On a rational level it isn't surprising that the "compute" part is so small, given its origins, but for some reason it still caught me by surprised seeing something barely larger than a Raspberry Pi.
But, yeah, this thing is crazy modular. I particularly want to call out how trivial it is to replace the ports, given how common of a failure point they are. With the keyboard/monitor being more involved, but absolutely still approachable.
I believe he finds just a single piece of light adhesive keeping a cable in place, everything else (inc. the battery) is screws only.
It looks like it's still bigger than the logic board on the 12" MacBook from 2015.[1]
I really wish Apple would resurrect that form factor, as every other MacBook since has seemed bulky in comparison. Thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher[2], I still haven't gotten a newer mac. With a modern M series chip, it wouldn't have such rough tradeoffs in battery life and performance. I'd definitely buy it.
The Neo actually has similar dimensions to the 12” overall, though not as tapered. That’s possible because it has a much slimmer bezel. The Neo is about a third heavier though.
Very true. In a way this is demonstrating the tradeoff between cost, repairability and size/weight.
The Neo is getting a lot of praise because it's all modular and screwed together. That should make it very easy to repair and also for Apple to do iterative upgrades, but that makes it bigger and heavier and size/weight does matter to people. Hence this thread.
What version of MacOS are you running on yours? I have a 2017, 16GB, 1.7ghz and it's DOG slow on Ventura, even with reduce motion and reduce transparency. I have considered downgrading just to see if there's improvement.
I'm on Sequoia (v15.7.4). I have the original 2015 model (1.1Ghz Core M-5Y31, 8GB of RAM). It's a little slow, but fine for what I use it for (web browser, syncing music/photos to/from my phone, simple coding tasks). My main gripe is the battery only has 60% of its original capacity. Apple won't replace the battery, and doing it yourself is pretty tricky. At some point it'll break or no longer get security updates, and then I'll probably get a MacBook Air.
If you're using OpenCore Patcher, it's important to install the root patches to enable graphics acceleration. Otherwise it'll be ridiculously slow.
By dimensions, assuming the 2015 ("eleven year old") version, the 13" M4 MBA is 0.17" wider, 0.9" deeper, and 0.32 lbs heavier. Where it's harder to compare is thickness. The M4 is 0.44" thick where the Intel one was tapered (0.11"-0.68").
Kind of hard to see that as "HUGE" in comparison. Bigger? Yes, but not really huge.
It's sort of ironic that at the time, there were many complaints that Apple made its devices thin at the expense of more important features. Now that M series MacBooks are thicker again, there are complaints that they are too thick.
I owned an i9 MBP with a discrete GPU. It absolutely was too thin. The CPU and GPU ran hot, it throttled like crazy. It would drain battery while USB-C docked while idling. Worst laptop I've ever owned.
The M1 Max I replaced it with was the opposite. I don't think I heard the fans for the first month. But it was much larger.
Based on the fanless Air, I strongly suspect an M1 Max in the old chassis would have been totally fine for non synthetic workloads and an M1 Pro would probably have been fine in all scenarios.
But I think they over corrected on the chassis design when they were shipping borderline faulty products and haven't walked it back yet.
I speculate they gave themselves a lot of thermal engineering margin to bump up TDP with the M-series MBP design (or perhaps they underestimated how good the M-series chips were going to be) The battery being at the TSA limit of 100Wh is quite nice as well. Another benefit is that it now differentiates the "Pro" line from the rest of the laptop lineup quite significantly. For most people the Air has enough power now and its plenty thin and light. The pro line is for "true" pros with actually intense workflows.
I'm a dev and the MBP line is definitely overkill for me. The 15" MBA handles everything I can throw at it.
Apple could win a lot of likes if they added some form of storage expansion. Even a recessed USB-C for those tiny drives would go a long way.
Doesn't need to be super fast or fancy, just extend the life of device a little more.
Soldered internal storage and ram is fine if I can store my non-essentials in a cheap drive. Or my essentials in a way that is recoverable if device fails. iCloud helps for photos and families, but it's still far too slow if you don't live near it.
Repairability and cost are key for the education market. Apple sold iPads into this space for awhile but there's been pushback and talk of going to chromebooks. Seems like they are positioning Neo for this segment as well.
Can we bring computer labs back into education, instead of K-12 all having their own laptops?!? Why does a primary schooler need to "access an online assignment portal" to turn in his assignment?!? You can make a good argument (perhaps) for high schoolers having access to personal laptops, but this shouldn't be allowed on the whim of all classroom hours.
We are failing our next generation, massively — it's already washing out in Gen Alpha's testscores/employability.
----
background: attended college on a teaching scholarship, twenty years ago; immediately left heartbreak of education, breaking repayment contract, to attend grad school; still jaded from that uncredentialed five-figure expense
yes. I think EdTech can be helpful for learning; but having immediate access to the rest of the internet at the same time negated whatever benefit EdTech would have had. I think that's why all the data from the EdTech companies shows a benefit in controlled studies of just their product, but the rest of our overall academic achievement data shows a net decline ever since portable screens were introduced into life and education.
