Only 8GB of RAM, and no option to upgrade even for the usual extortionate Apple prices seems like a bad idea in 2026. I know, AI RAMpocalypse probably has something to do with that. My Macbook Air...
Only 8GB of RAM, and no option to upgrade even for the usual extortionate Apple prices seems like a bad idea in 2026. I know, AI RAMpocalypse probably has something to do with that.
My Macbook Air running Tahoe is chilling with over 10GB of RAM in use with pretty much just the OS and Firefox with 5 tabs running.
Not to disregard your point, but how much RAM do you have? Because that might explain it, nowadays most OSes consume more RAM the more they have available. A fresh install of Windows 11 for...
My Macbook Air running Tahoe is chilling with over 10GB of RAM in use with pretty much just the OS and Firefox with 5 tabs running.
Not to disregard your point, but how much RAM do you have? Because that might explain it, nowadays most OSes consume more RAM the more they have available. A fresh install of Windows 11 for example can use about 10gb on a 64gb machine (wouldn't be surprised if it used over 20gb on a 128gb machine).
Browsers do the same thing, so your macOS and Firefox might just be filling the free space that they have rather than actually needing it.
I imagine that it’s due to a limitation of the A18 SOC they’re using. It was designed for phones and tablets, so I can’t imagine it has support for anything more than 8GB. I also imagine that the...
I imagine that it’s due to a limitation of the A18 SOC they’re using. It was designed for phones and tablets, so I can’t imagine it has support for anything more than 8GB.
I also imagine that the RAM won’t actually be an issue on the Neo. They aren’t shipping 8GB of RAM to lower the sticker price with the intention of everyone paying to upgrade at checkout. They must have done enough testing and OS optimization to ensure it’s sufficient for their target users’ use cases.
Maybe it's not an Apple type product/design, but it seems like this would be better suited to a shell connected to a phone, like the old Motorola Atrix with the laptop dock.
Maybe it's not an Apple type product/design, but it seems like this would be better suited to a shell connected to a phone, like the old Motorola Atrix with the laptop dock.
Yeah but the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, the only other devices that used the A18 Pro SOC, have 8GB of RAM. The newer A19 Pro SOC supports up to 12GB of RAM though.
Yeah but the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, the only other devices that used the A18 Pro SOC, have 8GB of RAM. The newer A19 Pro SOC supports up to 12GB of RAM though.
Baseline models of their other lineups had 8GB of RAM until recently as I recall. There are many people still running MacBooks with this limit. So I think it’s not that big of an issue Though I’m...
Baseline models of their other lineups had 8GB of RAM until recently as I recall. There are many people still running MacBooks with this limit. So I think it’s not that big of an issue
Though I’m pretty sure the Mac laptop I bought >10 years ago I upgraded to 16GB of ram, so I am of course a hypocrite :)
I just passed my 8GB MacBook to my wife this year, and it's still serving her well. Apple has some serious witchcraft going on with their memory system. If I did the same on Linux I'd be swapping...
I just passed my 8GB MacBook to my wife this year, and it's still serving her well. Apple has some serious witchcraft going on with their memory system. If I did the same on Linux I'd be swapping myself to death on the regular.
I’m curious to see how it fairs given that its a mobile processor with mobile levels of RAM. It basically a glorified phone running desktop mode iOS. Could be functional. But I too have a knee...
I’m curious to see how it fairs given that its a mobile processor with mobile levels of RAM. It basically a glorified phone running desktop mode iOS. Could be functional. But I too have a knee jerk reaction to low RAM numbers.
met so many people (ok it's been a few years) that NEEDED a macbook, and all they did was some MS Office, browsing and watching netflix. The MBP was already overpowered for those tasks back in the...
met so many people (ok it's been a few years) that NEEDED a macbook, and all they did was some MS Office, browsing and watching netflix.
The MBP was already overpowered for those tasks back in the days, but the M chips are so incredibly powerful that it's even more of a waste.
When I had an 8GB linux laptop I configured ZRAM (RAM compression) and so it effectively had more than 16GB "RAM" that way. The only drawback is a bit of CPU time to access compressed memory, but...
When I had an 8GB linux laptop I configured ZRAM (RAM compression) and so it effectively had more than 16GB "RAM" that way. The only drawback is a bit of CPU time to access compressed memory, but Apple silicon is so fast I doubt that matters. I don't know anything about the OS Apple is using on the Neo, does your Macbook Air have "compressed RAM"?
macOS has pretty good memory management, but there's limits to what you can do with software. I have an 8gb Air, and I feel the limitation pretty much constantly. 8gb just is not enough for the...
macOS has pretty good memory management, but there's limits to what you can do with software. I have an 8gb Air, and I feel the limitation pretty much constantly. 8gb just is not enough for the modern world.
Honestly I have to disagree with you here. I have an 8gb air, and it works perfectly for all lightweight tasks. The 256gb ssd is far more limiting than the ram. No, you won’t be doing Xcode on it,...
Honestly I have to disagree with you here. I have an 8gb air, and it works perfectly for all lightweight tasks. The 256gb ssd is far more limiting than the ram. No, you won’t be doing Xcode on it, but basic web browsing and pages document editing is fine. And that is what the target audience needs out of a laptop like this. If you are doing development, get a different computer. But I hope nobody needed me to say this. But for the way my mom and sister use computers, this would be absolutely fine.
Ugh, I've spiraled out of control with bad tab management since I switched to vertical tab bar in my browser. I've had over a thousand tabs numerous times, eventually I just close them all out and...
Ugh, I've spiraled out of control with bad tab management since I switched to vertical tab bar in my browser. I've had over a thousand tabs numerous times, eventually I just close them all out and start over. Currently I'm approaching 300 tabs and this is all within about a month or so. It's not so much that I'm even saving them for any particular reason, and some are just duplicates of already existing tabs, except once I've got a hundred of them I just don't bother looking for the existing one, I open a new one. I wasn't always this bad, when I was using horizontal tabs it forced me to be more discerning and clear them more often. I really do need to get a grip on it and somehow I keep slipping back into this lack of managing them.
Somehow I can keep it to under 5 tabs most of the time. Maybe 12 max in rare circumstances. I also don’t generally keep notes. Not sure if I’m missing out or just have good memory.
Somehow I can keep it to under 5 tabs most of the time. Maybe 12 max in rare circumstances.
