Apple today announced the “MacBook Neo,” an all-new kind of low-cost Mac featuring the A18 Pro chip for $599.
The MacBook Neo is the first Mac to be powered by an iPhone chip; the A18 Pro debuted in 2024’s iPhone 16 Pro models. Apple says it is up to 50% faster for everyday tasks than the bestselling PC with the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5, up to 3x faster for on-device AI workloads, and up to 2x faster for tasks like photo editing.
The MacBook Neo features a 13-inch Liquid Retina display with a 2408-by-1506 resolution, 500 nits of brightness, and an anti-reflective coating. The display does not have a notch, instead featuring uniform, iPad-style bezels.
↫ Hartley Charlton at MacRumors
There’s no denying this is a great offering from Apple, and it’s going to sell really well, especially in the US. I can’t think of any other laptop on the market that offers this kind of complete package at such an attractive price point – on the Windows side, you’re going to get plastic laptops with worse displays, worse battery life, and, well, Windows. For education buyers, the price drops from $599 to $499, making it a no-brainer choice for families sending their kids off to high school or university.
In the US, at least. Here in Europe, or at least in Sweden where I checked the price of the base model, it’s going for almost €800 ($930), at which point the cost-cutting measures Apple has taken are a bit harder to swallow. At that kind of price point, I’m not going to accept a mere 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a paltry 60Hz display. When I saw the announcement of this new MacBook earlier today, I wondered if this could be my way of finally getting a macOS review on OSNews after well over a decade, but at €800 for something I won’t be using after I’m done with the review? I can’t justify that.
Regardless, you’re going to see tons of these in schools and in wrapping paper for the holiday season and birthdays, and at least at American pricing, it’s definitely a great deal.
“Europe” is not one homogenous market, in fact, not even the EU is one homogenous market (despite Brussels pretending it is). For example, in Greece, the MacBook Neo is €699 for the base version:
https://www.istorm.gr/products/13-inch-macbook-neo-mhfd4gr-a
Considering that Greece’s VAT is a rather high 24%, and that $599 is around €515 at current exchange rates, that’s only €60 extra compared to the American price once the 24% VAT is taken into account.
Since €700 is the sweet spot for a good laptop here, it’s hard to justify a PC (and the dumpset fire that is Windows 11 in appearance, functionality, and reliability) over this. Heck, even if you find a comparable laptop for €600, an extra hundred euros is perfectly justifiable to have MacOS instead of Windows 11. Yes, even considering the Macbook Neo only has 8GB or RAM while a €600 laptop may have 16GB of RAM.
Despite not being a fan of Apple the company, and no longer a fan of macOS, I have to say that macOS on Apple Silicon will be much more performant and use less RAM for the same task as a bloated Windows garbage laptop whether it has Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm under the hood. That Windows machine will need every last byte of that 16GB.
I can say this because I had both the M1 Macbook Air with 8GB of RAM and the M1 Mac mini with 8GB, and I never once approached saturation with those devices even with heavy workloads. The A18 is overall just as fast as the M1 in benchmarks while benefiting from faster and newer generation RAM, so I think it will be quite a powerhouse for the price. I won’t touch it given my stance on Apple the company, but it will embarrass the hell out of any similarly priced Windows machine. Having full control over the hardware and OS gives Apple an undeniable advantage when it comes to performance.
Apple are notoriously non-credible in their marketing material. The closer you follow it, the more you see the same anti-patterns of intentionally withholding crucial information. For example…
They want to compare the neo to a low end i5, which is fine…but there are many models that fit the criteria, so which freakin’ one is it apple? Huh? What are the other system specs? They don’t even offer what brand the computer was. All of this is critical information and you can’t make an objective comparison without it. Obviously apple knows this.
apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/say-hello-to-macbook-neo/
Which intel CPU?
What was the memory speed?
What was the SSD speed?
We don’t even know when the system was manufactured.
This is objectively too vague to be useful for any legitimate performance comparison.
It seems apple knows this is a problem with their marketing, but they still want to withhold information so it cannot be independently fact checked.
Benchmarks are valuable and provide insight when used legitimately, but it’s crystal clear that apple are not revealing the parameters of their tests because they don’t want anyone to be able to independently verify their results.
It’s a shame because their products might do ok in a fair comparison, but I find it so grating for Apple to keep acting like car salesmen over and over again each product generation. It’s as though apple don’t have confidence they can promot their products on merit in a genuinely fair comparison. If you’re proud of your product, you shouldn’t need to rely on so much marketing slop as apple does. That’s just my take.
PS. I’m not criticizing the product, I’m criticizing apple’s marketing…too much BS.