it had 12GB, but AFAIK Apple didn't make an A18 Pro with 12GB. I suspect if they refresh it in a couple years with the A19 Pro, it'll have 12GB of RAM.
RAM is also an insanely high percentage of computer price right now. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/hp-says-memory-co...
The tiny screen basically encourages one app being used at a time and it seems to use swap fast enough with the ssd.
I still really like it, but I'll probably wait for a discount.
12 GB would've been amazing to have though, oh well.
Apple's product/marketing teams did an amazing job with the segmentation of this and the air.
I've done both with success: am still riding a maxed out M1 Ultra Mac Studio which hasn't lost a step, no matter what I ask it to do. For a daily driver that doesn't try to do the most extreme things (think: able to edit your 6K videos but not scrub them, and media storage space can't live on the actual machine but only on some outboard storage) the base models of these will be a breath of fresh air. This is of course assuming the liquid-glassification of the OS doesn't ramp up, rendering the system unusable to actual Mac users.
This is really nice for schools.
I really want this to work for me too, just because of those colors, but the RAM is really the only issue. Oh well, at least this forces every other budget laptop to compete harder.
Instead you differentiate. This does that. Does the Neo cater to everyone? No. But it's better to put 8GB in a machine for your mom, than making her pay for 16gb she doesn't use and also creating more RAM scarcity for the people who need more RAM.
That being said, it seems like a good living room laptop.
I really wish they let you pay for RAM upgrades though. I like the colors way more than the macbook air, even though I know the air (or non-apple laptop) is what I should really be looking at.e
Although this is competing with PoS Chromebooks, which often don't have much ram (sometimes as low as 4 GB) and have slow CPUs.
This looks like a huge step-up from most Chromebooks, which are frankly junk. Apple, however, will need to build education software and services to really get schools to commit.
I just don’t get arguing that it’s the same experience as what people actually consider fine.
Also this week: Lenovo's new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability showing that even popular modules of mainstream manufacturers can build with repairability in mind.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/115827/new-thinkpads-score-perfe...
Apple I imagine is still soldering their storage and memory to the motherboard.
And no, Apple is not soldering memory to the main board on most of their computers these days. All of the M series computers have the memory on package with the CPU, because there are latency issues with putting it any further away.
There are no socketed standards for LPDDR anyway.
The lack of upgradability is directly what provides a lot of benefits that I expect the average consumer vastly prefers: better performance with soldered memory and better battery life. It's not just to shaft you on prices (though that's definitely a big factor).
Memory would be in the SoC no?
My fear is that it's going to be made useless in no time with software updates, or that it has some important limitation (like i can't use XCode command line tools)... But i wanted to replace my old mid 2012 for a couple of years and i decided the next laptop would be either ARM or RiscV (browsing, writing text, scripting, light programming)
But hey the colors are cute.
My M1 8GB Air did great before Tahoe; even medium complexity Xcode projects ran fine on it with other apps running. Since I made the mistake of upgrading it to Tahoe, it’s too painful to work in those projects.
AI is so good these days I am using the laptop for quick changes more often, as I just push every change. I rarely need to fiddle. The general experience of using my desktop and laptop are converging.
Running a node.js server on Tahoe makes your macbook sluggish and you feel like Tahoe is fine performance wise?
May I reminded you that 10 years ago people also ran chrome and node js webservers and this was not a problem in any way with 8GB of ram.
Tahoe is a massive regression in my personal experience (16GB here). So many random bugs and menu bar pop-up slowdowns (how is the system menu bar this unresponsive?).
Spotlight has gotten so bad, I can literally count the time it takes between typing the app name and the result showing up in the dropdown. Ended up switching Spotlight to Tuna.
I've experienced this too, even after giving spotlight multiple shots months apart. For your sanity, I say just stop using spotlight. Don't let Apple steal your valuable waking hours with their crap QA.
And settings app does actually work!
It's Mac OS Vista. This is the proper name for this abomination Apple calls Tahoe.
