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Hands-On With the New MacBook Neo

Bearygoodfries1 said:
I used to have friend years ago who was very anti-Apple / pro Windows. “Macbooks are overpriced… Some apps don’t work on Apple… etc.,” He then started a new job that gave him an Apple laptop. He LOVED that thing. He even had an air of pretentiousness when using his MacBook in public (pretentious Apple user, crazy and unheard of right?).

I agree with what you’re saying. I think a lot more people would be open to the Apple ecosystem and actually love MacOs (and iOS) if the devices were more affordable. The MacBook Neo (and iPhone 17e) are the devices for that.
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Sounds like your friend was just basically uninformed and had no Mac experience and based his opinions on what he read or heard. There's a lot of that with everyone about everything nowadays. While affordability is a factor, in my experience managing businesses IT, people don't want to learn another OS. And despite what many "Mac people" say, Windows 11 is actually very stable. I don't really see an advantage for someone who is already well-invested in Windows to buy a MacBook and have to learn a new OS. Sure this Neo is cheap, but it's a glorified phone chip in a laptop case. 8GB of "forever RAM" and stuck with 256GB SSD. Windows laptops, for the same price gets you double the RAM and SSD.
 
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G-News said:
As an owner of a 2010 11" MacBook Air, I was really hoping this would be another venture into that niche market of ultra portable, yet very capable laptops, and could finally replace this marvel from yesteryear.

2.7 pounds is quite heavy, I believe the MBA was 2.1.
The MBA came with up to 4GB of RAM, 16 years ago! 8GB in this one seems like planned obsolescence. Remember, this runs on MacOS, not iPad OS. And it’s also shared memory, and not just 256MB either.

The benchmarks and reviews will have to come in first. Value seems great, but revision 2 might be worth waiting for, if you can.
Backlit keyboard, 2x USB 3.2, 12-16GB of RAM, that would already make this a killer product. Add a 12" version at 2lbs and I‘d buy one in a heartbeat.
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2.7 pounds (1.22 kg) is quite light. You have to go back to the 11" Air from 2010 to get a lighter Air. People always assume that the wedge-shaped Air was the thinnest and the lightest but the current Air beats it in both counts.

  • Current M4/5 Air is 2.7 pounds (1.22 kg).
  • 2020 M1 Air with the wedge case was 2.8 pounds (1.27 kg).
  • 2018 13" Retina Air was 2.76 pounds (1.25 kg)
  • 2010 11" Air was 2.38 pounds (1.08 kg)
  • Original 2008 Air was 3.0 pounds (1.36 kg).
Yes, the 12" Macbook was 2.03 pounds (0.92 kg) but it was more expensive an a lot smaller and had some severe limitations related to that.
 
justanotherdave said:
"The iPad is way overpowered and nobody needs that much for tasks like browsing, email or office productivity."

" The MacBook Neo is too underpowered and it can't run memory-intensive tasks like Photoshop."


The hypocrisy on MR forums over these two products is genuinely next level.
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Almost like certain people will complain/criticize no matter what is released.
 
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abowlby said:
Give me a Core i5 Ultra device over this any day. Far better multi-thread performance for sustained workloads, TB4 and PCIe support. And what does 50% better at everyday tasks mean? Like opening email? That has been instantaneous on laptops for 10 years, if not longer.

Yeah, just get an Air.
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This is for students who write essays, watch YouTube and check emails.

This is way better value than anything Windows or Chromebook can offer. Night and day.
 
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WarmWinterHat said:
This is NOTHING like a netbook, did you ever have one? I had a couple, and the largest of the two had a 9in screen, two hours of battery, and was slow as a dog.
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I turned mine into an OSX machine, but there weren’t enough vertical pixels so some OSX things got cut off on the bottom and you couldn’t use it perfectly.

With an SSD and more memory it wasn’t slow, but it was just a hobby.
 
Ferrandix said:
It’s the same situation as with the iPhone 17e and other low-spec products. They aren’t designed with you in mind. You have to understand that Apple recently started expanding its product segmentation in order to grow in markets where it previously had little presence. In the end, for Apple to keep growing, it needs to bring more people into its ecosystem.

