The MacBook Neo

IMO the consumer PC industry is near an existential crisis. The big players are just awful at marketing; too many SKUs and models - it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ. The exact same specs will be in two different chassis designs.

Additionally, you can’t count on the basic being correct. It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awful, keyboard doesn’t suck, and display isn’t a 300nits POS unusable even in a bright room.

You want the same performance as a MacBook Air without one of these fatal flaws? You’ll hand to spend $1500+ anyway so you save nothing. Then the OS is full of ads and pre-installed garbage “gaming-optimization-tool” or driver tools taking up 99% of a single core while being riddled with security holes.

Calling this a "content consumption" device seems wrong to me. Sure, it's not a professional laptop. You're going to have a bad time trying to run more than one Adobe creative suite app at once, or running the iOS emulator, but the chip in it is very powerful, and you can do real work on this laptop. I was even thinking of snagging one to use as a kind of thin client for dev accessing my big linux box via tailscale. It might be worthwhile to ensure that a web app you're developing will work on a less powerful machine without killing the browser, for example.

PC Magazine came to the same conclusion:

> Apple pulled off what I thought wasn't possible. The MacBook Neo is poised to set the budget-laptop world on fire as a $599 system that's better-built and sharper than anything else at or below its price.

https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/apple-macbook-neo

Similar to the Verge:

> even the cheapest MacBook Neo is good enough to be the go-to Apple laptop for a lot of people. Actually, not just the go-to Apple laptop; the Neo’s hardware simultaneously embarrasses an entire class of affordable (and even far pricier) Windows laptops, as well as just about any Chromebook. And the thing runs on an iPhone chip.

https://www.theverge.com/tech/891741/apple-macbook-neo-a18-p...

> The Neo doesn’t have a hardware indicator light for the camera. The indication for “camera in use” is only in the menu bar. There’s a privacy/security implication for this omission. According to Apple, the hardware indicator light for camera-in-use on MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads cannot be circumvented by software. If the camera is on, that light comes on, and no software can disable it. Because the Neo’s only camera-in-use indicator is in the menu bar, that seems obviously possible to circumvent via software.

iPhone and iPad does not have a hardware indicator light

I feel corny being so positive about a megacompany, but I bought my first Macbook air half a year ago after a life of PC's, and it has been genuinly surprising to use something made by a huge company that is constantly better than I expected.

> You cannot buy an x86 PC laptop in the $600–700 price range that competes with the MacBook Neo on any metric — performance, display quality, audio quality, or build quality. And certainly not software quality.

I would argue the opposite: while Apple hardware is generally excellent, it is the software that leaves to be desired. Apple has also been consistently pushing the industry in a dangerous direction (walled gardens with app stores, excessive power over developers and users). MacOS is also very behind Linux these days in terms of app compatibility (especially games).

I won't be buying a Neo before a compatible Linux distro is confirmed. If the stock OS can't be replaced for one reason or another, it's dead on arrival as far as I am concerned.

As someone who buys Asus motherboards when he builds PC's, it hasn't been a shock for me as an owner of a Macbook for the last 18 years.

I've been of the firm opinion for a very long time that Macbook's are the best productivity laptops and now even more so once Apple moved from Intel to their own M chips. Their entry level Macbook before the Neo you could buy and it would be a laptop that would see you for many many years.

Windows reputation is declining, so the operating system might be the actual crisis. Linux with modern desktops (e.g. Gnome 3) might fill the gap, but the market is far from broad adoption. Promoting and improving Linux desktop and apps would be a long endeavour, but betting only on Windows which degrades to a cloud and AI advertising surface might be fatal.

You greatly underestimate the utility used, serviceable laptops have provided to broke students.

My first laptop was a decommissioned pos office dell ultrabook. By every metrics it would've been the worst option to choose, but since it had replaceable memory I was able to push it to 16 gigs and get through my computer science degree and many side projects. Computational speed was adequate for me, I ran Linux on it. It had an Intel U series 6th gen (12th gen was latest then) i5, an NVMe ssd and was always responsive.

If I were a student in this day, and all I could find were these laptops this is what I would think. 1 they're out of budget for most students in developing countries. 2 I will most likely out grow 8 GB ram faster than my laptops CPU performance. 3 I am limited to learning with what can run on apple silicon(most Linux distros excluding asahi). Finally I end up paying basically 50-60% of the cost of a decent machine and replaced it with a disposable one.

Maybe this machine is perfect for a specific set of users, students with higher income households or degrees which need better a better quality display.

I still advise every computing student I meet to get a under $200 old used laptop that has expandable memory and atleast an NVMe ssd. That way they can maximise their time learning and experimenting. Anything that needs more complex hardware can always be offloaded into your institutes machines. Once you're settled a bit and have a decent amount of cash to burn go ahead and buy whatever maxed out MacBook your heart desires.

