MacBook Neo (opens in new tab)

List of differences from the MacBook Air:

* Only supports 8 GB of unified memory

* No MagSafe

* One of the two USB-C ports is limited to USB 2.0 speeds of just 480 Mb/s

* No Thunderbolt support means the Neo cannot drive either of Apple’s new Studio Displays. However, it can push a 4K display with 60Hz refresh rate over USB-C.

* “Just” 16 hours of battery life, compared to the 18 hours quoted for the 13-inch MacBook Air

* Display supports sRGB, but not P3 Wide Color

* No True Tone

* 1080p webcam doesn’t support Center Stage

* No camera notch

* Dual side-firing speakers, down from four speakers on the Air

* Does not support Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking on AirPods

* Dual-mic system, down from a three-mic system on the Air

* The 3.5 mm headphone jack does not have support for high-impedance headphones

* No keyboard backlighting

* Touch ID not included on base model

* Trackpad does not support Force Touch

* Supports Wi-Fi 6E, not 7

* No fast charging

* The Apple on the lid isn’t shiny

https://512pixels.net/2026/03/the-differences-between-the-ma...

This is a major challenge to Microsoft. A 13-inch Surface Laptop costs $899 [1], that's 50% more than an equivalent MacBook! And even at that higher price the Surface Laptop doesn't have a good screen: it uses 150% scaling (as opposed to the ideal 200%) which means you have subtle display artifacts.

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...

If this makes people develop stuff under the assumption that the user only has 8 GB of memory, I am happy for where we are going :-)

This is such a better deal than I had growing up, Apple has to be taking a bath on these.

My high school required students to bring their own laptops to school when I started in 2010. Their shopping list suggested a MacBook Pro 13" with a case - I looked up "MacBook Pro price" for the first time in my life and just about walked into traffic. I didn't have a laptop to bring, I didn't want to bring the wrong kind of laptop and get double-screwed, so I bit the bullet and brought my car savings to the Apple store at the mall. A tremendously thoughtful sales rep told me "that's crazy, what school requires a MacBook Pro for 9th graders?", led me to the white unibody MacBooks on the side, and showed me that if I was buying it for school, I would get a discount on the laptop, a free inkjet printer (with ink!), and a free iPod Touch. This blew my mind. I thought it was a scam.

If I recall, that model of MacBook compared admirably against the same year's base model MacBook Pro 13 on a stat sheet but felt worse in hand. The MacBook Neo might actually bring up the rear on fit and finish at the expense of I/O and like, the questionable idea of running an A-series chip in a laptop running Tahoe and Chrome. I'm thrilled with this release.

For years Apple has been selling an M1 Apple MacBook Air for $649 via Walmart. It was still using the old wedge case design and is literally unchanged from fall of 2020 when it came out. It was the base model with 256 GB storage and 8 GB of RAM model, no upgrade options, no colors.

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!

Crazy good market segmentation by Apple here - it's pretty easy for college students to justify this plus an iPad, and still have to upgrade to a "real" laptop post-grad.

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.

Apparently the two USB-C ports are different specs [1]

  - USB 3.0 10 Gbps with DisplayPort support
  - USB 2.0 480 Mbps

Both support charging but only one supports higher speeds and DisplayPort (A18 Pro limitation, as Apple probably doesn't dedicate much silicon to USB I/O).

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/04/macbook-neo-features-tw...

$599, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB, *No* Touch ID

$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 :)

"Education customers can purchase it for $499."

That is insane pricing for a brand new apple product. They will sell so many of these!

For those wondering: Geekbench CPU single/multi and GPU Metal scores.

- 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.

8GB RAM was actually pretty workable for lightweight work… until they shipped Tahoe. Now macOS is just a slog doing even the most basic things unless you’re at 16GB. Sure hope macOS 27 comes with some serious performance optimization.

But hey the colors are cute.

A perfectly performant, luxury-feeling laptop with a secure OS for under $500? This thing is going to eat Chromebooks and budget HP shitboxes for lunch. Sure a lot of niceties are missing but compared to the experience most people have with their $500 laptops, this is going to be night and day.

It's ironic that one of the product shots includes a child using a $599 laptop while wearing $549 headphones.

Everyone seems so focussed on the price and the RAM that noone is talking about the fact that macOS is now running on the A system chips which makes me wonder how far away from an iPad that can swap between iOS and macOS when you dock it in the keyboard are we...

Press release touts "built with the environment mind", but is silent on repairability.

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.

One of the first things Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple in 1996/97 is that he took a shredder and a flamethrower to Apple's product lines. He'd ask managers, "which one should I tell my friends to buy?" And if they couldn't give an answer, he'd kill the line. Or so the story goes, https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/how-steve-jo...

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.

As a Master's student, I didn't have money to afford a MacBook. So, I begrudgingly bought a Dell Vostro 13" at the time. Pretty much all of my friends just got the Dell/Sony/HP laptops and it's not like those laptops were powerful either. They were just pretty much entry level for a price tag of $600-$750. I got mine for $750. This was back in 2009. I had to remove the selection of a Webcam. These companies would pull shit like this, making basic things like a webcam, an add-on. I hated it. IDK what the price tag of a non-Apple laptop is now-a-days and IDK if they still do what they did then, including everything as an add-on, but, I'm so glad Apple released this. This'll be a blessing for students and generally folks who want a high quality laptop without bargaining over which basic add-on to pick, which seemed ridiculous then and feels the same even now.

2009 Me would've LOVED this! I'm so glad Apple released this.

Back in 2013/14 Guillermo Rauch (CEO Vercel) shared a brilliant insight -- develop software on a weak machine and optimize it to work well on it so that when it's used on a powerful machine, it's going to fly. This'll force macOS developers to consider these resource constraints.

$599 and available in a range of colors. My bet is this is going to be a hit with high schoolers and college students everywhere.

Reminds me of the Technicolor iPod mini of my college days. The 2000s are back, baby

I wonder if Apple is positioning these to counter Google's Chromebooks? The pricing makes sense, especially as lately I've seen some pretty expensive Chrome devices: £500 - £700... which is not that far off from base Macbook Air, but without the quirky limitations.

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.

I know this is a heavily tech circle.

however for the common person out there, unless they're buying for status -- this will meet most of their needs

office workers, hospital workers, stay-at-home parents - who just wanna fill forms occasionally, write emails, browse the web - design a few posters on canva for a funeral, special event etc

so yeah to those people they don't give a shit about M-series, as long it has enough memory and can do what they want without freezing.

well done to apple

Interesting that it's the same weight, less wide and less tall than the Air model, though it is a bit thicker.

