Discussion

gyomu: 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.

roblh: Yeah, not even having an upgrade to 16gb or more makes this dead on arrival for anyone doing real work. Bummer, since otherwise it looks great. I guess it'd be the same price as a macbook air after that upgrade anyways though, so it doesn't really matter.

scrivna: 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.

nicoburns: There are bunch of expensive components in a phone that aren't in this. The modem and camera system come to mind.

aosaigh: 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???

hyperhello: Neon, and also “fun for kids”.

elicash: The MacBook Neo starts at the same price as the new iPhone 17e!I think they should have branded the 17e the iPhone Neo.

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

retired: The Danish version has two years of warranty.

opjjf: $599, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB, *No* Touch ID$699, 8 GB RAM, 512 GB, Touch IDHonestly pretty fantastic product and price.This is clearly targeted towards education but I think I will happily replace by MacBook Air M1 with this :)

baal80spam: My thoughts as well.8GB is STILL perfectly fine for a starter notebook, casual browsing and light work. Noone is going to develop on this after all.Fantastic value for money.Honestly what I am (pleasantly) surprised by is the minijack.

epolanski: > Noone is going to develop on this after all.Because it doesn't have twice the ram. Otherwise it was a no brainer complementary machine, especially for users like me that work primarily on desktop and don't want to bring the much heavier macbook pro around. I've got both the m1 max and m3 max (16") and I absolutely hate carrying them around yet I have to, because even on vacations I may have to log and fix a bug in prod blocking the company so to me, weight is absolutely a primary factor for a notebook, and this would've been perfect at just twice the ram.

gyomu: Users like you have money and Apple wants them buying a MacBook Air for that use case :)

jitl: Besides the phone CPU, they’re using less apple custom silicon: MediaTek wifi/bluetooth, no cellular modem, generic 1080p camera.

dhuk_2018: Good question... I wonder if the 5G chipset adds significantly to the price? IP licensing?

hoppp: The price is fantastic but 8GB RAM feels like going backwards again, but oh well, ram shortage and beggars can't be chosers

pwthornton: I do wonder if the plan was originally at least 12 GB, but the RAMageddon foiled that.Although this is competing with PoS Chromebooks, which often don't have much ram (sometimes as low as 4 GB) and have slow CPUs.

geerlingguy: I still wish they would give back the 11" Air dimensions with Apple Silicon.IMO that form factor was perfect for a small, low end laptop, it just needed a more power efficient chip, and a screen with smaller bezels.

functionmouse: That's basically what this is, no?

wpm: That or the 12" Retina MacBook, which weighed 0.67 lbs less than the neo and Air do. And it does make a difference!It's disappointing they finally got the silicon for the "thin and light at all costs" form factor but gave up on the form factor. I just want my clipboard laptop back!

gyomu: A revival of the 12” MacBook would be amazing, but give it to me as a premium device - not an educational market positioning.I want a real M-series chip with RAM upgrades, an OLED display, etc.

dubeye: I'm typing this on an 8gb MacBook and Tahoe. it's mostly fine

hyperhello: You cannot express non-aligned opinions like that.

whizzter: 1: Education market 2: Avoiding cannibalizing their own products

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

jonpalmisc: I think it's purely a pricing & supply chain thing. Certain iPads have M-series chips in them, now certain MacBooks have A-series chips in them.Also, the chip used has no impact on the viability of merging macOS and iOS anyway.

ramgine: Hasn’t that been the discussion since the laptops/desktops went arm?

syntaxing: Yeah but macOS has never been ran on a “A” series chip before which makes it all more so interesting.

joakleaf: Technically, the Apple Developer Transition Kit Mac Mini from the Apple Silicon transition (just before the M1 release) ran on an A12Z.

weikju: The A18 Pro chip has 8B of ram and no option to change it.

stetrain: This is a 13" 16:9 screen. A little smaller than the current 13.6" 16:10 MacBook Air in display size but not really any more portable. Weight is the same as the 13.6" MacBook Air.

geon: 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?

mcphage: > Are they going to silently rename it in 6 months?Probably when they update it, if they decide to keep the product line going.

gyomu: You must not be doing much else then.My M1 8GB Air did great before Tahoe; even medium complexity Xcode projects ran fine on it with other apps running. Since I made the mistake of upgrading it to Tahoe, it’s too painful to work in those projects.

post_break: 13" is not 11" As someone who used their 11" for years, it was a workhorse. A slow workhorse, but I still yearn for that size.

gandalfgreybeer: > dead on arrival for anyone doing real workHonestly, we’re not the target market for this. I’m pretty sure at this price point though, it will sell like hotcakes. Once people get slightly into the ecosystem, it’s usually a big win for Apple since their stickiness is from my experience of people around me undeniable once you get one product

mschuster91: > 8GB is STILL perfectly fine for a starter notebook, casual browsing and light work. Noone is going to develop on this after all.Given the ridiculous speed of Apple's almost-on-the-SoC flash storage, 8GB is fine for basic development workloads.That's the tradeoff you get with soldered RAM and storage... you can't expand it, but the lack of sockets and shorter PCB trace paths gives a lot of headroom on what is essentially high-frequency analog signalling. The longer the traces the more latency, and the more sockets and vias, the more potential for interference.

gyomu: If by basic you mean running a simple Python script then sure; but try running Xcode + iPhone simulator (a basic development workload by Apple standards) with 8GB of RAM on Tahoe, and get ready for a lot of waiting and stutter.

mcphage: > but try running Xcode + iPhone simulator (a basic development workload by Apple standards) with 8GB of RAM on Tahoe, and get ready for a lot of waiting and stutterI don't think that's what this machine is designed for.

throwaway27448: It's a 13" and is ~2.5x as heavy.

avarun: 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.

showerst: Yesterday they came out with a five thousand dollar laptop with 128GB of ram. You can spend 20 grand on a mac studio. Companies can address different market segments.The software has taken a nose dive, but I don't think it's related. If anything, you'd think that selling lower spec machines would drive software improvements.

sublinear: 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.

ehutch79: Depends what you're developing. You could build a pretty powerful webapp as long as you don't fall into 'i need my blog running in kubernetes' trap.For a couple months I was on an 8gb m1 air, it was perfectly fine, even with docker containers. As long as i didn't launch teams....

Imustaskforhelp: This is the reason why I am not going to Tahoe. I have heard its very buggy at times and resource intensive.And I am quite happy with Sonama.

digikazi: 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.

raw_anon_1111: The problem with competing against Chromebooks is that Chromebooks + GSuite and Google’s managed offerings for schools.

cj: Is this the end of chromebooks?

afavour: IMO the biggest sell for Chromebooks in the education market (which is where they shine) is the software. It's a locked down OS with a cloud login that means when you encounter the slightest hardware issue you can swap out for another device seamlessly. macOS doesn't have anything comparable to that.

Imustaskforhelp: Atleast on Linux, I have been able to do almost everything in 8gb without any concern but I have the macbook air which has 16 gb and this can also do everything pretty much.So IMO in 8GB most types of coding is possible actually.But regarding Xcode+Iphone simulator, I am not sure if that's possible tho. It's possible to run android simulator on Linux 8 GB with waydroid while being pretty smooth. So theoretically could be possible but I am not familiar with building with Xcode/Iphone simulator.

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

pipeline_peak: Chromebook’s are like $200

Aaargh20318: The problem with a $200 laptop is that you get a laptop that's worth $200.

afavour: But a lot of Chromebooks are bought by school districts so the end user doesn't have a choice

janitor77swe: 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.

gbjw: Don't think it's 16:9, just lower PPI than the air -- Neo: 2408x1506, Air: 2560x1664.

Cthulhu_: [delayed]

podgietaru: I just want a colourful fun pro laptop :(

jitl: put a skin or case on ur favorite boring-colored pro laptop

elxr: Very tempting, but considering a macbook air m4 is often just $300-350 more, the 8GB or RAM feels like it's just enough of an asterisk to make this less of the value champion.I still really like it, but I'll probably wait for a discount.12 GB would've been amazing to have though, oh well.

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

areoform: 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?

AdamN: Generally the MacBook Air is incredible and what I generally recommend. If somebody is doing 'more' then it's the MBP. Now with the Neo I even have a recommendation for price sensitive people who may have otherwise gotten a cheap Windows device filled with crapware.I think these are all different markets - $1k seems like a small amount for the MBA but it's too much for quite a few people.

jen20: I was thinking yesterday while reading the Thinkpad repairability story that I would pay an unreasonable amount for basically this laptop in the chassis of an X220, with a 7 row keyboard and Mac touchpad.

Closi: The counter however is that lots of schools are on 365, which doesn’t work so well on a Chromebook but works great on a mac.

retired: I still remember when the Air lineup was all about being small and light.

xiphias2: It's a product category name at least, not a release name, so the next release can be Neo 2

iberator: you must be joking sir. those gonna be paperweight in 2 years. 16 is usable minimum for music making, grpahics and web browsing

snowwrestler: People habitually misunderstand this moment in Apple’s history. Jobs took a shredder to a complex product line of poorly selling products, produced by a company that was nearly bankrupt. That was the right thing to do at that time.Later when Apple was on sound financial footing, Jobs expanded the product line. That was the right thing to do at that time.With the Neo, Apple now offers 3 lines of laptops: Pro, Air, Neo. This is not substantially different from 2010 when Apple under Jobs offered 3 lines of laptops: MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air.

skydhash: > Noone is going to develop on this after all.Here I am, running OpenBSD on a 2019 Dell with 8th gen CPU. I'm currently using a bit less than 4GB of with 6GB as caches (for IO?). It's fine for a lot of progamming work (I have built kernel on this). 8GB is a good amount of RAM if you're not using bloated software.

sodality2: 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.

wiremine: This. My daughter is a high-school junior, and she's been asking for a laptop going into her senior year/college. This is exactly who Apple is going after.

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

alpaca128: I would first check the iPad + keyboard is actually lighter than the Macbook Air. As far as I know the keyboard weighs quite a bit, though coincidentally Apple's website doesn't specify the weight.

retired: Wow! Over 600 grams for the 11” Air keyboard. That is almost as much as a mechanical keyboard. I had no idea the total combination would be near a MacBook in weight.

onlyrealcuzzo: Because this is probably using a bunch of old parts that didn't get sold and are very cheap now (the a18 from last year's iPhones, etc).It also probably doesn't have a ~60% margin.

geon: If they plan to sell any volume, they can't rely on leftovers.

oarsinsync: Unless the "leftovers" in question are "leverover capacity on the previous process node that doesn't have pricing competition, so Apple's able to continue to demand all of the supply at their desired price point"

commandersaki: 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 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.

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

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

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

risingsubmarine: Would love to see an 11inch version of this.

lanthissa: in a competitive market they would have been unified a long time ago. google has been making slow steps at doing this apple wont until google does

jitl: all of apple’s devices with displays down to the watch run OS X with a form factor appropriate UI layer on top. iphone and mac are more unified than google’s android/chromeosTahoe made all the touch targets on macOS bigger, we may get a touch macbook pro this year.

lofaszvanitt: Well, Apple decimating competitors with this offering.

geerlingguy: 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...

soapdog: because all those prices are artificial, Apple is charging what they think they can get away with and also betting on making more money in the long run with subscriptions to iCloud and their other services.

pavlov: 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.

jkestner: Like the little buff 12” PowerBook https://www.macworld.com/article/225194/ode-to-the-12-inch-p...

NoSalt: 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.

icedchai: It seems fine for basic web browsing and office tasks: a youtube, facebook, or word doc machine. It's a "netbook" replacement, not for software development work.That being said, it seems like a good living room laptop.

elxr: It's perfectly capable for doing simple backend or webdev work too. Especially with a TUI editor, sqlite as a DB, and being disciplined enough to bookmark/close your browser tabs instead of leaving 150+ tabs open.I really wish they let you pay for RAM upgrades though. I like the colors way more than the macbook air, even though I know the air (or non-apple laptop) is what I should really be looking at.e

JSR_FDED: 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.

stefanfisk: I had the 11” dual core i7 and I wouldn’t even call it slow (for its time). Loved that little machine and I keep longing for that form factor but with modern specs.

pier25: > it's pretty easy for college students to justify this plus an iPadWhy would you want an iPad?The Neo can run iPad apps and it's small enough that it can be used in most situations where you'd typically use a tablet (bed, couch, etc).

sodality2: iPads are pretty common in education for the drawing capabilities. You can take notes by typing for most things, but when you get diagram/math heavy, you just cannot beat the pencil. I think it's probably pretty poor value of the small ability you gain to cost, relative to other things you could do (I like paper/pencil personally) but I see the use case, if limited.

pier25: This is not for "serious work". It's for users who spend most of their time in a browser and/or using lightweight apps.

Raed667: 8GB of ram places it in competition with cheap chromebooks but nothing more

Cthulhu_: That's a bit... uninformed, there are and historically have been plenty of non-chromebook laptops with 8 GB of memory in that price bracket (HP, Samsung, Lenovo, ASUS, etc).

wpsimon3: I used to use both...laptop for quick typing, and then the iPad for hand-written notes or annotation.The OneNote app sync is quick enough that I could type lecture notes on the laptop, and then quickly switch to the same document on my iPad to sketch out a diagram. It was overkill for sure, but very useful

basch: 300*500 kids is 150k and the difference between a school choosing chromebooks again. This is priced against the $450 Chromebook.

elxr: Agreed.This is really nice for schools.I really want this to work for me too, just because of those colors, but the RAM is really the only issue. Oh well, at least this forces every other budget laptop to compete harder.

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

pier25: Hasn't this been the case for most Apple laptops?

desireco42: 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.

jitl: M4 air to Neo is a huge downgrade, what’s the motivation?

beAbU: Shipping macOS on iPads will near instantly vanish a very large cohort of their macbook users.

pier25: So Apple is finally "admitting" an iPad is not the right device for certain users/situations.

gizajob: Yeah I’m pretty impressed by this, even though it’s essentially a rejigged iPad running MacOS.Touch ID is nice but I’m fairly sure if you have an Apple Watch then you don’t need Touch ID - the MacBook will unlock if you’re in proximity. I even have an 11inch MacBook Air 2011 that unlocks with the Apple Watch and that doesn’t have Touch ID either.As someone who started on a PowerBook G4 which was like some kind of unreachable holy grail with a base price of about £2500 (2002 pounds mind) this does make me happy.Would be nice to have a 12GB or a 16GB ram option even though typing Arts essays and talking to ChatGPT in a browser is never going to need that, and this is Apple’s new first step on their infernal pricing ladder.Citrus looks cute. Might treat myself.The pink “Blush” colour is going to sell like hot cakes to the Legally Blonde crowd this upcoming fall semester.

jen20: This largely shows how far standards have fallen - it’s not that long ago that 8 gigabytes of RAM was unthinkable in a desktop class machine - much less one that cost nothing once inflation was taken into account. It required buying an E10K style machine for tens to hundreds of thousands to get 64GB. And all of those hardware gains have been squandered by the electron people.That said, we are where we are - I wouldn’t buy a machine with only 8GB for any purpose at this point.

jonhohle: > the electron people“If you see anybody [building electron apps] in a restaurant, at a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere!” - a reasonable person, probablyHow anyone could think their chat app or text editor should be able to bring a 32GB 8-core machine to a crawl is beyond me. I can have about 200 browser tabs open, but one discord chat open in the background and I’m stuttering. It’s offensive.

lateforwork: 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 Asus, 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 had 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...

timpera: I absolutely love my ARM64 Surface Laptop, it definitely matches the MacBook Air's quality, but yeah, there's no way it is competitive with the new Neo offering from Apple. I hope this leads to a general decrease in price for laptops, but with the RAM crunch I don't see that happening…

dubeye: It chugs if I launch a node server yes but that's an outlying use case for an 8gb air.AI is so good these days I am using the laptop for quick changes more often, as I just push every change. I rarely need to fiddle. The general experience of using my desktop and laptop are converging.

jpc0: Let me ensure I understand you.Running a node.js server on Tahoe makes your macbook sluggish and you feel like Tahoe is fine performance wise?May I reminded you that 10 years ago people also ran chrome and node js webservers and this was not a problem in any way with 8GB of ram.

ToucanLoucan: I mean at this point with the latest ones, an iPad Pro with it's keyboard/trackpad accessory and a pencil could probably manage both for you pretty damn well.I just wish they'd let us run MacOS on iPads.

wpsimon3: That's fair...actually totally slipped my mind that today this would be much more feasible to do on a single device.

