Steve Jobs would have loved MacBook Neo

On the face of it, it might seem that Apple’s new MacBook Neo is a chronically underpowered device. After all, it runs on an A18 Pro chip that was originally designed for mobile phones, not for computers, so you might reasonably feel that it’ll struggle to be up to the task when it comes to MacBook usage.

The thing is, if the chip were made by anyone other than Apple, you might be right. But Apple’s chips are so efficient that using a mobile processor in a laptop almost certainly presents no problem at all to the majority of users. Once you take a closer look at the MacBook Neo, it quickly becomes apparent why it isn’t like any other $599 laptop on the market. It may be cheap in price, but it’s not lacking much in terms of quality.

And it’s precisely why Apple didn’t make one until now.

The power of Apple silicon

Let’s address the elephant in the room: performance. Because after all, it would be easy to conclude that Apple is ripping users off by stuffing a mobile chip inside a laptop.

But that’s not what’s happening here. Unlike 2015’s 12-inch laptop, which was driven by a rather weak Intel Core M mobile processor, the MacBook Neo has far more power at hand. Indeed, all of Apple’s mobile chips are made using the same architecture as the company’s Mac chips – a distinction you won’t find anywhere else.

The A18 Pro was first found in Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max phones and quickly established itself as one of the best mobile chips available. For example, in our testing, the A18 Pro scored 3319 in Geekbench 6’s CPU benchmark. That was about 15 percent higher than the A17 Pro in the iPhone 15 Pro range and, as our reviewer said at the time, it “crushes every other smartphone on the market.”

Now compare that to Apple’s desktop chips. As per our own testing, the A18 Pro sits somewhere between the M3 and M4 for single-core performance. Yes, you read that right: our reviews scored the M3 at 3144 and the M4 at 3724 in Geekbench 6, putting the A18 Pro right in the middle.

And let’s not forget that, like the MacBook Neo, that same M3 MacBook Air started with 8GB of memory at the time, but with a much pricier $1,099. In other words, the MacBook Neo brings better single-core performance than the M3 MacBook Air for almost half the price.

That’s a pretty incredible achievement for a mobile chip. Far from a rip off, its $599 price tag looks increasingly like a superb bargain.

What about multi-core benchmarks? Here, the A18 Pro falls a little behind Apple’s other chips. Its scores are about the same as the M1, but multi-core performance isn’t the target market here. Users who need a machine for demanding multi-core tasks – things like video rendering and dataset crunching – won’t be looking at the MacBook Neo anyway. That’s more the MacBook Pro’s territory, which will add $1,000 or more to the price.

If you’re looking at $599 laptops rather than those costing $999 (now $1,099) like the MacBook Air, chances are your demands are modest. For the people interested in it, the MacBook Neo’s performance will be more than enough.

The right sacrifices

People often forget that one of Steve Jobs’ motivating principles was to combine great tech with attainable prices. The idea of Apple being a luxury company has clouded people’s visions, and while there is some truth to it, it’s never been completely correct.

The iMac G3, for example, was shockingly affordable versus what you got from comparable PC setups, and a big reason it helped to shake up the industry in the way it did.

But Steve Jobs also felt that “we just can’t ship junk,” as a video from 2007 recently highlighted by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber attests. That means any sacrifices have to be worth it and cannot compromise the overall quality of the product. Until chips like the A18 Pro came along, that wasn’t always possible in terms of performance. Intel’s mobile chips – most notably those in the 12-inch MacBook – simply didn’t cut it.

When you look at what has been left out of the MacBook Neo, in most cases the losses are worth it in order to bring the price down without Apple having to “ship junk.”

For instance, the MacBook Neo can only be equipped with 8GB of RAM, demonstrably less than what you get with any other MacBook. But it’s worth remembering that Apple’s chips use a unified memory architecture that allows the CPU and GPU to draw from the same memory pool. While it’s not the same as having 16GB or more, it means that performance is a lot snappier than a Windows equivalent with 8GB or even 16GB of standalone RAM.

Critics might point to the MacBook Neo’s battery life, too, which is the lowest of any current MacBook. But can we really say that 16 hours of juice is a reason to avoid the device when many Windows laptops at this price point struggle to hit half of that?

You’ll also notice that the Neo is missing a 12MP Center Stage webcam, but it still has a 1080p resolution, which is fine for calls. And other nice-to-have features are absent, such as a backlit keyboard and a True Tone display. I’m OK with that, though, given the rock-bottom price Apple has managed to give the device.

The only sacrifice that I think could sting is the 512GB limit on storage capacity. That might be painful for some users, but it’s not like the Neo’s target audience is going to be saving large language models and 8K video projects to their SSDs. A 1TB option would have been ideal, but you can’t have it all.

Here, it’s useful to return to 2015’s 12-inch MacBook, which was another Apple laptop that was full of sacrifices. Yet while it might appear similar to the Neo on the surface, unlike the 12-inch MacBook, the MacBook Neo is not a futuristic device being used to test new technologies like USB-C or the butterfly keyboard for early adopters. Instead, it’s fundamentally designed for the entry-level market.

That’s reflected in the price. The 12-inch MacBook was stripped back and compromised in many, many ways, but it still cost $1,299. At $599, the MacBook Neo, on the other hand, will set you back less than half of that. Priced like that, missing features become a little more acceptable. And chances are, most people who want a MacBook Neo won’t miss them anyway.

Affordable but not cheap

In the days since the MacBook Neo was announced, social media has been full of disgruntled detractors claiming that the device is either underpowered garbage or that it is detracting from “the Apple way.”

Neither position is correct. Apple’s thinking – as expressed in the video I highlighted earlier – shows that the MacBook Neo is very much in keeping with Steve Jobs’ desire to make quality technology affordable.

If it feels out of step for Apple, that’s just because the company has been reluctant to sell products that are cheap in quality. But when Apple is able to create something affordable that doesn’t compromise on quality, it will do that, as the MacBook Neo attests.

In reality, the MacBook Neo is very much in keeping with Apple’s traditions dating back to the days of Steve Jobs. Ultimately, I think he’d very much approve of it. And I’m willing to bet that a huge number of Apple’s customers – and Windows switchers – will as well.