The Apple MacBook Neo’s $599 starting price is a “shock” to the Windows PC industry, according to an Asus executive.
Hsu said he believes all the PC players—including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD—take the MacBook Neo threat seriously. “In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product,” he added, given that rumors about the MacBook Neo have been making the rounds for at least a year.
Despite the competitive threat, Hsu argued that the MacBook Neo could have limited appeal. He pointed to the laptop’s 8GB of “unified memory,” or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can’t upgrade it.
In Europe the price it’s not that appealing, it’s €699 and because they “care about environment 😉” the €99 charger (which is almost mandatory for a new user) is sold separately.
At €798 for 256g/8g it’s not as good as the $599 they’re selling in the US.
If someone is price sensitive, can get 3-4 refurbished ThinkPads with better specs for that price and run Linux much easier without hoping on some volunteer wizard to reverse engineer the proprietary components
Got an L440, upgraded it to 16 GB and to i7, now it’s a beast. Had to “reset” its battery, otherwise it didn’t last for more than 20-30 minutes. Maybe will swap the screen to a 1080p IPS one and upgrade the WiFi/Bluetooth to modern standards.
I also hate that they no longer ship chargers, but it’s a USB-C charger. Don’t most people have at least one by now? The Neo in particular doesn’t require a very powerful one.
Now the fact that if you get an M5 Max 16" MBP which takes like a 100ish watt charger (can charge with slightly less, but with 20-30 it’ll be hopeless), you still get no charger, is utter bullshit because most people don’t have such a powerful USB-C charger around unless they’ve had a Macbook Pro made in the last decade already.
“care about environment 😉”
Most definitely something they’re doing for improved profit margins, but at the same time, slightly smaller boxes = more boxes per load of cargo = a bunch of CO2 saved on transport. Also they get to manufacture fewer chargers, as repeat customers won’t buy multiple chargers anymore. I do think the impact is significantly more pronounced with phones which get replaced more often and where the charger would take up a bigger percentage of the total box size.
because they “care about environment 😉” the €99 charger (which is almost mandatory for a new user) is sold separately.
It’s because they’re required by law to offer it without a power supply. See Article 3a, section 10.
Apple’s first-party power supply isn’t “almost mandatory”, and doesn’t cost 99€. The 20W model shipped with the Macbook Neo in other markets costs 25€ on Apple’s German store, and a generic 8€ power supply from Amazon will work. The power supply most people already have for their phone will usually also work.
The law is there solely to ensure the customer always has the option to buy the product without a charger, in order to fight waste. It doesn’t restrict manufacturers from offering the product including charger as well.
For consumers it doesn’t matter. Capitalism is capitalism. If the price of the laptop + charger is not attractive, consumers can buy a competing product. Arguably buying an Apple on a budget is a controversial choice anyway, as the ecosystem costs (software, cloud services, accessories) are generally higher compared to other OS, which have an open hardware architecture, less licensing costs and more competititon.
It’s because they’re required by law to offer it without a power supply. See Article 3a, section 10.
the problem is not that, but that they are still including the price of the charger in the deal
How much cheaper do you think it should be for not including a 20W power supply? I’d be surprised if Apple’s cost for that part is more than 5€.
it should be cheaper with the full price of the charger
in my european country, apple’s website says the 1 meter 60 watt usb-c charger cable costs 25 EUR, and the 30 watt usb c charger adapter costs 45 EUR. these are the most budget options I could find on apple’s site
so, the devife should be 70 EUR cheaper, to be exact
Like any other manufacturer, Apple marks up the devices in their store. Don’t believe me? Go price out chargers on Dell or HP’s website and see how overpriced those are.
When’s the last time you bought a laptop from any other manufacturer and had to specifically opt in to buying the charger
A year from now when Dell starts doing it on their home line of laptops.
one caveat: the us price is without vat
Can I put Linux on it? Because otherwise refurb Thinkpad Carbons are cheaper and better.
Refurb
You can’t really compare refurb to new. If you do, you might as well consider refurb Macbook Pros instead of the Macbook Neo too.
A new X1 Carbon is 1749 EUR starting price near me. The Neo is 719. A 5 year old X1 Carbon, refurbed, is 725. It’s not a bad laptop by any means, but it also has soldered RAM much like the Mac, so at 5 years of age it may not exactly be super reliable past the warranty which isn’t all that long for either case.