Ditto for iOS 26. They need some Snow Leopard action, for real.
Sheesh - in iPadOS you’ve got multitasking, multitouch, full windowing support, external input and monitors, and a ridiculously accurate pen. If that’s holding back, what exactly are you looking for?
I’d still argue a device that size works better with just split screen than the new windowing, but other than the walled garden approach it does pretty much everything today that us techies have been whining about.
File management that doesn't suck, incl. better handling of external drives.
And I am quite happy with Sonama.
Honestly, we’re not the target market for this. I’m pretty sure at this price point though, it will sell like hotcakes. Once people get slightly into the ecosystem, it’s usually a big win for Apple since their stickiness ( from my experience of people around me) is undeniable once you get one product
If you’re doing “real work” then 16gb won’t be sufficient, either. My “real work” machine has 96 and I sometimes wish it had more.
If only we could get fun colors for those…
- M1: 2,347 / 8,342 / 32,377
- M2: 2,587 / 9,669 / 44,712
- A18Pro: 3,539 / 8,772 / 32,288
So Neo is really comparable with the M1, although it has quite faster in single core speed.
I'm physically hurting at the amount of processing power we wasted. Atleast Apple did the right thing here.
I looked at OfficeWorks and I found some really cheap Chromebooks at the $300-500 level.
I picked two $500 Chromebooks:
- HP 14" Chromebook N200 8/128GB with usb-c + usb-a (quad-core).
- Lenovo IdeaPad 3i 15.6" Chromebook Laptop 8/128GB Celeron.
Looks like both are 1080p displays.
First at simple tech spec glance they're below the entry level Neo except they both have larger displays, but obviously as Neo costs $250 more.
But the question then is what do you get for that $250 more. I think once you take into consideration the finish, keyboard, webcam/mic, speakers, display, and even Apple's support which can be sometimes pretty decent, you're looking at a pretty strong contender.
The problem I expect though is that people tend not to be educated consumers and don't look into the other aspects outside of specs or cost, so Apple is really selling on branding, word of mouth, and probably through their salespeople at the stores. But also, if we start seeing these one the shelves of JB-Hifi, Officeworks, etc. (for US your local Best Buy and Walmart I guess), then it could penetrate the market well.
Assuming the Neo embodies Apple's signature quality and reliability, I hope it does well for first time laptop users / early education market.
There's a compelling value case here. It might well be my first Apple purchase.
Windows update on a Celeron chip makes it 100% utilisation with full boost.
I would actually rather but an Android phone than a laptop with a Celeron chip for the same price.
As an aside, I have been a firm ChromeOS user since 2013; since my computing life at work is pretty complicated, so I wanted to keep it really simple at home. For the most part, this setup worked just fine.
However, lately... I've found the Pixel line to be very underwhelming and expensive - add to that the ever increasing cost of Chromebooks... What can I say? Moving over to the Great Walled Garden of Apple makes sense. I'll probably buy one of these.
They've totally lost the plot with iPads IMO. It's a fantastic device to consume media, gaming, and some niche areas like drawing... but other than that?
But on a more serious note yes, I agree with you. Tablets - absolutely great for the use cases you mentioned, for everything else I want a proper keyboard, etc.
macOS is awful to manage on an enterprise and education level. This will always be Apple’s achilles heel in truly breaking into this market. Admins will push back.
Google has Security down to a science. ChromeOS has little to no malware. Google is constantly reporting malware and exploits to Apple so they can patch active vulns.
iPads a Macs stand up to much more abuse by students.
MacOS has very little malware even though users have more access to do things.
All google data is used to train AI and advertise. I’d like to not have that near my kids. Would rather have Apple’s “make money off hardware” from a data privacy standpoint.
The argument with Chromebooks is you can usually buy 4 of them at the cost of a single Mac.
My point is device management and security. This is what enterprise and education cares about and scopes around.
macOS is not nearly as robust or secure to manage as ChromeOS, and Windows flys above both with almost every single feature being manageable at a domain level.