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.

So in Australia this is $749 after education discounts.

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.

Yeah, just rub in the fact that an A series chip is capable of running a real OS.

In case anyone else is wondering -

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)

Air:

  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)

So really this appears to be a replacement for the M1 MacBook Air that they were still selling at Walmart.

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.

Don't get me wrong it's a fantastic product and great price point, but the only thing it makes me think of is the complete failure of iPadOS. Ultra portable MacBook with is A18 with 8G of ram is infinitely more useful to me (for non-pen input) than full M4/M5 chip with more ram that's completely wasted due to needless OS restrictions.

I can totally see many, many students and parents use that machine for daily tasks. Yes, base specs are pretty low: 8Gb RAM, 256 Gb drive - but the price tag is also low in the Apple world. I assume the trackpad will be excellent and the promise that the battery lasts all day is probably true (all day = 6-7h max). Good move from Apple, for once.

This is a real return to form for Apple. It's fun, pricing feels spot on for this market segment, the continued success of early M1 machines I think proves the spec limitations will not be a real world issue. This is excellent market segmentation on their part and I think many people will love this device.

Geekbench CPU single/multi and GPU Metal scores.

- 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 single core speed.

Looks pretty cool. I feel they got some features right for their target demographics:

- 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!

How is it Apple can make a whole laptop cheaper than the phones they sell? Phones are costing more while laptops are going down in price.

This sounds great, but it pains me that I can't dual-boot my iPhone 15 Pro as a lightweight Mac. Would be great with an HDMI connector & BT keyboard/mouse.

Run a Linux VM (basically no performance impact) and you have a killer quality Linux laptop. Sure it’s not the same as a dedicated Linux system but with these specs you’re going to do lighter work away from your desk anyway.

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 think this has no virtualisation instructions right? Since AFAIK, those are restricted to the Mx series.

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.

It looks like a good value if you can get by with 8 GB of RAM. This is a market niche that will sell, but it doesn’t replace the Air. The Air has 16GB standard and can be ordered with up to 32. I’m also curious about the benchmarks between the A18 Pro and the M5, although for a lot of people that’s going to be less important than the RAM.

Good on them for bringing back bright colors, and for including a 3.55mm audio jack on their new lowest end laptop.

8GB RAM, no apparent upgrade option. Regardless, these will be insanely popular. Apple has finally made a play for the budget laptop market.

I completely understand that as a cheap one, it has to be worse than macbook air in some aspect to make the product line work. However I'm genuinely curious why it's thicker and no lighter than the Macbook Air, while at the same time has shorter battery life, less ports, no keyboard light, and a smaller chip? Do they put dead weight inside it or something?

Neo will at least help in ensuring that macOS doesn’t become too heavy for a few years.

compatable with polishing cloth https://x.com/aaronp613/status/2029206219802722595?s=46

Apple is second to none in supporting legacy products.

Is there any world where them running MacOS on an A chip ultimately translates to just connecting an iPhone to a monitor, keyboard and mouse (all apple-branded, naturally :-) and running it in 'MacOS mode'?

Obviously just so many reasons why this won't happen. Or would happen on iPad first. But dare we dream?

The hardware looks fine, but Apple's software vision is so confusing.

MacBook Neo is cheaper and weaker than a MacBook Air, yet shares the same price and single-app mindset as an iPad. It uses a phone chip similar to an iPad Pro, but gets multi-user support and a keyboard.

I struggle to run Tahoe on my 16GB M2 Air and somewhat I have to believe running it on a 8GB phone chip is gonna be alright, which if true have me thinking what exactly is the role of iPadOS anyway.

Ultimately, it feels like iPadOS and Tahoe are on a crash course for a middle ground that nobody asked for.

Mom is getting a new laptop

Outside of college students, I think this also unlocks the Mac to rest of the world. Now $599 allows most of the world to buy/lock into the Apple ecosystem. 8 GB is the only issue I have but everything else is such a good compromise for the price.

This is exactly what's needed to get general users off of Windows.

Anecdotal, but whenever my friends/family are looking for a basic laptop I almost always suggest a Lenovo for the price/performance/quality they're looking for in the $400-600 range, even though I myself would never get anything besides a MBP.

I would recommend this to them instead every single time. The build quality of macs are unmatched and now in everyone's price range.

This, coupled with the nightmare fuel that Windows has become as of 2026, means no one sane should buy a Windows computer. It's more expensive, more intrusive, and Microsoft management clearly has zero respect for its customers.

Reminds me of when every college kid had those plastic Macbooks. Quite a smart product.

What does "Liquid Retina" mean? Is it 120 Hz or not? Hate these meaningless marketing names.

Didn't we agree that calling your product "new" is poor planning? Are they going to silently rename it in 6 months?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad_(3rd_generation)

Or will they keep doing this with "neu", "nouveau", "nuevo" etc?

I'm kind of shocked that they don't have much higher battery life. I'll be really interested to see one of these in person, those colors look great. Why is it that the Pro devices always get the boring colors?

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 wonder if this means a Mac Nano with an A-series chip is on the table now. Essentially a beefed up Apple TV that runs macOS.

Wait did I read that correctly? There's no backlit keyboard? I don't recall any Mac laptop not having a backlight keyboard since the 2011. And they're marketing it to students -- they are always going to be working in the dark on their beds during the exams...

Forget memory - this is like the more major loss in terms feature set.

This is perfect for folks looking to buy a brand new laptop.

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...

An iPhone in a laptop body to be an Apple "Chromebook", I can only imagine this will be pretty popular.

Looks like the best display you can get in laptops at this price: 2408x1506 resolution, 500 nits, antireflective coating (!). And bonus points for no silly notch.

8GiB of RAM, combined with "Built for Apple Intelligence.", makes me question the user experience on this thing. macOS with a browser open pretty quickly hits 13 GiB of RAM usage for me. That poor SSD is going to be swapping its whole usable life.

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.

As I see my kids bring home Chromebooks from school, it has made me recently nostalgic for the Apple of the 90s in terms of their presence in education. Using my Science teacher's Performa to play Sim Ant after we finished our assignments, (or Oregon Trail before that on the lab of Apple IIs) – not to mention HyperCard, etc.

Anyway, updating my priors a bit with this Neo laptop. This feels like it could maybe spark some renewed excitement over Apple as a student / classroom device. If nothing else, the price makes it more of an option.