Most of my peers/brothers met their wives IRL, pre-Tinder. They only realize how bad portable screens have become watching their/others' children fumble through normal developmental milestones.
Across the age spectrum I've challenged many to just not use their phone for one day [0] — and this often provokes intense defensiveness/anxiety. I'm personally back exploring new working jurisdictions, and the criteria of "Right to Disconnect" is a major influencer (i.e. cannot contact me during non-work hours).
i sure hope so if apple intends to sell these things to school divisions. the levels of abuse i witnessed students dishing out to their chromebooks when i was a teacher was shocking to say the least
The one thing I'd really miss here is the backlit keyboard. Too bad they cut it. And made it not even an option.
Including that omission it's very reminiscent of the surface laptop go. I'm surprised other reviews haven't made that connection. Similar price, features, the works. Even missing the fingerprint on the base model, just like the surface laptop go. The funky colours. People are acting like apple invented this class of midrange laptop but they didn't.
I always found a backlit keyboard to be visually distracting and had it on the lowest setting for my old M1. I literally never have to look at the keyboard when typing even with mac quirks
I do because I have so many different computers so I don't build fingerspitzengefühl. And its not just for typing. I use the keyboard for navigation too. Like Arrow keys and page up/down. Those are a pain to use on Mac laptops which makes finding them even more important.
That makes me suddenly way more interested in the upcoming redesign of the Pro laptops. I don't care about pretty much anything else that is gossiped about, but a reperaible design would be sweet
Would I be a little crazy to buy one of these and make an SBC adaptor board. Also getting IOS to run on these devices might not be astronomically difficult considering we have seen quite a few M series iPad running MacOS
This is the same chip as the iphone, the only thing that need to be done is make something like m1n1 work with iOS and circumvent all the security measures
This is really good to read. I hung on to my 2012 MBP for the replaceable battery, hard drive, and memory far longer than I wanted to. It's great having a thinner machine, but repairability - really extending its longevity - will always be a huge selling point for me. I have bitterly disliked the idea of "disposable technology."
Is the Neo in a price range where it could be attached to a robot chassis as its processsor and UI ? Connectivity, video, audio, status display, even a Max Headroom. USB-C plug-n-go.
Apple care has always seemed like an extortion scheme to me yet Apple owners seemed to feel it was a good deal, not realizing that you shouldn't even have to replace stuff before the 7 to 10 years mark appart maybe for the battery.
Judging by the sorry state of most second hand Macbook it really feel that they have made their hardware disposable (despite using relatively premium hardware like aluminum compared to plastic stuff on some brands) to force people to subscribe to it. Not that they are the only one to make shitty unreliable stuff (looking at you Asus, Acer and most brand's "family" lines).
Apple stuff lasts me longer than any other computers I've purchased in my life. The Mac had a bit of a dark age in the late 2010s but barring that, I think it's incorrect to say Apple products are unreliable.
I bought a late-2013 13" MacBook Pro when I started university and I used that thing up until the end of 2021 when I got a 14" M1 Pro MBP. And it wasn't even because it was performing that terribly, I just wanted the new Apple silicon machine. Now it's ~4.5 years later and that machine runs like it did on day 1 and I have no desire to upgrade anytime soon.
It's even less correct to exclude the whole decade of unreliable when discussing unreliable. Any product becomes good if you ignore the times when it's bad
Not a decade, it was roughly a 4 year span - from the 2016 super thin chassis redesign with butterfly switches to when they started shipping Apple Silicon in 2020 (they also backtracked on the bad keyboards in 2019 with the i9 MBP I believe)
And anyway, it's an outlier. Exception proves the rule.
Apple's held to such a high standard that people still joke about antenna gate from a decade and a half ago, or the iPhone 6 bending 12 years ago. Every other OEM is nonstop putting out worse devices with worse QC but no one hears about it because no one is shipping units for any individual high-end device in anywhere near the numbers Apple is. They've got a massive magnifying glass on them that no one else does.
I could tell you a swathe of issues I've had with every Android I've owned, all worse than any iPhone I've owned. But most people probably have never heard of those issues and/or don't remember them because it's not notable unless it's Apple. For instance, the Nexus 6P failed so reliably after the first year, it got to a point where you could just call Google, say you're having issues, and they'd fastlane you to sending you a Pixel XL as a replacement. The Nexus 5P from the same year had even worse issues where they practically all started boot looping at some point. If Apple had a dud year to that level, it would have been MAJOR news.
I had Apple Care on my 2006 MacBook. It covered around €3000 in repairs. Especially the logic board replacements added up fast. Couple of palm rests as well though that was also covered by extended warranty.
I paid $50 for that Apple Care through an eBay listing and got send a code that I could use to register. This was back when Apple Care was sold in physical boxes and people would resell them from foreign countries. So great deal all round.
But for the rest I never had Apple Care on anything.
> Apple owners seemed to feel it was a good deal, not realizing that you shouldn't even have to replace stuff before the 7 to 10 years mark appart maybe for the battery.
