Apple has finally come out with an affordable MacBook called the MacBook Neo. It's $600 (I'm not about that $0.99 game). Less if you have an educational discount. More if you need upgrades or whatever.

It runs on an A18 chip which is the same thing as a relatively recent iPhone. The details aren't highly relevant there.

If you're in the market for any of the following reasons, you should consider it:

• It's for yourself or another for basic computing tasks (email, Office apps, basic internet stuff)
• You'd like to try out a Mac but a Mac Mini seems annoying because it's not a laptop and you don't want to pay MacBook Air prices to try it out
• You'd like a portable computer for travel without spending a lot of money
• You get by with ~$500 Windows computers but would be willing to spend a little more

I don't need one because I already have a MacBook Air (M2). If you're going to do anything like editing videos, programming, or running heavy apps, steer clear. The Neo is not the computer for you.

You might see a contradiction between the last bullet point and the last paragraph. I'll grant you that this may potentially have less computational power than a Windows computer in that price range. However, the choices that Microsoft makes mean that a Windows computer in that range will inherently be bogged down by a bunch of bullshit.

Now, for ~$500 or less, you can have a hell of a lot of fun as long as you're up for installing Linux. But that's not the conversation we're having at this exact moment.