I’m confused. The iOS device line gradually shifts towards the M chips. Why does Apple make a laptop with the A chips? Isn’t the M line is more performant and energy efficient comparing to the A chip?

I'd be glad to try one (either blue or piss colored). If it really comes at 600€. Though it would already be 100€ too much unless it gets liberated to run linux at some point.

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)

It's like the Netbook is back, but done well. This is really exciting, I have to admit. Superb execution of hardware of course, but the secret sauce is the OS. Can't wait to try one.

Looks like they're using some new variant of branding font for this. Inspect Element shows it as SF Pro Display, but it's actually just being masked over with an image

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?

I'm sure these will sell very well. It will be interesting to see how they compare to the M1. I'm sure Asahi linux folks are really excited about an extra chip set to support.

It's strange that the low-end machines get positioned as "every day task" devices when the biggest ram hogs by far are browsers and websites.

cute netbook, I appreciate the no notch design

Too bad their software is total garbage now, I could never resign myself to that.

I just looked over the specs [1] and it's pretty good for the price. My only quibble is that there's only one USB3 port and that's also the charging port. So if you want to use an external display, you need some form of dock to also charge it. The other USB port is only USB2 so you can't use that as an external display connector.

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...

8 GB of RAM and an ARM chip, it is almost as if they took the specs from the Raspberry PI and built a laptop around it.

Joking aside, this is too anemic for today for serious work, but I guess at today's RAM prices this is going to be setting a trend. My decade+ old Lenovo W540 has four times that and I sometimes wished it had more. But for a school laptop it is acceptable I guess.

It's still almost three pounds....

Whatever they did with the 11" macbook air was magical. It doesn't seem like they can pull it off twice.

With every new device Apple releases the split between iPadOS and macOS gets more awkward.

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.

This would be a great Asahi Linux target, but I know that group has a lot on their plate with the MacBooks pros already

Why don’t they just allow MacOS on iPad Pro. It’s what people want.

On the one hand I feel like 8GB is low these days, but my iPhone 12 Pro only had 6GB of RAM, so maybe for light usage this is fine. I do feel like 16GB is the new "8GB" minimum of the 2010s. Especially on windows, 32GB feels like Windows just chews through it no problem.

Overall, I might pick one of these up at some point.

Apple, please make a new 12" Macbook for those of us who travel and want the lightest weight possible. Less than 2 lbs, thinner than the Air, but without the compromises of the Neo. I'd pay more than the Air price for this. Or, make the Air lighter and thinner (to match the iPhone Air in approach?).

I wish more would be done on weight. The 12 inch Macbook was very lightweight, just 2 pounds. Today there's no Apple product that gets close to that: an iPad with the added accessories weighs more and it's still an iPad. The Macbook "Air" is not airy, this Macbook Neo weighs the same as an Air.

I have an M4 Air and I just pre-ordered 3 Neos. One for myself, one for my niece as a present and one for my parents to replace their Windows laptop.

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.

I think 8GB with Tahoe will lead to a lot of griping in a month or two, but I've bought one for family use. We have some old iMacs with various issues issues and this ticks all the boxes for basic family use. Plus, the sickly color will hopefully mean no-one will hog the machine or take it outdoors.

I'm a little skeptical about the Apple Intelligence capabilities, as others have mentioned. I can assume that it doesn't run on-device and sends it to Apple's servers for processing.

I just noticed that according to https://support.apple.com/121115, devices purchased in China don't support Apple Intelligence but it's odd that they explicitly mention a workaround where devices purchased outside of China support Apple Intelligence if the region isn't set to China.

Personally, I might not get this device because of the hard limit of 8GB unified memory. This is unacceptable in 2026 because there were iPhones with 8GB of RAM in 2023. The current generation of iPhones have 12GB of RAM available.

This seems like a great price to have an actual MacBook with you anywhere for things that don't require a lot of resources, like if you're running some tmux/Tailscale solution at home and just need to SSH into it to do work with [whatever terminal agent you're using].

Hey Folks: no notch! This is beautiful!

I hope that Steve Jobs gets up and slaps whoever thought scaling the "Hello Neo" font to 150% width was ok, fires them, and then gets back in his grave grumbling that he would never have let this happen.

I have a degree in design, I paid good money to have bad type piss me off.

More affordable Mac, there is nothing wrong with it.

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.

Let's hope that in the future, When ram prices come down (if that's a concern to apple right now) then we can have 16 gb ram as well.

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.

Really want Apple to launch the Mac Mini version of this (yes, I really want an updated Apple TV)

Feels like a refurb M1 Air is a much better deal.

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.

This is an absolutely solid buy I think. My wife's macbook is no longer receiving MacOS (and as a result Safari) updates, and all she needs it for is "big laptop tasks" and occasional video calls. This is the absolute perfect purchase for her.

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.

I think most are going to pass on this. I'm not sure Apple has ever figured out how to sell anything to the price conscious consumer since the iPod Shuffle.

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.

Possibly dumb question: why not just get a previous generation MacBook Air for a similar price? Even a refurb one. I really don't understand who this is for, apart from children perhaps (but still just get a bloody MacBook Air)

Anyone think you'll actually be able to do anything on a Mac with only 8gb of RAM? I had a Macbook Pro before with 16gb of RAM and it was constantly running out of RAM and showing me the Force Quit Applications dialog. Constantly...

Is A18 fully compatible with M series chips apps?

I can't help feeling this is the size/weight that the Air should be targeting.

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?

So... have we now confirmed that the only thing preventing us from running macOS off our iPhones is a software limitation?

(I'm being facetious, if the hardware was open, someone would have already written a custom boot loader for this :P)

It's interesting that to get to the price point of $499 (edu) or $599 that what Apple did was

- 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.

Instead of launching neo, Apple could have enabled something like Dex on their phones. This is still a welcome device if Apple has excess inventory of A18 lying around as this helps people get a laptop for cheaper.

No idea why anybody still thinks of this company as making premium devices or catering to the premium market. Tim Cook's Apple makes cheap shit for the mass market, and has for years. It's not surprising when something like this comes out for cheap, because in general Apple has been price competitive for the past decade.

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.

This proves macOS should/could just be an iOS app that you can run when docked. It has great suspend and resume, the phones/tables would just need more ram and storage. Maybe we'll see it in the future

yesterday I wrote in a group slack that today I would get to decide whether:

* 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?

Apple's share price is down about 0.45% today. The market knew this was coming, so that doesn't say much. It will be interesting to see if this product helps their market share and also has good enough profit margin to affect Apple's profitability much. I expect it will sell a lot more units more than the previous cheapest Walmart M1 Air

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/04/apple-macbook-neo-budget-lap...

