Most of Apple’s announcements this week have been fairly straightforward internal updates to existing products, give or take some big architectural changes to its high-end processors.
But Apple has saved its most interesting announcement for today: the MacBook Neo is a brand-new lower-cost member of Apple’s laptop family, and will take over for the 13-inch MacBook Air as the company’s entry-level laptop. The new laptop starts at $599, the same as the M1 MacBook Air that Apple has been selling through Wal-Mart in the US, and much lower than the $1,099 starting price for the new M5 MacBook Air.
The new MacBook will go up for pre-order today and will be available on March 11, and you’ll be able to buy it directly through Apple’s website and retail stores in addition to third-party retailers. It’s available in four colors: silver, indigo, a pink-ish color called “blush,” and the yellow-ish “citrus.”
The MacBook Neo does make some fairly substantial compromises to hit its lower price. Most notably, it includes an Apple A18 Pro processor rather than an M-series chip. This chip includes a six-core CPU with two performance cores and four efficiency cores, compared to four P-cores and six E-cores for a typical M-series chip like the M4 and M5. It also uses just five GPU cores, down from the M4 and M5’s typical 10, and is limited to 8GB of memory. This is enough to support Apple Intelligence and basic computing, but the laptop will likely struggle with loading more than a couple dozen browser tabs or high-end professional and creative apps.