This whole post is a [citation needed] on multiple fronts.
Apple care has always seemed like an extortion scheme to me yet Apple owners seemed to feel it was a good deal, not realizing that you shouldn't even have to replace stuff before the 7 to 10 years mark appart maybe for the battery.
It's not about "having to" replace parts. It's for just-in-case. It's essentially insurance.
The battery in my M1 MacBook Pro went bad recently. But I have AppleCare, so I was able to walk into an Apple Store and hand it to someone, and the next day I picked it up all repaired. (New keyboard, too, since the keyboard and battery are considered one part.)
Total cost without AppleCare: $250 + tax.
Total cost with AppleCare: $0.
Total I've spent on AppleCare: $150.
If I had some machine from Dell or Acer or even Microsoft, what would I do? Ship it back to China for six months? There's no store I can walk into to get it fixed the next day.
The value in AppleCare is the same value you have in fire insurance. Maybe you want to save a few bucks and take your chances that everything you own won't burn to ashes and you have to start over with nothing. I'm not in college anymore.
With Dell you can get next business day on-site warranties for a reasonable price.
The tech comes out and does the repair at your home or place of business. Because the tech is often a contractor, in my experience there’s not likely to be an inquest for the purpose of denying the claim.
Lenovo’s on-site service has changed into a massive security risk. They changed the terms within the last year or two. You have to give one of their contractors full remote admin access to your computer to “run diagnostics” before they’ll dispatch the onsite repairman.
This used to be a service worth every penny. But now: read the fine print carefully.
The comment suggested Dell etc. require shipping to China and waiting months instead of making two trips to the Apple store when the reality is an online diagnostics and then a tech comes to your house or office the next business day.
> Total cost without AppleCare: $250 + tax.
> Total cost with AppleCare: $0.
> Total I've spent on AppleCare: $150.
Hence my comment about extortion scheme, even $150 would be way too high a price for a keyboard + battery but they kind of forces you subscribe to it by having absurdly high parts replacement prices. It is like a mafia asking you to pay for your protection yet you still think you made a good deal.
In what world is $150 “way too high” for a battery and a keyboard replacement on a laptop, including installation? Ever looked at pricing from OEMs on their batteries?
Just like when they did this on the iPhones I suspect this is all self-serving.
It’s about making it easier and faster for Apple to fix the machines.
It benefits us all. But I suspect the cost of their super tight integration into large non-replaceable components with lots of glue started to show up in repair work costs.
They mean in the sense of sum, product, difference, and quotient. The comment they were replying to said KW/h (a quotient), but the term is KWh which is a product.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that it either treats any battery connection like the stock battery or it fails over to a run like crap mode like third party batteries in their phones.
It's unbelievable how many EU haters are on this sub. Literally anything good it does, if you point it put you get downvoted. Stay classy.
Or perhaps you believe that this year all manufacturers, Apple especially, decided out of the goodness of their hearts that their devices need to be repairable?
The guy in the linked video up thread tore the whole computer down in 6 minutes. I'm pretty sure most people can manage to find 12 minutes out of their life every 5 years to replace the battery if they want. But if that is too arduous, you can pay Apple to do it for you for a mere $149, with the battery included in that price. Given that a comparable battery from iFixit will cost you $80-$100, that's just ~$50 to have someone save you the hassle of having to remove 18 screws from your laptop every 5 years.
There is a huge difference between threaded holes inside metal vs the horrible plastic self-tappers that are used by literally every other laptop on the market. Laptops are possibly one of the worse items to be made of plastic due to the shape because any compliance or bending will strip out self-tapped threads and there is no option for suitable replacement
Apple’s official illustrated guide shows you only need to pop the 8 case screws, 2 screws holding down the battery connector, then route the cables away and remove the 18 battery screws.
I mean, yes, it is easy. No adhesive and just a couple of clips on the case. You could replace the battery in 20 minutes with little anxiety that you're going to cause damage getting to it.
As it turns out, once battery life hits a certain baseline, people prefer devices where the battery is harder to replace but larger over devices where the battery is hot-swappable but smaller.
I feel like "most repairable macbook" is a bit like saying "most edible dirt". While it's good that there's progress, it's pretty telling that they need to only compare it within the same company's products.
I'd suggest you watch a teardown video. The Neo is absurdly repairable compared to just about anything in its category. It is extremely modular, and uses screws.
Twenty years ago, I worked part-time in a laptop repair facility for a large educational institution; this computer would have been a godsend (e.g. the first MacBooks had hundreds of screws, plastic everywhere).
I skipped that entire generation, but the modern silicon keyboards are slick. My workshop computer is a 2012 MacBook "Pro" (disabled GPU), which also has fantastic keys. Best Apple keyboard ever has to be the 12" PowerBook G4, but that may just be nostalgic...
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My major critique of the Neo is: for its intended market (younger), it should be more durable, not less — why is there no MagSafe power connector?