I find this a very exciting release. I was actually hoping we would somehow get macOS on mobile 'A' chips some day. And I think this is better than putting 'M' chips on an iPad.

My iPad with an 'M1' chip actually consumes more battery than much older iPads when both are locked and with the screen off. I ended up figuring it was probably because, in the 'M' chip, the lowest possible energy usage is way higher than the 'A' chip. So even small background wake-ups used more energy.

I'm still hoping one day we have an iPad with macOS.

Just from a pure investment standpoint, while people seem to think this will take on Microsoft PCs and Google's Chromebook, to me the bigger risk is that it is going to cannibalize Air sales. Just read the comments here and elsewhere online. Sure, some people say they need more RAM, etc...but the average consumer just uses their device as a browser.

Anyhow, I do hope this wakes Microsoft up. They seem to have abandoned their consumer base, which is quite annoying. I do enjoy Windows 11, despite the hate here, but Windows PCs have a lot of catching up to do.

Even if apple is losing money on these devices, they shouldn't care. Low cost laptops are the main reason why people buy Windows laptops instead of Macs. They need to get people into the Mac ecosystem.

This is interesting. Our current family [1] Mac Pro is from 2015 and its time to replace it, but I'm loath to spend 1000 on a laptop

[1] computer to do personal things i don't want my employer to spy on

8GB of ram places it in competition with cheap chromebooks but nothing more

Eager to see the Xcode benchmark on this. Would expect it to be similar to the M1, but we shall see! I still use my M1 MBP for light mobile development work. Sure it's slow, but it certainly works. It's wild to think you can buy a new laptop that costs less than an iPhone and write apps for an iPhone.

What's fun about this machine is its constraints, and it sort of reminds me of one of my processors orchestrating our school's server cluster via nothing but an 11" MacBook Air back in the day.

In Canada this is the same price as something like this: https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/acer-aspire-14-ai-copil...

So not bad, maybe a tad underwhelming but for those in the Apple ecosystem it's a decent student computer.

Curious how the cell phone chip holds up to desktop-esque workloads.

I was really hoping for 11inch version, but I am just that weird.

So I guess they must have fully depreciated the gigantic fleet of CNC routers they use to cut the aluminum cases. Making a cheap laptop seems better than throwing them away.

> MacBook Neo features two USB-C ports for connecting accessories or an external display[5]. Both ports can be used for charging. MacBook Neo also includes a headphone jack for wired audio.

> [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.

No magsafe seems like a bad idea given the target demographic.

Looks super nice, but I don't regret getting the M1 Air for $599 at Walmart. No Touch ID in the base version is a bummer... otherwise it'd be perfect.

With 256GB SSD storage & 8GB RAM, the Macbook Neo's Price @ $599.00 is still a bit high, for my needs. I would be sold if it came with 512GB SSD & 16GB. Still, the higher storage class version @ $699 with Touch ID should at least make people think a bit longer when deciding to jump in and purchase or not. It's a step in the right direction, slowly moving it away from "Eye Candy," status in my view.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this ends up being really popular with families. Parents with iPhones are (I’d imagine) far more likely to get their kids iPhones, and with Messages and FindMy I bet it’ll be the same here. Apple also has screen time and parental controls, so for parents wanting to get their kid a computer but worried about unrestricted Internet access, the MacBook Neo may be the most seamless option.

The base model at 256GB is either to advertise an artificially low price, or a deliberate move to ensure that most of these end up in e-waste within 18 months. Go ahead and explain to the target market of teens, college kids, and 'regular people' how to resolve the problem when their Photos library (or like 1-2 video projects if they are into content creation) fills the disk and the whole computer stops working correctly due to 'disk full'.

"Sure, just buy a paid iCloud plan"

Great. Of course, now you have to wait for it to download any photo you want to use. And you're stuck paying a monthly subscription (Yay, services revenue!). And the cloud is not any solution for the video people, at all. I've seen someone try to edit a video that's being stored in iCloud Drive and only cached locally with Apple magic... it wasn't pretty.

Apple's quest to kill off any understanding of the filesystem by doing everything inside hidden, conceptually-monolithic "libraries" means the only way to be happy on a Mac or iOS device is to buy way more internal storage than you think you'll ever need... at Apple's hilarious prices. Oh well, at least for a moment now their prices look similar to everyone else's that just tripled.

Fantastic value proposition.

For most of the non-tech people in my life, I'd now recommend a base MacBook Neo + base iPhone 17 + AirPods Pro 3. Students may want to throw in a base iPad and an Apple Pencil. Splurge on the higher end versions if you like nice things, but that combo will pretty much cover the tech needs of most non-tech people.

Apple is crushing it with their entry products.

I don't this product has many audiences on HN. But I would definitely recommend it to anyone not doing much computing.

I wonder if this is a way for them to take a situation like the RAM shortage and spin it into a way to sell more products with little memory to mask the expensive price of memory by bundling it with the outer shell of the laptop rather than try to sell a few PRO laptops whose price is now very jacked up because of the expensive memory.

Basic question: will this be able to run any app built for M chip? I suppose so because both a18 and the M chips are ARM?

All I want is a MacBook Pro with a funky color like citrus.

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.

This is an excellent addition to the lineup and changes the list of reasons for why the average person would go for a Windows laptop from “cost” to practically nothing, but from a consumer perspective, is there any reason to buy this over M1 MBA which can be purchased new for less than the education discounted version of the MB Neo?

I think Apple has a winner on it's hand. This is perfect, for large number of people who don't do much on their laptop anyway. Even for me as a developer, I want something small and light that I can carry around and I can connect to my bigger machine from.

I wish they went for 12" but I am not complaining. It is affordable and pretty.

Macs were already much better value than other laptops in my opinion. I just wish it were easier to run Linux on them.

First thing I did was search the page for "touch" as in touch screen. Still no touch screen. I've gotten so used to a touch screen with my X1 yoga that every time I use my Mac for work I get pissed off at it because I can't touch it. Just simple things like scrolling or multiple check boxes etc

Anyone know how this would compare to an original M1 Air? Both in terms of performance and also capability. My primary use case for my air is web browsing and similar. But I do use other things at times. I know they're both arm processors, but are there things that ne can do an M1 that won't work on this?

Why do all the low-end Apple laptops not have USB-C ports on the right?

That's one of the main reasons I had to get a MacBook Pro.