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

functionmouse: 599usd == 514eur

ErneX: These start at 699€, at least here, VAT included.

rjrjrjrj: They sell hundreds of millions of iPhones every year. The iPhone installed base is in the billions.I think there are many users who will be interested in an inexpensive laptop that neatly integrates with their iPhone. Same as there were many users who were interested in Airpods and a Watch.

NietTim: This is not primarily competing with the surface line of laptops, this is mostly competing with chromebooks which dominate schools. That's a completely different segment of devices.

reacharavindh: 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 :-)

compounding_it: Forget people, id like to see Apple themselves optimise the macOS experience for 8gb Ram. The M1 Air base should ideally be useful until the MacBook Neo loses macOS updates. So 6+6 years at least. But we all know M1 Air will lose updates in a couple of years maybe because Apple doesn't want us to keep using old hardware even if it's similar to new hardware.

Razengan: I used a MacBook Air with M2 and 8GB for a year, it was fine. Worked on Xcode/Pixelmator/GarageBand and a 100 Safari tabs all at once. Even ran WoW and League of Legends etc just fine, hell even Baldur's Gate 3 if I'm not misremembering.

compounding_it: I was able to do all this on the M1 maybe 2 years ago. On Tahoe, everything is just awful.

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

functionmouse: it's roughly the same physical size, just smaller bezels so bigger screen.

g947o: > The Neo can run iPad appsIn theory yes, but in reality barely any developer (at least the mainstream ones) make their app available on MacOS, and nobody enjoys interacting with a touch-screen optimized app with mouse/trackpad

Cthulhu_: That's an odd choice (for said developers), given in most cases it's a matter of checking a box. The second half of your comment is a generalization though.

jpc0: Just not having a Celeron level chip is worth the difference...Windows update on a Celeron chip makes it 100% utilisation with full boost.I would actually rather but an Android phone than a laptop with a Celeron chip for the same price.

pier25: The Neo is definitely a response to Chromebooks. Apple bet on the iPad for the education market and lost that bet for obvious reasons. This was already obvious 10 years ago when I was working in edtech.They've totally lost the plot with iPads IMO. It's a fantastic device to consume media, gaming, and some niche areas like drawing... but other than that?

elxr: It used to feel way better, that's the issue.Tahoe is a massive regression in my personal experience (16GB here). So many random bugs and menu bar pop-up slowdowns (how is the system menu bar this unresponsive?).Spotlight has gotten so bad, I can literally count the time it takes between typing the app name and the result showing up in the dropdown. Ended up switching Spotlight to Tuna.

gyomu: Oh my god, yes. Spotlight on Tahoe is a joke. Why will it so often not display any results at all, even for system apps like Safari or Terminal? You’d think those would be in an always available cache guaranteed to always show up instantly? So many questions.

elxr: > Why will it so often not display any results at all, even for system apps like Safari or Terminal?I've experienced this too, even after giving spotlight multiple shots months apart. For your sanity, I say just stop using spotlight. Don't let Apple steal your valuable waking hours with their crap QA.

Citizen_Lame: Thread’s been hijacked by Apple simps and Linux command-line purists, all trying to outdo each other in a kind of poverty Olympics. 8GB or RAM is not fine, and if it is you don't need laptop.

pjmlp: Not really, because Surface isn't what most folks buying PCs get.And those prices don't compute in many European countries, Africa, and most likely other regions as well.

amar0c: 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.

zeptonix: 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...

serf: 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..

ferguess_k: Do you think the RAM is too weak while the CPU is too strong for the use case? Like, with just 8GB RAM it can't do much that needs that kind of CPU. And with the same price point I can easily get a refurbished 16/32GB Dell mobile workstation -- which I admit won't last as long as a Macbook, but 8GB is only enough for light usage, which could just use a much older and maybe cheaper CPU.*Edit*: just read about education discount, so yeah, $499 or lower is more competitive.

kstrauser: My sibling comment was right about nvme swap. It wouldn’t be excellent for a dev-heavy workflow, but for the kinds of things you might use an iPad for, the target market of this won’t notice much of a difference.But this is going to be vastly more pleasant ergonomically than a Dell mobile workstation refurb. On paper, a Cybertruck has better specs than an old Miata, but I know which would be more fun to zip around in.

Applejinx: I'm a Reaper user, and I'm Chris from Airwindows. If you run with my standalone Apple Silicon plugins on these there is essentially no limit to what you can get done in music making. The track counts are gonna be impossibly high: we're generations away from that being a bottleneck, or from struggling with modern graphics scenarios in the sense of 'artist work'.Maybe if you mean running local diffusion models? Surely that's all being done with agents now, like off base Mac Minis which this competes directly with. Maybe web browsing is too much for it, but that is such an indictment…

kccqzy: > it uses 150% scaling (as opposed to the ideal 200%) which means you have subtle display artifactsI agree with you, but I’m afraid Apple doesn’t agree with us. The recent MacBooks do not use 200% scaling out of the box anymore. It is a setting that only needs use. I have no reason to believe that out of the box the default settings on this MacBook Neo will use 200% scaling either.

free_bip: I'm not sure that's true given that Chromebooks can be had for one third the price.

ViktorRay: Some of the new HP laptops are pretty well designed and have reasonable prices.

nolist_policy: Thankfully you don't have that problem with ChromeOS.

ferguess_k: Yeah I think there are a couple of advantages of a Macbook versus a Dell mobile workstation. it is definitely lighter and more pleasant got general use. I'm only concerned that modern apps usually take amount of RAMs that are close to or north of 500MB, so if you have say a word processor plus 10+ Chrome tabs you quickly run out of RAMs (I tend to have way more on my personal gig but I'm a developer). But maybe swapping is not a big issue on the Mac as both comments said.

kstrauser: Chrome’s kind of a hog. I wouldn’t think twice about having Pages and dozens of Safari tabs open side by side on an iPad. I’m confident this could zoom through the same workload.

adrr: It needs a touch screen for elementary schools kids. Fine for older kids.

wilsonnb3: The surface laptop is a competitor to the MacBook Air, the cheaper Surface Laptop Go was the low cost attempt from MS.Also, there are plenty of good laptops from HP, Asus, Lenovo, Acer, and others, the market is not that dire.

runjake: This doesn't compete with Chromebooks in schools at all.- Chromebooks in EDU cost approximately $290 (+- $10) per unit.- The Neo costs $499 per unit for schools.- For the cost of 10 Neos, I can buy 17 Chromebooks. Yes, this is a numbers game. The goal is every student has a device.- Schools using Chromebooks to log in. If you want reliable Google logins on macOS, you have an additional big spend up front, along with per-seat licensing costs.- This doesn't even factor in MDM and app cost comparisons.

apparent: Not my M2 MBA. Which ones are you thinking of?

hsnewman: Will it run linux?

comboy: 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).

big-and-small: Dont bother. Even when works iPhone mirroring is unreliable and buggy experience, often asks to unlock iPhone again and sync gets broken at random and you have to go over enabling it again even though phone was next to the Mac mini all the time.One of the worst supported features Apple has shipped. Idea was good though.

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

kunai: It's a much better QOL thing I've found to just ssh into a remote Linux box from a Mac. The BSD stuff on macOS isn't bad at all, just an adjustment... and homebrew lets you get your environment however you'd like.I am curious how long Apple is going to continue to support XQuartz though. There seems to be no equivalent wayland project.

WhyNotHugo: A terminal isn’t enough for everything, especially developers. I use lots of windows at the same time and plenty of non-terminal applications.When forced to use macOS, a Linux VM provides a very convenient experience.

NoLinkToMe: They already have! It's essentially what you wished for.Below respectively 11 inch MBA vs NEO in cm - Height: 1.7 vs 1.27 (thickest point) - Width: 30 vs 29.75 - Depth: 19.2 vs 20.65 - Weight: 1.08 vs 1.23 11 inch was thicker and wider, neo is longer and heavier. But more or less the same form factor.But you get 1.4 inches extra in screen size due to slimmer bezels, double storage, double pixel density, double ram, almost double battery life and a LOT more CPU, for half the price (even before adjusting for inflation, leading to a further discount).Only thing they didn't do was keep the taper model, but I think that's a smart move even if it made for a fantastic picture at the time.

throawayonthe: most of us mere mortals are using bloated software :)

skydhash: In the workplace, it does not matter as it’s not your device anyway (or buy something powerful if it’s a consultancy). For most utilitarian uses, you only have to endure a few.But I would expect you have more choice if it’s a personal computer, including paying the additional cost in memory and performance if the final choice is bloated software.

jjtheblunt: the surface laptop has an excellent screen (2880x1920 i believe), and the macbook neo is lower resolution than apple's made in years, however.

kunai: Well the costs had to be cut somewhere. At least they put a headphone jack in it, so they're doing better than Microsoft on that front (who inexplicably removed it from the SP line)

et-al: Hey, it took courage to remove that headphone jack.https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/07/courage/

cmovq: > it uses 150% scaling (as opposed to the ideal 200%) which means you have subtle display artifacts200% is ideal but unlike macOS, scaling on Windows has gotten really good. I use 150% on a 4K monitor and it works well.

joewhale: compatable with polishing cloth https://x.com/aaronp613/status/2029206219802722595?s=46Apple is second to none in supporting legacy products.

crazygringo: > id like to see Apple themselves optimise the macOS experience for 8gb Ram.How is it not already? MBAs with 8 GB of RAM run great. Macs are incredibly good with memory management.

bzzzt: That's right. It's not the native Apple apps that are the problem. Safari, iWork, Logic, even Final Cut run perfectly fine in 8Gb if you adjust your expectations (if you want to process 8K video you probably need more).It's third-party apps like Chrome or Teams that eat gigabytes.

pooortal: Yes Chrome easily eats up 5+ gb ram when having the azure admin portal open in a tab. Whose fault is that though?

cozzyd: why wouldn't it be? I'm running real OSs on ancient TI ARM chips that are probably 50 times slower.

dmonitor: What about color quality? I've used high resolution laptops with shitty washed out colors, but one thing I've always appreciated about Apple's displays is their vibrance.

mohsen1: $499 for education which a lot of target group would qualify.A friend has M1 with 8GB of RAM (the old design!) and she's perfectly happy about it still. Bought it in ~~2019~~ 2020!

pwthornton: $499 for general educational discount, but I am betting that school districts will get volume discounts above that. It's going to be very price-competitive.

adgjlsfhk1: I doubt schools will be getting this much cheaper. This is already a really aggressively priced product.

Imustaskforhelp: These are probably gonna have a decent resell value. Macbook products have a very higher resell value compared to say chromebooks/normal laptops.I can imagine schools buying them for their students and then taking them after the semester is over and then giving to next but also reselling it at a very nice value if they might want the next line of product at a decent price.Also this not only applies to school but normal people who buy the Macbook Neo too

wilsonnb3: My understanding is that students are very hard on school provided laptops, I don’t think many of them that have been in use for a year will be in good resale condition.

Imustaskforhelp: My mother is a teacher and the idea there is that if students break/damage the school provided (tablets in that case), the students have to pay the fine.And even after that, yes, children are absolutely hard on their tablets I agree but they operate and the resale value of those could be decent aside from a very few IMO. There is a way to create a culture of preservation or atleast steer things that way but yeah I agree it can be hard.

mpweiher: NeXT reportedly used to have all their developers on the entry level 8MB NeXTStations.With builds running on big build servers.

elzbardico: 8Gb mac os runs great for the vast majority of people. You can even do some light development on it.

sgt: I'm on a MacBook Pro (M2 Pro) with only 16GB RAM. I mean, I'm running 4 different JetBrains IDE's, 3-4 docker containers, Chrome, Mail, terminals, and a bunch of other stuff and it's never laggy (almost feels like magic coming from Intel to Apple Silicon).

kccqzy: Most MacBook Pros. Examples: https://support.apple.com/en-us/111955 https://support.apple.com/en-us/112586 https://support.apple.com/en-us/111946

apparent: Ah cool, my memory of laptop headphone jack placement doesn't go back that far. Anything before the butterfly keyboards is just a blur...

manwe150: I think macOS applications feel like they have mostly updated to use the native resolution, so arbitrary scaling works great now. My comparative experience with a new Windows laptop is how I remember macOS felt when they first made high density screens many years ago: lots of render bugs all over, and every program has to be re-opened when I plug in an external screen to be usable at the new resolution

kccqzy: Most macOS applications now support rendering at 1x and 2x. And arbitrary scaling is done by the OS not by apps.

NietTim: So what segment does it target in your opinion? The "surface" market is minuscule and compared to the edu market irrelevant, the "vendor lock in" angle with the google logins can easily change over night as it did with microsoft.

post-it: We started using computers with keyboards in class in grade 2-3.

elzbardico: Please use the correct names, despite whatever apple says.It's Mac OS Vista. This is the proper name for this abomination Apple calls Tahoe.

cozzyd: with 8 GB of RAM?

nolist_policy: A Chromebook with 8gb ram and stock ChromeOS runs the Linux Dev VM perfectly fine while having 100+ chrome tabs open.

transcriptase: “The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry.”

thewebguyd: That's what happens when we collectively stop making optimized, native apps and just go "eh, javascript is good enough for everything" and make everything using electron.The common complaint in this thread about the 8GB of RAM is "But chrome..." well I think I see the problem then.That's why I try to support native whenever I can. Even if a web app might do something better, I'd rather pay for a native app from an indie dev when I can than have yet another chrome tab I have to have open all the time.macOS at least still has somewhat of a native-app first culture and dev base, so I try to support it when I can.

butILoveLife: 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..

NoLinkToMe: Seems like a strange take. It wasn't per se a luxury brand, it catered to providing cutting edge consumer technology. That's still the case. Which company makes better phones, laptops, tablets, headphones, smart watches and consumer software?The fact it stood for quality doesn't mean you can't keep offering quality at lower budget and lower spec levels, while still pushing high-budget and high-spec levels. In fact it seems very succesful in doing so and keeps capturing more of the market.You could say there is limited growth in the hardware (total pie), and that there is are increasingly smaller shares of the market share pie left to conquer. And that's mostly true.But Apple has built out its Services business, from $12b in 2012 to $110b last year. That $110b revenue is more than Tesla's revenue, and that has a market cap of $1.2 trillion. And unlike hardware, services (i.e. software) are extremely high-margin. It's estimated that $110b revenue constitutes something like $80b in gross margin, whereas Tesla's $100b revenue lead to <$17b in gross margin, and just 3.8b in net profit.A push into budget offerings increases users and scales service revenue, a high-margin and fast growing business. Apple has been a tremendous success. I won't make predictions of the future but its push for affordable devices was a strategic win, to the contrary of your point.

CryptoBanker: They tricked you. $40&#x2F;month over two years is still $960 - definitely still luxury.

prepend: My daily laptop is a 2017 MacBook Air with intel and 8GB. Web browsing, finance, and civilization 5.These things will be running in 5-10 years.

grvbck: My 2010 Macbook Pro with 8GB works still. Not a daily driver anymore, but Word, Excel, Lightroom, Garageband, MainStage etc work just fine. Youtube videos up to 1080p play without stuttering in Floorp. It's not quick, but it is useable.

rk06: all apple needs, to kill surface laptops entirely, is to enable windows to run on m series laptops without issues.I don't know why the downvotes, maybe someone can chime in if there is more to surface laptop? because i am using one laptop, and much prefer to use windows on M4 macbook pro instead.

rbanffy: I’m not sure that many people want Windows badly enough they would get an Apple device and remove the original OS so they could run Windows.From my personal experience, Widows users in general don’t mind Windows, but, definitely, nobody I have ever met finds it more desirable than macOS.

Sir_Twist: [delayed]

rancar2: 8GB RAM means bye-bye Electron apps and Chrome running at the same time.

elzbardico: No. It doesn't. Mac OS runs fine for this with 8GB

heraldgeezer: >Other than Microsoft nobody even makes decent laptops in the Windows worldThinkpads.Or in general any business laptop, like HP Elitebook or Dell Presicion.But they are not cheap at all hahaIf you want performace get a desktop!