From a computer repair technician's POV, there will be lot$ of U$B port replacement$, due to power supply abusers (have you seen some students' charging cables?!). From manufacturer's POV: if they had MagSafe, they probably wouldn't need separate USB ports (IMHO).
It's almost guaranteed that the second revision of this product line will use MagSafe (you own the patent already!).
It is literally the main reason I would purchase an Air (were I in the market — am not). 15" screen would be reason#2.
There were several generations of Apple laptops that mysteriously didn't have MagSafe — I never bought one — very glad to see its return on my own M3MBAir15".
Tell me about it. Even decades later, whenever my limbic dreaming needs "random technical noise" it still pulls up images of early 2000s laptop screw bins.
For nightmares, the screwbin either tips over repeatedly, or a dropped screw poofs indefinitely. Sometimes I wake up sweated, snackycaked crumb constellations jambed up'gainst bedsheets and fattie.
Yeah, I mean I'm looking at frameworks/thinkpads on one side and chromebooks on the other.
Not charging up to $440 (!) for a keyboard isn't a great act of engineering or generosity. This has been ridiculous for a very, very long time. Being less ridiculous isn't worth celebrating. The goal markers have moved so damned much.
Compare to a thinkpad keyboard FRU. They have fluid drains and still cost $99 for a top-end laptop. My daughter's chromebook keyboard replacement at school was $16.
> This has been ridiculous for a very, very long time. Being less ridiculous isn't worth celebrating.
So what I'm hearing is you don't want Apple to make their computers more repairable? Think of this like training a dog. My dog can open the cabinet in the kitchen on their own, pull out a specific requested item, close the door again and bring the item to me from anywhere in my house. Opening a door is just tugging on something, bringing something to me is just fetch, closing a door is just pushing with its nose. If I went into the training of this with the attitude of "oh wow, you pulled the door open" or "oh wow, you fetched the thing" and didn't reward my dog for doing those simple pieces because "any good dog can tug on a rope or fetch a ball", then my dog would never have gotten to the point of doing all of those things in a repeatable complex sequence that serves a useful purpose. Instead every part of it that my dog got right, they got all sorts of praise and rewards. And so once I started asking more, my dog eagerly tried to do those things because they knew if they did what I wanted, they could get the things they wanted.
Train your companies the same way. Give them the positive PR and praise they're looking for when they do the things you want them to do. You'll get them to do what you want a lot faster if they have an actual incentive to do it.
I've replaced a battery, screen, hinges on a macbook (2015). Did they get considerably worse at repairability after that? Because while there were a fair number of steps, it's not like they required exotic techniques to pull off.
That's a relatively recent development. Repairability has been very poor for quite a while, but now they're finally starting to improve the situation somewhat.
Over 11 years, they exceeded $3 trillion in revenue, actually. I knew it was a lot, hadn't actually looked at the totals before. 2015-2025 sums to $3.429 trillion.
I just want to link this teardown; it is a suitable companion to this article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k7Lv7f-5CQ
On a rational level it isn't surprising that the "compute" part is so small, given its origins, but for some reason it still caught me by surprised seeing something barely larger than a Raspberry Pi.
But, yeah, this thing is crazy modular. I particularly want to call out how trivial it is to replace the ports, given how common of a failure point they are. With the keyboard/monitor being more involved, but absolutely still approachable.
I believe he finds just a single piece of light adhesive keeping a cable in place, everything else (inc. the battery) is screws only.
It looks like it's still bigger than the logic board on the 12" MacBook from 2015.[1]
I really wish Apple would resurrect that form factor, as every other MacBook since has seemed bulky in comparison. Thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher[2], I still haven't gotten a newer mac. With a modern M series chip, it wouldn't have such rough tradeoffs in battery life and performance. I'd definitely buy it.
1. See step 11 on https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+MacBook+2015+Teardown...
2. https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher
The Neo actually has similar dimensions to the 12” overall, though not as tapered. That’s possible because it has a much slimmer bezel. The Neo is about a third heavier though.
If you account for the taper, the Neo has about 50% more volume than the 12”
I sometimes travel with backpack only (cheap European airlines) and that is a big difference.
You do get a keyboard that you can actually use though :)
Very true. In a way this is demonstrating the tradeoff between cost, repairability and size/weight.
The Neo is getting a lot of praise because it's all modular and screwed together. That should make it very easy to repair and also for Apple to do iterative upgrades, but that makes it bigger and heavier and size/weight does matter to people. Hence this thread.
What version of MacOS are you running on yours? I have a 2017, 16GB, 1.7ghz and it's DOG slow on Ventura, even with reduce motion and reduce transparency. I have considered downgrading just to see if there's improvement.
I'm on Sequoia (v15.7.4). I have the original 2015 model (1.1Ghz Core M-5Y31, 8GB of RAM). It's a little slow, but fine for what I use it for (web browser, syncing music/photos to/from my phone, simple coding tasks). My main gripe is the battery only has 60% of its original capacity. Apple won't replace the battery, and doing it yourself is pretty tricky. At some point it'll break or no longer get security updates, and then I'll probably get a MacBook Air.