Also your AI point is moot. Enterprise and Education have much different terms than consumers.
You think Apple is letting Google, Slack, and Zoom use their internal company data for training?
With Creative Studio Apple could even displace GSuite at some point.
Reminds me of the Technicolor iPod mini of my college days. The 2000s are back, baby
I personally liked iOS and macOS being separate things because making a desktop OS also work on a touchscreen has wider implications than it sounds. That's why these days everything in Windows is blown up like Fisher Price software and way bigger than necessary for a mouse cursor. Seems like that's the direction Apple is headed in anyway with Tahoe.
I suppose it's enough if all you're doing is light office work, but you can get a laptop half the price to do that.
The USB 2.0 USB-C port seems like something that's going to confuse a lot of people. One of Apple's perks in terms of connectivity has been that you can basically assume all USB-C ports do everything. It also seems like they didn't include an SD card reader, like they used to. That's going to make the 256GiB rather cramped, I feel.
- 2 fun colors + 2 regular
- The Magic Keyboard looks like it has a decent amount of travel and should hold up well
- Headphone port, recognizing that wired headphones are way more durable in a classroom setting
- Decent price and display, though I wonder about performance w/ Tahoe
I don't currently have a modern macOS machine, so a basic machine like this could be useful to have around even though I daily drive Linux now. Maybe it'll get Asahi support!
Or perhaps this will be the perfect machine for the Asahi team to focus on…lots of demand at this price point, and a lean Linux install would make this machine fly.
I am curious how long Apple is going to continue to support XQuartz though. There seems to be no equivalent wayland project.
When forced to use macOS, a Linux VM provides a very convenient experience.
Plus this is exactly the same price as the base iPhone 17e.
It also probably doesn't have a ~60% margin.
On the other hand, the iPhone is water proof, made of sturdier materials to survive falls, has cellular, and the high end ones have more memory
- Older chip (and with fewer thermal constraints)
- Only one camera (and much cheaper)
- Less RAM than 17pro and Air
- No cell modem, FaceID, ProMotion, MagSafe, etc.
I think they should have branded the 17e the iPhone Neo.
But now more colorful and official.
I’m pretty interested in benchmarks. We haven’t had a phone chip and a desktop chip running the same OS so we could compare them better with benchmarks since the original Apple Silicon dev kits.
Also it’s $499 to start for students, which is impressive.
But the base model has no Touch ID which seems terrible to me. Having that is such a huge improvement over having to type passwords constantly.
But that's the point. If you're super price conscious and a student, it's only $499! Typing a password is not a big deal compared to $100 for some people.
But if you want convenience, it's $599. Which helps subsidize the $499 price.
Product differentiation like this is what enables the cheaper price to begin with.
Apple is doing everything they can to ensure it doesn't appear as a premium product.
A decade ago, they had the 12" MacBook (not Air, just "MacBook") it it felt super premium because it was lighter and smaller than any Air/Pro ... and used by executives (because it targeted that use case).
By having this product:
- called "Neo"
- thicker
- as heavy
- limiting RAM
And marketing this towards kids and lower grades, they are avoiding any mistaking this product as premium.
Apple is second to none in supporting legacy products.
Big companies drift away from the ground truth of their employees and customers over time. Without someone highly focused coordinating things, it's easier to create a "new" product and call it a day than it is to innovate.
And when you're big it takes years, decades even, for the cracks to eventually show, but show they will.
Because ask yourself, if you were telling your friend to buy a Macbook, which one would you tell them to buy?
–––
edit: just to clarify, currently Apple's lineup includes the "What's a computer?" iPad – $349+, iPad Mini - $500+, iPad Pro – $999+ and iPad Air – $599+.
These come with a pencil and a magic keyboard. Also some of them are more powerful than the A18 Macbook Neo.
Then there's the Macbook Neo - $600+, 13" Macbook Air - $1,099+, 15" Macbook Air – $1,299+, 14" Macbook Pro – $1,699+, 16" Macbook Pro - $2,699+.