But you’re stuck with MacOS.

I can’t stand it and every update makes it worse.

Been running popos abs everything I can and it’s petty nice.

Installed it on a new LG Gram and everything works including fingerprint reader. Is my favorite laptop and my old Mac sits gathering dust,

Just imagine what Apple would do to the market if they also offered a full Linux support, but not Windows... They'd probably own some 70% of Linux market outright and also double its overall size overnight.

My daughter just ordered one of these. She’s a student (not stem) and her ancient 8Gb MacBook Air with an intel processor was still serving well but the battery has become unuseable and her keyboard is becoming flaky.

The Neo is such a perfect replacement and easier than fixing the Air.

> Given Apple's historically very premium pricing, launching such an affordable product is certainly a shock to the entire market

No? Apple has been delivering way cheaper laptops ever since M1, this one is just even cheaper. I thought PC execs were asleep at the wheel but not this bad.

Maybe other manufacturers will actually stop making crappy hardware that feels like its taped together?

I was watching this video and it’s pretty impressive what can be done on this spec machine.

https://youtu.be/d-VOt9559Gk?si=tYlDstnaxtQWoJ88

He opens 50+ apps at once while working in Final Cut and Lightroom. Obviously anyone doing those full time would benefit from more resources but I think this is going to be enough for a big chunk of the population, and will be more appealing than the windows alternatives.

"It's a real Mac" - I get that!

I remember a whole slew of inexpensive netbooks and the like that were technically Windows XP or Windows 7 machines, but came with a dumbed-down "starter" OS, not enough RAM, only a 32-bit CPU in an era were 64 bits were already becoming standard - the sum of which amounted to a barely usable imitation of a real Windows machine and as a result most of these became garage sale fodder pretty quickly.

600 is a bargain for a MacBook, but I can't see the public windows users switching en masse. Most people who buy cheap windows laptops do so because 1) they need to replace a broken laptop and want to pay the lowest amount possible 2) they don't want to learn some new thing

600 might seem budget, but it's out of budget for most people. And my guess is PC manufacturers will retaliate against this by cutting prices just a little to drop under that 600 price point for mid range ryzens, with more ram and space.

Any family members I've helped shop for computers only care about how much space it has, how cheap it is, and will it struggle to run things like the last one. As it sits the MacBook is more money for less gigabytes

> "I’d consider paying double the price of the Neo for a MacBook with similar specs (but more RAM and better I/O) that weighed 2.0 pounds or less. I’d buy such a MacBook not to replace my 14-inch MacBook Pro, but to replace my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro as my “carry around the house” secondary computer."

> "As it stands, I might buy a Neo for that same purpose, 2.7-pound weight be damned."

The wonders of the closed ecosystem / walled-garden, where you don't have to face competition on equal terms, because you already locked-in your customers...

What's the problem? By last years lenovo x-series, install linux, takes 10 minutes, done and everything works like a charm.

Incomprehensible how much time and effort people spend on something which takes no more than a few minutes.

This is imho great MB for traveling, you want to edit some pictures, read/write and edit some code without being afraid of you 3K MB Pro getting damaged or stolen? Great!

I want to do more travel and photography, with occasional light work on my own project. And this feels like better option than iPad, because i can use Xcode and android Studio. And for +- the same price.

Microsoft will respond to this by furiously adding more garbage to Windows.

The missing camera light seems pretty serious. Any sandbox escape can turn on the camera and record without you noticing. Or your school or employer could. If you're in full screen mode the menu bar is hidden too. It's a very strange move for privacy centered Apple.

> The Neo charges faster if you plug it into a more powerful power adapter, in either USB-C port.

The fact that the "usb 2" port works for (fast) charging is a big win. That means you can charge and use the fast usb port at the same time.

not having a led indicator for camera, and not having an ambient light sensor, this means they are using the camera as a light sensor

All these PC can't compete reviews are based on US prices, outside it is ridiculous expensive for a 8 GB laptop.

“I’ll just say it: I think I’m done with iPads. Why bother when Apple is now making a crackerjack Mac laptop that starts at just $600?”

I’m curious to see this machine in person, but I’d bet the an iPad is still the best large device in Apple’s ecosystem for anything that benefits from viewing in portrait mode.

The legacy PC makers are lucky that Ubuntu doesn’t work on this, or else they’d face even more competition. By now, everyone hates Windows. And I’d wager some people hate it enough to be willing to switch to whatever works and is halfway ad-free.

Looks like the PC laptop market is going to have to stop being bad on purpose. I hope this causes significant pain for vendors like Dell, Microsoft and Asus.