I also don’t generally keep notes. Not sure if I’m missing out or just have good memory.
I use Firefox, I just have a habit of ignoring anything the address bar suggests. I don't even look at it, so to be honest, I never even noticed it suggested that. At some point I developed a...
I use Firefox, I just have a habit of ignoring anything the address bar suggests. I don't even look at it, so to be honest, I never even noticed it suggested that. At some point I developed a mindset that all the suggestions in the address bar are worthless spam and just blocked it all out.
The things it recommends the most is the tabs you have open and the pages you have been to often. I find it useful from time to time when I forget exactly what I’m looking for. IIRC you can...
The things it recommends the most is the tabs you have open and the pages you have been to often. I find it useful from time to time when I forget exactly what I’m looking for. IIRC you can configure it to not show “suggestions” from things you haven’t been to.
Even if you want to use Chrome or another Chromium browser with bad memory management, you can turn on low power mode in the settings to unload older tabs from memory. I handed down my M1 MBA with...
Even if you want to use Chrome or another Chromium browser with bad memory management, you can turn on low power mode in the settings to unload older tabs from memory.
I handed down my M1 MBA with 8GB of RAM to my wife and low power mode fixed all of her issues with memory usage.
That's a bit like trying trying to haul a pallet of cinder blocks in a Ford Focus around 24/7 and calling into question the Focus' ability to be a daily driver...
That's a bit like trying trying to haul a pallet of cinder blocks in a Ford Focus around 24/7 and calling into question the Focus' ability to be a daily driver...
That's a shame, that makes the Neo less interesting. On Linux even 8GB, without ZRAM, is reasonably comfortable for light use like web browsing and stuff. Would probably start to chug with any...
That's a shame, that makes the Neo less interesting. On Linux even 8GB, without ZRAM, is reasonably comfortable for light use like web browsing and stuff. Would probably start to chug with any kind of creative applications though.
Yeah, it does. Right now it shows it to be using about 740 MB of 'compressed RAM', 7.2 GB for apps, and about 1.8 GB of 'wired RAM', which as I understand it is Apple terminology for critical core...
Yeah, it does. Right now it shows it to be using about 740 MB of 'compressed RAM', 7.2 GB for apps, and about 1.8 GB of 'wired RAM', which as I understand it is Apple terminology for critical core system stuff that can't be swapped out.
I have an M2 Macbook Air with 8MB. It's faster than any previous laptop I've had and it's always been snappy. I don't do a whole lot with it though. I have VS Code and Chrome open all the time and...
I have an M2 Macbook Air with 8MB. It's faster than any previous laptop I've had and it's always been snappy. I don't do a whole lot with it though. I have VS Code and Chrome open all the time and it's mostly idle. All Macs seem crazy fast these days.
The people who complain that 8GB isn't enough memory must somehow be using their computers a lot differently than me. It's rather puzzling.
Apple does a good job with memory compression, so it’s not super easy to compare between operating systems. People that use Docker are losing a few GBs to that alone. And then there’s local AI...
Apple does a good job with memory compression, so it’s not super easy to compare between operating systems.
People that use Docker are losing a few GBs to that alone. And then there’s local AI tasks - although you’d need a large amount of memory for that to be more than a toy.
The rumours were true; Apple has announced the Macbook Neo, a Mac with an A18 Pro CPU that runs full MacOS. The specs are pretty ho-hum, and this definitely isn't something I'd choose for any kind...
The rumours were true; Apple has announced the Macbook Neo, a Mac with an A18 Pro CPU that runs full MacOS. The specs are pretty ho-hum, and this definitely isn't something I'd choose for any kind of heavy workload, especially given how much my M1 Air is struggling with only 8GB memory these days. That said, it's a tempting proposition for a family computer that the kids can use for homework and whatnot.
Yeah but 8gb soldered non-upgradable ram. That retina display has to come from somewhere. You'll feel that lack of ram in the performance almost immediately but that 220ppi will make it look...
Yeah but 8gb soldered non-upgradable ram. That retina display has to come from somewhere. You'll feel that lack of ram in the performance almost immediately but that 220ppi will make it look pretty while it's loading?
I don't disagree that plenty of machines need to get rid of the substandard 1080p either.
This will be significantly more powerful than any other windows laptop at this price bracket; you can't replace CPUs in laptops, either. In the end, you have to make tradeoffs. I have an iPad Pro...
This will be significantly more powerful than any other windows laptop at this price bracket; you can't replace CPUs in laptops, either. In the end, you have to make tradeoffs.
I have an iPad Pro with 8gb, and it hasn't really been an issue. macOS would allow you to use more memory than iOS since the latter aggressively culls background activities, but macOS also means this device has swap, which iOS doesn't.
CPUs, especially well made silicon like the M-series have significantly more longevity than the already bottlenecked 8GB RAM. "Just swap" is nothing more than a workaround for a glaring...
CPUs, especially well made silicon like the M-series have significantly more longevity than the already bottlenecked 8GB RAM.
"Just swap" is nothing more than a workaround for a glaring deficiency. If you're constantly swapping you'll see lower read/write across the board.
Modern software just needs dummy amounts of RAM. I'd argue we wouldn't have to if we stepped away from the highly RAM inefficient Electron and Chromium based shit but that's neither here nor there.
Look, I know I'm not the target audience for this. I understand that the use case for this notebook is light administrative work and the people needing this don't mind waiting a little. But even their higher end models with 8GB RAM tend to choke if you do anything hefty. I think even just 12GB would free up the system significantly.
You'll notice it a bit, but disk I/O speeds have grown much faster than ram I/O speeds have in the past decade, and Apple's disks are some of the fastest in consumer computers. Falling back to...
You'll notice it a bit, but disk I/O speeds have grown much faster than ram I/O speeds have in the past decade, and Apple's disks are some of the fastest in consumer computers.
Falling back to swap used to mean you were waiting ages for applications to chug along. It's not nearly as much of a performance hit nowadays though.
More RAM would be better, but it's not the end of the world.
It’s certainly a better situation than can be found on many Chromebooks and low end Windows laptops, which come with little RAM and also a tiny amount of very slow eMMC storage which makes the...
It’s certainly a better situation than can be found on many Chromebooks and low end Windows laptops, which come with little RAM and also a tiny amount of very slow eMMC storage which makes the inevitable paging downright painful.
