The MacBook Neo May Be Apple’s Most Consequential New Product in a Decade

For the first time since the 11-inch MacBook Air, Apple has an affordable Mac Laptop. That changes everything.

EXPERT OPINION BY JASON ATEN, TECH COLUMNIST @JASONATEN

Illustration: Inc; Photos: Courtesy Apple

The thing about Apple’s laptops is that the MacBook Air has long been both the best laptop for most people and also more expensive than a lot of those people were willing to spend. If you wanted a Mac laptop, you had to start at $999. Sure, you could sometimes get previous models at a discount, but not since Apple stopped selling the 11-inch MacBook Air 10 years ago has the company had a new laptop below $900 (not including educational discounts).

On Wednesday, all of that changed when Apple announced the MacBook Neo.

The new 13-inch laptop, powered by the A18 Pro chip, cuts the starting price almost in half. And, when you think about it, that fact alone means that the Neo could turn out to be Apple’s most consequential new product in years. Not because it’s the most powerful Mac or the most technologically advanced, but because it opens a part of the market Apple has largely ignored for more than a decade.

The MacBook Neo is a 13-inch fanless laptop built from recycled aluminum and designed to sit below the MacBook Air in Apple’s lineup. It includes a Liquid Retina display with a resolution of 2408-by-1506 and up to 500 nits of brightness, along with a 1080p FaceTime camera, side-firing speakers with Spatial Audio support, and two USB-C ports plus a headphone jack. Notably, it does not have MagSafe.

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Apple says the laptop delivers up to 16 hours of battery life, thanks largely to the processor inside. That processor is what makes the Neo unusual. Instead of using one of Apple’s M-series chips, the Neo runs on the A18 Pro, the same architecture that powers the iPhone 16 Pro. It’s the first time Apple has used an A-series chip in a Mac.

The laptop comes in four colors—Indigo, Citrus, Blush, and Silver—and ships in two primary configurations. The $599 base model includes 256GB of storage and 8GB of memory, but it does not include Touch ID. The $699 model adds Touch ID and doubles the storage to 512GB. There’s also a $499 education price, making the Neo one of the least expensive computers Apple has sold in modern history.

Even the other “affordable” Mac laptops—the 11-inch MacBook Air and White MacBook—were significantly more expensive than the Neo, both in actual dollars and adjusted for inflation.

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