“MacBook Neo Hands-On… Watch BEFORE You Buy!”
“New $599 MacBook Neo! What Apple Didn’t Tell You”
“BEFORE you buy the MacBook Neo…”
“Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo is GREAT (..or is it?)”
The headlines on countless YouTube videos say it all… right? It’s compromised! Apple didn’t tell you everything! Don’t make the wrong choice! It’s madness, per usual, as influencers scramble to carve out a potentially contentious position on Apple’s new affordable laptop, the MacBook Neo.
It’s all bunkum, if you ask me.
These influencers are the same people who complain when their $1200 Pro phones aren’t also the best cameras ever and shocked when a base M4 Mini can edit their 4K ProRaw videos as well as the $15,000 Mac Pro they bought a few years ago. They will tell you that the MacBook Neo will be good enough for email, messaging, simple spreadsheets, and “casual” browsing, whatever that is (is there extreme browsing?).
Again… bunkum.
Then one individual on social media said this, “That MacBook Neo is going to crash and burn the first time someone tries to open passwords.app”.
I responded, “What an odd take. The A18 Pro is from the iPhone 16 Pro. I imagine Passwords opens just fine on that since my 14 Plus (A15 Bionic) and 12 Mini (A14 Bionic) also have no issues opening Passwords. It’s a $600 laptop, from Apple, for average users, of which most humans are. And you’re not going to get a workstation that can edit feature films for $600. From any vendor using any chip technology. Just saying.”
To which they rejoined with, “this is tongue in cheek because it opens terribly on many existing M chip laptops without 16 or more ram. Why did you feel the need to defend Apple, especially along arguments I had not raised?”
This is just nonsense. The wife has an 8GB M1 Mini, which is a little less performant that the MacBook Neo’s A18 Pro, and we haven’t seen it chug or catch fire, and she has more than 100 tabs open in Chrome. Not kidding. It runs for weeks between reboots and runs just fine. Of course, she only runs a few apps. I run twelve or more on my 16GB M1 Mini and no, Passwords does not cause any lag at any time.
What I’d like you to take away from this is that you decide what you need, and if it’s an every day laptop that isn’t being used to edit major motion pictures or render complex 3D scenes, you’ll likely be just fine. You’ll be able to watch videos, run all the apps that come with the system, and a lot more. If I were to ask you about Thunderbolt and your answer is “What’s that” or “I’ve heard of it, I think”, then I would be shocked if the MacBook Neo wasn’t capable enough for your needs.
$600 for an Apple laptop is a fantastic deal, and if the success of the M4 Mini (also $600) is any indication, the Neo will also sell well. Before the Rampocalypse (thanks, AI TechChads) you could regularly pick up an M4 Mini for under $500, and I don’t see a reason why the Neo won’t go on sale frequently as vendors vie for your dollars.
PROTIP: Amazon historically loves to sell these at less than other sale prices, so keep an eye open. Just keep in mind that prices on everything are up, so keep an eye out for Apple sales that bundle three years of AppleCare+ with the system for less than $640, which is an excellent deal.
So, for the price of a cheap, plastic-clad PC laptop bundled with Windows 11 and all that includes (ads and Copilot AI and more nonsense), you get a milled aluminum 13" laptop with Apple’s legendary build quality and up to sixteen hours on a charge because it runs with the efficiency of an iPhone 16 Pro. Instead of being primed for disappointment from influencers who would never, ever consider spending as little as $600 (in today’s money) to buy one for themselves, just get what you want.
That’s what I’ll be doing. In Indigo, of course.
