That is insane pricing for a brand new apple product. They will sell so many of these!
This MacBook is going to be an absolute hit.
The biggest drawback I guess is it has a fan and well, the fact that it is an Acer. This MacBook will definitely beat the aspire series for now but who knows maybe the competition will make the OEMs improve their product.
I wanted to list my experience because there will be sales on these other notebook PC that Apple likely won't have.
Such people would always take any laptop Acer makes (or from many other brands), over anything made by Apple.
I have grown up in a country occupied by communists, and one of the most frustrating things was that the right of owning various kinds of things was denied to the majority of the population (including computers).
After eventually no longer being subjected to such oppressive laws, in recent years I find astonishing how easily people in countries like USA are willing nowadays to accept severe limitations to their rights of ownership over the things they buy, while in other places people have died in the hope to obtain such rights.
Windows 11 is full of ads, telemetry, and AI slop, much of which is impossible to disable. Very few owners want this.
Apple used to own the space. I don't think they do, anymore.
They also had a lot of school IT stuff, like charging carts.
I'd be curious to know what school HN User jimmydddd's son goes to that it uses windows only software instead of the web?
It just seems like something out of time. Like an engineering school that only teaches those building techniques that are predicated on load bearing masonry. Oh and by the way, here are the 5 drafting classes you need to take.
Stats software is cross-platform or open-source.
Art programs are cross-platform or open-source.
Office suites are cross-platform or browser-based.
Unless you're specifically trying to learn Windows development, dev tools are cross-platform and open source.
15 years ago, what you describe was probably quite common. Today, it's almost completely disappeared.
Many of the patients are older folks. They tend to press long and hard on the big buttons.
A sensible app developer traps tap and long-touch, and sends them both to the same handler. This developer only catches the tap event, and ignores long-touch. The attendant was getting grumpy, because she had to keep telling patients "tap 'gently'."
It's just me, I know, but I get salty, when I see this kind of careless UI design (it was the app's fault -not the iPad's). I know that the medical group paid big bucks for the app.
Your district is liable to be unpleasantly surprised. Like ours, they will likely find middle school-ers are worse at caring for Chromebooks. The rate of broken Chromebooks for us was staggeringly high.
I think it tends to be the more well-off schools with the iPads, the chromebooks are definitely a lot cheaper over the long run for the district.
Is this actually a problem though? For my kids you either pay for the insurance plan at the start of the year, or you're responsible for the full cost of replacement.
There are obviously exceptions made for qualified low-income households but otherwise I don't know why they school would particularly care what replacement cost is if it's passed onto the family.
It turns out "every school district in America" probably wasn't the target they were shooting for. And frankly even if they do have a cheap replacement plan, schools that are 100% low income aren't spending $500 per student on a laptop, they'll be buying the cheapest chromebooks they can find if they provide any takehome option at all.
I think the key difference is that phone operating systems are designed around extremely aggressive memory management where any background process can be killed at any time. AFAIK macOS just isn't set up for that.
Upgrade to air if you do things like coding and video editing semi-regularly and upgrade to a Pro if you do long running intensive tasks.
Also conversely what about iPadOS where you can multi task on just 8GB too.
People have survived on 8GB Mac’s for a long time. I’m not sure things are as dire as you make them out to be.
I'm definitely pretty squarely on the other end of the spectrum, but even the 32GB of RAM in my ThinkPad feels insufficient when I properly multitask with modern, bloated electron applications that eat multiple gigabytes each.
C'mon, man.
Control Center is currently using a whopping 128MB of memory on my system that's been online for 60 days.
Hopefully the presence of a laptop like this will be beneficial to software quality. They should make their developers use it one day a week.
Maybe a slightly used one as well.
But I think these are very tempting for brand new.
in the m5 announcement people were saying they still have no plans to upgrade from their daily driver m1s (im in this boat too).