That really depends on what you're doing. Like I said, I use an iPad Pro with 8GB of RAM quite often, mostly for painting, but I also browse the web on it, edit 60 MP photos in lightroom, and...
That really depends on what you're doing. Like I said, I use an iPad Pro with 8GB of RAM quite often, mostly for painting, but I also browse the web on it, edit 60 MP photos in lightroom, and occassionally edit 4k video on FCP, and it handles all of that without issue. Maybe it wouldn't handle all of that at the same time, but a $600 windows laptop is going to melt into lava the moment you start rendering something in davinci resolve. Sometimes CPU is the bottleneck, sometimes RAM is the bottleneck.
IMO people also vastly overestimate how much RAM browsers use, because they request a great deal from the OS. But a browser is, in essence, a virutal machine these days, and like a VM will very much request large blocks of memory and not release them in order to prevent the overhead from constantly allocating memory. But much of that won't actually be used.
You really have to measure how things feel in practice to see how a RAM limitation will effect daily use - merely seeing if swap is being used doesn't tell you much.
But even their higher end models with 8GB RAM tend to choke if you do anything hefty. I think even just 12GB would free up the system significantly.
This is part of the take-or-leave it costs of the SoCs. It's not trivial to add or remove memory from configurations, because the RAM is not soldered, but actually embedded into the chip itself. In this case, they're just reusing A18 Pros they have in stock for iPhones, which have 8GB as the top line.
I'd imagine as iPhone RAM increases, NEO ram will increase necessarily as well.
I've got a Mac mini with 8 GB of RAM and it's more than enough for basic computing, which is what this computer is aiming for. And the SSDs are so fast on even Apple's low end computers that...
I've got a Mac mini with 8 GB of RAM and it's more than enough for basic computing, which is what this computer is aiming for. And the SSDs are so fast on even Apple's low end computers that hitting your swap partition isn't as big a deal as it used to be.
I'm contemplating it. 8gb is enough for music, Safari, and vim. With agents, I could use this as a cheap platform to crank through small projects and word docs. I'll probably end up getting a...
I'm contemplating it. 8gb is enough for music, Safari, and vim. With agents, I could use this as a cheap platform to crank through small projects and word docs. I'll probably end up getting a MacBook Air because the extra ~$300 (on sale) won't kill me, but this is viable for my most of my use cases.
Honestly the build quality alone may sway a lot of people. Most laptops that I've seen in the $600 range have been plastic build (admittedly it's been a bit since I've been laptop shopping but I...
Honestly the build quality alone may sway a lot of people. Most laptops that I've seen in the $600 range have been plastic build (admittedly it's been a bit since I've been laptop shopping but I can't imagine with inflation the this range has gotten better in build quality). With student discount this even goes down to $500. It suddenly becomes a much more affordable and appealing option, especially if someone already has an iPhone.
In my place of work we have a small handful of budget laptops for kids who come in without their own. They are so poor in quality that they must have come out of the factory as borderline e-waste....
In my place of work we have a small handful of budget laptops for kids who come in without their own. They are so poor in quality that they must have come out of the factory as borderline e-waste. Every part of them flexes, even their blurry, maybe 1080p screens, they are so slow that you can’t be sure if any given app launches, they charge with a tiny unlabeled barrel plug which doesn’t give any details for the power on either the machine nor the power adapter itself, which is a cost reduction step I have yet to see in any other application. When they are closed you can squeeze them and you will audibly hear the plastic stressing and rubbing together.
There are some slightly better ones as well, but it’s almost frightening how bad the build quality can be for PCs and Chromebooks on the low end. At one time I bought a little “toy laptop” that used Android cellphone guts as a fun hobby project to install Linux on, and it’s frightening to see that while the laptops at my work offer arguably better components (a screen that is larger but somehow less legible, and full sized keyboards and trackpads), the overall build quality is actually worse!
Hmm, seems they are going for the Chromebook market after all. I almost certainly won’t be getting this because I have been too spoiled by the MacBook Air, but it seems that the one thing people...
Hmm, seems they are going for the Chromebook market after all.
I almost certainly won’t be getting this because I have been too spoiled by the MacBook Air, but it seems that the one thing people tend to hate about inexpensive Chromebooks is the poor build quality. $600 is still a bit high for that market, but I think they will get more than a few bites, especially because the MacBook Neo is a “real computer” that can run “real apps” such as the Adobe suite and Microsoft Office’s native apps.
It feels weird that it is using a cell phone processor but I don’t think that will be a problem. Frankly it feels like this is something like a re-release of the original base model M1 MacBook Air in terms of specs - while I haven’t bothered to see any kind of benchmarks on them (and frankly I never really trusted benchmark programs for apple phones for fairly irrational reasons), the CPU on my iPhone 17 - which should be noted is newer and faster than the one they are putting in the MacBook Neo - seems to be faster than my current 8-core M1 MacBook Air in terms of gaming and AI tasks.
It's $499 with a student discount, which I think hits the sweet spot for the target market. Apple has a massive advantage since they can utilize parts and designs from their other products, along...
$600 is still a bit high for that market, but I think they will get more than a few bites, especially because the MacBook Neo is a “real computer” that can run “real apps” such as the Adobe suite and Microsoft Office’s native apps.
It's $499 with a student discount, which I think hits the sweet spot for the target market. Apple has a massive advantage since they can utilize parts and designs from their other products, along with the huge incentive of indoctrinating students into their ecosystem (there's a very real chance that Neo users will upgrade to other Macbooks when they graduate, unlike with Chromebooks).
Having a more accessible model pricing-wise also makes it significantly more attractive for developers to support macOS (and in an optimized manner, too). Seems like a killer move overall if the hardware proves to be up for the task.
It’ll be interesting so see what the Neo means for local AI applications on MacOS. Apple currently has a .coreml framework that lets developers access the AI hardware acceleration features of the...
It’ll be interesting so see what the Neo means for local AI applications on MacOS. Apple currently has a .coreml framework that lets developers access the AI hardware acceleration features of the A-series chips. That same framework is not optimized for the M-series chip architectures.
It was less of an issue before because developers could generally assume that iOS apps ran on A-series chips and macOS apps on M-series chips, but now that will not be a generalization developers can make.
Pretty cool, I never thought Apple would reach below the $1000 laptop market - just seemed too low value, and could impact iPad sales. Specs seem great, it’s would definitely be hard to find...