MBCook: 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.

jawns: I'd probably go for a $50 Yubikey over a $100 Touch ID upgrade.

runjake: > So what segment does it target in your opinion?- Low end consumer- College students- People who have a desktop computer, but want a cheap portable for on-the-go.> The "surface" market is minusculeProbably so, but then again, I see a lot of Surface devices out and about and they are fairly popular with non-teacher education staff. While they aren't competing with Chromebooks or Apple on volume, I'd bet they're doing well.

anentropic: 8GB RAM is fine for thesetopping out at 512GB storage is lame though

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

wpm: Somewhere on my list of projects is "Gut a 12" Powerbook and put the guts of a modern M series Macbook in it". The chassis is so spacious and the Macbook Air logic boards are so small, physics is not going to be a problem. Just hooking up screens, the keyboard and trackpad (using the original, natch), and ports.

blazarquasar: Surface Laptop is 1099€ vs 699€ for the Macbook Neo in Germany.Macbook Neo is also 219ppi vs Surface Laptop at 178ppi. We’ll see about performance, but i’d expect the macbook to be on par or better.

pjmlp: Except most Germans don't buy Surface Laptops, and there are much cheaper options with 8 GB, naturally they lack a glowing apple to show off at Starbucks.

hbn: If they want to get these things into schools it would be insane to expect the schools to also supply everyone with AirPods or some other kind of wireless headphones.

lm28469: I saw this today: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;KidsAreFuckingStupid&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1rk3t...If apple products are even a tiny bit more durable I wouldn't be surprise if it's more cost effective to switch to the neo for a lot of institutions

prcrstntr: I don't think institutions will care much about the enhanced durability since they treat laptops as disposable units anyway. Apple can only complete if they provide bulk deals which bring the overall cost in line with chromebooks.

Kuyawa: 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.

lysace: I mean, I agree.This 3m49s "Hello, MacBook Neo" video is so insanely well done.https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=u3SIKAmPXY4

rbanffy: That’s the ideal. Apps shouldn’t concern themselves with pixels. It’s the OSs job to know the hardware the machine uses.

blahgeek: 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?

tiffanyh: Product Positioning...Apple is doing everything they can to ensure it doesn't appear as a premium product.A decade ago, they had the 12" MacBook (not Air, just "MacBook") it it felt super premium because it was lighter and smaller than any Air&#x2F;Pro ... and used by executives (because it targeted that use case).By having this product:- called "Neo"- thicker- as heavy- limiting RAMAnd marketing this towards kids and lower grades, they are avoiding any mistaking this product as premium.

inetknght: Where are we going? Thin-clients? No thanks.

nkotov: 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&#x2F;lock into the Apple ecosystem. 8 GB is the only issue I have but everything else is such a good compromise for the price.

mft_: It would be sensible&#x2F;wonderful for Apple to release a deliberately lighter version of MacOS for these laptops; but their intransigence and (e.g.) willingness to hold the iPad’s OS back year after year suggests they won’t.

happyopossum: > willingness to hold the iPad’s OS backSheesh - in iPadOS you’ve got multitasking, multitouch, full windowing support, external input and monitors, and a ridiculously accurate pen. If that’s holding back, what exactly are you looking for?I’d still argue a device that size works better with just split screen than the new windowing, but other than the walled garden approach it does pretty much everything today that us techies have been whining about.

grvbck: > what exactly are you looking for?File management that doesn't suck, incl. better handling of external drives.

whizzter: 16gb is plenty, an intern we had ran a M1 Mac with 8gb of memory and running a browser concurrently with Figma made everything slow down to the point where he went around asking for advice.

jurmous: For those wondering: Geekbench CPU single&#x2F;multi and GPU Metal scores.- M1: 2,347 &#x2F; 8,342 &#x2F; 32,377- M2: 2,587 &#x2F; 9,669 &#x2F; 44,712- A18Pro: 3,539 &#x2F; 8,772 &#x2F; 32,288So Neo is really comparable with the M1, although it has quite faster in single core speed.

adithyassekhar: A18 Pro is generations ahead of M1 and M2 on single thread if these scores are true. Are you saying we had this incredibly overpowered silicon shipped on millions of Instagram machines?I'm physically hurting at the amount of processing power we wasted. Atleast Apple did the right thing here.

jzymbaluk: Yea the iphone chips are hilariously overpowered for what most people use them for

adithyassekhar: It's even worse, the os is too restricted for doing anything more.

kstrauser: I don’t ever wanna hear a word about how my iPad Pro isn’t good enough to run macOS, so that’s why Apple won’t let me have a Terminal.app on it.

jeroenhd: Apple isn't good enough at software design to make macOS work on touch screens. Plus, they don't want to compete with themselves. Why sell an iPad running macOS when they can sell you a Macbook and an iPad instead?

kstrauser: Because now, at this price, there’s not a situation where I’d buy an iPad Pro over this. Although it’s marketed as a “pro”, device, a keyboard plus professional apps minus a touch screen is more pro than the same device minus keyboard minus apps plus touch screen.

post-it: > If you want performace get a desktop!Or a MacBook, which is part OP's point. Apple is delivering quality at price points that Windows OEMs aren't (which is sort of the opposite of the phone world).

thefounder: 8gb of ram is not performance.

pdpi: The baseline mini costs $499, so it seems to be going strong.

Someone: [delayed]

bxparks: Yup. The MBA11 is probably my favorite laptop of all time. It's my daily driver. I have 4 of those now, running MacOS and Linux Mint.I was really hoping for the Neo to be more like the MBA11.

mikepurvis: I have the Lenovo X1 and I'm very happy with it, though obviously that's in a very different price category than the Yoga, Surface, or Macbook Neo.On the other hand, more money doesn't always mean better computer. I had a Dell XPS 9570 at a previous gig that had a lot of issues: coil whine, bad camera placement, terrible thermals, etc.

lostlogin: > TeamsYou’re already sad if your using Teams, suffering is part the experience.Last week I met someone who likes Teams. That’s a first for me.

odo1242: This leads to visible moire patterns at non-integer scalings, though

NearAP: I think the 2 laptops you mentioned are targeting different markets.The Surface Laptop you linked to is - 16GB of RAM and 512GB of Storage (no 8GB of RAM option)The $599 Mac Neo is 8GB of RAM and 256GB of Storage. It doesn't have a 16GB RAM option but a 512GB storage option is $699.8GB RAM seems to me to be targeting folks who don't run a lot of local apps or multiple big apps

carlosjobim: Nobody except people on HN cares about RAM. People care about what you can actually do with the machine. The spec numbers are nothing more than numbers when a computer never works as it is supposed to. It's like having a 500HP car, but it can actually not drive.

Bluecobra: I literally just ran into this myself with my spouse. She is ready to upgrade her M1 MacBook Air and thinks she doesn’t need more RAM because everything is “in the cloud”. Hopefully 8GB is enough RAM for the next 5 years or so...

etempleton: I still have the M1 Macbook Air 8 GB and it works great as a travel laptop. It feels fast. Obviously it has its limits. I am not trying to do heavy workloads on it. But it is an incredible device. The Macbook Neo should essentially be the same speed in multicore performance and slightly faster in single core.

aaronbrethorst: 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.

reenorap: How is this different from Macbook Air?

pdpi: For a bit over half the price of the Air, you get the iPhone 16 Pro SoC (minus one GPU core, so somewhere between the 16 and 16 Pro, actually) in a laptop chassis that's all around a bit less premium than the Air.

benterix: > Nobody except people on HN cares about RAM.They might not care but they do call us saying "Oh you are good with computers, why is my computer so slow?"

carlosjobim: Tell them to buy a Mac and they'll never have to call for tech support again.

rcarr: 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...

graypegg: IIRC, iOS was forked from macOS (well... OSX), and they share a lot of internals. I think they could probably start up finder alongside springboard with some tweaking... but they'd much rather sell you an iPad AND a Mac!

hbn: When Jobs announced the iPhone in 2007 he said it was running OSX but what that actually means is anybody's guess. iOS is closer to macOS in functionality today than the iPhone's first OS.I personally liked iOS and macOS being separate things because making a desktop OS also work on a touchscreen has wider implications than it sounds. That's why these days everything in Windows is blown up like Fisher Price software and way bigger than necessary for a mouse cursor. Seems like that's the direction Apple is headed in anyway with Tahoe.

dmitrygr: Mobile devices, to give you good battery life, operate in a “race to sleep” mode. Good performance is necessary not to compute a lot of things, but to finish your computation quickly and shut down the power hungry processors. So do not worry, the performance is not being left on the table. It is there so that your phone lasts throughout the day.

rbanffy: > they lack a glowing apple to show off at Starbucks.If your MacBook has a glowing apple, you might be running Snow Leopard. You need to upgrade like now.

pjmlp: Thankfully I don't own any, I rather have computers with replaceable parts, more environment friendly, thus not something I need to worry about.

lotsofpulp: For starters, no royalties to pay Qualcomm.

askonomm: Don't the new iPhones have Apple's own modem in them?

Eric_WVGG: “hardware is slower” single core is significantly faster than the M2 Ultra chip. And when you're browsing the web, single core is all that matters.

raw_anon_1111: This is 2026. iPhones use standard USB C headphones, you can charge your phone at the same time while using your wired headphones using MagSafe and you can even by low end $59 Beats Flex headphones that have all of the Apple magic.I’m going to need HN geeks to get over analog headphones from the 60s

jonhohle: Not just durability, but ergonomics. My kids have crappy screens, literally the worst trackpad I’ve ever used, and awful keys that hurt my hands minutes after typing (but I go all day on my personal computer).If schools are found to be neglecting a minimum standard of care by subjecting kids to hardware that causes long term physical issues, they would have wished they would spend a little more (it amortizes to about $20&#x2F;student year difference the way our school district does it).

badc0ffee: What are the weight measurements? kg?

manacit: Yes, that's in kg

ben7799: The only problem with Chromebooks and the whole Google educational toolchain is it ruins school!My kid is on it, every kid hates it and every teacher hates it. You just can't argue with the pricing. I'm amazed at how bad everything seems to old fashioned paper text books.Every time I help my son I'm amazed how bad it all is. Horrible tiny screen that looks like is from 2000 and then the software is all designed for some Googler who has 2x 30" 5k displays. The usability is atrocious.

nolist_policy: A Chromebook at the same price point will get you similar if not better specs, 14" 16:10 FHD IPS display, convertible with touchscreen and pen input, backlit keyboard and 10h+ battery runtime.

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

markstos: Press release touts "built with the environment mind", but is silent on repairability.Also this week: Lenovo's new ThinkPads score 10&#x2F;10 for repairability showing that even popular modules of mainstream manufacturers can build with repairability in mind.https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ifixit.com&#x2F;News&#x2F;115827&#x2F;new-thinkpads-score-perfe...Apple I imagine is still soldering their storage and memory to the motherboard.

kube-system: Non-Socketed memory and storage is more of an upgrade friendly feature rather than a repairability feature. They don’t often fail. And most people do not attempt to upgrade their devices anyway, especially the type of people who are not power users, and are buying low end devices. For most people, upgrades are no longer a purchasing consideration, and they will buy the laptop that’s five dollars cheaper and has more attractive packaging.And no, Apple is not soldering memory to the main board on most of their computers these days. All of the M series computers have the memory on package with the CPU, because there are latency issues with putting it any further away.There are no socketed standards for LPDDR anyway.

odo1242: Socketed RAM is fine, but what do you mean by storage doesn’t fail often? It’s usually the first part that fails on any computer.

kube-system: Not since we got rid of spinning rust. Most common failures are batteries, and the parts of the computer subject to direct abuse by the user: keyboard, connectors, the display, etc.NAND is the first piece of silicon that’s gonna go bad, but silicon parts are the last thing to die in a laptop.

rbanffy: I agree. 8GB is enough for simple development tasks. You’ll start to suffer if you have too many documents open in Chrome or start running middleware and other services on your laptop. For that I recommend at least 16GB and, in the case of Apple’s inexpandable memory, ideally more. Remember the laptop will keep working for a decade.

cbm-vic-20: egacs: Eight Gigs And Constantly Swapping

jen20: Not to disagree too much with your assessment, one point stands out:> The Neo costs $499 per unit for schools.We don't actually know this. It does at the level individual student purchasing themselves, but I'd imagine there is a substantial bulk discount for educational establishments. That is not a new trend for Apple, it dates back to the Apple II.

ultropolis: Hip kids were doing bad type since Photoshop 3&#x2F;illustrator* gave them the ability to do so. Apple boldly ignored their fanbase and did type right.I don't want kids who think [incompetent] typography is hip designing my laptop, even if they use said laptop. Good type on Apple marketing says "don't worry, we hire boring people to do make your computer work". This looks like incompetence on the part of some designer IMO.Also: if Apple wants the hip kids to know they are being marketed to, they just show a picture of a hip kid using their computer to do trashy type.* I didn't mention any page layout programs on purpose.

GeekyBear: The build quality of a $300 Chromebook is laughable.

internet2000: Not just Microsoft. Dell and HP must be having emergency meetings right about now...

threatofrain: This is not competing against Chromebooks, which have very little reach outside of institutions. The Macbook Neo will likely have very widespread appeal for anyone looking for what used to be a netbook.

monegator: 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)

guax: For NL €699 and €799 (512Gb) at apple store. Will likely only be closer to 600 at big stores that do discounts.

akdev1l: MacOS is crazy efficient and can overcommit quite a lot.I used an M1 Pro for a couple years to work. 8GB of ram but routinely using 12GB including swap.Now, I couldn’t keep slack and outlook open so there were limitations but I was able to work. People are underestimating the usefulness of 8GB of RAM.I guess it is also worth saying that I do my work by connecting to a remote server where I do the actual development and everything else. The Mac itself being a web browser and ssh machine

MrDrMcCoy: Not being able to keep Slack and Outlook open at the same time seems like a pretty significant productivity hindrance to me. 8GB RAM is truly pathetic in 2022.

windowsrookie: macOS has been running on A series chips since the beginning of the transition to Apple Silicon. The original developer Macs had an "A12Z" CPU.https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Developer_Transition_Kit

rcarr: TIL, very cool!

quesera: Single thread performance is 50% faster, which is more important for most ordinary tasks.

thatwasunusual: > Apple doesn't want us to keep using old hardware even if it's similar to new hardware.I'm not disagreeing with you, but is this a fact, i.e. has it been proved?

wiseowise: That’s great, maybe someone will finally start optimizing their shitware.

jazzyjackson: Have iPads really replaced paper in college? I haven’t been on campus in a decade so I wouldn’t know

vikramkr: I haven't been on campus in a few years but even then paper was basically absent on campus. A class where a professor wouldn't allow tablets or laptops to take notes would be an aberration and a PITA. I remember I had to write like a paper check once and I had to physically go buy a pen since neither I nor anyone around me had a regular writing utensil on hand.The exception was when people were taking orgo or a diagram heavy class. For that semester not everyone would have a tablet and some people would have pens and pencils. Or writing classes that still required a handwritten essay for the final exam

densh: 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&#x2F;M5 chip with more ram that's completely wasted due to needless OS restrictions.

wiseowise: Your “failure” is billions of dollars to them.

Schiendelman: Do you actually have a problem with Slack and Outlook open at the same time on an Apple Silicon Mac with 8GB of memory? Or are you assuming?

MrDrMcCoy: I was replying to someone that made that claim from apparent experience.

lateforwork: Their challenge is, how do we halve the price and yet deliver twice the quality? I think they are going to realize they can't. Some of them will left the market.

SunshineTheCat: This is really well put.It's interesting, for years I have been trying to make my iPad a nice, slim laptop I could bring with me everywhere for lighter&#x2F;coding specific tasks. I've gone through several keyboards trying to make this work. It never has.Now with this laptop, I can do exactly this, while being cheaper than what I've been attempting to do with an iPad.

NoLinkToMe: Only if you want to take notes with a pen and prefer digital over paper. For me that's terrible, but some kids swear by it. I think if I grew up on it, it'd be different.Homework for things like algebra and later calculus definitely is interesting to do on an iPad, as the ratio of time spent thinking:writing is high while you're learning.But pure notetaking where the thinking:writing ratio is very low? I'd much prefer to type than write on a screen.

bwv848: That's a lot of money for a small amount of use cases, get a $70 Wacom.

pants2: Can't imagine what one needs more than 16GB for unless it's local LLMs. I regularly do front end dev while I'm editing 10-bit 4K60 footage in Da Vinci Resolve, runs smooth as butter.

humanperhaps: While I agree with you, I think it's important to note that MacOS does swap to disk quite often, even on 16 GB. While it's rarely noticeable due to how fast the internal SSDs are, it still leads to some degree of SSD wear (and disk i&#x2F;o usage) that could be avoided with additional RAM. I can't imagine this leading to drive failure considering how long the lifespans of SSDs are though.