Edit: TBH I'm disappointed, I was hoping for an ultra portable macbook that is less than a kg and extra thin. This is just for the edu market. I'm sure it will do well, financially.
For an active market-watching technology buyer, sure, think about it.
For 99.5% of the addressable market, click-click-ship-done. No thought required.
Not many countries allow tax return and expenses on used computers
The price point was designed to get customers who would not pay for a $1000 computer into using a Mac. Sourcing those 2020 era M1 components, screens, etc, let alone M1's, was probably becoming a problem in 2026.
The Macbook Neo is a modern way to meet that price point. The video ad is more instructional about what macOS is, and how it would work with an iphone the customer may already have.
It does very basic Apple Intelligence (they show the photo editing in the video), but this is not for running models locally (they even show the ChatGPT native app and say "runs all your favorite AI apps")
People complaining about the 8 GB limit are missing who the target market is for this machine. Its a Mac, for $599!
This is the M1 Macbook Air deal for the rest of the world as well as the US. This is huge, it's the cheapest Mac laptop of all time. Apple Silicon is paying dividends!
My daily-driver M2 16GB has been up for 54 days, running three web browsers simultaneously (all Firefox, which does help, about 30K tabs across them), plus a medium-sized Rails app and postgres, iTerm2 and tmux (about 38 panes), and the Slack app.
Current RAM usage is 6.14GB.
Things change when I run local LLMs or VMs or Xcode, of course.
Seems like an amazing entry-level offer for kids and students. But to be honest for myself I also don't really much added value of an Air or Pro anymore.
I think the memory of 8gb is the biggest limit for a device you want to use another 6-8 years, except for the most casual of users. Those who have multiple apps and tens of tabs open will enjoy an experience difference with 16gb Air/Pro. And the battery life is significantly (but not radically) better on the Air/Pro.
Really great to see.
Someone using just a browser and Word would have absolutely no problem.
Qualitatively I'm running way more things in the background than I could on Linux and Windows machines with double the RAM, with far fewer hiccups.
I haven't tried a modern Surface or other high-end Windows laptop so maybe their swapping is comparable, but given the shocked reactions of non-Mac users at 8 GB of memory, I don't think so.
This is for people who want the cheapest MacBook possible, with the edu discount it's only 499$.
You drop it being silly, cool that's only 500$.
There is no "only". It's $500.
Would you rather junior drop a $500 laptop while they're not paying attention, which is what kids do, or drop a $2,000 laptop?
The second hand market on this is also going to be great. Maybe Junior upgrades to an M5 air when he starts college, he's going to sell his Neo for 300$ which is very accessible for most.
My first laptop was 350$, brought after working for 6.75$ an hour. It was objectively a piece of junk, but hey I got to do computer and it lasted about 3 years before randomly failing for one reason or another.
I would like the bubble that is this website's "community" to pop, crash down back to earth and see them struggle living like normal people again.
Though I agree with you completely regarding the "oops I dropped it".
Neo:
Height: 0.50 inch (1.27 cm)
Width: 11.71 inches (29.75 cm)
Depth: 8.12 inches (20.64 cm)
Weight: 2.7 pounds (1.23 kg)
Height: 0.44 inch (1.13 cm)
Width: 11.97 inches (30.41 cm)
Depth: 8.46 inches (21.5 cm)
Weight: 2.7 pounds (1.23 kg)Which everyone on HN already says, but Apple seems to have its own idea what the iPad is for.
Of course the 8GB of RAM is also limiting for running any kind of VM, but this notebooks are almost exactly what I was looking for, except for the 8GB of memory.
I used an M1 Air with 8GB as my main software development machine for a year during Covid. It was fine.
The budget market consists of a lot of scrappy users that are willing to go out of their way and able to find good deals. And I think Apple has in some ways catered to that market by providing excellent mid-priced laptops like the M1 at $999 price points, which end up in new-in-box deals at places like Walmart/BestBuy at $650 price points, as well as similar refurbished and even lower second hand price points.