Pretty cool, I never thought Apple would reach below the $1000 laptop market - just seemed too low value, and could impact iPad sales.
Specs seem great, it’s would definitely be hard to find anything else remotely as performant at this price bracket, especially at the education price.
In this price bracket most other laptops cut corners in a lot of other places too. Cheap flexy chassis, bad screen, finicky diving board trackpad, etc. None of those are problems here.
In this price bracket most other laptops cut corners in a lot of other places too. Cheap flexy chassis, bad screen, finicky diving board trackpad, etc. None of those are problems here.
Ahh, well I guess we’ll need to see how decent the trackpad is in reviews, then. I don’t recall the pre-haptic MacBook trackpads being bad though, definitely better than the average cheap PC...
Ahh, well I guess we’ll need to see how decent the trackpad is in reviews, then. I don’t recall the pre-haptic MacBook trackpads being bad though, definitely better than the average cheap PC laptop trackpad.
To me this makes a lot of sense as a glorified iPad with an attached keyboard. Same RAM config as the M1-M3 iPad Airs, and I didn't see anyone complaining about having only 8GB there.
To me this makes a lot of sense as a glorified iPad with an attached keyboard. Same RAM config as the M1-M3 iPad Airs, and I didn't see anyone complaining about having only 8GB there.
Honestly looks pretty nice and I like that they're bringing back colors. For reference, I am and have always been a PC guy. Never owned a Mac, do not like Apple products generally, but this looks...
Honestly looks pretty nice and I like that they're bringing back colors.
For reference, I am and have always been a PC guy. Never owned a Mac, do not like Apple products generally, but this looks nice and it's wonderfully affordable. Don't think I would ever buy one, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at it either.
I just wish they had brought the orange from the iMac/17 Pro to this, it's such a good color and would be a neat throwback nod to the iBooks from around 2000. If I hadn't bought a nice gaming...
I just wish they had brought the orange from the iMac/17 Pro to this, it's such a good color and would be a neat throwback nod to the iBooks from around 2000.
If I hadn't bought a nice gaming laptop two years ago that fulfills all my laptop needs, I'd be considering getting one of these just to mess around in Macland again (seeing as how my last one was a 2013 MBA). Low price and no notch? Sign me up, I could live with just using my desktop for any heavy computing needs.
Yeah the limitations for running macOS on an iPad seem to be purely business-related. There are rumors about a redesigned MacBook Pro on the horizon though that does have a touchscreen, which...
Yeah the limitations for running macOS on an iPad seem to be purely business-related. There are rumors about a redesigned MacBook Pro on the horizon though that does have a touchscreen, which could explain some of the more iOS-y UI elements in macOS in Tahoe.
I still don't get the idea of a touchscreen laptop. I try and try to imagine what would be a situation where I'd prefer to slather my grubby hands on my laptop display but fall short every time....
I still don't get the idea of a touchscreen laptop. I try and try to imagine what would be a situation where I'd prefer to slather my grubby hands on my laptop display but fall short every time.
Those fancy foldables that can fold into a tablet, mayyybe. But a normal laptop with a hinge that doesn't go past 180 degrees. I don't get it.
Same, especially with it being such with large screens that it seems that effective antiglare coating and effective oleophobic coating are mutually exclusive, with nearly all touchscreen laptops...
Same, especially with it being such with large screens that it seems that effective antiglare coating and effective oleophobic coating are mutually exclusive, with nearly all touchscreen laptops favoring fingerprint resistance over glare reduction, turning them into mirrors. For anybody who never uses touch that’s a strict downgrade.
I've always been a little Mac curious despite my FOSS intentions, and I do need a new laptop. I'm operating under the assumption that Asahi would need a little bit of work, and/or crossover might...
I've always been a little Mac curious despite my FOSS intentions, and I do need a new laptop. I'm operating under the assumption that Asahi would need a little bit of work, and/or crossover might need some finagling, but GameHub is there, so there may be some Steam dreaming in the future one way or another.
I think Asahi will take a while to be functional on this hardware. I think the team are still hard at working getting it functional on the M3 platform so no clue what their bandwidth in getting it...
I think Asahi will take a while to be functional on this hardware. I think the team are still hard at working getting it functional on the M3 platform so no clue what their bandwidth in getting it functional on an A-series platform looks like.
Probably not. The only reason Asahi exists is because Apple explicitly allows you to unlock the bootloader on macs (like, there's an option in the settings panel for it). The Asahi linux people...
Probably not. The only reason Asahi exists is because Apple explicitly allows you to unlock the bootloader on macs (like, there's an option in the settings panel for it). The Asahi linux people didn't hack the bootloader or anything.
Whereas that's certainly not an option Apple is allowing on iPhones.
All true. That said, if at some point down the road A18 iPhones have their bootloaders cracked, very little work will need to be done to get Asahi running on them.
All true. That said, if at some point down the road A18 iPhones have their bootloaders cracked, very little work will need to be done to get Asahi running on them.
I've been wanting a Mac of some sort just to get into the OS and learn the environment more. I just purchased one in Silver. Maybe it'll tie in with my iPad nicely and give that some much-needed...
I've been wanting a Mac of some sort just to get into the OS and learn the environment more. I just purchased one in Silver. Maybe it'll tie in with my iPad nicely and give that some much-needed utility.
The integration with other Apple stuff if you have it really is excellent. I wish they'd open that stuff up to other platforms than Mac OS, but you know how Apple is...
The integration with other Apple stuff if you have it really is excellent. I wish they'd open that stuff up to other platforms than Mac OS, but you know how Apple is...
This will be perfect for school kids. I had to get 2 Windows laptops for high school going kids, and they were more expensive and much worse hardware. Also, this is perfect for businesses. Cheap,...
This will be perfect for school kids. I had to get 2 Windows laptops for high school going kids, and they were more expensive and much worse hardware.
Also, this is perfect for businesses. Cheap, lightweight, will run most business applications. I expect this to do really well.
This would be a really good candidate for Asahi Linux if they manage to get it running—probably depends on whether it uses SPTM or not, as I believe that's the major roadblocker for M4/M5. The two...
This would be a really good candidate for Asahi Linux if they manage to get it running—probably depends on whether it uses SPTM or not, as I believe that's the major roadblocker for M4/M5.
The two major features Asahi hasn't been able to support are touch ID and thunderbolt, which the base Neo simply doesn't have.
