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Do people like the Macbook Neo? When I saw it was announced I groaned thinking this was Apple's chromebook, cheap, representative of a disposable mindset. Under
by Avicebron 8mo ago
Do people like the Macbook Neo? When I saw it was announced I groaned thinking this was Apple's chromebook, cheap, representative of a disposable mindset. Underpowered and even more locked into the ecosystem..
I'd love to be proven wrong. But to me it feels regressive. I guess the only positive spin on it I can think of is that this is designed for kids in schools.
- Mistletoe 8mo agoI like how cheap it is. But I’m not a typical Apple user. My laptop is a MacBook Air 11” that does everything I need it to do that I bought on eBay for about $75 in 2022.
- tonyedgecombe 8mo agoI was hoping they might have brought back the 11" Air. I never do much serious work on the run so a small device like that would be ideal for me.
- windowsrookie 8mo agoI replied to somebody else earlier, but the 11" air and the new neo are very close in physical size. The 11" MacBook Air was 11.8" x 7.56" the neo is 11.71" x 8.12".
- programd 8mo agoIt's partly the weight that made the 11" MacBook Air great: MacBook Air: 1.08 kg (2.38 lbs) MacBook Neo: 1.23 kg (2.70 lbs)
- tonyedgecombe 8mo agoI'd assume the bezels would shrink in a modern version.
- windowsrookie 8mo agoDefinitely not typical, the 11" MacBooks had terrible screens by modern standards and have no hardware acceleration for modern video codecs. It really is too bad they never upgraded that 1366x768 LCD in the 11" MacBooks otherwise I think they could be great linux devices today.
- grey-area 8mo agoIt’s a remarkably powerful computer for a decent price. I like this new direction from Apple and also think chromebooks were a great idea even if the execution on them hasn’t always been great. I don’t see how they are disposable, perhaps for you their price makes them so? For many it just means they are actually attainable unlike other Mac products. If you’re looking to a corporation to save you from corporate lock-in I’m not sure what to say.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8mo agoI'm actually very excited for the Macbook Neo. I do all of my development on cloud servers. I just want a cheap laptop with a good battery life and, crucially, a keyboard and track pad that aren't complete trash. I'd strongly prefer to have Linux over Mac - but this seems like the best option (and I kind of hate Apple tbh). I don't think a better product exists at this price point, though I haven't tried it yet.
- zikduruqe 8mo ago> Do people like the Macbook Neo? People have been begging for MacOS on the iPad... and here it is, but in different clothing. The Neo is just a test bed before committing MacOS to the iPad.
- rowanG077 8mo agoI don't understand this comment. In everything it does this is a MacBook, not an iPad. It doesnt have a touch screen. It has a fixed keyboard.
- WillAdams 8mo agoIt has an iPad chip, and is at an iPad price --- if it sells well, and doesn't gut iPad sales, then maybe we'll get Mac OS on iPad (but I'm not holding my breath) --- a more interesting development would be for someone to work out how to transfer the Mac OS from a Neo onto an iPad w/ the same chip.
- rurihoshino 8mo agoDear lord in heaven I hope this is true. My work laptop is an M2 Air and I recently got them to spring for an M5 iPad Pro as a companion device. Whenever I'm using it as a wireless second screen I am acutely aware that it both has a larger display and significantly more powerful processor than the laptop it's serving as an extension of.
- mapt 8mo agoCan you even market a fully fledged desktop replacement thin and light in this price hemisphere in 2026? Both RAM and flash SSDs are now worth their weight in gold.
- Forgeties79 8mo agoI think mainly what upsets me about it is how it can only have 8gb of ram. Everything else you can kind of work with and stretch if you’re not a “power user,” but 8gb just isn’t enough in 2026 IMO if ewaste is a concern. Especially not in an era where people have ChatGPT open all the time Would be interesting to see these specs in a mini body with 16gb ram but I have a feeling there isn’t really a market for that.
- iainmerrick 8mo agoEspecially not in an era where people have ChatGPT open all the time People aren’t generally running ChatGPT locally.
- Forgeties79 8mo agoI didn’t say they were running it locally. A single tab of ChatGPT eventually eats a few gb of ram if you leave it open and are using it constantly, which is how I see most “casual” people using it in my vicinity. I’ve seen it push 2-3 gigs regularly. People also tend to just leave a lot of tabs open all the time. Even when they are paused I just see people’s computers slow to a crawl because of this constantly. I agree it should be enough and it even often is, but unless we’re going to get everybody to change their habits and get websites to be more efficient with tam usage (like how at work every single HubSpot tab I have uses 300-400MB which is ridiculous) 8 will become an issue, especially on macOS and windows. The way things are going it’s going to become a real problem in 5 years, which is relevant when we’re talking about ewaste. I just don’t see an 8gb mac neo lasting 8-10 years. This has been my experience. I understand why other people disagree with me, but this is just what I’ve witnessed around me.
- NetMageSCW 8mo agoFortunately Apple offers free recycling for all their products, so no ewaste will be created.