I bought a new MBA M2 a few months ago at a similarly low price point as this Neo. Apple has been providing fantastic value at budget for a while now through indirect sales channels on older models, though I agree this is another step-up with affordable new direct models.
MacBook Neo is A18 Pro and if you look at benchmarks, the A18 Pro single core performance is 50% faster than the M1...
https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/03/apple-introduces-colorful...
Single Core performance: the A18 Pro is faster than an M3!
Multi Core performance: The A18 Pro is essentially the same as an M1.
This balance seems right for the target market of a $599 laptop.
If/when my M1 MBP dies (a long time I'd guess) I might consider one of these as a remote/couch laptop to connect back to my main machine.
I used to only want black/silver "base" colors for resale reasons but that has fallen far on my needs for a laptop since I keep/repurpose them or cycle them through friends/family instead of reselling in most cases now.
I have an Air (M2) and I use it where I once owned a Pro. No fans sold it to me -- that's a quality feature, tired of them getting dirty over time. But I have the 15" model and essentially use it as a pro laptop.
This? This is an Air.
But the Air has become the Pro, the Pro has become the one you get for ports and super power and I don't know if many people even need it, and now 'Air' has lost its meaning (light, entry-level, portable) so they need a new name. So they name it, literally, neo: New.
Steve Jobs would weep. What happens in five years when it's not new any more?
Once upon a time, there was the white MacBook. Maybe this is trying to be the new plain MacBook?
Whatever they did with the 11" macbook air was magical. It doesn't seem like they can pull it off twice.
8/256, TouchID, Magsafe, USB3 all for $300-350 currently.
Or step up to a refurb M4 Air with 16/256 and all the bells and whistles for $759. The New M4 Air with 16/256 were $749 for 2 months over Nov/Dec everywhere.
Apple try to provide updates for a certain number of years after the model was originally released. The M1 Air was released many years ago now.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/136699644252
https://www.ebay.com/itm/136452780686
The refurb M4 Air are on Apple website.
But the only issue in school is the rick kid's parent will get them Macbook Pro or even Macbook Air, and the poor kids will get Macbook Neo... I'm sure the kid will not feel great about having Neo while her friend have Pro version.
But now they'll have more options! If they like Apple, they'll have a (likely pretty good) Apple laptop! It's great! I think a more affordable Mac is _good_ (at least better than no affordable Mac) and will make the poor kids happier.
https://www.apple.com/v/macbook-neo/a/images/overview/welcom...
Also, why not just MacBook? Wasn't that historically the base-level laptop name?
- No touchID on the base model
- 8GB of RAM
- USB 3 and the second port is USB 2
- No MagSafe.
But, you can still get a 512 gb of SSD and it adds the TouchID sensor back. For education the upgrade may actually make sense.
Edit: Not 16x9 as originally stated.
Makes no sense for a $1500 "Pro" iPad to have desktop-class RAM, storage, an M5 chip, and be stuck with a Fisher Price OS, while this one has the equivalent specs of last year's iPhone and gets the full power of macOS. Just unify the two already.
Yeah but some people buy both, and apple wants to keep it that way
I have a degree in design, I paid good money to have bad type piss me off.
Unless you are going to build software projects, a difference in single-threaded performance is going to be much more noticeable.
* i'm not buying any machine at all, or waiting for omarchy to support the new dell xps (32GB & 1TB = $1899)
* i'm buying the macbook neo at the top specs
* i'm buying the macbook air at the bottom specs
* i'm buying the macbook air with 32GB RAM & 1TB SSD (also $1899)
EDIT:
* adding an M5 Macbook (not Pro) with 24GB RAM & 1TB SSD also $1899
as someone who lives in claude code / opencode these days, the 8gb hurts but.. maybe, i dunno. they made this decision very painful. for me it could basically be a coffee shop opencode terminal that lets me access my apple iphone reminders, notes, etc.
but 8gb?