This is promising. I’ve only ever used work-provided Macs because I’m cheap/broke. But this looks like a good candidate for my first personal Mac. Some light dev work, maybe very light gaming...
This is promising. I’ve only ever used work-provided Macs because I’m cheap/broke. But this looks like a good candidate for my first personal Mac. Some light dev work, maybe very light gaming (rimworld, MC, emulators, etc).
I was excited for this announcement upon hearing the leaks as I was looking for a new personal laptop. I am a little on the fence about this actually. I do think this will sell like hotcakes at...
I was excited for this announcement upon hearing the leaks as I was looking for a new personal laptop. I am a little on the fence about this actually. I do think this will sell like hotcakes at its price point, especially for those with the education discount as its $499 for the base model. However, being stuck at 8GB of RAM does sting a bit. Would've been nice to get a third SKU with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD/TouchID but since it runs on an A18, I imagine re-engineering it to accept 16GB was more effort than it was worth.
It's just a solid premium-budget laptop for schoolchildren to do their homework, watch some Youtube, and play some Roblox. That's all it is. Temper your expectations.
It's just a solid premium-budget laptop for schoolchildren to do their homework, watch some Youtube, and play some Roblox. That's all it is. Temper your expectations.
Yes and I can't see this not being a HUGE seller for these exact people. This is a product a lot of people have been waiting for for years and it will surely bring many new apple customers
Yes and I can't see this not being a HUGE seller for these exact people. This is a product a lot of people have been waiting for for years and it will surely bring many new apple customers
I think most has been said about the low amount of RAM, but to add something else: the regional pricing (at least for Germany) really isn't great on this device. It starts at €700 instead of $599...
I think most has been said about the low amount of RAM, but to add something else: the regional pricing (at least for Germany) really isn't great on this device.
It starts at €700 instead of $599 and at the current exchange rate that's $800, a whopping 30% increase.
On another note, kind of annoying to gate keep touch-id behind the more expensive version with more storage.
Still not great at €577 ($670) - pretending VAT doesn’t exist - which is about the most anyone would pay inclusive of sales tax in the US. But I don’t think it’s that much different than iPhones...
Einschließlich MwSt. und ges. Gebühren i. H. v. ca. 123,00 €.
Still not great at €577 ($670) - pretending VAT doesn’t exist - which is about the most anyone would pay inclusive of sales tax in the US.
But I don’t think it’s that much different than iPhones would be to purchase in Germany vs the US; somewhere around ~25% more expensive to purchase if you’re comparing with a state’s sales tax included?
Oh, I goofed there and forgot that you don't need to disclose the price inclusive of VAT in a US context, which is baffling to me. Thanks, that brings it slightly more in line and as much as I...
Oh, I goofed there and forgot that you don't need to disclose the price inclusive of VAT in a US context, which is baffling to me.
Thanks, that brings it slightly more in line and as much as I dislike them, Apple at least isn't responsible for higher VAT in Germany compared to the US.
I think the lack of Touch ID makes sense if you consider the market for this is going to include a lot of educational organizations which will be using these shared between students, where...
I think the lack of Touch ID makes sense if you consider the market for this is going to include a lot of educational organizations which will be using these shared between students, where biometric identification might have political ramifications.
Also the upgrade to double storage for just 100 USD is sadly the least expensive storage upgrades Apple currently offers, so it’s a fantastic deal if you subscribe to their bizzaro world logic.
According to Geekbench, the iPhone 16 Pro is significantly faster in single-core performance and has a slight advantage in multi-core. The neural engine will have also had many improvements as...
According to Geekbench, the iPhone 16 Pro is significantly faster in single-core performance and has a slight advantage in multi-core. The neural engine will have also had many improvements as well, but that might not be terribly useful for something so memory-constrained.
It’s kind of impressive how affordable this is compared to its performance. My M1Air does everything I want from it, sure, gaming cooks up the chassis because of passive cooling but I tried to...
It’s kind of impressive how affordable this is compared to its performance.
My M1Air does everything I want from it, sure, gaming cooks up the chassis because of passive cooling but I tried to game on it for a day or two, and No Man’s Sky ran, I think at 30FPS but it did.
Apple Silicon is something I’d call revolutionary for laptops, but it’s a shame that it’s stuck on Apple hardware and only M1/2 can run Linux.
Only 8GB of RAM, and no option to upgrade even for the usual extortionate Apple prices seems like a bad idea in 2026. I know, AI RAMpocalypse probably has something to do with that.
My Macbook Air running Tahoe is chilling with over 10GB of RAM in use with pretty much just the OS and Firefox with 5 tabs running.
Not to disregard your point, but how much RAM do you have? Because that might explain it, nowadays most OSes consume more RAM the more they have available. A fresh install of Windows 11 for example can use about 10gb on a 64gb machine (wouldn't be surprised if it used over 20gb on a 128gb machine).
Browsers do the same thing, so your macOS and Firefox might just be filling the free space that they have rather than actually needing it.
16GB here.
I imagine that it’s due to a limitation of the A18 SOC they’re using. It was designed for phones and tablets, so I can’t imagine it has support for anything more than 8GB.
I also imagine that the RAM won’t actually be an issue on the Neo. They aren’t shipping 8GB of RAM to lower the sticker price with the intention of everyone paying to upgrade at checkout. They must have done enough testing and OS optimization to ensure it’s sufficient for their target users’ use cases.
Maybe it's not an Apple type product/design, but it seems like this would be better suited to a shell connected to a phone, like the old Motorola Atrix with the laptop dock.
I had a Moto Razr 4G that did the same. It never quite worked right, was very finicky.
There are a bunch of phones and tablets out there with 12gb of ram and even several with 16 now.
Yeah but the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, the only other devices that used the A18 Pro SOC, have 8GB of RAM. The newer A19 Pro SOC supports up to 12GB of RAM though.
Baseline models of their other lineups had 8GB of RAM until recently as I recall. There are many people still running MacBooks with this limit. So I think it’s not that big of an issue
Though I’m pretty sure the Mac laptop I bought >10 years ago I upgraded to 16GB of ram, so I am of course a hypocrite :)
I just passed my 8GB MacBook to my wife this year, and it's still serving her well. Apple has some serious witchcraft going on with their memory system. If I did the same on Linux I'd be swapping myself to death on the regular.