I don't see any way they can get out of this situation without seriously improving the UX of their products. Windows itself is likely implicated here too.

> A decade ago, Apple began switching from trackpads with mechanical clicking mechanisms to Magic Trackpads, where clicks are simulated via haptic feedback (in Apple’s parlance, the Taptic Engine).... The Neo’s trackpad is mechanical. It actually clicks, even when the machine is powered off.

I wonder if the real clicks on mechanical trackpad will actually feel better than the simulated clicks on the Magic Trackpad.

This won’t happen, but I would love an Apple implementation of the Samsung Dex - phone soc that can dock into a laptop or desktop enclosure.

I cannot believe I am saying this, but I am honestly thinking about getting one. So my iPad Pro is nice and I love my Mac Studio, but my MacBook Pro is out of support and installing Fedora Linux on it will be a hassle due to the touchbar from what I can tell. So I am actually in a marked for a laptop to just write on when I am on the go... The neo fits that spec perfectly....

I do not really understand why the Walmart $599 M1 MBA comparison is so lost in the MSM. The Neo is the same price (without edu discount). The Neo CPU benchmarks slightly better until the 4W performance limit factors in more real-world cases (then the M1 wins handily). So much is given up with the Neo: Worse screen, Worse keyboard, No TouchId, Worse Trackpad, etc. Yet Apple is praised for the Neo. No longer matters of course as it appears that the Walmart M1 is history, and we now have the Neo -- worse in almost every way vs. M1 MBA. The only real beneficiary is undoubtedly Apple's margin. I guess the MSM and Apple fanbois hatred of Walmart and the "losers who shop there" influences this, but even so. Neo only benefits Apple vs. Walmarts M1 MBA deal.

Edit / Link: https://www.macworld.com/article/2986234/walmart-m1-macbook-...

> “Once or twice a day I need to manually bump the display brightness up or down.”

This is a daily, albeit minor, annoyance on my MacBook Air too.

I've used an MacAir with 8GB ram starting at 700€ for years, writing and testing compilers. This was until the macOS and butterfly keyboard desasters, which made me go back to 450€ ThinkPad Ryzen laptops with Fedora, upgraded to 64GB RAM.

My wife is using a fancy new air for 2500€, which is way better. But I still think of the good old MacAir times, they'll try to bring up again.

I know this is being marketed for students and such but honestly even if you are a developer who works primarily with web dev stuff you will be able to do all of it on this device. Or if you are a product manager in a tech company, this is perfect device.

IMO there is a small subset of Mac users today(gamers, local LLM users, editors, mobile devs) for which this won't be the best option

The problem is, I just want to plug in a monitor, mouse and keyboard into my phone.

But it cannot be done because it only allows AppStore content with a 30% cut for Apple.

Technically it's not challenging as you can see with this new MacBook.

If they made a thin client with these processors, in a mac-mini (mac-tiny?) format. I would be buying a couple on every paycheck.

But that's very wishful thinking.

> The biggest shortcoming of the decade-ago MacBook “One”, aside from the baffling decision to include just one USB-C port that was also its only means of charging, was the shitty performance of Intel’s Core M chips.

MMMMMMM.....I don't know. I think the biggest shortcomings of that laptop were super common keyboard (dustgate), SSD, USB-C port, display, battery, and CPU (popcorning) failure.

I still can't get over how this thing is priced the same as the 2013 Macbook Air... when looking at JPY prices.

I wonder how much of the Neo pricing wow factor is Apple taking advantage of the strong dollar vs much else that's changed on the ground (obv the processor pick is a "real thing")

Not Asus, but I have a crappy Lenovo plastic laptop that was around that price range when new, and it's horrible. The hinges have so much resistance that the garbage display panel flexes when you try to open the lid. The junk trackpad is the size of a credit card, and requires some amount of force to actually pick up the fact that your finger is moving on it. The SDCard reader has failed twice (I'm on my third). It's just a piece of garbage and is even then it's about middle of the road when it comes to PC laptop quality. And outside of specific defects, (and this is what's endemic throughout the PC laptop ecosystem) the build quality just subjectively feels like it's barely held together with tape and glue. Like what you'd expect from a toy from an old cracker jack box. These OEMs have been shipping absolute trash for years, and it's about time the industry got a shock.

good review, the trackpad point is interesting - i didnt realise apple switched to haptic feedback that long ago. the no ambient light sensor thing seems like a weird cut to make honestly, that feature is so seamless you forget its there until its gone. also curious how the battery holds up after a year or two of use, thats always where budget laptops tend to show their age. but for $600 its hard to argue with, especially if youre just browsing and writing stuff.