- Forgeties79 8mo ago
- wffurr 8mo agoI think it's great to have a lower cost entry level option for the MacBook, especially given how resistant Apple has been to allowing local development tools and shared files on iPadOS. It seems like a worthy replacement to the M1 MacBook Air they were selling through Walmart this whole time. The colors are a really nice touch on a solid hardware offering. It doesn't seem especially disposable or more locked-in to any ecosystem than any other MacBook, and with less ecosystem lock-in than a Chromebook. Personally I'm still waiting for a return of the 12" MacBook or 11" MacBook Air with an M-series chip in it. The current MacBook Air model just doesn't have the same feeling of super portable grab-ability that my old 11" MacBook Air had. Unfortunately, the age of the netbook is long past and hardly any manufacturer makes laptops with screens less than 13" unless you go all the way down to some kind of weird handheld thing without a keyboard. I liked how the 11" MacBook Air had just enough width and depth for the keyboard and a usable trackpad and no more.
- windowsrookie 8mo agoThe 11" MacBook Air was 11.8" x 7.56" the neo is 11.71" x 8.12". It's extremely close in physical size, just with a 2" bigger display. https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macbook-air-core-i5-1.6-11-early-2015-specs.html https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macbook... https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/specs/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/specs/
- a012 8mo agoIf they keep the quality of the Magic Keyboard for iPad then I have no doubt in Macbook Neo.
- Hardwired8976 8mo agoThe only negative is the 8gb ram but the processor lies in between M1 and M2, aluminium chassis etc
- post-it 8mo agoIt's more powerful than my M2 MacBook Air, which is the most powerful computer I've ever owned and I'm only vaguely thinking about a future upgrade.
- ValentineC 8mo agoHow is A18 more powerful than M2?
- maattdd 8mo agohttps://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_a18-vs-apple_m2 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_a18-vs-apple...
- sznio 8mo agoit's a cheap way to escape from microslop, for those that really fear linux
- microtonal 8mo agoI like it in the sense that Apple is finally willing to admit after about 15 years that iPads are not a replacement for MacBooks. I think this is one of the things that plagued Apple for years initially led to the neglect of macOS for years (always a third citizen) and then terrible stuff like Catalyst. Apple being able to admit that even high school students are better of with a MacBook than iPads is a win. But yeah, to get there it took the Chromebook to butcher their market and now they have to compete on price (which means lower specs, but still an insanely good CPU).
- larusso 8mo agoI waited for such a device for years. I have 3 Macs at the moment. My MacBook Pro (still an M2 Max) from work for work. A Mac Mini M4 Pro from last year and an older M1 MacBook. I separate my work and private usage because of all the security software my employer forces on the machine. I didn’t want to buy yet another 4000Euro MacBook for my private stuff. So when the new Mini was announced I jumped on it. But my problem was that this meant that my personal computer was no longer portable. I was lucky because I still had the M1 in my house. My wife gave it to me because she stopped using it. If not for the M1 I would definitely have spend money for a MacBook Air or a used older laptop. This Neo would also fit my requirements. But I don’t need it at the moment. The second reason is of course kids. Yes I thought multiple times if I should get my kids some kind of computer. But the issue is that I don’t want a Chromebook or a windows device under my care. Used would be the way to go here but I love the fact that there is finally a good value entry level machine that also looks fun.
- treetalker 8mo ago> Do people like the Macbook Neo? At the time of our writing, it is a new product and was announced about a week ago, to be released on March 11. By Thursday of last week, Costco had essentially sold out of preorders for both models. (I think a few of the pink color remain.) So I think there is incredible demand — especially when memory prices are skyrocketing, everyone stores most of their data in the cloud, most LLM inference is also on remote machines, and the chip can handle most if not all typical office and web tasks (pretty much anything except running local models and demanding video editing). I'm interested in one myself for law work on the couch, and I'm eager to read the first reviews.
- dd8601fn 8mo agoIt doesn't scream "disposable" to me. It'll blow the doors off everything else in that price range, in a machine that feels like a macbook, which retain value better than anything else.
- ryandrake 8mo agoI really hope it has the effect of kicking other ~$500 laptop manufacturers in the nuts and forcing them to stop putting out such crappy half-assed plastic junk with terrible screens and touchpads, at that price tier.
- tonyedgecombe 8mo agoI hope Windows continues to lose market share. Their monopoly has been a tax on all of us.
- haunter 8mo agoThe Walmart outlet on eBay is selling refurb M1s for $380, I think that's still a better deal not just because it's cheaper but you get Touch ID, a better screen, and dual Thunderbolt ports. Backlit keyboard too!
- trueno 8mo agois it underpowered? i'm pretty sure that a-chip variant is binned way faster than the m1 air i had and that thing was a paradigm shift little workstation in a backpack when it came out in 2020 that somehow had no fan and got all day battery. i was compiling faster on that then i could on the actual workstation i was provisioned for work, so im gonna guess there aren't laptops at this price point that put this kind of horsepower down? there's quite a few trade offs getting this over an air but i doubt it's an underpowered device at its price point
- gambiting 8mo agoI love it, and I don't normally use a Mac. If I could think of any use case for it, I'd have already ordered one.