I’m sure Asahi support will be available soon. If these had 16gb of memory, I’d seriously consider it as a new Linux laptop. Even with the global AI-fabricated RAM shortage, 8GB hasn’t been a reasonable amount of RAM for over a decade.
Has Asahi matured? Last I heard there were still quite a few unsupported features like touch ID and displayport over usb c
I think TouchID isn’t a priority for them, but looking at the supported M1 and M2 devices and features, it seems like it could be a daily driver. It has things I never got to work on my first Linux laptop (webcam, microphone, speakers, suspend, keyboard backlight, wifi, bluetooth), although it’s 2026 so those are basically all expected. No thunderbolt, touchID, or display port alt mode, though, does make it a step behind MacOS, with some doubts it’ll ever fully catch up even on this 5-6 year old hardware.
Still, these were very popular devices, so I think they’ll stay on the used market for a long time. I might pick one up if it’s cheap enough.
The industry problem is mainly that RAM makers do not want to piss off Apple, who has already had long term contracts set prior to rampocalypse. But 8gb linux native is a better product for systems that need to be offered at 8gb for affordability.
Its still a Mac
Knowing apple, at that price point, performance is going to suuuuuck.
Lawl you don’t know anything about Apple and the performance kicks the ass of similarly priced Windows machines. Keep spreading BS tho, I’m sure it makes you feel smug
See for yourself:
Exactly which means superior build quality and a great experience. Parents will be snapping these up in the fall for back to school.
Lol
I hope the kool aid tastes good at least
Foxconn has never been known for quality.
Exploiting child labor? Sure.
Inhumane long hours? Absolutely!
Build quality? Hahahaha. Hahaha. What a tool you are.
That price still sounds like a ripoff for what you apparently get. Such is Apple.
Not too sure on that. In single-thread cinebench it beats high-end desktop CPUs from AMD and Intel. Now the Ryzen 9950X3D will absolutely DEMOLISH it in anything that can use all of its threads, but it literally lost in single-thread to Apple’s phone SoC. And that CPU costs the same as the entire Macbook Neo.
You can spend 3k on a gaming laptop with a Core Ultra 9 288V right now that is in every other way better performing than the Macbook Neo, but still loses heavily in single thread performance.
Now I’m not saying this makes it the best deal ever, it’s literally just one metric I’m talking about, but for the average user, single thread performance means the computer is more responsive overall, and a lot of applications aren’t optimized to make proper use of 6 threads, let alone 16 or 32, so it might feel snappier than a significantly more expensive laptop from another manufacturer, especially if it’s running Windows.
Shilling much lately?
It does seem still very impressive against other top laptop CPUs.
Although I heard from Jeff Geerling’s review that the neo often noticably throttles after a few seconds.
It also has pretty terrible IO.
I think the biggest attraction is the build quality, screen, etc. Most cheap laptops seem to cheap out on those a lot in my experience, and Apple did not. If you’re not stressing the CPU or GPU, it’ll still feel almost as high quality as any other MacBook.
For reference
“We can’t believe Apple aren’t fucking consumers harder! Apple?! have been fucking everyone so hard, for so long and people have just been bending over and taking it, and so we’re very shocked to see them decide not to go maximum fuck-you with this product”
He pointed to the laptop’s 8GB of “unified memory,” or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can’t upgrade it.
Given the price of RAM, you’d need to sell a kidney to upgrade it in a Windows laptop these days, so that’s not much of a difference, although 8MB is a little skimpy, I’ll give him that one.
My phone has more RAM than that. I can’t imagine running a computer with that little memory considering how poorly optimized software tends to be at this point.
I’m not sure what the overhead for Mac OS is, but that has to be basically rock bottom to be even considered functional unless you’re running one of the lighter Linux builds.
I got a free, going to be recycled, dell with 8gb of ram from work. I threw in an nvme and installed Linux. It’s not the lightest Linux install, but it is Arch, so definitely on the lighter side. I idle at under 1gb and under normal use don’t break 2. I do some coding which uses more but nothing super crazy. MacOS probably uses a little more ram, but it’s not Windows. I’d wager than the vast majority of people don’t come close to using all of that RAM, and power users are going to get hardware for the task, and this isn’t it.