Closer and closer to the desktop and mobile devices running the same OS...

One other thing, how repairable is this thing going to be? I'm guessing it's going to end up with an extremely low repairability score, considering they seem to solder both RAM and storage these days. Looking at the MacBook Pro (repairability score 4/10) it seems crazy difficult even to swap the battery: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+14-Inch+Late+2023+(...

> because the key caps are brand new, it feels even better than the keyboard on my own now-four-years-old MacBook Pro, the most-used key caps on which are now a little slick

Honestly, I have a hard time typing on a new Apple laptop; it doesn't feel right until the keycaps are a bit worn.

What's shocking is that this is a shock to the PC Industry.

I'm curious but could not find any information if virtualization is possible on the Neo. Not that 8GB is that promising to start with, but running a slimmed down VM has its uses.

I wonder if this will get RISC-V adoption on the roadmap of competitors. We had a thread in the last 24 hours over how slow as molasses it is, but honestly x86 isn’t the way to go. I like that the AMD x64 literature tries to push down on the legacy cruft but some of it is evident in the ISA which is harder to ignore, like default behaviours of registers and other things that are left over for backwards compat and as such everything around it suffers in a thousand broken windows sort of way.

nb I haven’t delved too deep into RISCV but I am under a general impression it did away with all this. My concern is the layers that are added will turn it into a CISCV over time.

> When I wrote last week that the MacBook Neo is the first product from Apple with an A-series chip sporting more than one USB port — addressing complaints that the Neo’s second USB-C port only supports USB 2.0 speeds — a few readers pointed to the Apple Silicon developer transition kits.

A12Z is really M0 (or you could say M1 is A14X or A14Z depending on GPU bin), so I would not characterize it as "(iPhone) A-series."

Why couldn't they just've called it Macbook, instead of Macbook Neo?

I grabbed a Neo w/ the edu discount for my niece. Very pleased with it on day 1.

So far I think the only thing I can add to the conversation about it is the only real disappointment is that the only upgrade option is to go to 512G w/ touch ID for $100. That's not to say the 8 GB option was bad by any means, it actually works even better than I was expecting, but it still leaves a big gap on the way up to the base model Air at $1100 and the splash could have been twice as large.

> my personal workstation remains a 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro

I was surprised that a guy who shills Apple for a living still uses a 5 year old MacBook. It goes to show how the longevity of laptops has increased over time. I'm also on a M1 Macbook and find it hard to justify an upgrade.

This was always going to be the case. Apple has perfected the art of finding slots for different use cases and consumer buckets just as well as they have perfected the hardware and software. This is a no brained for most home use and particularly education. Only issue for home use is photos and able to process an entire photo database at once and doing ML operations on them. Of course apple’s photos is the one black mark in their software stack, or may be something I don’t like.

My only problem with the Neo is that the base config has a good price, but if I want 512GB storage it reaches into the usable PC category. Usable for me: 16GB/512GB, Arc/RDNA 3.5 GPU Different tradeoffs obiously: light, good screen & touchpad versus Linux compatibility and backlit keyboard.

I miss deep technical dives on hw, folks just shillmaxn now.

Windows is such an offensive, defect-ridden pile of shit now that every PC maker should be blaming Microsoft for their inability to compete with the Neo.

I bought my parents Asus laptops years ago, and can't wait to replace them with a Neo.

Microsoft has spurned and scorned users. Now it's time for computer makers to push back and reject its shit. I'd love to see a consortium of computer makers come together to refine a Linux distro that's consumer-friendly enough to oust Windows and compete with Mac OS.

It's as if people forgot about the MacBook One (anagram: Neo) from 2015 (which I daily drove for a year and loved). I suspect the Neo will sell about the same, and be forgotten in as many years.

"I’ll just say it: I think I’m done with iPads. Why bother when Apple is now making a crackerjack Mac laptop that starts at just $600?"

So, Gruber, you're telling me that you didn't have a laptop before because of the price and you had to settle for an iPad?

Rather than just looking at Apple's motivations as to address ~new customers, I'd like to point out Mr. Gruber surprised himself:

> I am in no way arguing that the MacBook Neo is an iPad killer, but it’s a splendid iPad alternative for people like me, who don’t draw with a Pencil, do type with a keyboard, and just want a small, simple, highly portable and highly capable computer to use around the house.

My wife and I prefer iPads around the house as she is a pencil centric artist and loosely speaking I prefer touch to keyboards. But his framing points out Apple is expansively addressing broad market work/school/home computing needs/preferences and thus also brings up a question I think is under discussed...

What is Apple's user experience roadmap for Apple TV mass market home computing? And for home computing in general?