GeekyBear: Microsoft's build quality is largely equivalent, but the press has already noticed that the value proposition at Microsoft is now lacking.> Apple's newest MacBook is an impressive play for affordability, right as the Surface line is looking expensive and out of touch.https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pcworld.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;3077961

hightrix: It really isn’t. The track pad on surface is terrible compared to Mac. The surface has some weird edges and other spots to get caught on. I’ve seen a few with serious damage from typical daily use. The surface I have is barely hanging together, the charger is extremely finicky and will stop charging randomly. It takes effort to get the charger to “sit” in the slot and make contact.That said, my surface is pretty old so maybe some of these design flaws have been fixed.But from my experience, the build quality of the MacBook is in a different league than the surface.

dijit: telling that this is flagged 1 minute into submission.Microsoft hardware was in the premium tier for sure (and continues to be: relative to others), but these days nearly all the OEMs have pretty bad warts across the line-up, even the surface books, even the new ARM ones (which are quite good).For work I have a Thinkpad T14S (ARM also) and it is a better quality notebook than the Surface book others in my organisation have (those feel like a 95%-ish imitation of Macbooks, the only variations being strict downgrades in their respective areas).So I'd push back on the idea that nobody is making good Windows computers, but it seems to be fewer and fewer, and the big brands like Dell Latitude and HP Elitebook are also dropping the ball for a long time now.

antfarm: The Apple logo is on the wrong side of the screen to be concerned about. Apple's OS and user experience is miles ahead of the competition and so are the displays they use.

wolvesechoes: Yes, this should convince people who cannot afford to pay for Apple brand to buy it.

rbanffy: Let’s see… if the same problem happens under Safari, then it’s Microsoft fault. If the problem goes away when Safari runs the Azure admin portal, it’s a Google issue.Developers should have laptops with 1366x768 screens, 4GB if RAM, and dual-core Intel Atom processors. We keep giving them server grade hardware and expect them to empathise with the muggles that run their software on potatoes.

epistasis: > Developers should have laptops with 1366x768 screens, 4GB if RAM, and dual-core Intel Atom processors.I used to support federal laws towards this end. However, now I think the advocacy needs to be updated for the era of LLMs, as developers can just let the testing chug away and come back later. (Note: I did not actually support such laws.)

wao0uuno: Oh man I'd pay premium for a sleek device like this that CAN'T run Windows or Mac OS. Just a mere thought of being able to run pure Linux on that sweet sweet apple silicon with full driver support makes my juices flowing.

vikramkr: I mean durability is as or more important than repairability and apple products have a reputation for lasting a long time and holding their value. And getting software support etc. In general I think tech nerds underestimate how much people value durability over repairability and how hard it can be to sell repairability. Ive found that "this product is repairable" can be interpreted by people im trying to convince to buy a framework as "this product will need to be repaired and it's going to be your problem." On the other hand Apple's reputation for durability means that buying a used MacBook to save money is a serious and popular option which is by far the most environmentally friendly option compared to any new device, however repairable. The repairability <-> sustainability relationship isn't as straightforward as people suggest in the real world imo

whh: 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.

noname120: For some reason Alfred is also a *lot* slower on Tahoe. I can often wait a whole second after pressing the shortcut before the bar appears whereas on Sequoia it was instant.

chajath: just let me run macos on ipad?

karmakaze: That Surface has 16GB RAM though.> Your new MacBook Neo. Just the way you want it[sic]. 13-inch MacBook Neo in Indigo A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine Apple Intelligence Footnote ※ 8GB unified memory 256GB SSD storage U.S. English Magic Keyboard with Lock Key 20W USB‑C Power Adapter Two USB-C ports, 3.5 mm headphone jack Support for one external display 8 GB unified memory is brand-new e-waste today. macOS 26 makes it even worse.

eigencoder: It's probably a problem with my devices. I've never seen these problems with more expensive devices, but my cheap bluetooth speakers will only charge with certain cables.I also have cheap cables that don't seem able to do data transfer. Guessing it's not actually following the USB-C spec.

craftkiller: Are your bluetooth speakers connected over a C-to-C cable or is there any legacy USB in the mix (type-A and&#x2F;or microusb)? The reason I ask is legacy USB expected 5 volts to be supplied by default, whereas in type-C you have to specifically request any current. So some C-to-A &#x2F; A-to-C adapters&#x2F;cables include the resistors to request the current whereas others do not, leading to legacy USB devices not getting power through some adapters&#x2F;cables.

lateforwork: Not true.13-inch Surface Resolution: 1920 x 1280 (178 PPI)15-inch Surface Resolution: 2496 x 1664 (201 PPI)See https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;surface&#x2F;devices&#x2F;surface-lapt...Compare that to my Lenovo Yoga 14-inch: 2944 x 1840.

the_sleaze_: > Not just durability, but ergonomics.Somehow while spending the most per capita of any nation on the planet, American schools are in a perpetual budget crunch. It's about getting internet access not whether the trackpad is good. You think a chromepad is crappy - have you ever tried to do something in Blackboard?> If schools are found to be neglecting a minimum standard of careThey won't be. Pizza sauce is considered a vegetable.An aside: Why do school board super-intendants and administration make more money than teachers themselves? I believe they shouldn't.

dragonwriter: > Why do school board super-intendants and administration make more money than teachers themselves?The more and less cynical explanations (and both play a role, IMO):(1) Because individuals in those roles have closer relationships to the people that set the salaries than do individual teachers, and(2) Because otherwise people with experience in education would continue as teachers and not seek roles as superintendents or other administrators (or seek the advanced degrees sought for those roles whose only financial payoff is greater competitiveness for those higher paying roles.)

spogbiper: true, which is why chromebooks are almost ubiquitous in k-12, at least in the US. a mac, even for only $500, is still ~2x the price and lacks the management tools that Google Classroom provides

xtracto: I was recently in the lookout for a new laptop. I wanted something BEEFFY! Specs wise but 13 inch at most.I literally couldn't find anything on the PC side. I wanted an x86 because I prefer Linux Mint as my OS (didn't care about windows) , but it was impossible to find a good laptop with good GPU , more than 64gb ram and decent build materials (ive got a thinpad and the platic build is just terrible. The screen bends when pulling it to open the laptop).So, if settled for a 128gb ram M4 max Macbookpro. It has been pretty solid so far. I'm a power user, so the RAM is used quite a lot (one of the reasons I wanted x86&#x2F;Linux was to avoid virtualization overhead in docker&#x2F;podman).Macs are way more expensive than other laptops, but their level of tech sophistication is miles ahead of anyone.Now, if only Asahi was more complete.

wiseowise: How’s screen, keyboard and cooling in those? Still garbage matrix with flimsy keyboard and jet loud cooling system?

Mashimo: No reviews out yet.I like the keyboard on my gen1 T14, did it change later on?

BurningFrog: Apple is people, my friend!

antfarm: The post that I commented on was arguing that what sets the Mac apart from other options with 8 GB RAM, and what makes them more expensive, is that they are seen as a status symbol. I made a point against that mentioning two areas in which Macs are truly superior.What exactly is your point?

wiseowise: Poor kid would definitely feel superior rocking shitty, plastic Windows tombstone that won’t survive for 2 hours without power supply.

wvenable: I have no idea why anyone ever thought that Apple only made premium devices for a premium market. Apple has always been (or wanted to be) a mass market computer and device company and I have an iPod Shuffle to prove it.

dartharva: The experience I have had with Thinkpads, both current-gen and old during my childhood, did not warm me up to the line. They are not particularly better in feel, thermals and screen quality against its cheaper alternatives including those from Lenovo themselves. The only good thing was its keyboard, but then most Lenovo laptops in general have good keyboards. Its popular acclaim is weird to me.

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

s0rce: lots of people now have a $1000 phone and no computer at all.

philistine: You're out of date; Apple is soldering the memory to the CPU directly. I mean are you complaining that you can't swap your L2 cache or replace the math coprocessor? The history of computing is one of the CPU absorbing every single discrete component over time. Apple is at a point where the CPU has to absorb the RAM to maintain their performance lead. I'm happy I get a super fast computer.

seabass: And the battery or SSD?

philistine: Well the battery is usually glued, but Apple has started using this weird glue that releases if you give it a specific electric charge. It's replaceable but it's a complicated affair. I expect the Neo's battery to be glued on the chassis.The SSD is difficult to replace because Apple uses storage chips with no controller; the SSD controller is in their CPU. So you can't put in any M.2 in there even if you wanted. Some small companies have managed to offer upgrade parts for the Mac Mini, which has socketed storage chips.As time marches on and PC manufacturers stay still, Apple manages to simplify its logic boards by reducing the number of connectors and parts, lowering the price to make a computer. Apple, which has never really offered anything below 1000$, has entered a new market with a bang.I expect a computer in 20 years to look like the system-on-a-chip that Apple makes for its watches. I don't know why people are adamant that we need more controllers and chips on our machines, not less.

crazygringo: The iPad is vastly better for reading and highlighting (with Pencil) class materials.Reading whole books on a laptop tends to produce a ton of neck strain.

pier25: An eink display is vastly better for reading though. I only use the iPad for reading PDFs because Kindles are too small for that.

pantulis: That's why I'm rocking a Scribe. Do not really care much about note taking but my poor eyesight welcomes the bigger font size.

adrian_b: There are people for whom the first condition that must be satisfied by a computer is to do whatever their owner wants and only that, and to never do anything that other people than the owner want.Such people would always take any laptop Acer makes (or from many other brands), over anything made by Apple.I have grown up in a country occupied by communists, and one of the most frustrating things was that the right of owning various kinds of things was denied to the majority of the population (including computers).After eventually no longer being subjected to such oppressive laws, in recent years I find astonishing how easily people in countries like USA are willing nowadays to accept severe limitations to their rights of ownership over the things they buy, while in other places people have died in the hope to obtain such rights.

moolcool: > and to never do anything that other people than the owner wantWindows 11 is full of ads, telemetry, and AI slop, much of which is impossible to disable. Very few owners want this.

nolist_policy: So? Acer also makes Chromebooks.

a456463: lmao the koolaid in this thread is mind boggling. most of the development on mac unless everybody is doing iOS and Swift development with 3rd party web services &#x2F; APIs, is going to involve brew&#x2F;virtualization. currently running 29GB out of 32GB on M4 for work. This is just absolute unrealistic claim.I also survey and manage development env for a 250 engineer tech org. 8GB is not going to fly

happyopossum: the difference between writing on a screen and writing on an external tablet is hard to overstate...

bwv848: A Huion Kamvas then, still way cheaper than an iPad.

Matl: What about something like [1].1 - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rog.asus.com&#x2F;laptops&#x2F;rog-flow&#x2F;rog-flow-z13-2025&#x2F;

notatoad: Chromebooks don’t have a durability problem. I doubt the MacBook is any more durable, even with an all metal construction - if anything, that probably makes it worse at absorbing impact than nice soft bendy plastic.This is just how students treat laptops, and a more expensive unit only makes the problem worse.

malloci: Actually metal's pretty bendy when compared to plastic (most anyway...mmv based upon formula).The metal construction is what prompted me to switch over to macbook pro's back in the day. The plastic dell laptops i used to use couldn't handle the abuse that it took during all of the travel i was doing at the time (cases kept cracking). I switched to a pro and was rewarded later with it surviving a 5 foot fall from a car rental counter. It bent part of the corner, but the screen was still in tact and it continued to work well enough to get me through the trip. I suspect the plastic alternative would have been toast.Having kids today and seeing how rough they are with their toys, I'm not confident that a plastic laptop would survive them long.

nailer: > ive got a thinpad and the platic build is just terrible. The screen bends when pulling it to open the laptopDamn. I was at IBM in the early 2000s and for many decades you used to be able to beat people to death with IBM hardware, including Thinkpad laptops and model M keyboards.

craftkiller: FWIW the PS5 controller is super particular about what charger you use due to Sony being dumb, but the deciding factor there is the charger, not the cable.Source is the eternal benevolent champion of usbc compliance testing, Benson Leung: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;UsbCHardware&#x2F;comments&#x2F;tdduha&#x2F;commen...(and also my personal experience, but Benson explains why)

samcheng: 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.

jaydenmilne: People forget that macOS and even Windows (well, pre-11) excel at swapping. There are all sorts of hacks and tricks they do to make sure the system remains responsive when under severe memory pressure.This compared to Linux, where desktop environments seem to get noticeably bogged down and stressed out when swapping (the cursor starts stuttering and the shell becomes unresponsive).Although even KDE does OK on 4gb of RAM in 2026 as long as you only have one instance of Chromium loaded.

kyriakos: Win 11 is actually way better at memory management than Windows 10. It's just more bloated.

prmph: Indeed, 8gb is plenty, even for serious work and coding, if you use the machine well.If you think getting more and more RAM solves every performance problem, I've got news for you: People are having beachballs on machines with 32GB and more.

AlotOfReading: Add much as I'd like to be more efficient, modern toolchains absolutely need these kinds of numbers for big projects. My 48GB system will OOM trying to link clang unless I'm extremely careful. The 64GB system is a bit more forgiving, but I still have to go for lunch while it's working.Sure, might be ambitious to do that sort of workload on a budget conscious laptop, but it'd be nice y'know?

andriy_koval: > Well the costs had to be cut somewhere.its investment into next generation of loyal apple users, they more likely be selling it at loss.

billyhoffman: 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!

ciupicri: So what if it's a Mac, applications suddenly don't need as much memory? Can it open a table with a gazillion rows? Can it open ten tens if not hundreds of web pages? Can it run multiple programs at the same time? Having only 8 GB sucks unless you're using it as a terminal or media player.

happyopossum: Yes to all of the above. Macs swap incredibly well, and an M1&#x2F;*gb mac is more than capable of having hundreds of chrome tabs open while running excel with giant spreadsheets.As for "running multiple programs at the same time" - I assume you're leaning pretty far into hyperbole here given that machines with 1% of the resources of this one can do so...

andrewcastmate: I'm a bit too lazy to look it up, but this is surprising to me. I still have an 11-inch, and it has a huge bezel around it, but it still feels way, way smaller than a 13-inch MacBook Air.If the Neo has the same size screen as the MacBook Air, it's just a little confusing to me where it could be smaller.

nateb2022: > I've seen the stocks app take up 2GB of RAM before. Even Control Centre can be a RAM hog. If Apple were still slinging efficient software 8GB is one thing but their catalyst based crapware is far from efficient.Guessing based on your comments about 8GB of RAM that you have a lot more RAM than that. You should be aware that when you have a lot of unused RAM, many programs will cache data in RAM, and the OS won't really "clean up" paged memory, since there's very little memory pressure. In modern OS architecture, "free RAM is wasted RAM."If you have 32GB of RAM for example, macOS will allow processes to keep decorative assets, pre-fetched data, and UI buffers in memory indefinitely because there’s no reason to flush them. This makes the system feel snappier. The metric that actually matters isn't "Used RAM," but Memory Pressure. A system can have 0GB of "Free" memory but still be performing perfectly because the OS is ready to reallocate that cached data the millisecond another app needs it.Judging efficiency based on usage in a low-pressure environment is like complaining that a gas tank is "inefficient" just because it’s full.

ElijahLynn: Doesn't the surface have a touch screen?I don't really see how it's a competitor if it doesn't have a touch screen.

lateforwork: I have a Windows laptop with a touch screen. The only time I touch the screen is when I take a screenshot using the Snipping Tool and want to circle something.

internet2000: So you do use it.

lateforwork: Yes... barely. I wouldn't miss it if I didn't have it.

riddlemethat: 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.

bigyabai: > Microsoft management clearly has zero respect for its customers.Apple customers forgot about the golden trophy real quick, huh? https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;737757&#x2F;apple-president-donald-...

mrbonner: 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?

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

ncfausti: This is exactly what's needed to get general users off of Windows.Anecdotal, but whenever my friends&#x2F;family are looking for a basic laptop I almost always suggest a Lenovo for the price&#x2F;performance&#x2F;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.

bigyabai: The way Tahoe is headed, this is also exactly what's needed to get general users off macOS too.

quesera: This is wrong.My daily-driver M2 16GB has been up for 54 days, running three web browsers simultaneously (all Firefox, which does help, about 30K tabs across them), plus a medium-sized Rails app and postgres, iTerm2 and tmux (about 38 panes), and the Slack (Electron!) app.Current RAM usage is 6.14GB.Things change when I run local LLMs or VMs or Xcode, of course.

darkstar999: How can 30k tabs even be useful? What are you doing? That is ridiculous.

stetrain: Phones contain 3+ cameras, OLED displays, FaceID, wireless charging, and cellular modems. Plus there is a price to be paid for the latest and greatest in miniaturization, machining, and packaging.Plus this is exactly the same price as the base iPhone 17e.

dainiusse: This has nothing to do with part price. They sell for what people pay. And this new neo is for putting scale, but 8gb means you get hooked and then "climb the ladder"

neoyagami: This is my use case, 4 ides. Chrome and docker, its a 14’ M1 Pro, it works nice, but im not installing tahoe any time soon xd

ashton314: [delayed]

Tiktaalik: 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.

nateb2022: I doubt anyone learning to program would need to subscribe to a remote dev machine just to run hello world type programs. From 2020-2023 I used an 8GB Macbook Air M1 to develop a lot of relatively heavy software, containers in the background too, and it wasn't a bad experience.