Who are all of these things for? Why does the iPad Air exist with the magic keyboard alongside the Macbook Neo? That's the same keyboard attached to a less powerful processor and a touchless display for a spitting-distance price.
Today it's the MacBook Neo unless you have a higher budget and want a nicer screen and more power. Then it's the MacBook Air, unless you do serious photography, video, audio, or development work then it's a MacBook Pro.
It's still a pretty simple, linear progression up the line.
Steve Jobs presided over an era where they were selling:
- A white plastic 13" MacBook
- An aluminum 13" MacBook
- 13", 15", and 17" Macbook Pro
- A high end 13" MacBook Air that thermally throttled and was more expensive than most of their other laptops
Replacing my iPhone was a nothing burger of choice, on paper the iPhone 15 pro was the best feature set for value vs buying a new iPhone 17, but Apple know that so don't sell the older models directly when the new models come out.
There's really limited impactful innovation when you get into the details.
Today Apple is the most profitable company in the world, and every product line is ruthlessly optimized/scrutinized to maximize their revenue/supply chain use/suss out consumer needs for the next cycle.
There isn’t a world where Apple has a $4T market cap and where their product offering fits in a neat 2x2.
Well first I would ask them what they are planning to use the Macbook for.
Then I would make the recommendation. There is Macbook Neo for basic stuff. Macbook Air for regular stuff and Macbook Pro for gangsta stuff.
It seems there is still good differentiation between the Macbook lines.
Now the 8gb can be concern to some but not to many IMO. And I am also feeling just a bit optimistic that Apple will realize that the largest criticism of this product can be that it doesn't have 16GB otherwise even more people can buy so in the future, I expect 16 GB to be possible too (When Ram bubble finally bursts)
Later when Apple was on sound financial footing, Jobs expanded the product line. That was the right thing to do at that time.
With the Neo, Apple now offers 3 lines of laptops: Pro, Air, Neo. This is not substantially different from 2010 when Apple under Jobs offered 3 lines of laptops: MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air.
I think these are all different markets - $1k seems like a small amount for the MBA but it's too much for quite a few people.
Depending on their budget and needs, a Neo, Air, or Pro.
For the rest of us, happy with gently used 2nd hand devices, the original M1 MacBook Air and the M1 Pro/Max MacBook Pro are a *much* better deal for the same price, pretty much across the board, especially the Pro: bigger, brighter, 120Hz screen, beefy specs, ports.
That citrus colour, tho...
That assumes Apple dev teams use one in their test suites.
One downside to the 11" Air when it was still sold is so much software that would be slightly broken on the vertically-constrained display.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad_(3rd_generation)
Or will they keep doing this with "neu", "nouveau", "nuevo" etc?
It's a subtle distinction, but I think the general connotation is more like "hyper-modern" or "reinvention/reinterpretation."
People won't see "MacBook Neo" and think "oh there's just a new MacBook."
Probably when they update it, if they decide to keep the product line going.
I honestly don't understand people who complain about the lack of M5 Pro specs and features on a £599 Macbook. "Oh no, it's 1/3rd of the price of a Pro but I want the Pro specs on it." People seriously need to do think twice before pressing the submit button. And nobody in the right mind would buy a used Macbook for the same price, just because it's more powerful.
I have an 8G M2 at work and it's more than enough and I have two browsers running with 20+ tabs, Teams, Outlook, Figma, VScode... If you are a power user buy a Macbook Pro, you can't reasonable expect Pro performance out of a device that costs a third.
This Neo is going to sell like crazy because it's an amazing product for the price. That's how much Chromebooks cost but you actually get a full desktop OS rather than a web browser. And for students to buy a new Macbook for £499 come on, some of these comments are just ridiculous.
Anything for the price of the Neo that I could find was an ugly looking 15" piece of plastic from Asus or Lenovo (no offense, I love my Thinkpads).