I’m curious to see how it fairs given that its a mobile processor with mobile levels of RAM. It basically a glorified phone running desktop mode iOS. Could be functional. But I too have a knee jerk reaction to low RAM numbers.
met so many people (ok it's been a few years) that NEEDED a macbook, and all they did was some MS Office, browsing and watching netflix.
The MBP was already overpowered for those tasks back in the days, but the M chips are so incredibly powerful that it's even more of a waste.
Well, at least they get like 18 hours of battery life. Back when M1 came out it’s battery life was unmatched.
When I had an 8GB linux laptop I configured ZRAM (RAM compression) and so it effectively had more than 16GB "RAM" that way. The only drawback is a bit of CPU time to access compressed memory, but Apple silicon is so fast I doubt that matters. I don't know anything about the OS Apple is using on the Neo, does your Macbook Air have "compressed RAM"?
macOS has pretty good memory management, but there's limits to what you can do with software. I have an 8gb Air, and I feel the limitation pretty much constantly. 8gb just is not enough for the modern world.
Honestly I have to disagree with you here. I have an 8gb air, and it works perfectly for all lightweight tasks. The 256gb ssd is far more limiting than the ram. No, you won’t be doing Xcode on it, but basic web browsing and pages document editing is fine. And that is what the target audience needs out of a laptop like this. If you are doing development, get a different computer. But I hope nobody needed me to say this. But for the way my mom and sister use computers, this would be absolutely fine.
Maybe it's a difference in perspective. For me, "basic web browing" means 100+ tabs, which reliably brings my laptop to its knees.
Jesus Christ, get ahold of your tabs.
Ugh, I've spiraled out of control with bad tab management since I switched to vertical tab bar in my browser. I've had over a thousand tabs numerous times, eventually I just close them all out and start over. Currently I'm approaching 300 tabs and this is all within about a month or so. It's not so much that I'm even saving them for any particular reason, and some are just duplicates of already existing tabs, except once I've got a hundred of them I just don't bother looking for the existing one, I open a new one. I wasn't always this bad, when I was using horizontal tabs it forced me to be more discerning and clear them more often. I really do need to get a grip on it and somehow I keep slipping back into this lack of managing them.
Somehow I can keep it to under 5 tabs most of the time. Maybe 12 max in rare circumstances.
I also don’t generally keep notes. Not sure if I’m missing out or just have good memory.
Firefox will suggest your open tabs when you type in related things into the address bar. Do other browsers not do this?
I use Firefox, I just have a habit of ignoring anything the address bar suggests. I don't even look at it, so to be honest, I never even noticed it suggested that. At some point I developed a mindset that all the suggestions in the address bar are worthless spam and just blocked it all out.
The things it recommends the most is the tabs you have open and the pages you have been to often. I find it useful from time to time when I forget exactly what I’m looking for. IIRC you can configure it to not show “suggestions” from things you haven’t been to.
Even if you want to use Chrome or another Chromium browser with bad memory management, you can turn on low power mode in the settings to unload older tabs from memory.
I handed down my M1 MBA with 8GB of RAM to my wife and low power mode fixed all of her issues with memory usage.
I feel like that’s just blaming the laptop for user error..
Might I direct you to a new discovery in the world of Web Browsers, called BOOKMARKS :D
That's a bit like trying trying to haul a pallet of cinder blocks in a Ford Focus around 24/7 and calling into question the Focus' ability to be a daily driver...
I used to be the exact same, now I have my tabs go to auto sleep or close and open the browser to have them to go to sleep when needed.
That's a shame, that makes the Neo less interesting. On Linux even 8GB, without ZRAM, is reasonably comfortable for light use like web browsing and stuff. Would probably start to chug with any kind of creative applications though.
Yeah, it does. Right now it shows it to be using about 740 MB of 'compressed RAM', 7.2 GB for apps, and about 1.8 GB of 'wired RAM', which as I understand it is Apple terminology for critical core system stuff that can't be swapped out.
I have an M2 Macbook Air with 8MB. It's faster than any previous laptop I've had and it's always been snappy. I don't do a whole lot with it though. I have VS Code and Chrome open all the time and it's mostly idle. All Macs seem crazy fast these days.
The people who complain that 8GB isn't enough memory must somehow be using their computers a lot differently than me. It's rather puzzling.
Apple does a good job with memory compression, so it’s not super easy to compare between operating systems.
People that use Docker are losing a few GBs to that alone. And then there’s local AI tasks - although you’d need a large amount of memory for that to be more than a toy.
Well sure, but those are niche uses and there are people who seem to think that 8GB isn't enough for most people.
My main memory-hungry use case is Adobe Lightroom. That eats all the memory it can get.
The rumours were true; Apple has announced the Macbook Neo, a Mac with an A18 Pro CPU that runs full MacOS. The specs are pretty ho-hum, and this definitely isn't something I'd choose for any kind of heavy workload, especially given how much my M1 Air is struggling with only 8GB memory these days. That said, it's a tempting proposition for a family computer that the kids can use for homework and whatnot.
Always nice to see more "affordable" options from Apple.
220 PPI on a $500 budget laptop when you have Windows manufacturers still selling $1k+ laptops with a 1080p screen.
Yeah but 8gb soldered non-upgradable ram. That retina display has to come from somewhere. You'll feel that lack of ram in the performance almost immediately but that 220ppi will make it look pretty while it's loading?
I don't disagree that plenty of machines need to get rid of the substandard 1080p either.
Nevertheless, this Neo ain't it.
This will be significantly more powerful than any other windows laptop at this price bracket; you can't replace CPUs in laptops, either. In the end, you have to make tradeoffs.
I have an iPad Pro with 8gb, and it hasn't really been an issue. macOS would allow you to use more memory than iOS since the latter aggressively culls background activities, but macOS also means this device has swap, which iOS doesn't.
CPUs, especially well made silicon like the M-series have significantly more longevity than the already bottlenecked 8GB RAM.
"Just swap" is nothing more than a workaround for a glaring deficiency. If you're constantly swapping you'll see lower read/write across the board.
Modern software just needs dummy amounts of RAM. I'd argue we wouldn't have to if we stepped away from the highly RAM inefficient Electron and Chromium based shit but that's neither here nor there.
Look, I know I'm not the target audience for this. I understand that the use case for this notebook is light administrative work and the people needing this don't mind waiting a little. But even their higher end models with 8GB RAM tend to choke if you do anything hefty. I think even just 12GB would free up the system significantly.