Under 1GB on a modern build is pretty light. I run CachyOS and I’m pretty sure I idle at significantly more than that. Though I honestly haven’t checked, and don’t really want to close everything out to find out haha. I do know I’m currently using more than 8GB and not doing anything super heavy, but I do have multiple programs running. And multitasking is always going to be a killer for a system with low RAM limits. There is a reason my laptop has 32 and my desktop has 64.
I did just check and I was wrong. I idle at 1.6GB. I may have been thinking of a single app I had open when I looked the other day. I did just open Firefox and it took about a gig. Opening about 20 tabs and navigating to different sites did Bum it up to about 5gb. So yea, 8 is on the lower end, but it’s usable and I’d bet most people would be fine. Throw in things like swap and high speed storage, I feel most people wouldn’t notice. Definitely not enough for high usage though.
I miss when 4gb was good enough.
I run CachyOS with Gnome and it idles at just under 2GB
What the fuck are you doing on a phone that you need 8 GIGABYTES of RAM? Damn son!
It’s great for multitasking. I’ve seen phones boot and already consume 3-4GB of RAM. Alas, that’s how much some of this software uses now, depending on your needs.
Just to play devil’s advocate: a smartphone is definitely a computer and has no trouble competing with older laptop CPUs in benchmarks. I see this as a difference without a distinction beyond form factor.
8GB is 💯 barely serviceable. I see this is a product for a casual user only, with excellent build quality. I don’t think it ages well when pushed.
I mean… of course it’s for the causal users what kind of observation is that?
What appears to be common sense to you is hardly common sense to the consumer. I choose to be more inclusive thinking of a person who might not necessarily know what 8 GB means. That’s a ton of Apple’s customers.
I mean, at its heart, Mac OS is a heavily re-tooled fork of the BSD platform, so it’s not inconceivable that it’s light enough to run on 8G. I doubt it would run well on 8G, but it could do it.
It runs fine, unless you load up on chrome tabs, or try to run pro apps. Itdoes basic photo editing and admin apps and phone holiday video editing just fine for average users. I have a lot of clients with 8GB M1 machines.
I know it was lighter than windows the last time I used Mac, but that has been quite a few years now. Hopefully it is a decent machine. Computing just keeps getting more expensive, so having more budget options is definitely good as long as they are reasonably functional.
MacOS’ kernel is derived from Mach, though with with some BSD code, and is Apple’s own work since then. Its API is compatible with FreeBSD, but it’s not FreeBSD. And the FreeBSD userland tools don’t have effect on systemwide memory management.
My M1 MacBook Air idles at 1.03GB, my XPS 13 running Gnome on Vanilla OS idles at 2.4GB
GNOME on immutable distros = very bloated. Try antiX instead, as it uses a lighter DE.
Even a bloated GNOME runs with much less ram than Windows
I’d be curious to see what Gnome looks like on Debian stable or the like
I’m not looking for anything lighter
I have a 2013 MBP that shipped with 8GB, the minimum amount they came with.
Of course it also is upgradable. Which I did, to 16GB. A decade ago.
My 2013 MBP is still at 8GB. With memory compression, I rarely run into issues unless I’m doing VMs/Docker or something really heavy.
or what amounts to its RAM
You can criticize the amount of RAM, but it’s still RAM. Clown.
They’re hinting at the fact that those 8GB are shared between the CPU and GPU. So it’s not dedicated, which you’d expect if someone said “RAM.”
RAM is RAM. If you take issue with it being unified say so, but it’s still RAM.
He sounds like he’s grasping.
The neo is going to eat his lunch, and he knows it.
If you take issue with it being unified say so, but it’s still RAM.
He did say so. 8GB unified when a Linux laptop has 8GB of ram and an Nvidia 5050 with 8 GB of VRAM is 16GB of Ram despite not being marketed as a 16 GB laptop.
Sounds more like you’re looking for reasons to hate on the article.
I take issue Hsus statement, but not the article.
This model has absolutely short-circuited the brains of the ardent Apple haters, perhaps including yourself, and I’m here for it.
Don’t most integrated graphics setups use system RAM for graphics?
[…] although 8MB is a little skimpy
Have we already downgraded to this???
/s, and sorry for being pedantic
No one needs more than 640k
The failure rates of these will be the determining factor. The components inside are cheap, all soldered on, and will not be repairable at all (waiting on the iFixIt score).