However I do have to say again that I use an 8G M2 at work without any issues and I've had an M1 as a temp replacement for work recently again without any issues and they say A18 is equivalent to M1 in performance so I really don't see why this new Neo wouldn't be enough for a home/personal laptop. All my consumption is SaaS-based, I really don't need better spec. What I need is a lower price and familiarity that I appreciate and I think Apple nailed it here by offering both in a product.
Overall, I might pick one of these up at some point.
Today, every unemployed teen and stay at home mom has a $40/mo iphone. It lost its status.
These are some final nails in the coffin. As an Apple stock holder, I might exit my position. They have no growth left, they are just another Blue Chip now..
The fact it stood for quality doesn't mean you can't keep offering quality at lower budget and lower spec levels, while still pushing high-budget and high-spec levels. In fact it seems very succesful in doing so and keeps capturing more of the market.
You could say there is limited growth in the hardware (total pie), and that there is are increasingly smaller shares of the market share pie left to conquer. And that's mostly true.
But Apple has built out its Services business, from $12b in 2012 to $110b last year. That $110b revenue is more than Tesla's revenue, and that has a market cap of $1.2 trillion. And unlike hardware, services (i.e. software) are extremely high-margin. It's estimated that $110b revenue constitutes something like $80b in gross margin, whereas Tesla's $100b revenue lead to <$17b in gross margin, and just 3.8b in net profit.
A push into budget offerings increases users and scales service revenue, a high-margin and fast growing business. Apple has been a tremendous success. I won't make predictions of the future but its push for affordable devices was a strategic win, to the contrary of your point.
I think their marketing pretends they are cutting edge, but I always found them behind. iOS was years behind Android in features. Macbooks don't even have Nvidia in them.
Apple is never 1st place in tech quality. At best they are 2nd place.
The US per capita GDP is 90k now. This means its 5% per year. Not really a luxury when people spend all day on their phones. Heck, you'd call walmart groceries a luxury because they are more expensive. Both are needed in 2026.
Forget memory - this is like the more major loss in terms feature set.
And in that vein of making cheap shit for the mass market, their software quality has suffered incredibly. They no longer serve the consumer tier they used to, but their branding halo from those days is so effective that it helps them sell to this new, lower tier consumer.
The software has taken a nose dive, but I don't think it's related. If anything, you'd think that selling lower spec machines would drive software improvements.
Software has gotten shittier tho, but I think it is an overall trend and not just Apple.
I always buy the new color option from Apple when getting a phone, it helps me keep my device generations apart. But Macs have been sadly boring in recent years. "Starlight" is barely different from silver... I loved the rose gold they had for the M1 Air, that was a great computer.
Too bad their software is total garbage now, I could never resign myself to that.
A return to 8GB laptops would be a good thing overall, so if this becomes a "target" for electron based apps, it would be a total game changer. The iPhone 17 has 8GB RAM, and honestly for the workloads we're doing it should be enough. I think there was a big jump when we jumped to 1080 screens on laptops about a decade ago (seriously...) but most of the resource usgae growth there has been needless since.
although it IS hillarious to read a group of enthusiasts in 2026 screaming "8GB IS FINE!" -- meanwhile people want more ram on their RPis..
I think something like that is in the works, but you could leverage Claude or ChatGPT or a similar service, right?
edit: Denmark VAT is actually 25% not 20% so the USD price plus Denmark VAT is ~$750
With state sales tax of 8% where I live, the base would cost me $648.
So not a huge difference.
Denmark has a VAT of 25%, so the DKK 5499 price without VAT is DKK 4399, which amounts to ~$684. Still more but not substantially.
Other than that, perhaps some small form factor related device support differences.
Never been an OS (iOS, iPad, watchOS vs. Mac) distinction from the hardware standpoint.
The only thing I read from M-series in iPads and A-series in the Neo, is the A chip is better balanced in price and power draw for a low cost laptop with a smaller battery.
The M-chip with that balance is the A-chip.