If you're using OpenCore Patcher, it's important to install the root patches to enable graphics acceleration. Otherwise it'll be ridiculously slow.
I just helped a friend replace her eleven year old 11" Macbook Air with a new M4 Air.
her review: “this thing is HUGE :( :P ”
By dimensions, assuming the 2015 ("eleven year old") version, the 13" M4 MBA is 0.17" wider, 0.9" deeper, and 0.32 lbs heavier. Where it's harder to compare is thickness. The M4 is 0.44" thick where the Intel one was tapered (0.11"-0.68").
Kind of hard to see that as "HUGE" in comparison. Bigger? Yes, but not really huge.
It's sort of ironic that at the time, there were many complaints that Apple made its devices thin at the expense of more important features. Now that M series MacBooks are thicker again, there are complaints that they are too thick.
I owned an i9 MBP with a discrete GPU. It absolutely was too thin. The CPU and GPU ran hot, it throttled like crazy. It would drain battery while USB-C docked while idling. Worst laptop I've ever owned.
The M1 Max I replaced it with was the opposite. I don't think I heard the fans for the first month. But it was much larger.
Based on the fanless Air, I strongly suspect an M1 Max in the old chassis would have been totally fine for non synthetic workloads and an M1 Pro would probably have been fine in all scenarios.
But I think they over corrected on the chassis design when they were shipping borderline faulty products and haven't walked it back yet.
I speculate they gave themselves a lot of thermal engineering margin to bump up TDP with the M-series MBP design (or perhaps they underestimated how good the M-series chips were going to be) The battery being at the TSA limit of 100Wh is quite nice as well. Another benefit is that it now differentiates the "Pro" line from the rest of the laptop lineup quite significantly. For most people the Air has enough power now and its plenty thin and light. The pro line is for "true" pros with actually intense workflows.
I'm a dev and the MBP line is definitely overkill for me. The 15" MBA handles everything I can throw at it.
It seems like a normal-sized motherboard? For comparison here is the ifixit teardown of a PixelBook Go (happens to be the laptop I am using right now). https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/LT6YEIeE1Svh4WCk.hug...
Apple could win a lot of likes if they added some form of storage expansion. Even a recessed USB-C for those tiny drives would go a long way.
Doesn't need to be super fast or fancy, just extend the life of device a little more.
Soldered internal storage and ram is fine if I can store my non-essentials in a cheap drive. Or my essentials in a way that is recoverable if device fails. iCloud helps for photos and families, but it's still far too slow if you don't live near it.
It’s already there on the MacBook Pro lineup: Wouldn’t the MicroSDXC card slot qualify as storage expansion?
I actually do have that but it failed 2-3 years in. Usbc ones are a bit more reliable as far as i understand.
Repairability and cost are key for the education market. Apple sold iPads into this space for awhile but there's been pushback and talk of going to chromebooks. Seems like they are positioning Neo for this segment as well.
I am WAY out of school and I still care about repairability and cost ;)
there's been pushback and talk of going to chromebooks
There's been talk of the education market going to Chromebooks?
Did we just fall into a wormhole to 2014?
Can we bring computer labs back into education, instead of K-12 all having their own laptops?!? Why does a primary schooler need to "access an online assignment portal" to turn in his assignment?!? You can make a good argument (perhaps) for high schoolers having access to personal laptops, but this shouldn't be allowed on the whim of all classroom hours.
We are failing our next generation, massively — it's already washing out in Gen Alpha's testscores/employability.
----
background: attended college on a teaching scholarship, twenty years ago; immediately left heartbreak of education, breaking repayment contract, to attend grad school; still jaded from that uncredentialed five-figure expense
yes. I think EdTech can be helpful for learning; but having immediate access to the rest of the internet at the same time negated whatever benefit EdTech would have had. I think that's why all the data from the EdTech companies shows a benefit in controlled studies of just their product, but the rest of our overall academic achievement data shows a net decline ever since portable screens were introduced into life and education.
Most of my peers/brothers met their wives IRL, pre-Tinder. They only realize how bad portable screens have become watching their/others' children fumble through normal developmental milestones.
Across the age spectrum I've challenged many to just not use their phone for one day [0] — and this often provokes intense defensiveness/anxiety. I'm personally back exploring new working jurisdictions, and the criteria of "Right to Disconnect" is a major influencer (i.e. cannot contact me during non-work hours).
[0] as a cellphone-less fortysomething
To clarify: Talk of going from iPads to Chromebooks. Because kids view the iPads as a toy to play games on.
i sure hope so if apple intends to sell these things to school divisions. the levels of abuse i witnessed students dishing out to their chromebooks when i was a teacher was shocking to say the least
This is probably going to be my new laptop next year if it gets the A19 Pro with 12 GB of RAM.
Literally the only thing wrong with these is the RAM is so borderline in 2026. 12GB would have been right on the money for an upgrade options.
100% that. So frustrating. Their lifespan is artificially short because of this.
I'd bet these things are going to be on a two-year upgrade cycle, instead of yearly. Will be super happy to be proven wrong.
