The market has been asking for it for years, but probably with different technical expectations. The CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, with a coup of theatre, launched the first economical MacBook in the history of Cupertino. Neo, this is the name of the new laptop with the apple, in Italy will have prices starting from 699 euros for the basic version, and comes with bright, pop colours: Citrus (yellow), Indigo (indigo), Blush (peach) and Silver (silver). Shades that somehow recall the iconic era of the G3 iBooks.
Neo, a great marketing operation?
But on closer inspection, beyond the enthusiasm for the ‘sale’ price, analyzing the technical specifications and the first tests from the American press, a different picture emerges. The MacBook Neo It goes without saying it is not the successor to the MacBool Air, it is to all intents and purposes an iPad, or even an iPhone, disguised as a laptop, with compromises on the hardware front, in a period in which artificial intelligence requires hyper-performing processors, which could really weigh like rocks.
The loudest break with the past is under the body. For the first time since it introduced them, Apple abandons the ‘homemade’ chips of the M series – created specifically to power computers – to make room for the A18 Pro chip, i.e. the same processor that powered the iPhone 16 Pro (introduced on the market in September 2024, and therefore almost two years ago). Even though it is a very powerful and high-performance processor for a smartphone, in a desktop environment, with the macOS operating system, the issues will come home to roost – you can bet – soon.
An iPhone disguised as a laptop
The benchmarks that have circulated in the last few hours are a verdict: the power of the A18 Pro is comparable to an M3 chip, but when it comes to managing multiple tasks at the same time as is normally required of a laptop, the Neo would struggle to keep up with even the old MacBook Air M1 dated 2020. After all, the A18 Pro only has 6 total cores – compared to the 8 or 10 of the M series -, which makes it perfect for scrolling through Instagram or writing a document, but in all likelihood a nightmare for anyone trying to edit 4K video or manage complex AI streams. Add to this that the design does not include fans, and therefore the risk of slowing down the chip to avoid overheating the machine is more than probable.
And what about the constraint linked to 8GB of RAM, without a possible 16GB configuration? Apple has in fact set 16GB as the minimum standard for the entire line of its MacBooks (Air and Pro), precisely to make the artificial intelligence resources run decently: the Neo, stuck at 8GB, smacks of planned obsolescence.
Furthermore, to reach a market price of 699 euros, Cupertino had to make cuts almost everywhere: the keyboard is not backlit, the basic model does not have a fingerprint sensor for unlocking the screen, of the two USB-C ports only one is fast, and again the Liquid Retina technology will not guarantee vivid and faithful colors like any other MacBook on the market.
If you count the servant, the MacBook Neo is certainly a masterful marketing stunt, it will bring long queues of people to Apple stores, attracted by the popular price. But this new entry level laptop seems like the ideal ‘computer’ only for those who surf the web, watch a streaming TV series and write a few emails. Is it really worth it?