Apple Working on New MacBook Neo With Two Upgrades

[triumvirate]

12-16gb RAM minimum on a Mac (even Neo) is nonnegotiable in 2026 going on 2027. I remember people saying 8gb of apple ram was “magic RAM” in 2020... yeah, no thanks, that MacBook Pro started sucking very quickly for me.

 

[jabbawok]

With luck they will keep everything exactly the same mechanically so all the parts remain interchangeable.

 

[ResolutionNZ]

Unless they add improved thermals for the air, with the chip and ram upgrade I see few good reasons for most people to pay for more than the neo.

 

[Velli]

I'll buy a MacBook Neo when it has M6, Face ID, OLED, 32GB RAM, Space Black, HDMI, USB-C, FireWire and FSD (Supervised). Smh my head.

That’s a Pro. Shaking My Head my head.

 

[ResolutionNZ]

With luck they will keep everything exactly the same mechanically so all the parts remain interchangeable.

This is what I'm hoping for. Being able to upgrade the SOC without replacing the entire machine would be ideal.

 

[EugW]

Unless they add improved thermals for the air, with the chip and ram upgrade I see few good reasons for most people to pay for more than the neo.

The thermals in the Air are better than in the Neo. Even though the A18 Pro is faster for CPU than the M1, in extended workloads the M1 MacBook Air is significantly faster than the Neo, because the Neo throttles immediately. The MB Air also throttles, but much, much less. The reason is the Neo doesn't even have a heatsink. It seems ridiculous but maybe they do this intentionally so that it will throttle... and conserve battery life.

Hopefully they improve this with the Neo 2. They did add a reasonable thermal design to the iPhone 17 Pro, so hopefully something similar gets adopted for the Neo 2 which should have the same SoC (albeit binned in the Neo).

 

[bodonnell202]

I'll buy a MacBook Neo when it has M6, Face ID, OLED, 32GB RAM, Space Black, HDMI, USB-C, FireWire and FSD (Supervised). Smh my head.

Shaking my head my head at this comment. I don't think the Neo is for you and that's ok. Not everyone needs a Pro level device and it's a good thing that Apple is making a more affordable device for those people.

 

[EugW]

Shaking my head my head at this comment. I don't think the Neo is for you and that's ok. Not everyone needs a Pro level device and it's a good thing that Apple is making a more affordable device for those people.

I think your sarcasm detector is broken. 😀

 

[Leobreaker]

I think your sarcasm detector is broken. 😀

It's okay, I forgot to put the /s. 😜

 

[turbineseaplane]

I had a chance to play with Neo at Gatwick Airport in one of popular UK electronic retailers. I am very impressed what that little machine can deliver and now after this update it will be even better. However its screen size makes it obsolete for my needs.

The limitations on storage, ram, and the screen size were the three things for me.

Awesome little device just not for me

 

[RealE]

I'll buy a MacBook Neo when it has M6, Face ID, OLED, 32GB RAM, Space Black, HDMI, USB-C, FireWire and FSD (Supervised). Smh my head.

No Thunderbolt 5 or ExpressCard/34? Pass.

 

[EugW]

No Thunderbolt 5 or ExpressCard/34? Pass.

All joking aside, I wonder when it would be realistic to include USB 4 instead of USB 3 in an Ax Pro chip. TSMC A10 node, with actual Apple products by 2030? USB 4 would be a huge leap forward. Maybe by that time they can make the base Ax non-Pro chips USB 3 too.