Ugh. Why is is so much more expensive in Denmark? Here it's DKK5499 for the 256 GB version. That's USD857.

Interesting how it runs on the A18. I wonder if this means they will try to unify macOS and iOS within this decade.

This is pitched as entry-level, but it works as N+1, as in: people have beaucoup computers, but they avoid carrying them around (risk loss/destroy). The computer absolutely needs to be a mac for keychain-linked services, etc. For those users, not having TouchID on the base model is a bummer.

Just yesterday, we were discussing starting to retire our fleet of 8GB Macbook Airs, because 8GB just isn't enough to run Tahoe and a few apps. Luckily, most of our Macbook Airs are 16GB to avoid this kind of obsolescence.

It looks like this MacBook Neo doesn't even have an option for 16GB, unfortunately.

I wonder if this can develop iOS apps.

For me an iPad with the Magic Keyboard case is already my personal laptop, and this device would be a downgrade in almost every way (ergonomics and specs).

The one thing I can’t do with my iPad that interests me, that’s got me thinking of buying a personal Mac, is develop software for iOS.

Built for Apple Intelligence. 8GB of RAM. It will be a struggle but I have no doubt it will sell really well.

This is going to be a huge success and to me makes so much sense as a product. I’m always amazed at the range of opinions people have on these topics. Might even pick one up for myself to use on the go, I had been thinking about an Air but I don’t need much by the way of power in all honesty

So Apple is finally "admitting" an iPad is not the right device for certain users/situations.

This would be pretty cool for my Grandparents. They don't need too much and I assume that in typical MacBook fashion this works rather smoothly. (Their current Laptop is old)

I still think 512 GB on Storage is realy too little for a PC device. There is phones with more Storage.

So the biggest difference I see with the new Air is that you get sRGB only in the display, with less brightness. Also it is has 8GiB of RAM, which shouldn’t be an issue for the intended use.

Same weight. You lose a bit on the speakers, microphone, and webcam. Not sure how noticeable this will be.

I got my mom an Asus Chromebook and she loves it. This would have been a nice contender at the time.

Woah. A burner laptop for travel? I might need to rethink what personal computing is for me soon. Mac Studio + Studio Display, plus a Neo/iPad might be the right combination instead of having to buy an expensive laptop which has hinges and can get stolen.

I want one for all my kids. I love it. I just wish it had more ram. Personally though this direction is good. I wish now apple would add some sort of AI to it's icloud offering that these computers could use that wasn't necessarily 'local'

Is the screen supposed to read MAC? The C is misshapen if it's supposed to be 3 bars per letter.

(Looks like a decent option, technology and price-wise, for parental and sibling light-browsing and email usage patterns but they normally get my seconds when I upgrade.)

This machine has me asking why much older hardware can't run newer versions of macOS. The answer of course is Apple needs to sell new machines, but the Neo may be proof that decade old Macs could run Tahoe as well as or better than the Neo.

Anyone else find the naming odd? What’s the relevance of “Neo”?

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???

It's an incredible value but a world of resource-hungry vibe-coded webapps and 8GB of RAM just does not feel compatible.

If you primarily use native Apple apps though this thing is awesome. $499 with student discount? This thing is going to do NUMBERS.

Well, why can’t my 17 Pro run macOS apps when connecting it to an external screen etc?

$499 through Apple Edu: https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/buy-mac/macbook-neo.

8GB of unified memory, the fine print says. Hardly enough to multitask with today's bloated software. Maybe products like this, and the ram price hike, may finally push developers to care more about their memory budget.

Anyone else has this Apple shopping experience?

- look at the new "cheap" product/gadget

- look at better products

- choose a better product, configure it, add options

- don't buy anything, not even a PC or a tablet, maybe upgrade your old android phone

This thing loaded up with Parsec could maybe be a great small, cheap coding machine, for accessing a more powerful computer beyond.

iPads with neither an ability to run VSCode nor Parsec have been frustratingly useless for this category.

This is an iPad, with touch screen taken away and keyboard built in

Same chip (A series), same RAM (8gb), same screen size, probably the exact same camera.

iPad starts at $349 + $199 for Magic Keyboard folio.

$549 for essentially the same thing + a touchscreen.

I have an old 2020 M1 Macbook Air that is on its last legs because 8GB RAM isn't enough for regular use cases. If this had a 16GB RAM option I'd go for it, but alas.

The specs are similar to what Google Pixelbooks had in 2017, except for the CPU.

4 colors, 2 configurations. This is kind of awesome. I know it's targeted at the low(er) cost laptop market, but this could be a great travel machine instead of lugging a macbook pro around.

The Macbook 12 inch was a relatively better laptop than this. An "re"-launch of equivalent for today, really would have been something. This is half-baked compared to the innovation that was there.

I guess it’s to be expected, but i’m sad there’s no 16gb RAM upgrade option. $699 for a brand new Mac is nice and 8gb will work for the netbook/student audience but i’d personally want a teensy bit more.

When I saw this I thought it was just similar to an iPad with a built-in keyboard. Anyway this is better. finally a mac that can compete with other lower-cost laptops while still offering high performance.

Interesting.

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?

We are back to colors! https://appleclamshell.wordpress.com/color-guide/

Like the YouTuber said, if you are watching this then it might not be for you.

https://youtu.be/kBX5WH9b4M4

what a move by apple! these are going to sell like hotcakes. i can imagine this putting apple even further ahead if local llms really do take off sooner rather than later. a cheap mac like this brings a lot more people into the mac ecosystem, and once you’re in it’s pretty hard to leave given how seamless everything is. over time that likely pushes people to upgrade to more powerful macs when they want to run ai locally. yet another reminder of why hardware ends up being the real moat ;)

RIP any hope for an Apple alternative to Samsung Dex. An iPhone 16 pro running the same specs will never be able to run macOS. We already knew it but this made official

I am going to need a mac to perform some app build for ios sometimes. I was thinking to get a used mac mini for that. Would the neo be a cheaper, but still viable option?

With only 8 GB of RAM would this be usable even for web browsing?

Besides the the lack of a magsafe which I find essential for a kids laptop, I think it is perfect from a kid in the age 10-15... Unless they want to game of course.

They just crushed the budget laptop market. Everyone but weirdo contrarians and maybe gamers will have a macbook. Apple stock is slightly down. What‘s going on?

So its fundamentally an iPad with a keyboard running macOS.

The hoops Apple will jump through to not let me install/dual-boot macOS on my iPad Pro.

