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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.
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 was really hoping for 11inch version, but I am just that weird.
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.
No magsafe seems like a bad idea given the target demographic.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ;)
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
I got my mom an Asus Chromebook and she loves it. This would have been a nice contender at the time.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
8GB in 2026 sounds... tight. that with an A18, makes me wonder how its going to hold up in a year.
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.
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?
So Apple is finally "admitting" an iPad is not the right device for certain users/situations.
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.
This seems like a competitor to the Chromebook more because of the 8GB hard limit.
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].
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?
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
Ugh. Why is is so much more expensive in Denmark? Here it's DKK5499 for the 256 GB version. That's USD857.
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.
Interesting how it runs on the A18. I wonder if this means they will try to unify macOS and iOS within this decade.
8 GB is not enough...even the $699 model has only 8 GB.
Built for Apple Intelligence. 8GB of RAM. It will be a struggle but I have no doubt it will sell really well.
Well, why can’t my 17 Pro run macOS apps when connecting it to an external screen etc?
Has MacBook chassis been locked for a while? When was the last exciting design change?
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...
Oh neat!
8 gig cap though? That seems strange... But, for a $600 Mac for the kids' homeschooling though, maybe I can forgive them.
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 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'
Many governments and large companies issue burner laptops when traveling to the US or China. This is a perfect candidate for that
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???
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 is great, to me this is a far better deal than buying an iPad with an extra keyboard.
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.
8GB of ram places it in competition with cheap chromebooks but nothing more