I met MacBook Neo. Everything I know is a lie
Summary created by Smart Answers AI
In summary:
- Macworld reviews Apple’s new MacBook Neo, a $599 laptop that challenges the long-standing “Apple tax” perception of overpriced devices.
- The MacBook Neo features premium aluminum construction, a 13-inch Liquid Retina display, an A18 Pro processor, and comes in four colorful options.
- This budget MacBook appears to be a game-changer and could fundamentally alter Apple’s pricing reputation in the laptop market.
There is a famous scene in The matrix just before Neo takes Morpheus’ red pill, where the latter explains what the Matrix is. He tells Neo that the world he lives in is a construct and that the Red Pill will disrupt the simulation and reveal the truth.
Apple’s new MacBook Neo is the red pill. If I hadn’t known the price before buying one, I would have guessed it cost at least $799 and maybe $999, depending on the specs. This doesn’t just disrupt the laptop landscape with a machine that has no right to exist in the budget market. This changes everything people think they know about Apple.
Picking it up is just as premium as a MacBook Air. The Neo is made of what looks like the same aluminum as Apple’s high-end laptop, although its range of colors – Citrus (yellow), Blush (pink), Indigo (dark blue) and silver – gives a playful vibe. But make no mistake, it’s built for serious work.
The MacBook Neo could be a $999 MacBook Air.
Michael Simon / Foundry
For the first time since the iBook, the keyboard (which has the same bouncy Magic Keyboard feel as the Air) isn’t black, but it’s not completely white either. They have a tint that matches the color of the case when they catch the light, one of the premium touches that belies the $599 starting price.
Open the screen on a table with one finger and the body won’t lift up like it does on many plastic PCs and Chromebooks. Start typing and your fingers will fly around the keys. Play a video and the side speakers will immerse you in sound. Turn up the brightness and the 13-inch Liquid Retina display will shine. Pinch the multi-touch trackpad and it feels like you’re using an iPhone.
We’ll have to test the A18 Pro processor to see if it can withstand the pressures of a hard benchmarking session, but that won’t really matter to its target market. Neither are the 8 GB of RAM or the 256 GB of storage. This is a machine designed to defy convention, to make people believe they’re using a laptop worth a thousand dollars when in reality they’ve only spent a fraction of it.
The MacBook Neo looks like a premium laptop.
Michael Simon / Foundry
Down the rabbit hole
For as long as I’ve been using and writing about iPhones and MacBooks, it’s been thought that Apple users are foolishly paying a tax to a company that charges extra because it can. Even though its competitors were making thousands-of-dollar smartphones and all-aluminum laptops that cost just as much, Apple has never been able to shake the reputation that its users blindly overpay for pretty devices that don’t measure up.
The MacBook Neo doesn’t just dispel that notion, it upends the entire philosophy that Apple is a brand for rich, stupid people who don’t know any better. I’m writing this on a MacBook Pro M3 Max and my mind is still back at the MacBook Neo table. There is no going back.
When I walked up to the MacBook Pro table at the Apple Experience, I had my pick of machines because no one else was there. They had all taken the red pill.