Some time ago (...over ten years ago) they made some movements towards unifying the desktop and tablet interfaces with LaunchPad, which looked like it was designed for a touch screen, but they never followed through. Not even touch screens on their laptops, which honestly still surprises me.
Also, the chip used has no impact on the viability of merging macOS and iOS anyway.
The increased compatibility is great and kind of obvious given the switch to ARM, but if it went both ways then the M4 chip in iPads would be a lot less bored.
M1 evolved from the A cpu line.
Tahoe made all the touch targets on macOS bigger, we may get a touch macbook pro this year.
That's one of the main reasons I had to get a MacBook Pro.
edit: NVM lol, the Neo only has one fully featured USB port
Same weight. You lose a bit on the speakers, microphone, and webcam. Not sure how noticeable this will be.
One of the worst supported features Apple has shipped. Idea was good though.
It feels like one of the only Apple products where the name is completely divorced from its intended usage (or defining feature)
- Phone
- Watch
- Pro
- Studio
- Mini
- Vision
- Air
- Neo???
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/16858435?baseli...
you’re essentially getting an m1 macbook air with a worse keyboard
a quality used m1 air on ebay is about $400 w 256gb storage https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=m1+macbook+air&_trksid=...
I'll be interested to see a true comparison with the M5 Macbook Air. I don't think we have any direct comparisons between an M chip and the A18 Pro. The A18 Pro is used in the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, not even the 17. I found this spec comparison [2]. Not sure if it's accurate.
It seems like this is an iPHone 16 Pro in laptop form because the iPhone also has 8GB of RAM.
[1]: https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/specs/
[2]: https://erickimphotography.com/apple-m5-vs-a18-pro-comprehen...
> Apple also pointed out that the MacBook Neo is Apple's lowest-carbon Mac. It features 60% recycled materials, more than any other Apple product. This includes 90% recycled aluminum and 100% recycled cobalt in the battery.
This is _incredibly_ cool.
I wish they went for 12" but I am not complaining. It is affordable and pretty.
As always, you can get a more performant laptop for the price. Price sensitive consumers have shown time and time again they will put up with all the little annoyances of a cheap laptop if it means more performance. I'm not saying those details Apple puts into their products aren't nice, but yeah this is barking up the wrong tree. For those people, any laptop purchase is going to be their one and only device that isn't their phone.
Those who absolutely need MacOS and have this budget will just get a Mac Mini.
I think there are many users who will be interested in an inexpensive laptop that neatly integrates with their iPhone. Same as there were many users who were interested in Airpods and a Watch.
I do think that 8 gb is fine for most cases, even development. I used to use a PC with 8 GB ram and it worked perfectly fine and honestly depending on the workflow if you need more, a VPS can always be your good friend (I really love using zed on a VPS with cloudflare tunnels or perhaps tailscale)
Looks pretty good to me. There have been two wins in just these couple of days. This Macbook Neo and The grapheneos+Motorola phone both seem to make decent options available for the market.
I might have to go recommend this to a friend of mine who had once asked me what laptop they should pick when they get into college.
> [5] MacBook Neo features two USB-C ports — USB 3 (left) and USB 2 (right). External display connectivity supported on left USB 3 port only.
So, 1 display. Note that there’s probably already $100 of dongles on top of a Mac price, but at least this one would be an excellent fit for my father.
8GB memory is pathetic. But that doesn't matter for most users yet.
In fact, it may not matter at all. If the hardware limitations push us to have several machines, a well-built entry laptop becomes a terminal (you won't run things in it, you'll connect to things). For that, 8GB might be enough.
I swear to god they can transmit virtual ecstasy through their website, it's so incredibly impressive you want to buy one even if you don't need it. Everything is so perfectly presented, it has speakers! it has USB-C! WOW! No I am not being sarcastic, I am just expressing how joyful it feels watching marketing to its fullest. Just watch the videos.
Apple should be studied for centuries to come not for what they sold but for how they sold it. Pure genius. Beautiful up to every detail.