Its pretty much just their phone platform with a big screen and keyboard, so maybe it’ll be okay. It’s not built like a phone though, so I’m expecting some interesting testing outcomes. It’s either going to be cheap enough that they have a new planned obsolescence hit on their hands, or people are going to be pissed at it sucking so hard.
According to an early reviewer, the Neo is surprisingly good in terms of hardware quality, and it actually handles typical usage just fine, possibly because of the Silicon ecosystem that Apple spent so long refining. That looks promising, but I share much of your skepticism for the reasons you give.
Every failure I’ve gotten from an Apple product is the inevitable demise of the battery either through degradation to the point of uselessness or expanding and causing something else to come undone. So the components just need to keep outlasting those events.
Always the keyboard for me, for some reason. Almost never battery problems.
Tip to used laptop buyers: avoid the MacBook Pro from 2016 through early 2020. The keyboard design dies early and is expensive to replace.
Your experience is not singular. Looks like we’ve got some haters here.
Factory batteries are top tier and get you around 1000 charges, typically about five years. After that the battery is around 65% health and time to change out.
Apple is no different from other manufacturers in that respect, maybe better quality cells than most. They suck at making those changeable, lately. 2011-2017 Macbook Air is about a 5 minute job. MacBook Pro from certain years you just want to throw it in a lake, or scrape glue for ages.
I mean modern smartphone SOC compute power is insane. That wont be a bottleneck for a long time. If i had to make a guess they dont even have to go the hardware failure route for planned obsolescence. That measily 8GB of shared ram for both CPU and GPU will take care of that. Just add a bit more shiny UI bloat with every update and this thing will get slow af at some point in the future. Takes care of all the entry level M1 Airs too…
Mobile chip power is insane AT THAT SCALE though. That’s the key differentiation here. So if you’re running a larger format display with a higher resolution, cut that by quite a bit. Also cut it if you’re running desktop apps that aren’t optimized for mobile, and if this is intended to run MacOS instead of iOS, the mobile optimistic memory scheduling is out the window. I’ll have to see it to say for sure, but I’m guessing the performance for average desktop apps is going to be pretty, but that’s kind of the price point.
This is Apple’s scoop up of the ChromeOS segment.
So if you’re running a larger format display with a higher resolution, cut that by quite a bit.
Funny thing is that the Macbook Neo needs to drive less pixels:
Iphone 16 Pro: 2868 x 1320
Macbook Neo: 2408 x 1506
Also only at 60hz and not 120hz. While having magnitudes more thermal mass to cool with the prolonged high performance bursts. I dont have any worries about its performance in its intented market segment. And yes, its running MacOS which still runs pretty well with a Macbook Air M1-M3 with 8GB of RAM.
Resolution alone isn’t the only factor. It’s a larger display, requiring more power, which is either a PC/PD issue, or a battery issue. The point is that the power draw has to come from somewhere, and nothing this is the same platform as an iPhone (essentially), there’s going to be a trade-off somewhere.
As you noted they’ve reduced the refresh rate, which makes a big impact, but I don’t think it stops there.
The original platform has apps that are optimized for that platform, and now you’re throwing a different OS at it which has more expansive use of resources: CPU, memory, GPU, and power.
We’ll have to see how they have made paths through MacOS to account the platform specifically, but I’m betting there are several drawbacks. This was the main complaint of how they dealt with those insanely expensive Mac Pro with M-class chips when they first came out, but in the inverse. High power draw, heat issues…etc.
My guy,
i said mobile compute power is insane. You had a somewhat sensible take why it may not transfer to a laptop. I gave you hard facts why your concerns arent applicable. Instead of just admitting you misjudged the resolution differences you mansplain to me some irrelevant things. Yeah, the power draw is going to be different. Its a laptop, no shit. It also has tons of more space for a battery.
You are just talking out of your ass. Instead of looking up the wikipedia page for 2 minutes.
/Its also a released product. Reviews and benchmarks are readily available… Like what. Just look it up.
I’m also waiting for the full iFixit review, but teardowns from other channels are now being shared and so far it looks like it’s very solidly built and repair-friendly. None of the typical ‘cover everything in excessive glue and tape’ anti-repair shenanigans we’ve come to expect from Apple.
Wow. Modern laptop “repairability” is pretty rough in general, but that does actually seem better than I expected.
Repair friendly means CHEAP components repair, which Apple just does not do.
As an example, in a machine like this if your WiFi module tanks…that’s a full logic board replacement. Might as well buy a new one.
