The $600 MacBook Neo is Microsoft’s nightmare

We’ve been hearing about it for a while, and now it’s official: There’s a new entry-level MacBook in town. The MacBook Neo is small, cheap, colorful, and most importantly, available. Apple made some big compromises to get the price down, but now that it’s here, I think it’s coming at just the right time to kick Microsoft right in its, ahem, complacency.

We’ll take a quick look at the hardware, because it isn’t all that important. The MacBook Neo is a pure budget laptop running on Apple’s A18 Pro Arm chip, previously seen in the iPhone 16. It only has 8GB of RAM, it starts with a tiny 256GB storage drive. It doesn’t even get the notched screen seen on newer MacBooks (which, depending on your aesthetic sensibilities, might be a plus). It gets two USB-C ports, a headphone jack, and a fingerprint reader that’s only available on the upgraded model. It is an affordability play down to its bones.

But there are also plenty of things to like about this design. With a 13-inch, 2408×1506 resolution, it’s not making any huge compromises on the screen, like some cheaper Surface designs I could mention. It has a pure aluminum chassis all the way through, getting that classic MacBook look, and also comes in some fun colors, silver, blue, pink, and piss a yellow-green-ish one that I don’t love. It’s delivering a full, if spare, MacBook design, at the same price as the newest entry-level iPhone, an impressive accomplishment when every manufacturer on Earth is scrambling for affordable RAM and storage.

Now let’s take a look at our own PC-laden shores. Over on Microsoft’s official hardware store, you can get a Surface “Pro” starting at $800. It’s also running on an Arm chip, a mid-range snapdragon, and starts at 256GB of storage. And to Microsoft’s credit, an extra $200 gets you 16GB of memory…which Windows 11 absolutely needs. But what you don’t get is a keyboard cover — you know, the thing that makes a Surface tablet a laptop replacement instead of just a laptop. You also don’t get a charging power supply. Those cut corners are looking a lot more substantial today.

Microsoft

Want a full Surface Laptop? Then the cheapest you can get is $900 for the “affordable” Surface Laptop 13, for approximately the same specs. Hey, at least this one comes with a keyboard…and something to charge it with. With the admittedly nice upgrades of an extra 8GB of RAM and touchscreen, it sure doesn’t look like it’s worth a 50 percent price hike over the equivalent “cheap” Apple laptop.

Microsoft

Microsoft isn’t the only Windows laptop maker, of course. But to get down into $600 territory, you’re going to have to make bigger sacrifices. Just 8GB of RAM, a plastic chassis, terrible battery life, or some combination of the three, unless you find a pretty fantastic deal (like I did last year). I can see literally millions of college students going for the MacBook Neo in a few months as they’re shopping for back-to-school laptops. And none of them will get my Matrix jokes, because it’s 2026.

The Neo would be an impressive play in a normal market. But this market is anything but normal. The “AI” RAM crunch is making prices on just about everything shoot up, especially laptops, but Apple seems to be using its supply chain muscle to make an incredibly savvy push for affordability. Add on top of that a general discontent with Microsoft in general and Windows in particular, as users sour on the unnecessary upgrade to Windows 11 and being force-fed Copilot “AI” features that no one wants to eat. Even PC gamers, formerly the most dedicated Windows users out of necessity, are making goo-goo eyes at SteamOS and alternatives like Bazzite thanks to the Steam Deck.

I don’t know if the MacBook Neo is a good laptop — I’ll leave that call to my coworkers over at Macworld. The processor, RAM, and storage are all definitely on the low end, and might be real pain points even for regular users. But I know that Apple is going to sell a hell of a lot of them, right as people are looking for both affordable machines and alternatives to Windows. Dell, HP, and Acer are all looking on with trepidation.

It’s the perfect device, at the perfect time, to make Microsoft and the Surface brand look expensive and out-of-touch. That rattling sound you hear is someone in Redmond shaking in their boots.