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MacBook Neo

MacBook Neo: the Five Days Later post

• 5 min read

Five days before Apple announced the MacBook Neo, air temps here in New England were hovering at slightly above freezing. We were barely able to leave the house due to the 30-plus inches of snow that a recent blizzard had just deposited. And it was pitch-dark outside by late afternoon.

A mere five days into this post-MacBook Neo world, the weather is in the low sixties. There’s barely enough snow around here to ice down a gin and tonic. And there was plenty of sunlight all the way into early evening.

“Correlation does not equal causation,” goes the old adage. But correlation doesn’t not, either. In fact, I personally have frequently observed causation arriving hand-in-hand with correlation far too many times to believe that the two have no connection whatsoever.

I merely witness and report. I’m content to let the unflinching eye of history decide whether or not Apple helped to heal an emotionally-fractured region of the US with this product release.

Apple made sacrifices, but they’re almost entirely good sacrifices

I’m pretty sure that the arrival of a $599 MacBook didn’t dispel all of the awful weather.

But that shouldn’t dispel our enthusiasm! Even now, after the sparkle has worn off and I’ve had some time to learn more and think things over, my cynicism remains unengaged.

Compared to the base-configuration M5 MacBook Air (which, pre-Neo, would have been the lineup's entry-level MacBook), what doesn’t the Neo have? And do any of those things matter? A breakdown:

CPU

  • Neo: A18 Pro
  • Air M5: M5

Does It Matter? We’ll honestly have to wait and see. It should be 100% fine for anything that involves pushing a cursor to the right (mail, docs) and photo/video editing performed at the level of “fix this up before we share it with Gramma.”

RAM

  • Neo: 8 gigs
  • Air M5: 16/32 gigs

Does It Matter? Possible bottleneck. Macs use RAM much more efficiently than other PCs. But when a notebook or phone behaves in a noticeably Inelegant fashion, it’s usually due to a shortage of system memory. And you can't do anything about that. I reckon that on-device AI will exacerbate this problem over time.

Base storage

  • Neo: 256 gigs
  • Air M5: 512 gigs

Does It Matter? Not an issue. More storage is more better, but if ingesting and editing 4K video is out of the picture — and it is — this limitation won’t affect many users. Those who feel a pinch can buy an SSD. This was an obvious place to cut corners.

Built-in display

  • Neo: sRGB
  • Air M5: P3

Does It Matter? Not an issue for the Neo's typical buyer. Gramma won't message you with "What the holy **** was up with the color gamut on that birthday cake?!" after you send her the latest batch of photos. Well, I guess I shouldn't assume anything. I still say it's unlikely. The Neo’s 500-nit display is just as bright as the Air’s. That’s the most important thing.

External display

  • Neo: 1, up to 4K @ 60Hz
  • Air M5: 2 displays that are Better or 1 that's way better

Does It Matter? Not an issue. In fact, I wouldn’t have been outraged if Apple had decided to eliminate support for an external display entirely, just to set the Air apart from the Neo a little more. But that would have been an artificial constraint, given that A18 iPhones support external displays anyway. And kids would probably prefer to game on a bigger screen.

Webcam

  • Neo: 1080p FaceTime HD
  • Air M5: 12MP Center Stage

Does It Matter? Not an issue. If the concept of built-in laptop webcams were a human being, it would have a neck tattoo that reads “Eh, Good Enough.” It'd be slightly blurry and lacking in crisp contrast, too. Center Stage is awesome, though.

Ports

  • Neo: 1 USB 3, 1 USB 2
  • Air M5: 2 Thunderbolt 4

Does It Matter? Kind of a bummer. So, one of these is a de facto charge port “with other benefits,” and it’s up to the user to remember which is which. I’m surprised that Apple didn’t visually distinguish the two.

Charging

  • Neo: Only via USB-C
  • Air M5: USB-C, MagSafe

Does It Matter? See above. But I guess having just one USB-C left to play with whenever you're charging up is an acceptable inconvenience. Plus, many Neo owners will be first-time Mac buyers. It’s appropriate for Apple to initiate them into Dongle Culture.

Keyboard

  • Neo: Non-backlit, no Touch ID (it's $99 extra)
  • Air M5: Backlit, Touch ID

Does It Matter? This one would drive me bananas. One of the notebooks in my regular rotation doesn't have a backlit keyboard. If I don’t have a little LED worklight on the desk during late-night writing sessions, I’m regularly squinting to re-home my fingers. As for Touch ID, it's a grace that you can certainly live without…but only if you’ve never owned a laptop with biometric security.

Trackpad

  • Neo: Mechanical
  • Air M5: Force Touch

Does It Matter? You tap this thing a jillion times a day. A mechanical switch is more likely to break down. I’m sure the Neo’s trackpad is rated for the life of the device, but it’s gonna be more vulnerable to life's merry misfortunes (dust and Diet Dr Pepper, to name but two) than a Force Touch trackpad.

WiFi

  • Neo: WiFi 6E
  • Air M5: WiFi 7

Does It Matter? Not an issue. I only notice the advantages of the more modern standard when I’m doing a huge device-to-device data transfer between two WiFi 7 devices.

Speakers

  • Neo: 2
  • Air M5: 4

Does It Matter? It's a slight bummer. This is an obvious target for cost-cutting. But sound is almost as much a signature of the MacBook line as its build quality. I don’t even bother packing a Bluetooth speaker when I travel with my MacBook.

But it really doesn't matter

The Neo is $500 less expensive than the base-model M5 MacBook Air. That’s a significant enough drop that any rational assessment of What It Doesn’t Have must end with the phrase “…But at this price, it really doesn’t matter.” The Neo is for consumers who are OK with trading away features and performance.

I imagine that the only people who will be disappointed with the Neo will be people who were willing and able to spend $1099 on the MacBook Air that they actually need, and tried to save some money by downgrading. Or, people who wind up doing something that I often do: treating the $1099 as a budget, not as an MSRP. A $699 maxed-out Neo leaves you with a $400 bankroll for an external SSD, a USB-C external display in a travel-friendly folio stand, and other niceties. It's tempting.

The only real danger here is that this might be the first new Mac in eons – definitely the first since Apple completed its transition to Apple Silicon for the whole Mac line – when someone might spend their first week with their brand-new Mac and think “Damn…why is this thing so _slow?_” The Neo's performance is probably no better than "not exactly ostentatious."

But that doesn't matter, either, because Apple has a generous two-week, no-questions-asked return policy. And the only buyers likely to be disappointed are those who assumed that the Neo is exactly the same as an Air and that the $500 price difference is just a sign that Apple has turned 50 years old and is recognizing that there are more important things in life than making money.

I am a weak man and a fan of both Kevin Kline and Gilbert & Sullivan. So I must leave you with this video.