It’s normal that it might feel a bit strange, but not every Apple user has to have an opinion about products that aren’t meant to meet his own needs.

Beyond that, I’m sure it’s a quality computer that will work, look, and sound great—even with its 8 GB of RAM.
What’s really surprising for Apple here is its price. Quite Ageessive for apple.

Oh, by the way, multi-thread performance isn’t that relevant for the typical use of these laptops. Or do you want a MacBook Neo to run Final Cut Pro?

I have a macbook air m4 and an an Intel Imac i5 2019 for my everyday desktop use for professional design. I use it with indesign, illustrator, photoshop, lightroom.. with all the apps open and lots of documents opened. It runs perfectly well.

This macbook neo is 2x faster than my imac intel core i5

Specifications nowadays are overrated. There are users who are completely lobotomized into believing that without an M4 Pro their work is impossible (seriously, I’ve seen plenty of reviews claiming that a MacBook Air M4 is only for office tasks).

Any modern computer runs 100% of software with sufficient smoothness. That’s a barrier we crossed about 10 years ago, especially since the widespread adoption of SSDs.

with one only exception: Games.
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Personally I prioritize advancements in display tech for the exact reason you've laid out here...basic computing tasks run fluidly on everything now, with a few deviations from something like a Wish.com scam market machine.

I also dont mind a thin client. I looked at things and said, if I want to lock down and control everything (example: run a home server/LLM/etc) I'm doing it full fat or not doing it all. The cloud is convenient and using GeForce Now was an eye opener for me because it allowed to play graphically intense games on damn near anything (iPad Pro for example). No heat, no noise, excellent battery life...a wireless experience. Regardless of the "gaming aspect" it demonstrates offloading hardware requirements somewhere else can (if you are ok with it) make the way you look at hardware change. So, in the case of this MacBook vs a Core i5/AMD offering, the ability to use something like TB4 is even more profoundly important. It gives my thin, light piece of kit the ability to parlay its looking glass into alternative canvases of higher resolutions or faster refresh rates. I can spread out across 2 4K monitors for working with .csv files or plug into one gorgeous gaming monitor and play a game that requires substantially hotter and louder hardware than the aforementioned iPad (for example).

I see tremendous value in that *specific* type of flexibility, which is on brand for my entire thesis of the thin client, which is flexibility and accessibility. So when people say "the A18 is hands down better than a MODERN Core i5," not only is it subjective, but in terms of utility, it's flat out wrong.

Edit: Grammar
 
ashdelacroix said:
The critics of this machine are just not getting it. This is going to sell like hot cakes. It will fly. Neo will open a whole new category for Apple (thus the name). My only question is why they have created this category at all.
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I just checked and apparently they haven't sold out of their initial inventory yet as I can still get one on release day.
Usually new Apple products that are popular sell out very fast and delivery dates slide.
 
If I didn't already have a spare M1 air as a walkaround piece, I would happily get one. Seems about 100 dollars over the price point that would make it successful but time will tell. Regardless, someone needs to explain the apple obsession with urine yellow to me in a way I can properly understand.
 
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justanotherdave said:
"The iPad is way overpowered and nobody needs that much for tasks like browsing, email or office productivity."

" The MacBook Neo is too underpowered and it can't run memory-intensive tasks like Photoshop."


The hypocrisy on MR forums over these two products is genuinely next level.
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iPads run MORE powerful chips than the Neo laptop - but the OS interface on the Neo makes it more likely to be used for running intensive desktop-class apps. I can’t see the hypocrisy here - seems like a valid point to me. I would have liked at least an option of a more powerful chip in the Neo.
 
DEMinSoCAL said:
I just checked and apparently they haven't sold out of their initial inventory yet as I can still get one on release day.
Usually new Apple products that are popular sell out very fast and delivery dates slide.
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Too early to judge fully. This is serving a new need not a pent up need (such as iPhone cycle years). Parents won't be jumping at it today, it will filter through as the thing-to-buy. This is going to be a birthday, Christmas or back-to-school purchase for many.
 
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