It's been a while since we've had excitement at the "cheap and cheerful" end of the spectrum.
Anyone remember the initial Eee PC... and the problems it created for MSFT during the Vista transition?
No idea how the processors compare, but that RAM isn't a good sign
There's also another HP for $359 with 8 GB RAM & 1 TB SSD. For half the price of this MacBook Neo, it should offer comparable performance with double the storage.
And will we have software compatibility issues because of A versus M issues?
It's interesting because the new studio display has 4 usb-c ports and 2 support thunderbolt, but they do indicate which ports are thunderbolt above the port.
That's one of the main reasons I had to get a MacBook Pro.
That might be the reason, but the number of people that actually use a mouse these days is tiny.
If you do serious development, you might need to think about it.
I do serious development with local applications on my 16GB M2, and my current usage about 6GB. It goes higher when I run LLMs or VMs, and of course Xcode. Aside from iOS dev, I do not use an IDE.
edit: somehow missed it has Apple Intelligence - whoops
I assume it's not Linux, because things are pretty good there too (aside from the poor behaviour when you reach OOM).
With 8GB RAM?
After Tahoe and Apple Intelligence what's going to be left for actual applications to use?
Apple released the M1 MBA for $999 and it was considered insane value, and it had 8GB of RAM as well.
I don't think it's criminal, sufficient for plenty of casual users. Of course not for everyone.
Not in a world of everyone shipping fat browsers with everything.
Edit: everything my kids use in their educational side is browser based or thick web apps. This is going to suck.
We shouldn't be here and 8Gb should be absolutely fine, but that is not the case.
As for Chromebooks, they are fucking awful for education. The abject disaster that is Google Classroom needs to just go away. NOTHING works properly, has any inkling of any reasonable design or engineering or is intuitive. I've seen so many students struggling with them.
They should all be native apps.
This would be a _drastic_ improvement over what I see most middle school kids using, at a similar-ish price point. 8 isn't great but 8 with apple's really rather decent nvm paging is a step up.
Yes, according to the Apple marketing pamphlet.
The problem is when you start throwing half the modern tech stack crap on top which is built on standalone browser engines. They are NOT memory or CPU efficient compared to native apps. Really kills a nice machine dead.
2. Would a used older hand-me-down Macbook Air/Pro not be better performance/value than this iPhone board in a cheap laptop shell? There was a guy here saying he bought a used Macbook Air M1 16GB for 250 Euros.
To an individual consumer perhaps, but schools need to buy hundreds at a time and the second-hand market isn't really great for that.
This is basically Apple taking a bite at the Chromebook market. Interested to see what reviewers have to say.
This is by design, who do you think the target market for this Macbook is?
This is very clearly targeted at Chromebooks in education, where the iPad is not doing too great:
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-apple-lost-the-k-12-educ...
At this price, a new device seems very tempting over dealing with a used hardware which is always a bit of a lottery.
Performance-wise A18 would be plenty for casual stuff. IIRC it's faster than M1.
If it's aimed for education, where does the need come from?
I use ~500 Gb on my laptop, but that is only because I have all my music on that thing. Doubt most students today have that need.
(But they have never not locked down a product with an A-series CPU - hence my concern)
I'm currently running pretty much that exact use case on my M1 MBA (Firefox with 10 tabs open, Pixelmator Pro, Apple Mail, Apple Music playing a local playlist) and I'm at 12.5 GB of RAM used. This is also on Sequoia, from what I hear Tahoe uses more resources. I'm sure that Mac OS can do fancy things with memory compression, swapping, etc when memory pressure is higher, but if you're an individual you might as well buy a refurb M2 or M3 MBA with 16 GB of RAM for the same price as this and not have to worry about it.
That's why I said this seems more targeted towards schools. They want a fleet of brand new cheap laptops with a support contract, they don't want to bother with buying individual used laptops off of ebay.