Edit: or at least a variant with 12 or 16.
You'll notice it a bit, but disk I/O speeds have grown much faster than ram I/O speeds have in the past decade, and Apple's disks are some of the fastest in consumer computers.
Falling back to swap used to mean you were waiting ages for applications to chug along. It's not nearly as much of a performance hit nowadays though.
More RAM would be better, but it's not the end of the world.
It’s certainly a better situation than can be found on many Chromebooks and low end Windows laptops, which come with little RAM and also a tiny amount of very slow eMMC storage which makes the inevitable paging downright painful.
That really depends on what you're doing. Like I said, I use an iPad Pro with 8GB of RAM quite often, mostly for painting, but I also browse the web on it, edit 60 MP photos in lightroom, and occassionally edit 4k video on FCP, and it handles all of that without issue. Maybe it wouldn't handle all of that at the same time, but a $600 windows laptop is going to melt into lava the moment you start rendering something in davinci resolve. Sometimes CPU is the bottleneck, sometimes RAM is the bottleneck.
IMO people also vastly overestimate how much RAM browsers use, because they request a great deal from the OS. But a browser is, in essence, a virutal machine these days, and like a VM will very much request large blocks of memory and not release them in order to prevent the overhead from constantly allocating memory. But much of that won't actually be used.
You really have to measure how things feel in practice to see how a RAM limitation will effect daily use - merely seeing if swap is being used doesn't tell you much.
This is part of the take-or-leave it costs of the SoCs. It's not trivial to add or remove memory from configurations, because the RAM is not soldered, but actually embedded into the chip itself. In this case, they're just reusing A18 Pros they have in stock for iPhones, which have 8GB as the top line.
I'd imagine as iPhone RAM increases, NEO ram will increase necessarily as well.
I've got a Mac mini with 8 GB of RAM and it's more than enough for basic computing, which is what this computer is aiming for. And the SSDs are so fast on even Apple's low end computers that hitting your swap partition isn't as big a deal as it used to be.
I'm contemplating it. 8gb is enough for music, Safari, and vim. With agents, I could use this as a cheap platform to crank through small projects and word docs. I'll probably end up getting a MacBook Air because the extra ~$300 (on sale) won't kill me, but this is viable for my most of my use cases.
Honestly the build quality alone may sway a lot of people. Most laptops that I've seen in the $600 range have been plastic build (admittedly it's been a bit since I've been laptop shopping but I can't imagine with inflation the this range has gotten better in build quality). With student discount this even goes down to $500. It suddenly becomes a much more affordable and appealing option, especially if someone already has an iPhone.
In my place of work we have a small handful of budget laptops for kids who come in without their own. They are so poor in quality that they must have come out of the factory as borderline e-waste. Every part of them flexes, even their blurry, maybe 1080p screens, they are so slow that you can’t be sure if any given app launches, they charge with a tiny unlabeled barrel plug which doesn’t give any details for the power on either the machine nor the power adapter itself, which is a cost reduction step I have yet to see in any other application. When they are closed you can squeeze them and you will audibly hear the plastic stressing and rubbing together.
There are some slightly better ones as well, but it’s almost frightening how bad the build quality can be for PCs and Chromebooks on the low end. At one time I bought a little “toy laptop” that used Android cellphone guts as a fun hobby project to install Linux on, and it’s frightening to see that while the laptops at my work offer arguably better components (a screen that is larger but somehow less legible, and full sized keyboards and trackpads), the overall build quality is actually worse!
Hmm, seems they are going for the Chromebook market after all.
I almost certainly won’t be getting this because I have been too spoiled by the MacBook Air, but it seems that the one thing people tend to hate about inexpensive Chromebooks is the poor build quality. $600 is still a bit high for that market, but I think they will get more than a few bites, especially because the MacBook Neo is a “real computer” that can run “real apps” such as the Adobe suite and Microsoft Office’s native apps.
It feels weird that it is using a cell phone processor but I don’t think that will be a problem. Frankly it feels like this is something like a re-release of the original base model M1 MacBook Air in terms of specs - while I haven’t bothered to see any kind of benchmarks on them (and frankly I never really trusted benchmark programs for apple phones for fairly irrational reasons), the CPU on my iPhone 17 - which should be noted is newer and faster than the one they are putting in the MacBook Neo - seems to be faster than my current 8-core M1 MacBook Air in terms of gaming and AI tasks.
This is going to be a great Chromebook competitor! I sent the product link to my wife, and she saw that immediately, too.
It's $499 with a student discount, which I think hits the sweet spot for the target market. Apple has a massive advantage since they can utilize parts and designs from their other products, along with the huge incentive of indoctrinating students into their ecosystem (there's a very real chance that Neo users will upgrade to other Macbooks when they graduate, unlike with Chromebooks).
Having a more accessible model pricing-wise also makes it significantly more attractive for developers to support macOS (and in an optimized manner, too). Seems like a killer move overall if the hardware proves to be up for the task.
It’ll be interesting so see what the Neo means for local AI applications on MacOS. Apple currently has a .coreml framework that lets developers access the AI hardware acceleration features of the A-series chips. That same framework is not optimized for the M-series chip architectures.
It was less of an issue before because developers could generally assume that iOS apps ran on A-series chips and macOS apps on M-series chips, but now that will not be a generalization developers can make.
The A-series CPU in the Neo is faster in single core benchmarks than the M1. Which is kinda bonkers.
Pretty cool, I never thought Apple would reach below the $1000 laptop market - just seemed too low value, and could impact iPad sales.
Specs seem great, it’s would definitely be hard to find anything else remotely as performant at this price bracket, especially at the education price.
In this price bracket most other laptops cut corners in a lot of other places too. Cheap flexy chassis, bad screen, finicky diving board trackpad, etc. None of those are problems here.
They did downgrade the trackpad from the fancy force feedback thingie to a "normal" clicky one they had in the Intel generation.
Ahh, well I guess we’ll need to see how decent the trackpad is in reviews, then. I don’t recall the pre-haptic MacBook trackpads being bad though, definitely better than the average cheap PC laptop trackpad.
To me this makes a lot of sense as a glorified iPad with an attached keyboard. Same RAM config as the M1-M3 iPad Airs, and I didn't see anyone complaining about having only 8GB there.