RhysU: Low-end wired earbuds come in packages with dozens of units. I buy cheap earbuds because my kids love breaking them. Not everyone optimizes for the same thing. Analog remains the bees knees in certain settings.

6SixTy: Kids are given those for free, so there's no responsibility for them to keep them in good condition. It would take a restructuring of laptops within the school system to kids&#x2F;families having a joint ownership over the laptop to stop them intentionally destroying them. Even then, there are complications like kids that will absolutely destroy anothers' for fun.And knowing how laptop makers treat keyboard repairs, the keyboard switches are easy to damage beyond repair and expensive to replace, making them a target for "problem" kids in school districts with a dysfunctional penal system.

dragonwriter: > Kids are given those for free, so there's no responsibility for them to keep them in good condition.Very often they aren't (the school devices are in-school resources that aren't given to the kids any more than their desks are) and anything the kids have out of school is bought by the parents (and even if they are given the computers by the school, usually the replacement costs is on the parents if there is damage). But, either way, grade school kids are, on average, irresponsible as a matter of cognitive development (its a big part of why children are treated differently than adults legally.)> school districts with a dysfunctional penal system.A school district that can be described as having a “penal system” is, ipso facto, dysfunctional.

runjake: No, we really care about durability. The amount of damage is crazy. So many units are damaged that it would be cost-prohibitive to dispose and replace them.The screenshot in that Reddit post more or less looks like ours. Schools generally repair these, if they have the technicians. And everyone is cannibalizing parts out of last generation models. It's like a Jawa shop.> Apple can only compete if they provide bulk deals which bring the overall cost in line with chromebooks.I've never seen, nor heard of Apple providing competitive prices, even in quantities of ~10,000 units. They haven't even gotten close and they've largely given up on the idea of Macs as a standard K12 school device. ~$250 iPads are still strong in low primary grades and special education, though.

joezydeco: Can confirm Apple gave up on education. If they really cared you'd be able to have multiple accounts&#x2F;profiles on iPad, and that's still not a thing that exists.I did a major PTA fundraiser to buy iPads for our classrooms and they were pretty much never used because of this.

thewebguyd: > you'd be able to have multiple accounts&#x2F;profiles on iPad, and that's still not a thing that exists.It does exist, it just requires the iPad to be managed via MDM, which most schools would have (and should implement if they don't have it). JamF, Mosyle, Business Essentials, InTune and probably any other MDM can put an iPad into shared iPad mode with multiple profiles.

dzonga: 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 needsoffice 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 etcso 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

bubblewand: I’m still on an M1 Air for my personal laptop and probably will be for another couple years. It doesn’t feel “slow” and I feel no urge to start browsing newer models.My understanding is this laptop matches or exceeds the M1 Air’s performance, so it should be pretty damn nice for most people.

s0rce: My M1 was the biggest upgrade of many years, I got one from an old job and returned it when I left, it was possibly the most "fast" feeling computer since going from Win98 to 2000. I ended up buying one for my personal computer, I only replaced it when I cracked the screen as it wasn't a huge amount more to simply get a new one. Now typing on my M4 air.

cyberpunk: You’ve lost me. How does a tech ceo giving a trinket to the current president indicate any kind of respect or lack thereof towards its users?

SilentM68: 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.

happyopossum: > the chromebooks are definitely a lot cheaper over the long run for the district.I'd need to seem some evidence for that - cheap chromebooks break very easily. Talk to any school IT person who handles device repair&#x2F;replacement and you will hear nightmares of 50+% loss rates...

MarcelOlsz: >Microsoft's build quality is largely equivalentI will have some of what you are smoking please.

fortran77: Your Mac "fanboy" nonsense is tiring. The Surface 7 Laptop is an excellent machine, built well, and even gets a good iFixit rating (4 screws and you can replace the battery and M.2)

badc0ffee: Interesting. In Canada the 17e starts at $899, and the Neo starts at $799.

elicash: First, sorry for my U.S.-centric comment!And yes, that's fascinating. Are carrier subsidies in Canada higher or something?

afavour: $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

notjustanymike: Getting strong original iMac vibes as well, with a similar market opportunity. The chromebook &#x2F; education space is awful, and a well built (and stylish) competitor can do serious business.

andrewcastmate: I was wondering if they were somewhat intentionally trying to harken back to those original iMacs and iBooks. The first thing I thought when I opened the page for these was that the colors were really giving me that vibe.

fckgw: Why is that confusing? The A chip is cheaper, hence is goes into their cheaper laptop. The more expensive laptops get the more expensive M chips.

happyopossum: A used m1 air isn't going to have that battery life anyway...

OSaMaBiNLoGiN: As soon as those headphones sound better than the analog alternatives, sure.But they don't. And won't.

luke5441: This is how opinions differ. IMO plastic is better than aluminium. It is robust (if done right), lighter and doesn't have good thermal conductivity (which makes laptop usage possible, MacBooks can be uncomfortable for lap usage if too hot).The metal is more "luxury", though.

accrual: 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&#x2F; TahoeI 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!

yonatan8070: I wonder, if Asahi get's ported to this, would that potentially open the door for Asahi on an A18 powered iPhone? Or are those secure-booted too hard?

TingPing: iPhones would require an exploit.

bpye: A bootloader exploit at that, and we haven't had one of those in years.

SirMaster: I'd rather go for a Refurb M1 Air with 8&#x2F;256 and TouchID which go for $300-350...

happyopossum: A refurb M1 air with 85% battery and in 'fair' condition goes for ~$400 these days - I have no idea how bad it would have to be for $300, but good luck. How many more years do you think that battery is going to realistically hold up?

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

deepthaw: Until 1&#x2F;3 of your hard drive space is taken up by weird cache stuff that MacOS doesn’t explain nor offer a straightforward way to clean up.

NetMageSCW: Never used an 8GB Mac I see.

illwrks: If you stop the video you can see the 8 screws on the bottom of the Neo. I'm hoping that means there's some level of repairability at least from a battery perspective. I'm looking forward to some teardowns when it's in peoples hands.

prmph: Usually the problem then is more fundamental.Rust exists. If you insist on using (or need to use) languages with horrendous build architectures like C++, then you probably need a proper build server then anyways.I don't have XCode on my Macbook and have resolved not to do iOS development any time soon (although ideally I'd have wanted to dabble in it sometimes), because I've accepted I don't want to run the rat race of always needing beefier and beefier machines to keep up with Apple's bad habit of bloating it up for each version up for no good reason.I don't run local LLMs on my machine, since even with 100s of GB of RAM, I hear the performance you can expect is abysmal.I think it is a good idea to put pressure on hardware and software vendors to make their products more efficient.

raverbashing: Who cares about Windows anymore?Kids are happy with iOS&#x2F;Android devicesGoogle docs solves 90% of Office use cases

NetMageSCW: Google Docs might handle 50% of people who use Office, but I doubt if it handles 25% of Office use cases. Few use every feature of Office but someone uses every feature of Office and all those power user cases that are different can’t be handled by Google Docs. Or even Web Office.

Eric_WVGG: I have so many questions.- Was there a lab where they tested beating people to death with IBM hardware?- Where did they find subjects? Volunteers, interns, exit-interviews from layoff rounds?- Now that you can't beat people to death with IBM hardware, what do you use instead?

zahirbmirza: 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.

pie_flavor: I am a longtime Windows user and it brings me absolutely no joy to report that the M4 I am forced to use for work runs the Rust compiler a good bit faster than the big fancy gaming PC I just got with a 9800X3D.

rstat1: I'd wager that's more likely due to Windows than the hardware. Like sure the hardware does play a part in that but its not the whole story or even most of it.My C++ projects have a python heavy build system attached where the main script that runs to prepare everything and kick off the build, takes significantly longer to run on Windows than Linux on the same hardware.

bottlepalm: Yep this is the biggest news. We’re one step closer to a DeX like experience for iPhone. If Apple did that they would stomp the entire Windows laptop AND desktop market.The phone in my hand is powerful enough to handle all the general purpose computing I already do, so let me do it Apple!

general_reveal: Sometimes I wish I could just use any laptop and Remote Desktop into my gaming rig which is awesome. Then I can have whatever form factor laptop I want, but the problem is I think the latency still sucks (maybe not?) on stuff like Parsec even locally.

pinkgolem: Nah locally is fine, if you have a good 6ghz coverage, but that means a hotspot in every second room

stetrain: They'll develop with 8GB of memory in mind, but under the assumption that they are the only app running. And if it's Chrome that's probably right most of the time.

aziaziazi: As a former React developer, I can't help but look back at the monsters we created. We spent a decade optimizing developer experience, only to outsource the hardware costs to the user’s RAM.2012 - my 8GB MPB was enough to run docker on my MPB, not light-speed but smooth-working-speed. Every website was blazing fast though.2026 - Same budy runs VSCode and Sketchup (big project) offline as day 1. I played Factorio last year. Hacker News and Wikipedia works great, google and GitHub are ok. But 95% of the internet is not decently usable: Gmail, WhatsApp, Messenger, local gumtree - that one crash without an Ad-bloquer.We've reached a point where a machine capable of 3D modeling can't even render a chat interface.

abrouwers: My spouse bought a mac and asks me (mostly a linux user, and I'm happy to help) for support somewhat regularly (mostly recently, for a tahoe upgrade). It's not the golden unicorn people paint it to be. 8gb is insane in 2026.

swiftcoder: It may not be a golden unicorn, but I find it is quite a lot better than providing support for the Windows laptops they used to buy from random department stores on rock-bottom sales... Nothing quite like a $200 PC laptop stocked with OEM bloatware

happyopossum: > The Macbook 12 inch was a relatively better laptopWhich virtually nobody bought... Everyone loves an ultra-light ultra-compact laptop, then decide that one of the sacrifices required to make one is a deal-breaker and the company was dumb to not "just include X".

julieturner99: if this weighed 1.7 lbs, i’d buy it today. still waiting for a successor to the 12” macbook.

buzzerbetrayed: You left out the part where the build quality is not up to par with a MacBook, which is what is actually being discussed.

tigerlily: Headphone jack!

kdheiwns: There's a subset of people that likes collecting tabs and thinks it's some impressive measure and I've encountered them more and more recently, I guess as some attempt to brag that their computer can handle something? It's like saying you have 30000 pieces of junk mail in your living room. It's just sloppy.30000 tabs is about 10x as many pages as there are in the entire Harry Potter series. Nobody remembers all pages in those series. Nobody remembers why they have 3000 tabs, much less 30000.

Shalomboy: I could use a laugh today, do you have a link to the leica comment? It wasn't that one review of the Fuji X Half, was it?

DauntingPear7: Student at a US Uni here. They still do very much own the space for both tablets and laptops, especially in CS

suobset: CompSci grad in the US as well, it is genuinely a sea of either Macs or ThinkPads with $INSERT_FAV_LINUX_DISTRO here, and even then 66% of that are Macs.

zamadatix: I don't think the M line is more energy efficient (at equivalent performance), just more performant overall and with more advanced features (more maximum display outputs, more maximum USB interfaces, more maximum memory channels, etc).

cromka: 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!

mikestew: That's one way of looking at it. How much do you think it costs to take a laptop system and shrink it down to iPhone-sized?

kokanee: YOU GUYS IT HAS A HEADPHONE JACK

restes: >People are having beachballs on machines with 32GB and more.Well, sure, because the beachball means the main thread is hung, and that can happen for many reasons unrelated to memory pressure.

runako: > Can it run multiple programs at the same time?I have used a M1 MacBook Pro, 16 GB, as my dev daily driver for many years. I generally never need to close any application.Typical sample of apps concurrently in use:- PostgreSQL (server)- TablePlus (db client)- Docker- Slack- Chrome- Safari- Zed- Claude native- ChatGPT native- Zoom- Codex- Numbers- Calendar- the whole stack for whatever app I am building (Redis, Node, Rails, etc.)With that persistent stack running, I can pretty comfortably launch whatever other apps I want to use: Office, Music, etc. I only see a beachball when I launch an Office app (they may not be native yet, I suspect it's emulating from x86).I was skeptical that 16 GB would be enough. I bought this fully expecting to return it and buy one with more RAM. The Apple Silicon Macs are much more efficient with memory than even the Intel Macs. I believe some tech articles have been written on the why&#x2F;how, but in practice you just don't need as much RAM as you think on Apple Silicon.

swiftcoder: > MacBooks can be uncomfortable for lap usage if too hotThis was definitely the case in the Intel era, but I can't say I've had this problem since the move to Apple silicon

luke5441: I have an Air. Maybe active cooling prevents it from getting too hot. With the Air, the metal body is kind of the heatsink.I can configure my Snapdragon plastic laptop such that the fan doesn't turn on, so the body being metal isn't a requirement for not turning on the fan...

f311a: That's only true for M Macs. Intel Macs with 8 GB of RAM perform pretty poorly.

NetMageSCW: My Intel Mac Mini with 8GB of RAM has always seemed fine on the rare occasions I use it.

perardi: Office has been ARM&#x2F;Apple Silicon-native for a while.It’s just pig slow, even on my M3 Max MacBook Pro with 64GB of RAM.

imwally: It’s 60Hz. “Pro Motion” is Apple speak for 120Hz, which as of right now, is only reserved for the MacBook Pro machines.

cromka: Honestly, I don't see it. Are you gonna stay at home with yubikey plugged in? On your couch, in your bed, etc.? It's a matter of months, if not weeks, before you break it? And also need to remember to remove, because otherwise what's the point?Used to own Yubikey before fingerprint scanners were a thing. I don't see the appeal now, to be honest. I considered it now that I use Asahi on my M1 with no support for TouchID, but still just type in the password because I couldn't be bothered with Yubikey.Or I'm missing something?

raw_anon_1111: So USB headphones sound worse than analog ones? Does vinyl sound better to you to than CDs?

nolist_policy: Since this is a A series processor it's not clear if the MacBook Neo supports virtualization though.

kettlecorn: At this point I think few people really will care about that spec difference.The accumulated brand trust of Apple, and the negative brand trust of Microsoft outweighs the numbers.Even many technically savvy people believe Apple can deliver a higher quality computing experience with 8GB of RAM than Microsoft can with 16GB, and they're often correct.

thewebguyd: > The accumulated brand trust of AppleThis is an important thing to Apple, and Apple users know it. They would not have put out this macbook if it was going to be a subpar experience. Microsoft has no such qualms about OEMs shipping an underspecced disaster of a beater laptop (see Vista).You can (generally) but any Apple product and know you are going to get something quality and a good experience, even from the base&#x2F;budget models. They don't really have any "bad" products.

1attice: The Vision Pro and butterfly keyboard would like a word

Amorymeltzer: To name a few components:- Older chip (and with fewer thermal constraints)- Only one camera (and much cheaper)- Less RAM than 17pro and Air- No cell modem, FaceID, ProMotion, MagSafe, etc.

cromka: Much bigger screen, keyboard, big battery, lots of copper and aluminum, extra USB port, touchpad, a charger.

mrweasel: I have one of those, it's perfectly fine for everything I do. 8GB of RAM isn't a lot, but I've never run into issues with it not being enough.The M1 and A18 seems rather similar, but I might be concerned that the integrated GPU isn't as capable as the one in the M1. I guess they picked the A18 because they make them and because the NPU much better and Apple cares more about AI than I do.

swiftcoder: > I might be concerned that the integrated GPU isn't as capable as the one in the M1This is the A18 Pro, specifically, which should have a faster GPU than the M1?

general_reveal: I don’t have WiFi 6E, just 6 (5ghz). If the input latency is imperceptible for productivity work, and the resolution matches my laptop resolution without pixelation, then why the heck am I not streaming my powerhouse main pc?Weekend project.

vunderba: The best laptop that I ever had was an Thinkpad T530 back in ~2012 - that chunky brick felt like it was made from recycled soviet tanks.Modular as hell - trivial to swap out batteries, cd-rom bay with an extra SSD, RAM upgrades, keyboard itself.

