The MacBook Neo
Apple did a thing I never thought they'd do and they made a budget MacBook and called it the Neo. (Hey, AlphaSmart fans...)
Personally? I think it's pretty neat for the target market. It's $600 USD, $700 to double the storage and give you Touch ID. $100 less if you buy them via education discount.
It's a pretty cheap way to get a MacBook that gets the job done. People have been sneering at the use of an iPhone chip in these when I think people forget just how powerful the A-series processors have become. The A18 Pro in the Neo compares very favorably to the M1 in the MacBook Air just judging on Geekbench 6 scores:
A18 Pro (iPhone 16 Pro)
3445 Single/8624 Multi
32574 Metal Score
M1 (MacBook Air, 2020)
2347 Single/8342 Multi
33148 Metal Score
This is an A18 Pro in an iPhone, mind you. In a MacBook with greater thermal headroom? It'll probably perform even better. Going by these numbers the only thing the A18 really trails on is GPU performance, and not by much. The A18 Pro is no slouch.
And this is going into an entry level MacBook meant to take the upper end of the budget notebook market. This is aimed for premium Chromebook territory. Apple is never going to be able to take on budget Chromebooks head-to-head. I think it'll do perfect there. Chromebooks are effectively built to be always-online thin terminals for cloud services, whereas the MacBook Neo is a full fledged computer.
Unfortunately, some of the online discourse seems to forget that this machine is not and never was intended for power users. Sure, it would be a cool kickaround machine for light duty tasks even if you're a power user, but a replacement for a full-fat MacBook Pro this is not, and I think some need to stop judging it through those optics.
Some of the stuff I've heard:
It doesn't have a backlit keyboard! While this is indeed a compromise, given the design choices made...I think this was probably the right choice. The Neo's keys are like the old white polycarbonate MacBooks of yesteryear: black text on a lighter-colored keys. If they wanted to stick with light-colored keys (which is honestly the better play, here, I think the key colors kinda matching the chassis color looks great), a backlight is a terrible idea.
I say this as someone who owns an Asus Zephyrus G14, which has a white chassis with white keys and an RGB keyboard backlight. I keep the backlight entirely disabled because with it on, the keyboard text blends in with the rest of the key and it becomes much harder to read. With the backlight off, the key text is dark, contrasts the rest of the key more, and becomes much, much easier to read.
Even in the dark, too! Trying to see the keys with the dim light from the screen is easier than trying to read the backlit keys with the lighting on.
Your experience may be different. But for me, I think backlights on white keys presents a huge contrast problem and makes them harder to see, not easier.
But it only has 8GB of RAM! Once again, this is not intended for the power user with ten Firefox windows with a clustershag of tabs opened in each one.
At most, I personally have 12 tabs open in a single window. At least on Windows, with three of those tabs playing video (two YouTube, one a live Twitch stream) I used at most 3.8GB of RAM. On Windows. macOS is infinitely better at memory management so it may be much better off on that side of things.
What I can tell you is up until recently I had a 13" M1 MacBook Pro. Base model. Bought it new in 2021 and used it quite a bit until late last year. The only time I ever had RAM issues was when Chrome went rogue and crashed out so hard it consumed all available RAM in the process and macOS just couldn't handle it. Past that one instance, if I ever ran out of available RAM, I never knew about it.
I even did 4K video edits on that very machine with Final Cut Pro X. It never suffered so much as a single hiccup doing so. The funny thing is I bought that machine to replace my travel machine, and it ended up being so good it put my big boy laptop (Precision 7720) out of a job.
I think the casual user will be just fine with 8GB. Again, this machine was never, ever meant to be a pro machine. It was meant to do casual stuff and do it well, and I think 8GB will do well for that. I do also think that Apple may have wanted to put better RAM options on the table (maybe an additional config) but, well, the RAM shortage going on right now changed things.
But again. I think 8GB will be just fine for the intended audience.
But you can get a Windows laptop that has better specs and is cheaper! And I'll bet you a tasty sandwich that said Windows laptop is built like ass and has keyboard deck flex such that the iPhone 6 would be jealous. Further, while I use Windows 11 daily, there is something to be said for how Microsoft is hell bent on running it into the ground. Yeah, Tahoe sucks, but at least Apple hasn't gone into full AI psychosis mode like Microslop has. Not yet, at least.
(And again: The target market just wants a solid laptop that provides a good user experience, they do not care about the specs.)
Bu-but Linux, you can install- stop right there. Remember how we said this was for casual users? Those people aren't installing Linux. Full stop. They're going to use whatever OS comes on the laptop, and if you're buying one of those PC laptops at retail, it's coming with Windows.
But it can only drive a single 4K display! ...and? Again, consider what this laptop is for. The fact that it can even drive a 4K display at 60Hz is amazing. Further, it covers a likely use case of the average user. If, say, you're on the road with your Neo and you want to watch some Netflix or something at a hotel, you can plug it into your room's TV perfectly fine, even if your room has a fancy 4K TV.
The display kinda sucks, though! Is it going to be as sharp and vibrant as a Pro? Absolutely not, but it doesn't need to be. Up until 2017, MacBook Airs had horrendous displays. The regular polycarbonate MacBooks of 2006-2010 also had lesser displays. Guess what? The target market for those machines never cared. Those that did, bought a MacBook Pro.
This is intended for the everyman, the people who don't pixel peep and who don't care about the specs, they just want a good experience and a solid entry into the Mac ecosystem.
And I think the Neo is a pretty solid effort for what it is.