It’s all the same damn hardware. Just let me install an OS that isn’t purposefully gimped!!

The A18 Pro single thread passmark score is 4k, that's up there with pretty premium desktop CPUs, very impressive if it can do it for any meaningful time.

that's it boys. apple will take over the ENTIRE market with this. they will be at schools everywhere. only reason to not get a macbook before was the price.

Feeling glad I got a 2nd hand air M1 (16gb+512gb) for ~400 GBP last October, rather than waiting out for this.

No idea how the processors compare, but that RAM isn't a good sign

the market segmentation is nice, it'll do well with the colors and all -- but the unified memory thing is the literal only reason to want to dip a toe in apple whatsoever; with these numbers id rather just spend ~300 on a Chuwi or equivalent white label 'ultrabook' with double the specs.

although it IS hillarious to read a group of enthusiasts in 2026 screaming "8GB IS FINE!" -- meanwhile people want more ram on their RPis..

For 800 euros, with 8 GB RAM, and a mobile GPU?!? No thanks.

I find it really fascinating that this is priced identically to an iPhone 17e. Speaks to it essentially being a big iPad with a keyboard attached running macOS.

This is an amazing move by Apple. Most excited I've been about an Apple product launch in a long time. Low cost, high quality, colorful laptops are back.

I imagine this will be popular in other countries too. Such an incredible product for the price. Does anyone have benchmarks comparing the A18 to an M1 say?

I can open iphone on my macbook? Wish I had it working on my macbook pro, because I was supposed to be able to do that a long time ago (I'm in EU).

8 GB is not enough...even the $699 model has only 8 GB.

Given how incredibly bloated OSX is now and that everything else is CEF, how can they possibly justify 8gb of ram? Even my ancient w7 box has 64gb

Did anyone else notice how the wallpaper spells MAC?

I wouldn't want a MacBook that can't run a free operating system, but if Asahi gets there, I may buy one to replace an aging XPS.

Will it be true macOS or will they use this excuse of using an “iPhone chip” to lock down everything like they do on iPads/iPhones?

Seems like landfill fodder with the memory at 8gb.

How is this laptop cheaper than a basic iPhone???

How will the A chip fare for LLM-based use cases, compared the M series?

And will we have software compatibility issues because of A versus M issues?

Will it run linux?

Many governments and large companies issue burner laptops when traveling to the US or China. This is a perfect candidate for that

Tiny, silly, no good, minor, tedious complaint: can you visibly tell which port is USB 3 vs. USB 2 or do you have to just remember?

Bit of a strange choice of name if I may say so!

Does it run Linux?

a bit disturbed to see this upvoted as much on HN as I thought techy people shunned Apple products (like Stallman calling their ecosystem a "jail") but...

I can see there are a lot of Apple users here apparently. I have some old hardware I still make use of but couldn't see a case for anyone buying new stuff (overpriced, locked down, etc.)

That's a pretty slick video where the block of aluminum transforms into the finished MacBook in the presenter's hands.

Yikes, if I had known Apple was going to release a new budget laptop I would have gotten my mom this instead of a $1000 Air.

This is an iphone 16pro chip. That's the phone I have and don't love it. I am not sure if this is a useful config.

This could be amazing for running Asahi Linux one day. Probably will be quite a while before Asahi works on it though.

Oh neat!

8 gig cap though? That seems strange... But, for a $600 Mac for the kids' homeschooling though, maybe I can forgive them.

I think this is a very niche product or a potential Chromebook competitor. This is good enough for students and kids.

Why do all the low-end Apple laptops not have USB-C ports on the right?

That's one of the main reasons I had to get a MacBook Pro.

I can't believe how fast the chip is. It is comparable to my top of the line gaming laptop from 6 years ago.

What's that slot on the side? Antenna?

No Force Touch?! That's absolutely awful... That's probably the biggest UX difference in daily use...

For someone who wants a secondary (travel) laptop I don't like how needlessly thick and heavy this is.

I just want a colourful fun pro laptop :(

Woah... a mobile processor and enormous bezels... definitely feels like Jobs would have never let this ship

The amount of compromises leave little to no wiggle room to ever recommend this device to anyone.

I guess PCs and chromebooks are over? Literally what normie would pay more for a worse experience now?

They finally installed a real Operating System on iPad hardware and attached a keyboard. Innovative!

Would definitely consider for my next laptop. What’s the best solution for “Mac Subsystem for Linux”?

8GB in 2026 sounds... tight. that with an A18, makes me wonder how its going to hold up in a year.

would be a very compelling little device for cash strapped schools but ... 16GB of ram heck even 12 would have been better.

Otherwise the limitations are fine. In fact this really has the chance to canabilize the iPad a bit though the iPad has a better screen and a faster chip...

I'd like to bring to your attention the 2026 irony of how much things now cost: this thing has nearly the same chip, way bigger display,a keyboard, extra USB port, a touchpad, lots of copper inside and aluminum outside, way bigger battery and yet it is same price as entry level iPhone with same RAM and storage. Go figure!

PS. Wonder why they didn't use A19 in this? Imagine they thought "yeah, that A18 will do for an entry-level laptop", but the entry-level iPhone 17e with A19 needed more kick? What for, our social media apps and mobile websites? This is soooo absurd!

I was hoping they'll revamp the 12" MacBook. I liked a lot that design and form-factor.

This is a very smart move and I love it! Absolutely the best device I can get for my parents.

Nail in the coffin for ChromeOS (or aluminiumOS) if they 8GB RAM variants are sold > $500.

This is great, to me this is a far better deal than buying an iPad with an extra keyboard.

Has MacBook chassis been locked for a while? When was the last exciting design change?

I was hoping for a sub 1kg laptop for travel. Might go for an iPad Air plus keyboard now.

They're finally laying the silly "Macs cost too much" complaint to bed.

Its wild watching Apple change. They lost their luxury brand and have pivoted to general population.

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..

Excellent! Was going to get a MacMini for my kids but I might just get this instead.

This seems like a competitor to the Chromebook more because of the 8GB hard limit.

What’s going on with Apple? Are they doing one-hardware-a-day week/month now?

Whoever added the pause button on the image carousel on that page, I applaud you.

If anyone makes Linux running on this thing, it's a major gaming changer!

Just an upgraded version of iPad air with the magic keyword attached.

Whats "neo" about this compared to the last macbook they put out?

For the same price, Walmart is selling the HP Omnibook 5. It has a better CPU, 16 GB RAM (double), and 1 TB SSD (double).

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.