They released the 17e a year after 16e so there’s hope.
The new naming of iPhones makes sense for a yearly update, not so much for the Neo.
Apple has products in their lineup where they refresh and keep the name. Example: Mac Studio is the same every refresh.
This one will be my new laptop this year, and I'll then see what happens next year.
might as well get an air
Wow. Beautiful engineering. Please, please Apple use this ethos for all future major laptop re-designs e.g. MBA & MBP.
When they did this to the low end iPhones, it “trickled up” to better models later.
I suspect they’ll do that on laptops too. I hope they do.
The one thing I'd really miss here is the backlit keyboard. Too bad they cut it. And made it not even an option.
Including that omission it's very reminiscent of the surface laptop go. I'm surprised other reviews haven't made that connection. Similar price, features, the works. Even missing the fingerprint on the base model, just like the surface laptop go. The funky colours. People are acting like apple invented this class of midrange laptop but they didn't.
I always found a backlit keyboard to be visually distracting and had it on the lowest setting for my old M1. I literally never have to look at the keyboard when typing even with mac quirks
I do because I have so many different computers so I don't build fingerspitzengefühl. And its not just for typing. I use the keyboard for navigation too. Like Arrow keys and page up/down. Those are a pain to use on Mac laptops which makes finding them even more important.
That makes me suddenly way more interested in the upcoming redesign of the Pro laptops. I don't care about pretty much anything else that is gossiped about, but a reperaible design would be sweet
Would I be a little crazy to buy one of these and make an SBC adaptor board. Also getting IOS to run on these devices might not be astronomically difficult considering we have seen quite a few M series iPad running MacOS
This is the same chip as the iphone, the only thing that need to be done is make something like m1n1 work with iOS and circumvent all the security measures
This is really good to read. I hung on to my 2012 MBP for the replaceable battery, hard drive, and memory far longer than I wanted to. It's great having a thinner machine, but repairability - really extending its longevity - will always be a huge selling point for me. I have bitterly disliked the idea of "disposable technology."
The teardown is impressive. The next question is whether anyone other than Apple will be able to get parts.
Apple has a third party sell them - https://selfservicerepair.eu/en-GB/home
I always thought that website was a daughter company from Apple for liability reasons. Never knew it was a third party. TIL.
Wishful thinking: Apple releases Veronica
Veronica is an ultra-light MacBook based on Neo, lighter than the MacBook Air. It becomes way more powerful once you connect your iPhone directly.
Reference: Veronica is the Iron Man Armor that snaps onto Iron Man to handle Hulk.
The armour is Hulkbuster. The satellite that launches it is Veronica.
Is the Neo in a price range where it could be attached to a robot chassis as its processsor and UI ? Connectivity, video, audio, status display, even a Max Headroom. USB-C plug-n-go.
Apple care has always seemed like an extortion scheme to me yet Apple owners seemed to feel it was a good deal, not realizing that you shouldn't even have to replace stuff before the 7 to 10 years mark appart maybe for the battery.
Judging by the sorry state of most second hand Macbook it really feel that they have made their hardware disposable (despite using relatively premium hardware like aluminum compared to plastic stuff on some brands) to force people to subscribe to it. Not that they are the only one to make shitty unreliable stuff (looking at you Asus, Acer and most brand's "family" lines).
Apple stuff lasts me longer than any other computers I've purchased in my life. The Mac had a bit of a dark age in the late 2010s but barring that, I think it's incorrect to say Apple products are unreliable.
I bought a late-2013 13" MacBook Pro when I started university and I used that thing up until the end of 2021 when I got a 14" M1 Pro MBP. And it wasn't even because it was performing that terribly, I just wanted the new Apple silicon machine. Now it's ~4.5 years later and that machine runs like it did on day 1 and I have no desire to upgrade anytime soon.
It's even less correct to exclude the whole decade of unreliable when discussing unreliable. Any product becomes good if you ignore the times when it's bad
Not a decade, it was roughly a 4 year span - from the 2016 super thin chassis redesign with butterfly switches to when they started shipping Apple Silicon in 2020 (they also backtracked on the bad keyboards in 2019 with the i9 MBP I believe)
And anyway, it's an outlier. Exception proves the rule.
Apple's held to such a high standard that people still joke about antenna gate from a decade and a half ago, or the iPhone 6 bending 12 years ago. Every other OEM is nonstop putting out worse devices with worse QC but no one hears about it because no one is shipping units for any individual high-end device in anywhere near the numbers Apple is. They've got a massive magnifying glass on them that no one else does.
I could tell you a swathe of issues I've had with every Android I've owned, all worse than any iPhone I've owned. But most people probably have never heard of those issues and/or don't remember them because it's not notable unless it's Apple. For instance, the Nexus 6P failed so reliably after the first year, it got to a point where you could just call Google, say you're having issues, and they'd fastlane you to sending you a Pixel XL as a replacement. The Nexus 5P from the same year had even worse issues where they practically all started boot looping at some point. If Apple had a dud year to that level, it would have been MAJOR news.