Honestly looks pretty nice and I like that they're bringing back colors.
For reference, I am and have always been a PC guy. Never owned a Mac, do not like Apple products generally, but this looks nice and it's wonderfully affordable. Don't think I would ever buy one, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at it either.
I just wish they had brought the orange from the iMac/17 Pro to this, it's such a good color and would be a neat throwback nod to the iBooks from around 2000.
If I hadn't bought a nice gaming laptop two years ago that fulfills all my laptop needs, I'd be considering getting one of these just to mess around in Macland again (seeing as how my last one was a 2013 MBA). Low price and no notch? Sign me up, I could live with just using my desktop for any heavy computing needs.
MacOS on an A18? Yet we still can't have MacOS on an iPad. Sigh.
I know some of those iPads have M-series CPUs, too...
Yeah the limitations for running macOS on an iPad seem to be purely business-related. There are rumors about a redesigned MacBook Pro on the horizon though that does have a touchscreen, which could explain some of the more iOS-y UI elements in macOS in Tahoe.
I still don't get the idea of a touchscreen laptop. I try and try to imagine what would be a situation where I'd prefer to slather my grubby hands on my laptop display but fall short every time.
Those fancy foldables that can fold into a tablet, mayyybe. But a normal laptop with a hinge that doesn't go past 180 degrees. I don't get it.
Same, especially with it being such with large screens that it seems that effective antiglare coating and effective oleophobic coating are mutually exclusive, with nearly all touchscreen laptops favoring fingerprint resistance over glare reduction, turning them into mirrors. For anybody who never uses touch that’s a strict downgrade.
And no notch on that model.
I've always been a little Mac curious despite my FOSS intentions, and I do need a new laptop. I'm operating under the assumption that Asahi would need a little bit of work, and/or crossover might need some finagling, but GameHub is there, so there may be some Steam dreaming in the future one way or another.
I think Asahi will take a while to be functional on this hardware. I think the team are still hard at working getting it functional on the M3 platform so no clue what their bandwidth in getting it functional on an A-series platform looks like.
It would be very very interesting if this lead to the breaking open of iPhones to using alternative firmware.
It probably won’t but a man can dream.
Probably not. The only reason Asahi exists is because Apple explicitly allows you to unlock the bootloader on macs (like, there's an option in the settings panel for it). The Asahi linux people didn't hack the bootloader or anything.
Whereas that's certainly not an option Apple is allowing on iPhones.
All true. That said, if at some point down the road A18 iPhones have their bootloaders cracked, very little work will need to be done to get Asahi running on them.
I've been wanting a Mac of some sort just to get into the OS and learn the environment more. I just purchased one in Silver. Maybe it'll tie in with my iPad nicely and give that some much-needed utility.
The integration with other Apple stuff if you have it really is excellent. I wish they'd open that stuff up to other platforms than Mac OS, but you know how Apple is...
Asahi Linux exists if you have an M1 or M2, at least.
This will be perfect for school kids. I had to get 2 Windows laptops for high school going kids, and they were more expensive and much worse hardware.
Also, this is perfect for businesses. Cheap, lightweight, will run most business applications. I expect this to do really well.
This would be a really good candidate for Asahi Linux if they manage to get it running—probably depends on whether it uses SPTM or not, as I believe that's the major roadblocker for M4/M5.
The two major features Asahi hasn't been able to support are touch ID and thunderbolt, which the base Neo simply doesn't have.
This is promising. I’ve only ever used work-provided Macs because I’m cheap/broke. But this looks like a good candidate for my first personal Mac. Some light dev work, maybe very light gaming (rimworld, MC, emulators, etc).
I was excited for this announcement upon hearing the leaks as I was looking for a new personal laptop. I am a little on the fence about this actually. I do think this will sell like hotcakes at its price point, especially for those with the education discount as its $499 for the base model. However, being stuck at 8GB of RAM does sting a bit. Would've been nice to get a third SKU with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD/TouchID but since it runs on an A18, I imagine re-engineering it to accept 16GB was more effort than it was worth.
It's just a solid premium-budget laptop for schoolchildren to do their homework, watch some Youtube, and play some Roblox. That's all it is. Temper your expectations.
Yes and I can't see this not being a HUGE seller for these exact people. This is a product a lot of people have been waiting for for years and it will surely bring many new apple customers
I think most has been said about the low amount of RAM, but to add something else: the regional pricing (at least for Germany) really isn't great on this device.
It starts at €700 instead of $599 and at the current exchange rate that's $800, a whopping 30% increase.
On another note, kind of annoying to gate keep touch-id behind the more expensive version with more storage.
I spotted this, and was pretty turned off by it as well =/
Still not great at €577 ($670) - pretending VAT doesn’t exist - which is about the most anyone would pay inclusive of sales tax in the US.
But I don’t think it’s that much different than iPhones would be to purchase in Germany vs the US; somewhere around ~25% more expensive to purchase if you’re comparing with a state’s sales tax included?
Oh, I goofed there and forgot that you don't need to disclose the price inclusive of VAT in a US context, which is baffling to me.
Thanks, that brings it slightly more in line and as much as I dislike them, Apple at least isn't responsible for higher VAT in Germany compared to the US.
I think the lack of Touch ID makes sense if you consider the market for this is going to include a lot of educational organizations which will be using these shared between students, where biometric identification might have political ramifications.
Also the upgrade to double storage for just 100 USD is sadly the least expensive storage upgrades Apple currently offers, so it’s a fantastic deal if you subscribe to their bizzaro world logic.
The fact that I paid a crapton to get my M1 Air to 16/512 still hurts. But I wonder how this laptop compares to a stock 8/256 GB M1 Chip.
According to Geekbench, the iPhone 16 Pro is significantly faster in single-core performance and has a slight advantage in multi-core. The neural engine will have also had many improvements as well, but that might not be terribly useful for something so memory-constrained.
It’s kind of impressive how affordable this is compared to its performance.
My M1Air does everything I want from it, sure, gaming cooks up the chassis because of passive cooling but I tried to game on it for a day or two, and No Man’s Sky ran, I think at 30FPS but it did.
Apple Silicon is something I’d call revolutionary for laptops, but it’s a shame that it’s stuck on Apple hardware and only M1/2 can run Linux.
Supposedly this chip is ~30% faster, so it should be a bit more performant. The 8 GB will definitely limit multitasking.