We are overdue for a leap up there, where Apple, as with the Neo, exploits their ability to profitably deliver higher end hardware which enables features at prices below any comparable competition.

I know folks are fond of pointing to Apple struggling to deliver Siri/AI advances but I view that like their Apple Maps fiasco: an ongoing priority roadmap that they will keep working at until it is better than good enough.

I believe Apple will soon accelerate the power ramp up in Apple TV both because they could now ~ Neo that device into very $/performance competitive vs game consoles but also because they likely predict an ever increasing demand for home compute by consumers.

Not just speech i/o and AI conversation but also active realtime cheap private application of compute, such as personalizing your sports game feed, for example:

a) continually show me where the ball is by [dynamic method] b) rewind to when player X had the ball c) freeze there and show me what might have happened if they had passed to Y d) dress all the players in tutus e) change to my cooking show but warp me back to this game if someone scores f) etc etc etc.

Their 5+ year planning and commitment to the Apple Watch and Vision Pro show that they are ardent bettors on personal computing continuing to evolve very rapidly if they can concoct a profitable multi-year course from niche to ubiquitous. [not just for a product but for their synergistic products]

Remember they build elaborate fake homes as test centers, and not just to film product promos. I would be very surprised to learn their current 5 year outlook ignores robotics. Look around the edges of their public activities and imagine how what you notice might also fit together with something new but hidden.

They are ambitious. Very Ambitious. What's next?

The neo might be the start of the end of traditional home PCs. You buy a thin client and a monthly subscription and all of your files and compute is in the cloud.

Want to edit some raw video into a polished 20 minute video suitable for youtube? You don't open final cut pro, you tell your thin client to edit the raw video into a polished 20 minute video. Your monthly subscription includes AI and out pops an edited video.

So the force touch stuff has also been available on Apple laptop trackpads?

Damned if i ever noticed, and all my laptops since like 2013 have been Apple.

I knew I had it on one of my previous iPhones but there it was an annoyance because I never knew what was going to happen on a touch.

> You cannot buy an x86 PC laptop in the $600–700 price range that competes with the MacBook Neo on any metric — performance, display quality, audio quality, or build quality.

Interesting metrics, though I'd add that if you count storage and memory as metrics, it'd be hard to find a worse PC laptop. And I don't see why we should artificially exclude ARM PC laptops from the comparison.

https://www.bestbuy.com/product/asus-vivobook-14-wuxga-lapto...

2x the RAM and 2x the storage isn't meaningless to a lot of people.

The PC has a single-core geekbench around 2100 single / 10,000 multicore. The Neo is apparently in the range of 3600 / 9,000 multicore.

No arguments on the Mac's screen being way nicer though. However, the low-end computer market - unlike most of us on HN - has never cared about pixel density, color accuracy, or really any screen specs other than size (Looks like the Asus has the Mac by an inch on that spec).

Bottom line, for a high-end Chromebook replacement (literally everything is done in the cloud, so storage doesn't matter, and only running a browser, so RAM isn't a big deal), as long as it's for someone who will take care of such a delicate device, the Neo is pretty great. For everyone else, it's debatable.

> And certainly not software quality.

This is most definitely only a little true in that Windows has jumped the shark lately with ads and various enshittification, and thus ties with Mac OS. Tahoe is without a doubt the worst Mac OS ever released. It's both poor quality and poorly designed.

This might be affordable for US and western world, but for us indians it's still a high end laptop at 70k. And considering that repair cost almost half of the price after warranty it actually in premier segment.

Does anyone know if it runs Windows 11 well? It seems like the Parallels app has not been tested by reviewers so far. This could make a great Windows machine.

This does look great for its use case, but I'd love a version as a latter-day eMate.

RIP Microslop

The perfect kid or mom device for news, homework and entertainment.

> The A9, in 2015, benchmarked comparably to a two-year-old MacBook Air from 2013. More impressively, it outperformed the then-new no-adjective 12-inch MacBook in single-core performance (by a factor of roughly 1.1×) and was only 3 percent slower in multi-core.

Too bad that performance is (still) locked in the walled garden and cannot be used as a small Linux server.

I notice they are sold out at MicroCenter - I was hoping to go look at one in person today.

Not really a comment on laptops, but I recently built a new desktop for the first time in nearly two decades. I'm sure that there has been some innovation in the space, but overall I was surprised that everything just seemed... the exact same?

PCI slots are from the 90s. DIMM from the 90s. SATA from the early 00s. LGA sockets from the mid 00s.

The MacBook Neo is, to my mind, almost certainly a sink for rejected mobile chips. My understanding is that they run a nominally six-core chip in five-core mode.

