The MacBook Neo targets first time MacOS owners
As we speculated last week, Apple just announced the MacBook Neo, the most affordable laptop running MacOS. The device is a chimera of sorts, catering to, for the first time, a budget-conscious Mac owner. And I say this as someone who has owned more than four iterations of Mac laptops, since the days of the iBook G3.
It is an Apple chimera because it uses a chipset from the iPhone 16 series, looks more like the iconic MacBook Air from 2012-2013, yet comes with modern day amenities such as USB-C charging and Apple Intgelligence. It’s also priced like an e-series iPhone, namely the iPhone 17e at only USD $599.
Historically, Apple has priced the MacBook to at least USD $1,000 thereabouts. This is the first time we are seeing a MacBook close to half that price at launch. It is the cheapest MacBook ever made and is sure to incite a cultural wave to introduce more people to Apple silicon.
Even the announcement ad was deliberate: the narrator seemingly speaks to a first-time MacOS owner who may have owned an iPhone but could never get on board with an Apple-branded laptop: the synergy between iOS and MacOS, the ability to run an LLM (a direct jab to the Copilot+PC products also running on ARM architecture), the 16 hours of battery life.