According to this, Apple is basically making an insurance vertical as part of their business, and they are pricing repairs to be exactly 1/3 the retail cost of the machine for pretty much everything except screens.
This is pretty scam my when you consider their past of quoting customers for repairs that are above and beyond the scope of the actual hardware failures, and what maximizes profits for their AppleCare and RMA process. There are dozens of breakdowns in this, so I won’t write a novel, but it’s very obvious they’ve baked in the costs to make it more cost-effective to just keep buying new units as a replacement in the face of simple hardware failures.
Tbh Apple laptops were always easier to deal with than non-pro PC laptops when I worked at a refurb shop.
Professional grade PC laptops (Thinkpad T, X series, Elitebook 700 series and up) were very easy to repair (and had more replaceable components than a Mac), but get your hands on a Pavilion and you’ll want to pull your hair out. Using label remover to remove battery cells after removing an 8-10 screw bottom case on a Mac was quicker than even a simple HDD replacement in some PC laptops.
Of course it helped a LOT that Apple’s lineup is pretty standardized and they don’t change everything around every model year, so a LOT of part reuse happened. Which was the same with e.g Elitebooks and Thinkpads, but again, not Pavilions and Ideapads and such.
This is attractive to me simply because finding a quality 13" laptop is very difficult. 15.6" is huge.
I switched to Macbooks specifically for the 11" Air. I do wish they’d bring that form factor back.
It’s a netbook with Apple’s bells and whistles. IMO it should be $100 less, at least for the base model.
It’s 13 inches and full macOS, can edit HD video without choking. Not a netbook.
You forgot the $200 “I get to use an apple so I’m fancy” tax
The perfect time for a relatively cheap Apple laptop when Microsoft is forcing people to buy new hardware just to use their latest version of their operating system. I wonder what the percentage of Microsoft folks who go to the MacBook will be. I wonder what the percentage of users who go the UNIX/Linux route would be. I’m not an apple fan myself so would go linux, but a good business move from Apple though.
Apple user share is beneficial for Linux user share.
That would be interesting to watch.
If I ever had to buy a personal laptop again, it’d definitely make the list.
Obnoxious hardware prices are what kept me off mac for so long. Now all prices are obnoxious maybe it would even out.
Great move if they can capitalize on it
They were making a lot on build quality, convenience, brand, ecosystem, cultism, software quality, but not so much on power.
Now power became more expensive for suppliers, and for things listed before it you have to restructure marketing and everything. Apple doesn’t have that problem. They also have rid themselves of the legacy problem by two softer changes (dropping 32 bit Intel, then moving to ARM) instead of one hard change.
Damn man maybe the PC industry should’ve considered making even one single actually good laptop
reads the title
Well…those certainly are words. They don’t make sense in that order, but they are real words.
They’ve had Mac minis for over a decade.
I find this hard to believe.
Computer people (like me) buy Mac minis, frequently as an extra device. Regular people who don’t care about computers beyond wanting a nice one buy laptops. I believe it completely.
I would assume most computer people would just assemble their own devices…
But that’s the difference between real computer people and you.
Computer people might own several devices, some of them (particularly laptops) prebuilt, and don’t usually gatekeep.
But that’s the difference between real computer people and you.
Ah yes, tech nerds not at all known to gatekeep lmao
Tbf many of us can be real assholes online but all the fellow nerds I know irl are very inclusive and just excited when someone else shares a hobby
Username checks out.
Tyvm
Windows is DOGSHIT, I bet a lot of people will dump that pile of shit and move to Mac OS.
Why would you move to Mac os?
Windows still runs software from the 90s.
Mac’s… Lol… Good luck with that.
You can run Windows on the Mac with some amazingly integrated emulation software and all that 90s software is there.
Parallels and VM aren’t really the same…
I can’t see teenagers and 20-somethings going, “What I really want is a laptop that runs software from the 90s.”
Just because you have no appreciation for history you think no one else does either?
Just be nice to be so detached from reality
as much as I appreciate old software, I don’t think Mac’s target audience cares about it all that much.
… And Mac’s target audience can buy CrossOver (74$, though). Or install DREAMM for many LucasArts games, the speed of development of this thing and its functionality are amazing, I wonder how much vibecoding was involved.
I’m not sure how you got that I don’t appreciate history from my comment. That’s some amazing mental gymnastics. You get a cookie.