This is fine, and actually a brilliant business move to monetize inventory investment that is otherwise sunk while releasing a new product that doesn't require them to fight for fab capacity.

It's just not something I'm seeing in the consumer discourse that, perhaps, people might like to understand.

> Because the Neo’s only camera-in-use indicator is in the menu bar, that seems obviously possible to circumvent via software.

Not as obvious as the author implies. Apple has some docs out, IIRC, explaining how it is implemented. Worth a read...

Soo has there been work to run hackintosh on an iPhone??

When did $600 become budget?

Was my first thought also when I saw it. I honestly planned to ditch Macbooks before they released M1, but this hardware is just so much better than anything Intel or AMD can offer at least for laptops. For people that are not too demanding I've recommended Airs for a while, but this basically has the potential to destroy the entire midrange PC market. Some people will be reluctant to switch, but I don't think the OS is as important today as it was before. So much happens on the web anyway.

edit: also on a tangent, Apple's pricing has become weird. It actually feels like it's a really good bang got the buck. Regular iPads are under 400 now, and they're just better than the competition. MacBook Pro is about the same price as it ever was, but it's just so much better than it was etc.

Imagine if future versions had a sim card slot for data-only connections. That would be killer - a main reason I've considered an iPad is for "ambient internet" wherever you go. Why has that phone feature not made its way to laptops?

No mention of no backlit in keyboard?

> And there’s the whole thing with the second USB-C port only supporting USB 2 speeds. That stinks. But if Apple could sell a one-port MacBook a decade ago, they can sell one with a shitty second port today.

This is the kind of reasoning behind why I can not take any Apple product review seriously, or any Apple fan seriously.

>we’re lucky it comes with a charger at all

Yup

I am perfectly fine with many of the technological restrictions on this device, and think it represents a great balance.

However, I think that two will bring sour tastes to people’s metaphorical mouths much more than expected: the RAM and drive space.

There should have been a 16Gb option. Nosebleed the price if you have to, or include a SODIMM slot if needed, but the option should have been there to expand the memory to 16Gb either on spec or at a later date. Because each version of MacOS gets weightier and more demanding of hardware - Windows isn’t the only resource hog out there - and at 8Gb the pain will begin to be felt long before the 7-year usability cycle comes to an end.

There should have been a 1Tb option. Not because people use that much drive space - many don’t - but because 1Tb is the level which provides enough cells in parallel to properly saturate the PCIe bus, ensuring maximum performance. Not always at that 1Tb level, and not on every machine. But typically 1Tb or above, rather than below. Even if it required a hairdryer to unstick the original due to the constrained space not permitting a lock-down screw, the drive should have been either replaceable or with the size as (again) a nosebleed-price option at provisioning.

Because while I see every other compromise as acceptable, it is those two which make me hesitate on getting this as a long-term secondary/casual system.

Other than that, this is a laptop which can only goose Apple’s further adoption among students and casual users.

It's remarkable to me that this shows what an iPhone chip has been capable of, and a reminder about how strongly Apple works to keep phone, tablet, and laptop in separate segments. Even though they share the same chips.

Going to be signficiantly harder for Qualcomm X2 Elite to make a splash, given the price here. I have high hopes for the X2 Elite Extreme (even if it is going to be cursed with incredible difficulty trying to get each of these non-ACPI / DeviceTree systems running Linux). But this raises the bar signficiantly.

It’s really an iPad running MacOS instead of iOS; the question is whether people want that.

I’m not the target market since I require Linux compatibility but I realize that is not a necessity in the market.

It's good but it's no Asus eee901

> You cannot buy an x86 PC laptop in the $600–700 price range that competes with the MacBook Neo on any metric — performance, display quality, audio quality, or build quality.

You don’t have to if the software you need needs Windows.

I swear to god every time I go to Gruber's website he's narrowed the text another ten pixels.

This feels like the first time Apple’s walled garden approach has paid off in the desktop arena.

With a cheaper Windows alternative to the MacBook Neo, your options are inferior battery life with AMD 64, or Windows Arm’s inferior compatibility.

I doubt Microsoft is holding developers hands when transitioning to Arm the way that Apple does. Not to mention they’ve been using their own chips.

Very obvious next step is to release 15" or 16" variant. It would put nail in coffin on cheap PC market. But would also cannibalize their own air/pro sales.

MacBook Neo with 512 gigabytes of storage configuration costs 1,200,000 KRW (Approx. 810 USD for reference) in my nation.

I can get ThinkPad E14 with a decent lunar lake CPU and 16 gigabytes of memory, at a slightly lower price.

So I'm not as hyped as others...

If the Neo had been the next 12" macbook (2.0 lb), it would be the first apple product I would have lined up for.

