Daring Fireball★ Thoughts and Observations on the MacBook Neo
https://daringfireball.net/2026/03/599_not_a_piece_of_junk_macbook_neo
https://daringfireball.net/2026/03/599_not_a_piece_of_junk_macbook_neo
Tuomas Hämäläinen 🇺🇦@daringfireball When speaking about products with A-series chips and multiple ports, I feel like the DTK should be at least somewhere in a footnote: it was powered by the A12Z and had 2 x USB-C 3.1 as well as 2 x USB-A 3.0 ports.
Jeff@daringfireball This would make a great MacBook for my daughter so I won’t have to give her my M1 MBP.. wait, I mean I.. well, there IS that new M5 MBP I’ve been eyeing.. if only I had thousands of dollars.
bsf1
dmitriid"""
Apple designed and produced a custom panel, that they never used before, with a pixel density they never used before AND a chassis they never used before but then decided they should cheap out on something True Tone, a $.02 ambient light sensor and a $.05 TouchID sensor lol
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Tim 🏳️🌈 (@LuftkoppTim) on X
Apple designed and produced a custom panel, that they never used before, with a pixel density they never used before AND a chassis they never used before but then decided they should cheap out on something True Tone, a $.02 ambient light sensor and a $.05 TouchID sensor lol I
Edward Munn@daringfireball Just a stray thought, but the A12Z Bionic in the 2020 DTK had a pair of 10 Gbps USB-C ports and a pair of 5 Gbps USB-A ports. (It also had 16GB of RAM). But this is comparing apples to oranges.
@daringfireball in the uk (and eu) apple made another trade off as the power adapter is not included…
mrpommer@daringfireball An impressive machine for sure, but I'm surprised you didn’t comment on the typography of the name. I'm sure it's in the SF family, but it seems variable on too many axes at once.
Julian Kussman@daringfireball if our phones are equally or more powerful than our laptops, could Apple ever build a piggybacking system that used the phone processor added to the laptop processor?
John Gruber@jkuss I don’t think there’s any I/O that would make such a thing feasible.
danny_wonglh@daringfireball So technically my phone with A18Pro chip able to run MacOS. Jailbreaking is going to be fun again.
@danny_wonglh We’ve known that since the Apple Silicon dev kit hardware, which used the A12Z iPad chip:
Chancerubbage@daringfireball so one port is usb 2.0 speed. How fast is the other one? Which side is the faster port?
Because folks will probably keep it plugged into a charger on the slower port.
People are whining about the usb 2.0 port so much that a lot of readers thing the shittymport is the only port.
Owen 🇦🇺@Chancerubbage @daringfireball Both ports are on the same side, faster 10GB port is at the back, slower 480MB port is at the front. I think a common user mistake is going to be that they plug it in to charge on the rear port and plug an external drive into the slower front port and wonder why file transfer speeds are so shitty. 🤪
I honesty think drive enclosures should have a small indicator screen that helps users suss out average throughput speeds and or cable type. The one Mac OS provides on monitor is too vague, tells one nothing about cable specs when it matters, etc.
It’s like Apple Watch updates inexplicably defaulting to Bluetooth data only. No, this is a Watch OS update, opening the data doors wide should automatically be part of the process during an os update.
I for one do not walk around with WiFi active on my Apple Watch. And the place I’m most likely to update the watch has a gated terms of service click through for its WiFi which must be connected manually first.i alway forget, the progress ticker says DAYS, not minutes.
os68ng@daringfireball The next question is: what if I could connect my iPhone to a monitor, keyboard and mouse and run a desktop…
@daringfireball Honestly when you consider the M1 MacBook Air (with similar performance) with Thunderbolt (and Apple Display support), backlit keyboard, same RAM and SSD capacities was on sale for $549 - that was a better value than the Neo is. They should have just kept that and perhaps at some point updated it to an M2.
@daringfireball Okay, it’s cool, but now that we have a benchmark we know that, in almost every way, the Neo is the same or worse than the backdoor-of-Walmart-new MacBook Air M1.
Make it make sense. It’s neat that they pulled it off, but upgrade the webcam, add some colors, & the old slanted MBA is no worse... plus better ports and backlit keyboard!
This must be cheaper to make than the M1 MBA and/or allows them to upgrade more inexpensively for years.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/05/macbook-neo-first-benchmarks/
@daringfireball Worth noting - the MacBook Neo's price of $599 is the equivalent of $190 in 1984 money.
The original Macintosh, of course, launched for $2,495 in 1984 - which is equvalent to $8,000 in today's money.
BrightBird@daringfireball IMHO, 8GB RAM will be a deal-breaker. For years, users complain that the iPhone has less RAM compared to Android phones, regardless Apple's explanation that an iPhone does not need the same amount of RAM to perform at the same level as an Android. I foresee that the same discussion with the Neo. People will compare Neo's amount of RAM with similar PC laptops and will probably wait until Apple ships the Neo with more RAM, even when the current amount is more than sufficient.
@BrightBird I don't think it's a dealbreaker at all. If someone cares, they’ll spend to get a MacBook Air.