Izikiel43: > Not being able to keep Slack and Outlook open at the same time seems like a pretty significant productivity hindrance to me. 8GB RAM is truly pathetic in 2022.I read this as how bad software quality has gone down, that a mail program and a chat program don't fit in 8GB of RAM.

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

nolist_policy: > Are there any similar laptops around this price range with comparable battery life?A Chromebook with 8Gb ram and stock ChromeOS gets 10 hours doing real work. And with real work I mean full local dev with containers, vscode, Vivado, and 100+ chrome tabs open. And even running small VMs from time to time.

sodality2: Hm true, I wrote off Chrome OS altogether, does it provide enough customizability that MacOS&#x2F;Linux does? You mention dev containers which is already way beyond my perception of its capabilities (and the general public, I think)

NotPractical: It makes it easier to pirate your app if you enable that checkbox. macOS attempts to disable iOS apps when SIP is disabled to prevent this but it's not difficult to bypass [1]. I don't necessarily agree with it but this probably does factor into their decision process.[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;paradiseduo&#x2F;appdecrypt

raw_anon_1111: That couldn’t be the reason. 90% of App Store revenue comes from in app purchases of consumables from games. This came out in the Epic trial.The rest of the most use apps are front end for services where the app is free. There are very very few one time app purchases on iOS where pirating would make sense

NotPractical: Piracy is not the only risk when someone grabs your app binary, but also cracked versions with ads removed, or subscription checks disabled.

raw_anon_1111: They can already grab your binary by using third party tools or by using the Apple Configurator from what I’m seeing.TIL: iPhone backups on computers stopped including full ipa’s back in 2017…

tonymet: I love the new reduced resources Era. MS was clever in launching Xbox series S + X and demanding all published games run on the lower spec machine (similar to Xbox One-S specs).Games and Apps have both been suffering from resource glut -- slow rendering, loading , large downloads , poor user experience.It'll be great to have 5+ years of low resources to force devs back into taking performance seriously.

rescbr: I miss the glowing apple on my white polycarbonate MacBook. What I don't miss is the shitty Intel GMA X3100 iGPU and Apple not releasing a 64 bit driver for it.Should have spent the money on a MacBook Pro with a real GPU, I would have used that computer way longer than I had.

et-al: In my experience, USB-C ports are more fragile than 3.5mm audio jacks for repeated plugging in &#x2F; unplugging cycles.

jshen: If you're trying to link clang, this laptop is not for you. It's for people that would consider a chromebook for their use case.

svnt: The performance gap between Apple’s flash and a typical aftermarket NVMe drive in a Windows laptop is more attributable to controller design and integration than to trace length.

NetMageSCW: The comment was about RAM - what does NVMe have to do with RAM?

soneil: > Now that you can't beat people to death with IBM hardware, what do you use instead?I believe IBM hardware is still applicable for this, the Thinkpad just isn't IBM hardware anymore.

dragonwriter: The hard part of beating someone to death with a z16 is lifting and swinging a z16; if you can manage that, though...

thewebguyd: Fair enough, although I wouldn't call the vision pro a bad product necessarily, it's just too expensive for what it is.

dntrkv: I’ve had issues like that in the past, had to clear the cache for the spotlight index or something like that. Fixed it right away. Not sure if you’re facing the same issue.

deepthaw: I’m freaking out the equivalent of mutt and irc require more than 8GB of RAM to run simultaneously.What are modern operating systems and applications doing?

jshen: Gifs. I'm only half joking.

Kirby64: Children don't have Slack and Outlook open. Gmail in a web browser and Discord, maybe. My old M1 Air works just fine for productivity workloads, and has for years.

vunderba: Is Slack that much worse of a memory hog than Discord? Aren’t they both built on electron?

Kirby64: Not sure about slack vs discord, but browser Gmail is almost certainly less memory hungry than Outlook. And that’s probably enough of a difference by itself.

racl101: 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.

happyopossum: This device has been in the pipeline for a lot longer than our current RAM shortage, and it's A18 Pro SOC (with it's integrated 8GB or RAM) was probably taped out before ChatGPT was a thing...

NotPractical: They're encrypted using FairPlay, so you need either a jailbroken iPhone or a "jailbroken" (SIP bypass while SIP is enabled) Mac to decrypt them. The former will stop being possible soon enough, the latter will likely remain possible for quite some time.

ivanjermakov: Would be great deal in 5 years to buy those post-lease if Asahi&#x2F;others Linux catch up.

akdev1l: I used outlook on the browser when needed and slack was open most of the timeI also had around 200 tabs open on the regularNow I wouldn’t tell you it was a good experience because it wasn’t. But it was usable even pushing the hardware to the max.

jkestner: > - Where did they find subjects? Volunteers, interns, exit-interviews from layoff rounds?Standard issue for field agents in the corporate acquisitions and consulting divisions.(Hey, Eric!)

joemi: Don't all macbooks have one?

kittikitti: 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:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;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.

mikestew: I'm typing this on a 2012 MBP with 8Gb of RAM. That seemed like plenty when I bought it, and I did dev work in Xcode on the thing. Granted, it can only run Catalina, but it still gets the job done for what I use it for now. "Now" being web browser and running the Numbers&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;Keynote apps, which is about what anyone buying the Neo is going to do with it.After 14 years of service, though, he'll get to retire soon, probably taking it easy running some version of Linux in his old age. Just as soon as that new M5 MBP (with 32Gb this time) shows up tomorrow.

dmitrygr: Vote for politicians who'll lower VAT from 25% (!!!) to the same about as we pay in sales tax (5-9% depending on locale, 0% in some states) -- see lower prices :)

thewebguyd: Try adding your working directory to the exclusions for windows defender, or creating a Dev Drive instead in settings (will create a separate partition, or VHD using ReFS and exclude it from Windows defender). Should give it a bit of a boost.

rbanffy: Thinkpads are tanks, but most of the time you’d be perfectly well served by a BMW series 3.

heraldgeezer: Ts-series are nice and slim. X1 too.Only P-series are workstations.I meant for build quality.

fragmede: This is an ad.

m_mueller: Afaik a lot of it is ntfs. It’s just so slow with lots of small files. Compare unzipping moderately large source repos on windows vs. POSIX, it’s day and night.

PaulHoule: Just deleting 40,000 files from the node_modules of a modest Javascript project can thoroughly hammer NTFS.

danvayn: Define fine. Tahoe, chrome, electron apps running with pretty much anything else already push things over 4gb when things start to get laggy and usability becomes more problematic, atleast to me. You could theoretically run a lot of things ‘fine’ the way you describe. And for the college student who hopefully doesn’t already run Spotify and Discord, it’ll hopefully be “fine”.I just don’t get arguing that it’s the same experience as what people actually consider fine.

NetMageSCW: This is the cheapest MacBook available new - you are already compromising. Do you expect an economy car to outrun a Porsche?

leptons: >They would not have put out this macbook if it was going to be a subpar experience."You're holding it wrong" - Steve JobsApple has put out plenty of subpar experiences in the past, and there's no reason they wouldn't do it in the future.

p_ing: No, it’s not NTFS, it’s the file system filter architecture of the NT kernel.

zozbot234: There is a secret easter egg: every time you say the magic incantation "You have to let it all go, Neo. Free your mind", macOS triggers every app to run a full GC cycle.

philistine: Joke's on you; Swift has no garbage collector.

hu3: It obvious does, with reference counting. Otherwise programs would just balloon in memory.

qn9n: It's UNIX, just open Terminal.app

zamadatix: Sometimes that covers the need.Most will at least want something like https:&#x2F;&#x2F;brew.sh&#x2F; to get you current versions of standard Linux utilities rather than the bundled ones and then maybe even set up a separate profile in your terminal of choice (iTerm2 is a great option as well) which defaults to using them so you don't break normal system usage which assumes the built in utilities.Even then, if your use case requires using standard Docker images, assumes certain features of the kernel, or assumes common distro environments rather than just you wanting a posixy feeling terminal you'll still need to run a Linux VM in the background.

reactordev: I agree. I read this and immediately thought to myself: The gloves are off.The price point, the capability, the only thing stopping Apple at this point is the MDM stuff integrating it with other identity providers but its ahead of where it used to be.

thewebguyd: The MDM stuff is there now, and platform SSO works pretty well, at least with Entra and Okta (the only two I have experience with). Both JamF and InTune support it, I'm sure all the other MDMs do as well.The only time macs can be a bit of a headache is if you are still using all on-prem AD & group policy and trying to force them into that environment via joining the mac to AD.

qingcharles: How much of that 256GB is eaten by the factory install of MacOS?What's the CPU performance like compared to an M1?

NetMageSCW: CPU performance is about equal to the M1 multicore and a bit better single core.

p_ing: If the body was a heatsink, it would be extremely hot to the touch.https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hothardware.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;make-your-m1-macbook-air-perfor...

runjake: I do because we asked Apple about Neo pricing.We do because this is historically the norm. Schools pay roughly the same as the "college student" pricing, aside from the occasional deals they toss us.

NetMageSCW: what computers are you buying that are more environmentally friendly? The MacBook Neo is 60% from recycled materials and Apple offers free recycling for all their products.How do you recycle your old parts?

rescbr: > what computers are you buying that are more environmentally friendly?Any computer that you can upgrade its parts? SSD, RAM, Wifi cards, etc.The only parts that wear out on a modern laptop are the SSD and the battery. If I replace those, I can use it basically indefinitely, paying the penalty on performance and energy consumption depending on how old the CPU is.Why would I throw out (or recycle) a perfectly good computer if I could simply fix or upgrade it? If you're not reusing it, then you could pass it down to somebody who would use it.20+ year old computers are e-waste at this point thanks to software bloating and lack of hardware acceleration for at least h.264.15 year old computers are very usable, but unfortunately most use SATA for storage which is definitely not optimal for SSDs.10 year old computers are from when PC tech plateaued, for most use cases the difference in performance is imperceptible, and maybe you lose power efficiency.

NetMageSCW: Apple has always ignored cannibalism because they would rather cannibalize their own products than have someone else do it.

poly2it: In all honesty, developers know better. I am not writing web everywhere for recreational purposes, but economical. There is not incentive to not externalise the cost.

delusional: What are your use-cases for 128gb of RAM? I find it hard to imagine what you could be doing with that, so it must be interesting :)

dzonga: most people who are into graphics processing e.g video-games, 3d for films&#x2F;entertainment industry etc need these "PRO-workstation" machines, or doing fluid mechanicsif your work is around data | software engineering (web backends etc) like me - a MacBook Air tends to be sufficient

zadikian: Yes, I had a base 2015 MBP with 8GB RAM until recently. It was fine, but I didn't run many VMs, Docker composites, etc on it. At most just some local NodeJS and Python backends with a test Postgres DB, plus a small Linux VM sometimes.It did get slow with Google Meet, but only due to CPU.

ViktorRay: Because ask yourself, if you were telling your friend to buy a Macbook, which one would you tell them to buy?Well first I would ask them what they are planning to use the Macbook for.Then I would make the recommendation. There is Macbook Neo for basic stuff. Macbook Air for regular stuff and Macbook Pro for gangsta stuff.It seems there is still good differentiation between the Macbook lines.

danesparza: I guess I'm just an OG to Apple. Macbook pro every damn time.

tencentshill: $1700 is a lot for most people, and they don't have their entire jobs on it.

ghost-of-dmr: My friend in high school got a beefy Power Mac G5 just because his parents could afford it. All he did with it was write essays and browse online.

regularfry: Charging in and DisplayPort out on the same socket would mean an additional dongle or hub or something, so there's at least that reason for having both.

thewebguyd: Both ports support power delivery, so you can still be plugged in and use DisplayPort out.

w0m: > (ive got a thinpad and the platic build is just terrible. The screen bends when pulling it to open the laptop).Which thinkpad? Typing on a loaded P16s currently; it's not metal like old MBP or even my travel surface pro, but it feels... fine.

dmos62: I'll just chime in to say that not everyone cares about the features you mentioned that much. Keyboard, touchpad, looks are the last things I think about when comparing laptops. Not to lessen your preferences, just to point out that there's a variety of viewpoints.

widowlark: What features do matter to you?

dmos62: Last time I was shopping for a laptop, I needed battery life, low glare, high screen brightness, rugedness was a plus. Cheapness is a good proxy for rugedness. Being able to upgrade&#x2F;repair components is generally something I value highly too. Something that's made to be maintained, meaning opened, disassembled (and reassembled!), feels good to me.

widowlark: What options do you see available on the market today that meet those needs? I agree that all of those are super nice to have

dmos62: Used thinkpads and dell latitudes, battery and brightness aren't always what I'd like though. Frameworks and similar sound nice, but can't bring myself to pay the premium.What features matter to you?

dgxyz: While I died inside at the 8Gb RAM, this is absolutely right.We should be developing efficient software, not assuming our customers can just pay for more RAM forever.

ClarityJones: Particularly when paying for more RAM means buying a completely new computer.

thewebguyd: Even on an upgradable machine. We're looking at ~$400 for 32GB of DDR5, and the price is only going to keep going up. We're at a point now where Apple actually charges less for RAM upgrades than it costs to upgrade your own machine. Insane.

jscottmiller: I guess that means no Cowork.

sigzero: For a casual computer at home, I'd get one. Everything I do is practically web based anyway.

kube-system: The 11" MacBook Air was also not 11". It was 11.6".The footprint of the Air was 11.8" x 7.56". The Neo is 11.71" x 8.12". If you liked the size of that one, you'll like this.

vrganj: The HP Zbook G1A is what you wanted. It's Strix Halo with up to 128GB of unified RAM and built like a MBP.

NetMageSCW: Maybe you should try a MacOS device.

0x457: That's most likely because windows indexes and scans files rustc produces. My linux machines demolish my iMac in rust compilation.

ErneX: Intel iMac?

NetMageSCW: What he meant was that it was running the non-user touching parts of OS X. It was possible to SSH to an original iPhone and install gcc and compile applications. It was sort of like OS X in a kiosk mode.

game_the0ry: > This is a major challenge to Microsoft.> Other than Microsoft nobody even makes decent laptops in the Windows world.I get the impression that microsoft and the pc world have given up on consumer hardware and instead are completely focused on enterprise and ai. That's why windows 11 is saturated with bugs and is basically unusable, but enterprise is forced to buy it.

leptons: >That's why windows 11 is saturated with bugs and is basically unusableThat's far, far from my experience. What bugs are you talking about that make it "unusable"? I've been on Win11 for years and it's been no problem at all. No bugs that I can think of.

game_the0ry: You must be lucky. They have been well-documented. [1]The constant, annoying reminder to sign up for One Drive is enough to drive me crazy and want to throw my device out the window (I am writing this from a windows 11 laptop that I use for experimentation).[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46000098

bloomca: Apple seemed to copy this one exactly as iCloud asks you the same all the time. Honestly these days Linux feels like the only sane platform as you can customize it properly.

dgan: 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

thatwasunusual: Good for you. Not sure how your comment contribute to ... well, anything, but... Good for you!

alwillis: > This doesn't compete with Chromebooks in schools at all.Of course, it does. The price difference is small enough now that the Neo is in the running. There's no doubt the build quality is going to be much better than a Chromebook.I worked in education for 20+ years; that $499 is just the starting price; a school or school district that buys them in quantity is going to get an even better price.Sure, a Chromebook is better than nothing, and if you’re an impoverished school district, you may have no choice but to go with Chromebooks. But if there's an opportunity to get Macs at this price point, most school districts are going to take it.Don't underestimate Apple's sales and support infrastructure. Many of the schools in the US are in areas with Apple retail stores, where sales and support work out of.It's hard to imagine a school committee going with Chromebooks instead of Mac Neos for a little more money and likely better support. The parents aren't IT experts, but they know Apple is a trusted brand, and Macs are "better".

SaltyBackendGuy: I might be a dinosaur but I just can't stand laptops that have touch screen...

itsfine2: You might want to actually click the links and spent a couple of minutes before typing comments. This is not a laptop with a touch screen - it's a tablet with a kickstand and detachable keyboard.

w10-1: 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&#x2F;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.

theopsimist: 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&#x2F;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 shinyhttps:&#x2F;&#x2F;512pixels.net&#x2F;2026&#x2F;03&#x2F;the-differences-between-the-ma...

