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.

It’s funny how if you look at it from the point of view of the ARM vs x86 race, Windows adopted Snapdragon smartphone chipsets to power Windows Copilot+PC devices to compete with Apple’s battery life. Now, Apple went the other way, bringing in their phone-level A-series chips to make these laptops cheaper.

The MacBook Neo is an iPhone 16 with a big screen and keyboard running MacOS. Great for students. Perfect for Apple Creator Studio subscriptions.