Wow $499 for students

It's like the crack dealer giving free samples to the young ones

~~Haven't yet seen anyone comment on the apparent lack of Apple Intelligence. Makes sense due to the low amount of memory but wonder how many people won't notice that until after they buy this laptop.~~

edit: somehow missed it has Apple Intelligence - whoops

I don’t even have to look at the specs to tell you : “insufficient ram”

I think the lack of RAM kind of kills this product for general use. 8 GB of RAM with no option to get more is ridiculous in 2026. I bet they'll be very popular with whatever school districts have stuck with Apple rather than switching to Chromebooks though.

Oh dang. No 16GB option at all, I thought 8GB was just the base.

This could be useful as a remote-access device for something that has a decent amount of RAM, I suppose, but how can anyone do anything outside of light-duty work with 8GB? At some point a Pi + battery/screen case is legitimately better.

8GB of RAM? In 2026?!!!

Xcode and some browser tabs are going make this slow AF.

My wife was just telling me she wanted an updated iBook...

Every Apple post for the past 2 decades has brought out of the woodwork experts with armchair analysis of price points, market segments, product positioning, and target demographics. It's so funny. X'D Carry on.

Can't seem to find what is the processor on this thing?

Still can't compete with a used ThinkPad from ebay.

How much extra is it to add DVI out and an ethernet port?

I would love to see the upselling this product triggers.

8gb ram is criminal. For $100 more Air is the one to buy.

Anyone else thinking of using this as a homelab server?

This A18 processor, how does it compare to the M series?

Well, Apple decimating competitors with this offering.

To me it feels like Netbooks are back on the menu.

Interesting that it only comes with 8GB of RAM. My Macbook Pro on Tahoe uses around that just when booting up, before I start anything. I wonder if they have some memory optimisations planned?

8GB RAM is fine for these

topping out at 512GB storage is lame though

Can I virtualize Windows 7 and PostgreSQL in it?

Sounds like the Apple equivalent of a ChromeBook.

i didn't even know usbc2 ports were a thing

Interested to see how 8gb of ram holds up here.

Would love to see an 11inch version of this.

This is an incredible price. Lucky students.

seems nice. I imagine the strategy here is going for expanding user base so Apple can sell more software services?

Sounds like not bad option

Is that plastic

Headphone jack!

I see a lot of young people on that page.

anybody else thinking of getting one just to have a mac in a fun color?

as someone who likes bold colors, the citrus is nice.

So, and iPad with an attached keyboard.

There it is! Very interesting offering. It's nice that it's running full mac os with "root access" (whatever that means on macs in current year) I was afraid they'd introduce some bastardised version of iPadOS for this device. This seems like the type of device I'd want my kids to use instead of an iPad or other touch & app based device and just let them figure things out like I did.

> 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.

Okay, then, this isn't for you.

8Gb. Fuck off no chance.

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.

A laptop to watch movies and surf web

would it be crazy to use this as a more casual macbook alongside my mbp? it seems light, cheap, and fun.

Would this be an upgrade from an X270?

This laptop is almost perfect for me, nix the 8GB to be a little cheapskate in 2026, but given the RAMageddon and SSDageddon artifically caused by the solid state cartels lately from Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, WD, all of you pieces of shit who is part of this cartel...we have had to accept 8GB for the moment, but for future? At least 12G, because a lot of slop software are using electron to run.

I just want a small laptop or handheld device where I can use ssh and kubectl, maybe sometimes running VSCode to have remote access. The 13 inch form factor is a godsent. I missed my 11-inch MBA 10 years ago so much.

This is an ad.

There’s now a gaping 500 dollar hole in the lineup between this and the macbook air.

Would i get this over my (now half broken) H[inge]P[roblems] that I got for 600€ in 2016, and now run linux on, with 16GB of RAM? Hell no

I have to say I wasn’t expecting this

Interesting that the headphone jack is on the left! Have there ever been any other MacBooks where this was the case (no pun intended)?

Only 8gb RAM?

if this weighed 1.7 lbs, i’d buy it today. still waiting for a successor to the 12” macbook.

What on earth, at least they could have provided 16gb as base RAM. 8gb RAM in 2026 - what on earth were they thinking.

Is this the end of chromebooks?

8gb is (not) enough for anyone

Apple is giving incredibly powerful and lightweight laptops for ALMOST FREE! What a time to be alive!

> Built for Apple Intelligence.

With 8GB RAM?

After Tahoe and Apple Intelligence what's going to be left for actual applications to use?

Wow thats a really good deal

Ideal computer for our mom.

Does anyone know if Linux is viable on this? I want Apple hardware (or surface hardware) but despise osx. Saving a few hundred over a surface would be sweet.

Haters will say this is them competing with Chromebooks, real OGs know they just expanded TAM

RIP, IBM compatiable PC.

Apple's Chromebook.

Now that MacOS has been demonstrated to run on an A-Series chip, can we please finally get unlocked bootloaders to run MacOS on other iDevices?

So the new iBook. Great.

Does the BoM change account for all of the price drop? I suspect the price/cost thing is bogus here, and in fact, the functionality drop is deliberately designed to NOT predate their existing markets in laptops:

They priced it just low enough to be considered "cheap" and they removed enough parts to make people who use a MBP or MBA not to want to do this.

This is basically the most efficient way to work with agentic tools in my opinion.

Honestly, if you have a tonne of staff that only use Excel and Chrome... this is the laptop to buy.

I'd hate to jinx it, but I reckon this thing will dominate the market.

Good job Apple.

No magsafe, no deal

that's a wild price point for a mac, impressive

This thing is going to sell a lot.

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.

Why don’t they just allow MacOS on iPad Pro. It’s what people want.

I wonder if the bootloader will be locked down, I hope not.

which AI features will I get in neo ?

>3.5 mm headphone jack

YES!