Man I've never read a comment so detached from my actual experience
I had Apple Care on my 2006 MacBook. It covered around €3000 in repairs. Especially the logic board replacements added up fast. Couple of palm rests as well though that was also covered by extended warranty.
I paid $50 for that Apple Care through an eBay listing and got send a code that I could use to register. This was back when Apple Care was sold in physical boxes and people would resell them from foreign countries. So great deal all round.
But for the rest I never had Apple Care on anything.
Apple care is about user fuckups, not Apple's.
Some people use computers with utter disregard for their integrity.
Macs, specially Apple silicon ones are extremely reliable.
Not really. AppleCare is about apple's fuckups. AppleCare+ is about the users' ones.
> Apple owners seemed to feel it was a good deal, not realizing that you shouldn't even have to replace stuff before the 7 to 10 years mark appart maybe for the battery.
This whole post is a [citation needed] on multiple fronts.
Apple care has always seemed like an extortion scheme to me yet Apple owners seemed to feel it was a good deal, not realizing that you shouldn't even have to replace stuff before the 7 to 10 years mark appart maybe for the battery.
It's not about "having to" replace parts. It's for just-in-case. It's essentially insurance.
The battery in my M1 MacBook Pro went bad recently. But I have AppleCare, so I was able to walk into an Apple Store and hand it to someone, and the next day I picked it up all repaired. (New keyboard, too, since the keyboard and battery are considered one part.)
If I had some machine from Dell or Acer or even Microsoft, what would I do? Ship it back to China for six months? There's no store I can walk into to get it fixed the next day.The value in AppleCare is the same value you have in fire insurance. Maybe you want to save a few bucks and take your chances that everything you own won't burn to ashes and you have to start over with nothing. I'm not in college anymore.
With Dell you can get next business day on-site warranties for a reasonable price.
The tech comes out and does the repair at your home or place of business. Because the tech is often a contractor, in my experience there’s not likely to be an inquest for the purpose of denying the claim.
That was my experience too with Dell.
They flew a tech next day to where I lived with spare parts.
Replaced mobo/cpu (which burned due my overclock shenanigans) without asking questions.
That was really impressive especially when compared to butterfly keyboard problems with Apple which was problematic to say the least.
compared to butterfly keyboard problems
No gripes from this decade?
If you have to dig back 11 years for something to complain about, that's pretty good for Apple.
They were still selling butterfly keyboards in 2020.
Be very, very careful.
Lenovo’s on-site service has changed into a massive security risk. They changed the terms within the last year or two. You have to give one of their contractors full remote admin access to your computer to “run diagnostics” before they’ll dispatch the onsite repairman.
This used to be a service worth every penny. But now: read the fine print carefully.
on-site warranties
But now you're back to the parent's definition of "extortion."
The comment suggested Dell etc. require shipping to China and waiting months instead of making two trips to the Apple store when the reality is an online diagnostics and then a tech comes to your house or office the next business day.
> Total cost without AppleCare: $250 + tax. > Total cost with AppleCare: $0. > Total I've spent on AppleCare: $150.
Hence my comment about extortion scheme, even $150 would be way too high a price for a keyboard + battery but they kind of forces you subscribe to it by having absurdly high parts replacement prices. It is like a mafia asking you to pay for your protection yet you still think you made a good deal.
In what world is $150 “way too high” for a battery and a keyboard replacement on a laptop, including installation? Ever looked at pricing from OEMs on their batteries?
pretty sure apple tops reliability metrics reliably, so this is probably more about your feelings than reality
Just like when they did this on the iPhones I suspect this is all self-serving.
It’s about making it easier and faster for Apple to fix the machines.
It benefits us all. But I suspect the cost of their super tight integration into large non-replaceable components with lots of glue started to show up in repair work costs.
This machine is probably more repairable because its simpler and bulkier and more cost conscious.
So basically they are trying to reach what Lenovo and others are doing for years.
Nice Apple. That's good :)
The bar set by “Cheaper to repair than other Apple laptops” is wheelchair accessible.
I'm not sure if it's possible, but an aftermarket battery with closer to the MB Airs KW/h specs would be a very interesting modification.
The repairability seems to be interesting especially if it leads to framework style upgradability (logic boards, not the ports).
FYI: KWh (it is a product).
Yeah, that would be an interesting modification, wouldn’t it?
Link? Searching for such a generic term didn’t reveal anything
They mean in the sense of sum, product, difference, and quotient. The comment they were replying to said KW/h (a quotient), but the term is KWh which is a product.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that it either treats any battery connection like the stock battery or it fails over to a run like crap mode like third party batteries in their phones.
If the BMS onboard the batteries only exposes the same power as the stock battery I don’t know how it would know
this is a re-arranged iPhone inside a larger case with a bigger battery no?
I mean yeah, the same way an iPhone is a rearranged Macbook in a smaller case with a smaller battery.
thats not true at all but the first IS true, are you being dumb on purpose?