MYEUHD: 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.

post-it: > macOS 15 uses ~5GB on startup without any app openSort of? Mac very aggressively caches things into RAM. It should be using all of your RAM on startup. That's why they've changed the Activity Monitor to say "memory pressure" instead of something like "memory usage."I'm typing this on an 8 GB MacBook Air and it works just fine. I've got ChatGPT, VSCode, XCode, Blender, and PrusaSlicer minimized and I'm not feeling any lag. If I open any of them it'll take half a second or so as they're loaded from swap, but when they're not in the foreground they're not using up any memory.

softfalcon: 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 already)

mtrovo: 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.

nolist_policy: Do you know if the A series processor supports virtualization?

xmodem: The A-series has supported virtualization since long before the M-series existed. iOS disables it in early boot, though.On the other hand, how much virtualization are you really going to be doing with 8GB of RAM?

nolist_policy: A lot: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47249309

lynndotpy: I am a huge 3.5mm jack defender and I am still upset at how Apple created a post-USB C world. But this is a common misconception.USB C headphones and 3.5mm headphones (and Bluetooth, USB A, etc) are all equally as "analog" as one another (with the exception of someone with all-analog equipment, of course).You need a DAC somewhere between the chip you're getting the digital signal from and the speakers that are playing an analog signal. And so the quality of that depends on (among other things) the quality of your DAC.With USB or Bluetooth headphones, the DAC is somewhere in the headphone. With the 3.5mm jack, the DAC is behind jack. If you have a device with a crummy built-in DAC giving you a noisy signal, you'll be better off using a USB DAC.I haven't used Apple's USB C earbuds, but Apple does make a $10 USB C to 3.5mm DAC that performs very very well for its price point.

teaearlgraycold: What are you doing in your node server? That shouldn't take up a ton of RAM.

pjmlp: Thinkpads with replaceable components and PC desktops.

qmr: What are you slicing?What do you find compelling with Prusa slicer over orca slicer?

forgetcolor: 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?).

davnicwil: 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?

arndt: I hope too, maybe with iPad Pros first: A new hybrid binary for apps that allows you to seamlessly switch between MacOS mode when connected to peripherals and iOS when not, apps just render in a different place, but maintain state.

internet2000: Glowing logo for Starbucks dig? What year is it?

pjmlp: 2026

bloomca: I have an M2 Macbook Air with 8GB and it struggles even without the light development part, and latest macOS made it all much worse. To be honest I am impressed how fast the experience degraded as there was a lot of headroom.

e12e: It's nice to be able to authenticate sudo via biometric id with the help of Pam, or unlock your password manager like bitwarden.I don't think an apple watch would help there?

beeflet: I've got this functionality in linux with the framework laptop, and it really isn't much faster than typing in a password.

theopsimist: And of course the screen: 13.0-inch vs 13.6Weight 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)

theopsimist: I'll keep adding to the list:* Only one external display* No haptic trackpad

Schiendelman: "With 8GB". 8GB on Apple Silicon acts more like 16GB on a PC.

pjmlp: Depends on how many ChromeOS Platform apps you have running.

ChoGGi: Only 8gb RAM?

Shalomboy: 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&#x2F;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.

gandreani: Wow props to that sales rep. Not many would pass on the opportunity to sell something more expensive. I'm assuming they make some sort of (paltry) commission

tedmiston: no commission

ewoodrich: I’m confused, you’re talking about 16 GB of RAM but OP said: Having only 8 GB sucks unless you're using it as a terminal or media player. I have the M1 MacBook Pro with 16 GB too and it’s fine for normal web development and multi tasking but that … really isn’t surprising?I still regularly use a five year old Ideapad 14 Pro with 16 GB of RAM running Windows 11 and it’s also completely fine for dev work running servers&#x2F;Docker&#x2F;WSL2 VM&#x2F;etc locally.

ezfe: They're giving an example of a very heavy workload on 16GB. It stands to easy reasoning that a casual consumer could be fine on 8GB.

achenet: I disagree about Apple's OS and UI, I prefer the user experience of Linux :)With a distro like Linux Mint or Ubuntu everything basically "just works", and you have much more freedom with how you setup your computer. Plus, while Apple is generally better about not bloaring their OS with bothersome corporate BS ("log into your Windows account! Sign up for OneDrive! AI in your email!") then Microsoft, they're not exactly perfect.

internet2000: 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.

theopsimist: I think different people will have one feature they feel should have been kept (other than the ram which is universal). For me not so much the Touch ID but the backlit keyboard.

lynndotpy: On the refurb market, you can get a Macbook Air at the 16-512 configuration for only a few hundred more, which is a better value.But! Then you'll be seeing the Neos on the refurb market in the $300 or $400 range.I think this has basically been how the market for Macs have worked since 2021.

spinningarrow: > No keyboard backlightingWhen was the last time Apple had a laptop without keyboard lighting?

wackget: Price difference?

ezfe: * $500 = base model (250 GB SSD) (education)* $600 = 500 GB + Touch ID (education)* $1,000 = MacBook Air (500 GB SSD) (education)

thewebguyd: It definitely feels that way. Microsoft has made it clear they don't care about the consumer market anymore. Xbox is dying or already dead, they've done nothing with the game studios they acquired, Windows laptop OEMs still ship plastic 1080p crap targeted at general office workers.They'll continue to sell it, because it's effectively free surveillance for them, but they certainly aren't focusing on the consumer market as a target demographic.And with less and less windows-specific apps now a days, there's very little reason for the average user to buy a Windows laptop, especially over this new macbook.

pjmlp: Indeed they haven't, Microsoft is only one of the biggest publishers in the world, and regardless of XBox the console, Microsoft Games Studios is doing great.

ezfe: Since it's just $100 to get 250 -> 500 GB and Touch ID, I think it's okay.It means people who need the cheapest computer can get it, and people who want to upgrade pay a small amount and get all the upgrades in a package without jumping up to the MacBook Air, etc. for much more.

1attice: Yes, you see them on the subway all the time

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

slowjin: Would this be an upgrade from an X270?

markn951: The body, size, weight, shape of the Neo is almost exactly the same as the current Macbook Air. What are you talking about?

vintagedave: 'What are you talking about' aside: exactly. What is the Neo, if not an Air? What is the Air, then? What is the product segmentation?Once upon a time, there was the white MacBook. Maybe this is trying to be the new plain MacBook?

throwaway270925: > Maybe this is trying to be the new plain MacBook?Well yes, obviously!

whateverboat: Plastic is better if done right. I do not know a single manufacturer today which does plastic right.

mixdup: That assumption would be wrong, and is why you get that kind of service from them. They may have targets of units sold but the real target is customer satisfaction and part of that is getting the customer into the right product so they're happy with it

sva_: > Powered by A18 Prohttps:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Apple_A18So this is basically running on a phone CPUI 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.

sgjohnson: Of course it’s an iPhone chip, which is why it’s got just 8 gigs of RAM. I think it’s the same exact SoC that went into the 16 Pro Max.

sva_: There were some M-series chips with 8 gigs, iirc. There was a whole debate going on about that on the net when they were released. Not the M5 though, as it seems.

ebbi: Imagine putting on some glasses for virtual display and iPhone going into desktop mode...That'd be the dream

999900000999: It was definitely the Fuji X Half review.https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arslan.io&#x2F;2025&#x2F;06&#x2F;14&#x2F;fujifilm-x-half-is-it-the-perfe...And I must make a correction, he doesn't explicitly mention trusting his kids with a 5k Leica. He's using a 10k M11 as a family camera and he lets his wife use it.Still, I'd imagine a family with this type of money would have no issue giving the kids 500$ MacBook.I should of brought up the thread where someone felt they needed to buy each daughters a Tesla...

ppeetteerr: This laptop competes against M2&#x2F;M3 MacBook Airs. Going to be hard to justify a Neo when the others are so much more powerful.

thallavajhula: 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&#x2F;Sony&#x2F;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&#x2F;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.

quesera: No need to be obnoxious.I noted the tab count because it's a weak measurement of memory requirements, which is directly relevant to the topic at hand.I keep tabs because they're better in most ways than bookmarks. I'd be happy to expound on that opinion, but I suspect you're unreceptive.FWIW, Firefox with Sidebery can handle more tabs than you or I need. Someday I'll clean them out, maybe, but I don't need to. Thanks Mozilla!

tedmiston: "Apple Pi"

testfrequency: Chromebooks are much more secure for enterprise and education.macOS is awful to manage on an enterprise and education level. This will always be Apple’s achilles heel in truly breaking into this market. Admins will push back.Google has Security down to a science. ChromeOS has little to no malware. Google is constantly reporting malware and exploits to Apple so they can patch active vulns.

ezfe: My school, my college, and my current enterprise (Fortune 500, etc.) environment all manage it just fine.

jimbokun: It could compete well in both. Looks like Apple has a product that competes with Chromebooks on price and competes with Surface on performance at the same time. At least close enough on both counts to create headaches for anyone trying to sell either.

jonplackett: How long do those chrome books last though?I reckon even an iPhone pro is better value than an average android phone. Same with iPad vs Android tablet.Because they last 3 possibly 4 times longer. A decent Apple laptop purchased 4 years ago is still basically a top notch laptop. Build quality is amazing. Resale value is still very high.

magnio: > Because they last 3 possibly 4 times longer.An iPhone Pro is 3 times more expensive than an average Android phone too. If you buy Android flagships after 2022, they also last 4-6 years.

alwillis: > If you buy Android flagships after 2022, they also last 4-6 years.The hardware lasts but they usually stop getting software updates after a few years, especially if they're not high-end models.Last month, Apple released an update for the iPhone 8 and iPhone X [1]. The iPhone 8 was released September 2017. I seriously doubt 9-year old Android phones, even flagship models, are still getting software updates.[1]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;02&#x2F;02&#x2F;apple-releases-ios-16-7...

MYEUHD: In macOS 15 there are two metrics: "Memory used" and "Cached Files"I'm specifically talking about "Memory used" here.In fact, on my 16GB mac, if I open apps that use ~8GB of RAM (on top of the 5GB I mentioned earlier), it starts swapping.

KerrAvon: How do you define "swapping?" Even on Intel Macs, the memory statistics don't map the way one might expect. Be careful when making assumptions about what those metrics actually mean.

MYEUHD: I mean at that point (13 GB memory used), the "Swap used" is at several hundred megabytes.And if I more apps (or browser tabs), the "Swap used" keeps increasing, and the "memory pressure" graph switches color from green to yellow.The color of that graph is the indicator I'm using to know that I should close my browser tabs :p

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

satvikpendem: This isn't news, all MacBook have one.

jstimpfle: > which means you have subtle display artifacts.No. 150÷ just means 96dpi * 1.5

lateforwork: At 150% scaling, one logical pixel maps to 1.5 physical pixels. When a 1px grid line is drawn, the renderer cannot light exactly 1.5 pixels, so it distributes the color across adjacent pixels using anti-aliasing. Depending on where the line falls relative to device-pixel boundaries, one pixel may be fully colored and the next partially colored, or vice versa. This shifts the perceived center of the line slightly. In a repeating grid, these fractional shifts accumulate, making the gaps between lines appear uneven or "vibrating."Chromium often avoids this by rendering 1px borders as hairlines that snap to a single device pixel, even when a CSS pixel corresponds to 1.5 device pixels at 150% scaling. This keeps lines crisp, but it also means the border remains about one device pixel thick, making it appear slightly thinner relative to the surrounding content.For some people such artifacts are not noticeable for others they are.

taftster: > Other than Microsoft nobody even makes decent laptops in the Windows world.I completely agree. I actually quit like and get along with my Surface Laptop. It's a really nice computer overall, worthy. It's the closest you get to the same polish and usability that Apple has in their macbooks.I absolutely love my M4 macbook pro, it's definitely the best laptop I've ever owned. I had an older macbook pro that I kept way past its lifetime too.

OkayPhysicist: The Surface is garbage. My last work-issued one caught fire.I've never had any complaint's about Asus' laptops, though I've only used their Zenbook and Zephyrus lines.

carefree-bob: woah, how did it catch on fire? I want to hear this.

satvikpendem: Rust literally compiles ~4x faster on WSL than on the Windows command line, on the same hardware, so try that and see. Also set up the mold or wild linker as well as sccache, although sccache is OS agnostic so you can use it on macOS too. Make sure your code is on the WSL side not on &#x2F;mnt&#x2F;c which is the Windows side though, that will kill compilation speed.https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;rust&#x2F;s&#x2F;CsEy9bLivK

margorczynski: The Mac OS is the thing that keeps me away from those computers. I really don't like when a piece of software tries to treat me like I have some kind of brain injury and needs to "help" me at every point.

stuff4ben: The A18Pro is a very powerful CPU, besting even the M1 in single-core performance (about even in multicore). Saying its just a "phone CPU" is disingenuous.

sroussey: I do wish they used the A19 Pro which has better hardware based memory security.

ezfe: In the United States (population of 340 million):* 86 million (27%) are under 21 and most of those are students. * Those people have parents, assume 2 parents per 2 children = 86 million parents (27%)That means 55% of the US population is eligible for the cheaper rate before you even account for people getting secondary degrees, educators, and yes - the schools themselves.

jjtheblunt: ahhh....good catch. i used the wrong name: i meant surface pro 13, which has the detachable keyboard. yeah, it's odd that the surface laptops are lower res.

w10-1: > - USB 3.0 10 Gbps with DisplayPort supportI'd like to run the external display plus an external SSD at USB 3 speeds, so I'd be waiting for experience reports on whether the one port can handle both without constraining the filesystem transfer speeds.

ghrl: Since it's just USB and not Thunderbolt, wouldn't it use DisplayPort Alt mode for the display leaving data transfer untouched?

nateb2022: > What is the product segmentation?RAM, CPU cores, GPU cores, for the most part.

vintagedave: Segmentation is about product fit. I think it’s amazing and an amazing price and I expect and hope it will be very successful. Yet I feel like this is where the Air used to be, but the Air has crept more towards Pro.I don’t dislike it! Just, confused how three models all fit together.

ezfe: Yeah it sounds like your the target audience for 16GB of RAM.

ex-aws-dude: If you even know what XCode is you're not the target audience for 8GB

yndoendo: The USB-C ports are unbalanced. Should have one on the left and right, not side by side.Unbalanced USB-C ports has become a common bad design in the laptop industry.

freeone3000: Commodity hubs, especially USB2, come with lots of ports; it's up to how many connectors you can reasonably fit on the chassis. But running a trace across the board for USB isn't a great sell. Getting a second board on the other side isn't a great sell, especially for budget computers like this one. So we end up with "unbalanced" ports.

yndoendo: "Unbalanced" USB-C and USB-A ports on a laptop is a bad design. We should be calling out bad designs. HP, Lenovo, Asus, ACER, Dell, ... all contribute to this bad design. Apple even uses unbalanced USB-C ports on the MacBook Air.This is why I choose the Framework laptop over the big names. Their design has balanced USB ports were it can be charged from the left or right. Balanced power USB ports improves user experience with using on a couch or in a bed. Plugging in two USB to NIC adapters allows the weight to be balanced while working on a lap or some other non-desk environment.Balanced USB-C ports sold me and what I first look at when reviewing a laptop.

alwillis: You can make a pretty good electron app or one that kinda sucks. Slack is in the latter category.

satvikpendem: Not necessarily replaced. Some classes still ban all electronic devices unless you have some medical accommodation, this was in response to people not listening while being on their phones, tablets, and laptops.

alwillis: > "You're holding it wrong" - Steve Jobs> Apple has put out plenty of subpar experiences in the past, and there's no reason they wouldn't do it in the future.Come on—that was 16 years ago! Y'all gotta let some things go after a while.

asdff: Why would reading on a laptop produce neck strain? Just sit comfortably.

crazygringo: The way people use laptops, the screens are generally much lower than they should be for good ergonomics.iPads&#x2F;Kindles are better because they're smaller and lighter so you can position them with far greater flexibility.

0x457: M4. To be fair I bought it as a pretty ssh terminal in living room into compute in another room.

sgjohnson: I think the M2 was the last one they made with 8 gigs of memory.

