Being limited to 8gb of ram is genuinely the only thing on that list I care about (no backlight and no fast charging are teetering on the edge of me caring, but they aren't worth multiple hundreds of dollars) - Apple silicone is so fast now that (at least for my purposes) the performance segmentation between price points is basically meaningless.

You forgot an important difference: the macbook neo has the A18 Pro chip (2 performance cores + 4 efficiency cores) whereas the macbook air has the M5 chip (4 performance cores + 6 efficiency cores)

Also the A18 Pro chip has a 5-core GPU whereas the M5 chip has 8 or 10.

Personally, the only dealbreaker in the list you posted is the amount of RAM. macOS 15 uses ~5GB on startup without any app open. I'd be swapping all the time on 8GB of RAM.

Feels very negative! It costs 50% less than the air, in a time when everyone else’s prices are going up.

The single core performance smokes a lot of high end intel chips.

> * No MagSafe

For my kid who uses a Chromebook right now, Magsafe would've been improvement in how often the power cable pulls the it off the desk.

But otherwise, this checks all the boxes, including applecare.

And of course the screen: 13.0-inch vs 13.6

Weight is the same incidentally.

I think the tradeoff would be worth it for a lot of people but many would be better off buying the apple refurbished 16GB M4 Air ($759 from apple right now)

I want to see the person buying the Neo and pairing it with a new Studio Display.

I forgot about force touch as a feature until I read this comment.

The only one of those choices I disagree with is no Touch ID in the base spec. Otherwise, good corners to cut to get to the cheap price point.

>No camera notch

Well, I see this as a very positive thing.

It's pretty cool to see this machine come out. The Macbook Air is still my sweet spot though, I use a Thunderbolt audio interface, and need more RAM.

Great for a student or casual user though for sure.

Why didn't you list the number 1 difference, the price.

"1080p webcam doesn’t support Center Stage"

That's a huge PLUS. This asinine "feature" ruins our family Zoom calls EVERY WEEK. There doesn't appear to be a system-wide way to disable this junk on iOS. Because Windows sucks so monumentally, my parents insist on trying to do everything on their phones and tablets. I'm thinking the Neo is perfect for them, and hearing that it'll solve this infuriating problem just makes it more appealing.

A USB 2 port is embarrassing for a computer at any price in 2026. But at least you can apparently use that one for powering the computer, leaving the good one free for other uses.

Fantastic post, thank you. Answered pretty much every question i had. This is why I love hacker news.

— ...We believe that the customers will like it despite all that. We plan to market it as MacBook Nerfed.

— But you can't use "Nerfed", we'll run into a trademark dispute.

— Ah, well, you're right! Hey Claude, what generic lofty-sounding words start with "Ne"?

Do you know if the A series processor supports virtualization?

Price difference?

> The Apple on the lid isn’t shiny

This made me laugh. Thanks for the breakdown! (=

The Red Delicious of Macs.

> No keyboard backlighting

When was the last time Apple had a laptop without keyboard lighting?

> The Apple on the lid isn’t shiny

That’s been the case for 5+ years :)

> No camera notch

I'd consider this an upgrade. Does this mean we get screen real estate back from an abnormally-thick menu bar?

The notch is one of the most bizarre 'innovations' to ever come out of Apple.

Like designing a car you steer using your genitals to free up extra dash space then gaslighting everyone into thinking this is somehow better.

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

for pretty much half the price, though.

i mean, it's still early to judge (there is no review yet) but if it performs decently it's a death sentence for all the trashy 600$ laptop.

as somebody that has used both windows (at work), mac os (at work) and linux (at work and at home) the macbook neo could be an absolute steal of a laptop.

> * The Apple on the lid isn’t shiny

oh yeah, first world problems /s

like Neo from the Martix, it has only one interface port of real use.

"No keyboard backlighting" is a show-stopper. Nuts.

> Powered by A18 Pro

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A18

So this is basically running on a phone CPU

I got excited for a moment thinking it might have an M4 or M5 chip, that would've made it interesting to tinker around with Asahi Linux.

But now it mostly just reminds me of a netbook. Its cool for people on a budget though, good to see Apple not just being this overpriced premium brand that it once was.

The biggest drawback is no Thunderbolt. The biggest sell for Macs right now is the ability to daisy chain them with the new RDMA update. A used M1 Mac Mini is more valuable than this.