Look, I know everyone's freaking out about the MacBook Neo at $599. I get it. It's cheap, it's Apple, take my money. But honestly? If you spend like five minutes actually reading the specs, the MacBook Air is the obvious buy here. The Neo sounds sick until you look at what they actually shipped. It's running an A18 Pro. That's a phone chip. Not even an M-series. 8 gigs of RAM. One of the USB-C ports is USB 2.0, which, like... it's 2026, what are we doing. No MagSafe. No Thunderbolt, so forget plugging in a Studio Display. No backlit keyboard. No Force Touch. The base model doesn't even have Touch ID. Someone on 512pixels put together a list of everything they cut and it's honestly kind of depressing. Just cut after cut after cut. The Air at $1099 gets you the M5, 16 gigs of RAM, Thunderbolt 4, MagSafe, Wi-Fi 7, P3 display, backlit keyboard. The whole deal, no weird gotchas. Yeah it's 500 bucks more. But you're getting double the RAM, a way better chip, and you don't have to keep a mental list of stuff your laptop randomly can't do. The RAM thing is what really kills the Neo for me though. macOS eats like 5 gigs just sitting there doing nothing. Someone on HN said they're running VSCode, Xcode, Blender, and ChatGPT all at once on 8 gigs and sure, macOS is clever with swap and compression, but come on. You're redlining it from the jump with zero room to grow. And you can never upgrade it. 16 gigs on the Air means you're actually comfortable for years. This matters way more now because of the local AI stuff that's blowing up. OpenClaw just dropped, open-source AI agent that runs right on your Mac, handles your email, calendar, does actual useful stuff on its own. The LocalLLaMA crowd is going absolutely feral setting it up with Ollama, running local models for free. People are hitting 49 tokens per second, running 30B parameter models on their Macs. That kind of thing eats RAM for breakfast and really wants those M-series GPU cores and the Neural Engine. On 16 gigs with an M5? You're golden. On 8 gigs with a phone chip and a 5-core GPU? Yeah no. The move in 2026 isn't buying the cheapest Mac. It's buying the one that doesn't feel slow in two years. Grab a refurb M4 Air for like $900, or just pay full price for the M5. Either way you've got a machine that handles everything for the next five or six years easy. Browsing, dev work, local AI stuff, whatever. The Neo is gonna start choking the second you try anything beyond Safari and Netflix, and at that point just buy a Chromebook for 300 bucks. Apple built the Neo to hit a price tag. The Air is where the math actually works out. Spend the extra 500 now, forget about it for five years. Done.

And yet same specs iPad + Magic keyboard will cost you twice as much. Sure it's touchscreen but at end of the day If I am "keyboarding" it I am not "touching" it much.

* US price: $599 * UK price: £599

I don't like swearing on here, but fuck that.

The "real" USD-GBP exchange rate price should be £448. Apple are basically taking £150 extra on top for UK consumers.

just let me run macos on ipad?

You can now officially get a device with mutli-user support for only $100 more than the base model iPad. They've really got to throw us a bone with what the iPad is capable of.

Finally, some good hardware announcements. It nails almost every common use case, with few flaws or exceptions.

* If we're talking "child's first laptop", this gives them a full-fat desktop OS with ample power to get into various mischief (experimenting with audio in Garageband, making videos in iMovie, writing stories in whatever text editor they fancy, presentations and spreadsheets for school, and the ability to install whatever they like with a quick reformat/refresh if things get borked). $599 isn't quite "disposable", but it is "accessible".

* For "parental computer", this also fits the bill. The extra $100 doubles storage and adds TouchID, enabling Apple Pay on-device. It's affordable, resilient, and manageable by remote support (i.e., us kids). 8GB of RAM is more than enough for common tasks for most folks, provided they work intentionally and not just stack tabs infinitely.

* As a Chromebook alternative, the results are a bit more mixed. Sure, durability seems higher at first blush, and the user experience is better, but as @runjake points out Chromebooks play a "numbers game" Apple won't compete on: rock-bottom pricing, disposability, replaceability, and integration with Google's (mostly free or heavily discounted) educational tooling. For schools that have the CapEx to move back to Apple's ecosystem (or are in it, but want to expand it), the Neo is compelling; for public school systems lacking disposable funds, it's a harder sell - though maybe moot, given the studies linking negative outcomes to early and forced technology adoption in schools.

* For businesses, meet your new "loaner laptop". Keeping a few of these on-hand with corporate profiles preloaded and MDM/DEP managing provisioning makes these the ideal daily replacement while a laptop is being serviced or forgotten at home. Keeping a half-dozen of these ready to go is half the cost of Macbook Airs or Pros waiting in the wings, and perfect for 90% of SaaS-reliant business use cases.

* Speaking of business, say hello to your new "contractor special". Cheap enough to not fret if they're lost or destroyed, but still managed by the same impeccable MDM/DEP tooling, and with enough headroom for most contractor work.

For every niche where you don't mind paying the premium for a better UX in hardware (software is a bit...questionable, at the moment) and don't need a monster of power, this thing fits the bill almost perfectly. That said, I do have some annoyances with the Gen1 that I'd like to see addressed in the next revision:

* Don't make MagSafe a premium feature. It saves cables, it saves ports, and it saves computers. It should be standard.

* I get that the USB ports are limited by the A18 Pro's onboard controllers, but stop silently making different USB ports. Either label them, make them identical, or drop the lower-spec ones entirely. USB-C at USB2 speeds and missing DP video is dumb, and it makes the user experience worse since the ports aren't labelled somehow.

* I know I'll never get it, but either hardware mute toggles to keep speakers from going off during class/meetings, or profiles that let IT mute/disable speakers entirely to force headphones.

Another nail in the coffin of iPad as a portable workstation. A18-powered $600 MacBook, but no MacOS-powered tablet.

If only there was an ~11inch one to replace the old 2012 model, possibly the most perfectly portable laptop created.

Others covered specs etc, but just came here to say the intro video is so much fun! I really enjoyed that.

Compared to other repairable and upgradable laptops, this one is utter waster of investment.

256gb and 8gb of ram, here we go again. Old gen macbook air seems a better deal, isn't it?

Cool hardware but wake me up when I can install Linux on it.

How come my iPhone can't just run MacOS at this point?

Now give me a damn tellow MacBook Pro please

Come on! Put a cell modem in this thing!

Now give us a 17-inch laptop, please!

now the next macOS update being performance/bug fixed focused makes sense to me

Holy shit thats a good deal

Honestly a pretty interesting little thing but my god what a terrible name

Yet another trash!

very good product app man

How is this different from Macbook Air?

256gb on a macbook should be illegal in 2026

Because of course there's no magsafe.

This laptop competes against M2/M3 MacBook Airs. Going to be hard to justify a Neo when the others are so much more powerful.

Yeah, I see your $599 price tag, Apple. I also remember the hype behind your Mac Mini that was a sub $500 computer. And, how long did that last? The answer is: not long.

1. Gawd damn, scrolling through that page full of all those bright colors with their saturation cranked up to 11, feels like I'm being flash-banged by a Cocomelon episode. No other page from Apple is like that. wtf

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.

Reality distortion field at its fullest. I want one!

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.