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

CharlesW: 2010. https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;07&#x2F;12&#x2F;backlit-keyboard-to-ret...

amluto: Pretending your laptop is a screaming fast workstation and compiling C++ code on all cores can use quite a bit of RAM.(I have a MacBook Pro that is only around 10% slower at this than an AMD workstation. The workstation has considerably higher TDP. I’m quite impressed.)

jjtheblunt: too late to edit: i was thinking surface pro (the detachable keyboard) not surface laptop with attached keyboard and weirdly low res screens, compared to the surface pro series.

dmitrygr: The hardware support was there for a while. Given that this runs macOS, i would guess (no insider knowledge) that it would work just fine and not be disabled like it is in iOS (by policy, not by technical reasons)

basch: Apple absolutely needs a management layer, both for school and for family. Apple family controls are sorely broken.

cyberpunk: Our work macs are tied into microsoft’s intune thingy, pretty sure that’s enough for most orgs.Not that i’m a fan of it, but meh it exists.

basch: That’s not free. Apples Apple ID management is atrocious. How do you password reset an ID you own?They need to move to having the students ID under both their parents and the school, detachable from the school when a kid moves.The devices need to be enrolled to the org and then act as thin clients so any kid can log onto any laptop, not have the laptop locked down to a specific kid.Apple Parental controls are either controllable on the kids device or one parents device but not both at the same time and definitely not two parents at the same time. Whose bright idea was it not to allow two parents to see and manage a kids settings from their own devices, at the same time. That’s a lot of the world that doesn’t appear to anticipate two parents wanting to manage a kid from separate accounts, but Apple should know better.

elondaits: AirPods have too much latency for playing music. You want wired audio for running GarageBand or Logic Pro with a MIDI controller. They could have gone with a USB-C to audio adapter, but then you wouldn't be able to plug the MIDI controller and charge the computer.... Only a few people make music with a Mac, but it's been an important part of its history, and Apple cares about it.

zakki: Can I virtualize Windows 7 and PostgreSQL in it?

joe_mamba: Dell has 50% more market share than Apple and HP 2x Apple's market share in the PC space. I doubt they'll be exiting the market because Apple launched a cheap laptop with 8gb of ram and using USB 2.0 ports. Most corporations are still tied to Windows apps and the MS ecosystem in general.

alwillis: > cheap laptop with 8gb of ram and using USB 2.0 ports.A nitpick: there are two USB ports, one of them is a 10GB&#x2F;s USB 3 port.

joe_mamba: Both of which look identical with no obvious markings which is which. I'm sure this will generate no confusion amongst consumers who will have no issues whatsoever with this. &#x2F;s"you're plugging it wrong" will become the new version of "You're holding it wrong"

alpaca128: As an iPad owner I would probably use it for taking handwritten notes if the handwriting recognition was reliable enough for text search. But it's not, and the search feature in Apple Notes is the absolute minimum to be called "search". It can only search from the beginning of words, so typing "oo" will never find "foo". Better apps exist but they all come with a subscription of some kind.I am clearly not the target audience for the iPad. Being restricted to apps and what they allow you to do while asking for money at every corner is not my cup of tea.

gopalv: > * No MagSafeFor 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.

medi8r: RIP, IBM compatiable PC.

sreekanth67: wow. are elementary school kids using chromebooks? my kids is in pre-K this year. i dont know about the elementary school chromebook thing.

chrisgeleven: Yes, my kids all started using one in Kindergarten, although it took to 4th grade before my oldest started bringing home one every night.

BugsJustFindMe: > I’m confused, you’re talking about 16 GB of RAM but OP said: Having only 8 GBLook at the list of things they said they have open. Divide in half and it's still a lot because that set of running software is very hungry. PostgreSQL, Slack, Docker, Brave, Cursor, and iTerm2 running on my system puts RAM usage at 23.5GB, and yet modern macs have both very good memory compression and also extremely fast swap. Most Mac users will never realize if they've filled RAM entirely with background software.

ewoodrich: Okay, I can see the point being a subset of that would work on 8 GB, but I don't think you can really just divide by half?Considering a much larger portion of the 8 GB would be dedicated to base OS&#x2F;unified GPU needs compared to the 16 GB model.e.g. using hypothetical numbers: if MacOS&#x2F;typical GPU usage requires 4 GB, then the 8GB model would have 4GB available for running apps (but multiplied by memory compression&#x2F;swapping to fast SSD). Whereas the 16GB would have a much more comfortable 12 GB for multi-tasking in that scenario.

fluoridation: That has not been my experience at all; I get pretty much the same times on the same machine on Linux and Windows. Something weird has happening to that person. Someone mentioned Defender, and that could certainly be it, as I have it totally disabled (forcibly, by deleting the executable).

NetMageSCW: The Neo is for when budget is primary. The Air is for when weight and size are primary. The Pro is for when the others aren’t enough.

alwillis: > 8 GB unified memory is brand-new e-waste today. macOS 26 makes it even worse.One reason Apple can get away with 8 GB of RAM is their SoC does realtime compression of data in RAM and they use high bandwidth memory; the M4 Air's RAM bandwidth is 120 GB&#x2F;s. This enables them to treat the SSD like an L3 cache.It's nearly 5 years since the M1 was released; I suspect Apple has gotten really good with their RAM > compression > SSD system since then.

crazygringo: Exactly. 8 GB still seems plenty for lightweight work, even under Tahoe.For general browsing and webapps and writing papers and watching Netflix and whatever, this is great.

pipeline_peak: To some people that isn’t a problem.

nateb2022: My feel is the "feel" segmentation is like this:MacBook Neo: for students (some primary school, probably more geared to post-secondary) and people who want a lightweight (form factor, price, performance) laptop that still feels premium.MacBook Air: people who frequently move around, have an actual need performance but in a highly portable form factor.MacBook Pro: professionals who highly prefer performance over ergonomics, basically a portable PC, as they likely keep it plugged in more than not, and it spends more time on a desk than being used as a laptop.Basically the Pro is like a PC that also happens to have a screen and a keyboard and foldable, the Air is their laptop that intends to be a laptop, and the Neo is their Air on a budget.

NetMageSCW: Why is that unfortunate? They make MacBook Airs with 16GB for those that need more than 8GB.

drstewart: >Why would you want an iPad?Talk to Gen Z some time. They prefer tablet devices to laptops.

pier25: when working?

drstewart: yep

janitor77swe: It's not a replacement, it's an addition. My Air is stationary and it doesn't leave my desk due to lots of cables plugged in and I want something that I can take with me around the house if I decide to chill elsewhere for a bit. I was looking at Windows laptops for a long time and it was either a Chromebook or £1k+ which I couldn't justify.Anything for the price of the Neo that I could find was an ugly looking 15" piece of plastic from Asus or Lenovo (no offense, I love my Thinkpads).However I do have to say again that I use an 8G M2 at work without any issues and I've had an M1 as a temp replacement for work recently again without any issues and they say A18 is equivalent to M1 in performance so I really don't see why this new Neo wouldn't be enough for a home&#x2F;personal laptop. All my consumption is SaaS-based, I really don't need better spec. What I need is a lower price and familiarity that I appreciate and I think Apple nailed it here by offering both in a product.

jitl: i think a mac mini (m4, 16gb, $599) for the desk is what i’d buy in your situation but ofc i don’t know the specifics

NetMageSCW: Or wait for the M5 Mac Mini to come out instead.

parl_match: Yes, the person you are replying to has explained that.The old mental model of how ram and swap works doesn't fit neatly to how modern macos manages ram. 8GB is acceptable, although on the lower end for sure.

gdubs: 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 &#x2F; classroom device. If nothing else, the price makes it more of an option.

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

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

NetMageSCW: 8GB is all the target market needs.

NetMageSCW: I do remote support with my iPad using Horizon, Citrix and Jump to RDP with a VPN.

alwillis: FYI: Apple added support for Linux containers to macOS Tahoe [1].[1]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;apple&#x2F;container

fluoridation: I think part of that is Explorer, rather than NTFS. Try doing it from the console instead. rd &#x2F;q &#x2F;s <dir>.

PaulHoule: It still takes a lot longer than Linux or Mac OS X.

stetrain: There have also been iPads running on M series chips for years now.The actual hardware system differences between an M4 iPad Air and M4 MacBook Air are pretty slim as far as the OS would be concerned.You can connect an iPad to an external display, keyboard, and mouse. It even has multi-window support.Not supporting Mac apps on iPad OS is a product decision by Apple, not a hardware or underlying OS issue.

kettlecorn: Apple certainly puts out experiences that leave much to be improved but to be pedantic the word 'subpar' implies below the 'par'. If 'par' is set by Microsoft then Apple easily clears it.Nowadays Chromebooks offer more design competition for Apple, and even historically Linux distros have had more ideas for Apple to learn from than Microsoft.

asdff: Why would you spin up a linux vm for development when you are already running a unix os?

umanwizard: Linux is quite different from macOS in many ways. They are both distantly inspired by "unix" (and Apple has managed to convince someone to let them use the trademark, so they really "are" unix, legally at least), but the similarity ends there.

tedmiston: > A18 Pro chip (2 performance cores + 4 efficiency cores) whereas the macbook air has the M5 chipi don't see the m5 air on geekbench yet, but here are some related numbers for context (sorted by multi ascending): | device | cpu | single core score | multi core score | |:----------------------------|:------------------------------------------------|------------------:|-----------------:| | iPhone 16 Pro Max | Apple A18 Pro | 3428 | 8531 | | iPhone 16 Pro | Apple A18 Pro | 3445 | 8624 | | MacBook Air (15-inch, 2025) | Apple M4 @ 4.4 GHz (10 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores) | 3708 | 14698 | | MacBook Air (13-inch, 2025) | Apple M4 @ 4.4 GHz (10 CPU cores, 8 GPU cores) | 3696 | 14729 | | MacBook Air (13-inch, 2025) | Apple M4 @ 4.4 GHz (10 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores) | 3696 | 14729 | | MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2025) | Apple M5 @ 4.6 GHz (10 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores) | 4228 | 17464 | https:&#x2F;&#x2F;browser.geekbench.com&#x2F;ios-benchmarkshttps:&#x2F;&#x2F;browser.geekbench.com&#x2F;mac-benchmarks

wffurr: Put the M1 in your comparison - I think the A18 Pro compares favorably to it and it's a good baseline for people who bought in on Apple Silicon early and are still using it.

tokyobreakfast: > No camera notchI'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.

philip1209: I forgot about force touch as a feature until I read this comment.

blissofbeing: Anyone else thinking of using this as a homelab server?

locusofself: 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.

jeroenhd: 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.

nateb2022: > macOS with a browser open pretty quickly hits 13 GiB of RAM usage for me.Without context on total memory available, this is a meaningless metric. Free RAM is wasted RAM.

ux266478: > Free RAM is wasted RAM.Very bad truism that's not even compatible with the first half of your post.

klardotsh: To each their own. The OS is easily one of the most frustrating I’ve ever been required to use. It does some things very well, but many things absolutely infuriatingly.Now, yes, almost everything about Apple’s hardware UX is a light year ahead of most competitors. That’s been true for ages.

dmonitor: You'll look like a mega nerd if you pull that out in a classroom, assuming you even have the desk space. Not to mention the qol improvement of having your pen touch the screen you're drawing on.

satvikpendem: A mega nerd for pulling out a 7 by 6 inch touchpad with a pen next to your laptop? They're not talking about a full fat Wacom tablet, and besides, it's really not that hard to write on a screen vs a tablet, in some cases even better because your hands don't cover parts of it up (I have both an iPad with a pencil and a Wacom).Plus on macOS you can easily use note taking apps with the Wacom touchpad that then digitize the text to make it searchable.

levl289: Does the Wacom show the actual result of the writing, or do you need to look at the screen? This feels like a bad solution to needing an electronic notepad.

intenex: When you open up Activity Monitor, to the immediate left of the "Memory Used" and "Cached Files" that you see, you'll see the Memory Pressure graph that the guy above is talking about.On my 64 GB M1 Macbook Pro right now, I have 53.41 GB of Memory Used and 10.72 GB of Cached Files and 6.08 GB of swap, but Memory Pressure is green and extremely low. On my 8 GB M1 Macbook Air I just bought for OpenClaw, I'm at 6.94 GB Memory Used and 1.01 GB of Cached Files with 2.05 GB of Swap Used, and Memory Pressure is medium high at yellow, probably somewhere around 60-70%.You can open up the Terminal and run the command memory_pressure to get much more detailed data on what goes into calculating memory pressure - more than just the amount of swap used, it tracks swap I&#x2F;O and a bunch of page and compressor data to get a more holistic sense of what's going on and how memory starved you're going to feel in practice.In any case - I've been absolutely mindblown at how fast my 3 8GB M1 Macbook Airs I just bought for ~$350 brand new have been - even with tons of Chrome tabs open, multiple terminal windows open, running OpenClaw and Claude Code and VS Code and doing a ton of development and testing, never once have they ever felt slow. Oftentimes they actually feel faster than my 64 GB M1 Macbook Pro, which kind of blows my mind and makes me wonder wtf is going on on my monster machine. Moreover, my M1 Macbook Pro drains battery like crazy and uses a ton of charge, whereas the Macbook Airs stay constantly below 10 watts essentially always and even with Amphetamine keeping them on 24&#x2F;7, with the display off and being fully on, they'll drop to a single watt of power draw. Truly insane stuff. I've lost all my concern about RAM, to be honest (which is shocking coming from someone who bought a top of the line maxed out RAM primary machine in 2021 specifically because I felt like RAM was so important)

tomcam: > I've been absolutely mindblown at how fast my 3 8GB M1 Macbook Airs I just bought for ~$350 brand newWait what? How did you manage that?

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

lern_too_spel: In my area, an Acer Chromebook Spin 514 has a faster processor, more RAM, and a touchscreen and costs only $100 more. With those specs, it's much better for productivity, development, and games, so it's well worth the price. The same people who didn't know that Acer sold this before will still not know they sell it now. The people who knew Acer sold that device before will continue buying it.

downrightmike: Court cases and the Feds proved they were intentionally slowing down old hardware and killing battery life ahead of new releases

whiterook6: In case you didn't already know or haven't considered it, you can find right-angle usb-c MagSafe adaptors that basically allow the charging cable to disconnect from the device like MagSafe.

genxy: Most of these devices are a fire hazard. And in an environment where kids are needing magsafe, is probably the most dangerous for fire safety.

BugsJustFindMe: A lesser set of running processes wants 24GB on my mac (32GB RAM, which means I also have less pressure to compress things). That means their much heavier load with less RAM is waaaay into swap territory but still doing just fine. Also, just for the info, my Activity Monitor says that the OS RAM (wired) usage is around 3GB on Tahoe 26.3.

asow92: 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.

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

tomcam: > I'm typing this on an 8 GB MacBook Air and it works just fine.Most cool. Is it an M1?

alistairSH: Not the OP, but I have an M1 MBA and it handles light "coding" stuff quite well, though haven't tried VSCode+Zoom+bunch of other stuff, as my work laptop is a M1 MBP.

alexzenla: All of that is a yes, plus compressed memory is a big component of macOS.

znpy: > * “Just” 16 hours of battery life, compared to the 18 hours quoted for the 13-inch MacBook Airfor 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 shinyoh yeah, first world problems &#x2F;s

kccqzy: It just looks nice. Touch typists don’t look at the keyboard anyways.

adrr: They take standardized tests on it. Questions have a button to speak the question. Same with answers.

lern_too_spel: I've bought several touchscreen Chromebooks for that price.

flenserboy: 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&#x2F;mouse.

ryukafalz: I can't see Apple doing anything that'd make the iPhone not a usable phone while it's being used as a Mac. But I bet they could have macOS components running alongside iOS, in a VM&#x2F;container of some sort. Would be very cool.(Honestly I can't see Apple doing that either though since it'd cannibalize their other product lines. But c'mon, Apple!)

zer0zzz: I guess PCs and chromebooks are over? Literally what normie would pay more for a worse experience now?

satvikpendem: It's a touchpad, of course the result shows up on the laptop screen, and the user doesn't even look at the touchpad anymore, just as digital artists don't now. Honestly not sure why commenters here are acting like it's some huge deal to use a touchpad for note taking and that one has to get an iPad when there really is no need.

mjlee: Wacom have been selling "pen displays" for years, at least since ~2013. You can buy a brand new one for $300.

asow92: 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.

dfalbel: Is A18 fully compatible with M series chips apps?

NetMageSCW: As others have pointed out, the original Apple Silicon development kit used the A12Z chip.

everfrustrated: Apple buries this info but the memory bandwidth on the M series is very high. Doubly and triply so for the Pro & Max variants which are insanely high.Not much in the PC line up comes close and certainly not at the same price point. There's some correlation here between PCs still wanting to use user-upgradable memory which can't work at the higher bandwidths vs Apple integrating it into the cpu package.

chocochunks: They don't bury it. It's literally on the spec page these days. And LPCAMM2 falls somewhere between the base M and Pro CPUs while still being replaceable.The new MacBook Neo is a less than half the memory bandwidth of the base model MacBook Air.

kccqzy: Targets of units sold is a better metric than targets of total revenue, if a company is focused on customer satisfaction.