The article sums up why quite well:

"The biggest shortcoming of the decade-ago MacBook “One”, aside from the baffling decision to include just one USB-C port that was also its only means of charging, was the shitty performance of Intel’s Core M chips. Those chips were small enough and low-power enough to fit in the MacBook’s thin and fan-less enclosure, but they were slow as balls. It was a huge compromise for a laptop that carried a somewhat premium price. Today, performance, performance-per-watt, and physical chip size are all solved problems with Apple Silicon. I’d consider paying double the price of the Neo for a MacBook with similar specs (but more RAM and better I/O) that weighed 2.0 pounds or less. I’d buy such a MacBook not to replace my 14-inch MacBook Pro, but to replace my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro as my “carry around the house” secondary computer.5"

My kids (ages 10, 14) have never used a Windows computer. They were introduced to computing with iPhone and iPad, and they use Chromebooks at school. At home I have Win, Linux and MacOS computers, but they've only used the MacOS ones (not interested in the others). I am trying to get them to use Linux, but unless they want to do hacking-type stuff (that's not them), then it's hard to sell them on it.

When we buy them personal laptops (not there yet), it'll be a MacBook Neo (or its successor). I expect that unless they're forced to at work, they'll never touch a Windows computer in their life.

Impressive hardware for cheap. Too bad it is MacOS.

I’m a bit confused about who this article is really for. The MacBook Neo starts at $600 so when I read:

“MacBook Neo is built on an iPhone chip—the A18 Pro. It’s far less capable of running intensive tasks than any of Apple’s M‑series chips or any moderately powered Intel or AMD processor.”

and that:

“It’s merely the right kind of performance for anybody who wants to browse the internet or stream video.”

...at this price point there are plenty of alternatives for laptops with better performance and specs.

For example, you can get a 15.6" Ryzen 7 5700U laptop with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD for less than the “unbeatable” price of the Neo:

https://www.amazon.com/NIAKUN-Computer-Processor-Graphics-Ke...

Or a 15.6" Intel Core i7‑1255U/12650H laptop with 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD in a similar price range:

https://www.amazon.com/HP-Laptop-High-Performance-i7-1255U-4...

Both of these offer:

* A more traditional laptop CPU

* 2–4× the memory

* 2-4× the storage (1TB vs 256GB base on the Neo)

Standard HDMI/USB‑C video out for external displays

So I can definitely see the appeal of the Neo for people who just want an inexpensive way into macOS, but the claim that “no other budget laptop can compete.” doesn't track.

Maybe it should have been "The least expensive Macbook yet, but that comes with significant downsides."

I look forward to the insane amount of bloatware HP will add to hit a 599 price point.

Some more discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47332009

"I wish Apple would make a MacBook that’s akin to the iPhone Air — crazy thin and surprisingly performant."

I think a lot of us wish that! I'm struggling to pick either the Neo or the new iPad Air 13", the former for having MacOS, or the latter for light weight and light usage purposes. And come this fall pair whichever choice with an M5 mini at home.

"Of course, it's not that it cannot do all the work, but considering user experience and those hardware limitations, the experience, I think, differs significantly from mainstream products..."

I worked in retail for a decade, a lot of that was selling computers. The vast majority of what people buy computers for could be done a toaster. You don't exactly need top end specs to browse the internet, reply to emails, and write the occasional document.

Except for the bit that immediately killed it for us in the office: only one external display. Even if you close the lid.

I dream of the day I can kick windows into the next bin, but this is the one thing that the Neo fails hard on, all other compromises would've made this a great remote dev machine.

I woke up to see my other comment downvoted by some rando, but I honestly think this is the best line in the entire article and Gruber's wish is telling (I quote the line only here, but it is best read in context of the original passage):

"I wish Apple would make a MacBook that’s akin to the iPhone Air — crazy thin and surprisingly performant."

What this reflects is all those comments and users, myself included, over the years saying "I would get an iPad if only it could run MacOS", and the ensuing discussion to the effect of why Apple won't do it, the chips are just as powerful, etc. A tablet Mac is a lot of people's (both casual and tech) holy grail in portable computing, justified/sensible or not in terms of technology and UI form factor. Gruber's wish is precisely the expression of this not unpopular sentiment. And also the Tahoe iPad OS features is a clue that Apple knows this.

This is going to be against a lot of the comments and opinion posted on HN here.

The best selling Macbook in history, as percentage of total MacBook sold is the 11" $899 MacBook Air. That was when Apple learned people are willing to give up on performance and features just to get a Mac, or just to use OSX.

And despite the declining state of macOS, as Gruber said it is still zillions times better than Windows.

Apple Mac has always been more expensive than PC. But they are also better built. No Laptop has decent trackpad until M$ pull R&D into their surface book. PC Speaker was appalling until YouTuber start to state the obvious how MacBook speakers were better. But none of these matters, at the end of the day most consumer dont understand spec. They see that is the cheapest MacBook, it looks good and works, just like the MacBook Air 11", if they could afford to buy a $500 laptop, they will spend extra $100 on Apple. Even if the spec on paper is arguably worse.

And if we are really talking about spec and compare. If you even want some after sales services, you would at least have to look at Dell, HP or ASUS. And not some random Chinese brand.

These 1920 * 1080 15" screen is not a decent screen. Even ignoring P3 colour, you will have to find a screen with 200PPI+, let alone Apple do it with 220PPI.

If you want to use Amazon as comparison, they have been selling M4 MacBook Air at $200 discount sometimes $250 for most of the time. I have no idea why, but I would not be surprised the $699 model be selling at $599, same as EDU price. Then at this point the MacBook Neo is extremely competitively priced. You get better screen, faster CPU for less storage and less ram.

And let's fast forward a year. A Neo with A19 Pro as used in iPhone 17 Air and Pro with 12GB RAM, Double the SSD Speed. WiFI 7. Assuming that is true, I dont even see anything on the PC roadmap that is competitive, especially when they are all facing DRAM pricing pressure. ( Although I also think Apple will bump A19 Pro version by additional $100 )

Forgetting all that for a second, not a single review look into the actual Neo hardware. We will have to wait for iFixit for detail teardown. But is should be the easiest to fix Mac, and designed to be simple to manufacture as they said in the interview. The chassis is likely heavier due to this process but could see further refinement. The mechanical trackpad is work of genius, I am not sure if this is Apple only innovation or something that is on the market already. That trackpad alone is 150g, that is nearly one tenth of the weight of whole Neo.

The Neo is, as far as I am aware perhaps the first Apple product that was designed and engineered to be as practical and cost effective as possible. True to their words this isn't some cost reduction exercise using old design and components. This makes Neo the most boring Apple product on paper, but sometimes boring is good. And I agree with MKBHD, this is perhaps the most disruptive Apple product since the original iPhone.

There are roughly 1.5 - 2 billions Windows PC in use today. And Apple has at best 150 to 200M Mac user. So there is plenty of room to grow. I would be happy if they could double that in 5 years time.

I am really liking everything this New Apple is coming through so far. Molly Anderson as Industrial Engineer. John Ternus on Hardware Engineering. Not sure if Steve Lemay is great but my gut feeling is he would restore a lot of Apple HID.

The only thing missing is software ( And may be Services lead ). I know Craig Federighi is popular on HN and internet but I haven't liked a single software engineering direction since he took charge. Stop adding features and Resume driven development and start fixing bugs.

May be lastly, Tim Cook has never been any good at picking person. But all these new selection seems to be great. This cant be a coincidence. I am wondering if there are some additional changes in the background at Apple we dont see.

I have been giving Tim Cook's Apple plenty benefits of doubt but losing faith steadily for 10 years. This is the first time ever since Steve Jobs passed away I am excited to see changes in direction. The name Neo is just great. Truly something new.

He wasn't referring to the build quality which is about average, or the ipad level performance.

He was referring to the supply chain. The shock is that Apple was able to build something like this with current component costs.

While the impact of the MacBook Neo is huge, this type of review is really screaming of an inexperienced reviewer who can't actually make good purchase recommendations to average people.

It's really cool that this device is cheap but 8GB of RAM is the elephant in the room. Even non-technical web browsing users will notice the sluggishness coming from that spec.

The moment they upgrade it to the next iPhone processor, it'll get 12GB of RAM, and it will need it.

And the other elephant in the room that John doesn't bring up is the fact that you can definitely find in-warranty MacBook Air options for ~$700 and they'll be much better buys.

You'll get more RAM, keep your Touch ID, better trackpad, better screen, better battery life, better speakers, better mics, I think even a better webcam? Maybe.

That reminds me: the small battery in the Neo means that high screen brightness or more than light usage will more quickly deplete it compared to other Mac systems.

maybe Apple is "subsidizing" this ?

nudge/"help" people to join the party?

trying to ride something around the windows-bullshitization , recent memory-prices etc..

There's no point taking any Mac opinion from John Gruber, he's basically just Apple PR. He can't be objective

Would it kill this guy to make his site responsive? It’s like one prompt.

> You cannot buy an x86 PC laptop in the $600–700 price range that competes with the MacBook Neo on any metric — performance, display quality, audio quality, or build quality. And certainly not software quality.

My old x86 "PC" laptop with the $0 Debian certainly compares positively to Apple in terms of software quality.