Thanks, EU! A lot more gadgets will come out this year with improved repairability because of an EU requirement starting next year: https://repair.eu/news/making-batteries-removable-and-replac...
It's unbelievable how many EU haters are on this sub. Literally anything good it does, if you point it put you get downvoted. Stay classy.
Or perhaps you believe that this year all manufacturers, Apple especially, decided out of the goodness of their hearts that their devices need to be repairable?
Just 20 steps and 18 screws to replace a battery, easy!
The guy in the linked video up thread tore the whole computer down in 6 minutes. I'm pretty sure most people can manage to find 12 minutes out of their life every 5 years to replace the battery if they want. But if that is too arduous, you can pay Apple to do it for you for a mere $149, with the battery included in that price. Given that a comparable battery from iFixit will cost you $80-$100, that's just ~$50 to have someone save you the hassle of having to remove 18 screws from your laptop every 5 years.
Bingo. People will go lengths to find a reason to complain about things they would otherwise never be actually bothered by in their lives.
But no adhesive under the battery. That’s huge.
There is a huge difference between threaded holes inside metal vs the horrible plastic self-tappers that are used by literally every other laptop on the market. Laptops are possibly one of the worse items to be made of plastic due to the shape because any compliance or bending will strip out self-tapped threads and there is no option for suitable replacement
Probably could get the battery directly without all the other disassembly steps...
Apple’s official illustrated guide shows you only need to pop the 8 case screws, 2 screws holding down the battery connector, then route the cables away and remove the 18 battery screws.
Not bad, not terrible?
https://support.apple.com/en-us/126157
The MacBook Neo has a rechargeable battery. By the time the battery goes bad from too many charge cycles people will want to upgrade to a newer one.
The Neo’s battery is rated for 1,000 charge cycles, same as the MBP.
Right, but his point is the battery last like 2-3x longer than most other similar laptops, so the charge cycles wear out 2-3x slower.
And xray, microscope and soldering station to replace ssd.
I mean, yes, it is easy. No adhesive and just a couple of clips on the case. You could replace the battery in 20 minutes with little anxiety that you're going to cause damage getting to it.
As it turns out, once battery life hits a certain baseline, people prefer devices where the battery is harder to replace but larger over devices where the battery is hot-swappable but smaller.
I feel like "most repairable macbook" is a bit like saying "most edible dirt". While it's good that there's progress, it's pretty telling that they need to only compare it within the same company's products.
I'd suggest you watch a teardown video. The Neo is absurdly repairable compared to just about anything in its category. It is extremely modular, and uses screws.
Repairability examples:
modular USB ports; battery sans glue; trackpad
Twenty years ago, I worked part-time in a laptop repair facility for a large educational institution; this computer would have been a godsend (e.g. the first MacBooks had hundreds of screws, plastic everywhere).
Keyboard that doesn’t require half the computer to be thrown away to replace it!
That probably bit them HARD during the butterfly days.
>the butterfly days
I skipped that entire generation, but the modern silicon keyboards are slick. My workshop computer is a 2012 MacBook "Pro" (disabled GPU), which also has fantastic keys. Best Apple keyboard ever has to be the 12" PowerBook G4, but that may just be nostalgic...
----
My major critique of the Neo is: for its intended market (younger), it should be more durable, not less — why is there no MagSafe power connector?
From a computer repair technician's POV, there will be lot$ of U$B port replacement$, due to power supply abusers (have you seen some students' charging cables?!). From manufacturer's POV: if they had MagSafe, they probably wouldn't need separate USB ports (IMHO).
It's almost guaranteed that the second revision of this product line will use MagSafe (you own the patent already!).
Cost. It’s 100% cost.
The USB-C port that’s already there anyway is free, thus way cheaper. No special port. No special cable in the box.
I don’t think it will come in the next revision.
It is literally the main reason I would purchase an Air (were I in the market — am not). 15" screen would be reason#2.
There were several generations of Apple laptops that mysteriously didn't have MagSafe — I never bought one — very glad to see its return on my own M3MBAir15".
Most laptops back then were filled with tons of screws.
Tell me about it. Even decades later, whenever my limbic dreaming needs "random technical noise" it still pulls up images of early 2000s laptop screw bins.
For nightmares, the screwbin either tips over repeatedly, or a dropped screw poofs indefinitely. Sometimes I wake up sweated, snackycaked crumb constellations jambed up'gainst bedsheets and fattie.
Screws, everywhere. Me.
Wow screws. Crazy. So the industry standard for many years. But I guess it's Different™ this time.
Yeah, I mean I'm looking at frameworks/thinkpads on one side and chromebooks on the other. Not charging up to $440 (!) for a keyboard isn't a great act of engineering or generosity. This has been ridiculous for a very, very long time. Being less ridiculous isn't worth celebrating. The goal markers have moved so damned much.
Compare to a thinkpad keyboard FRU. They have fluid drains and still cost $99 for a top-end laptop. My daughter's chromebook keyboard replacement at school was $16.
> This has been ridiculous for a very, very long time. Being less ridiculous isn't worth celebrating.
So what I'm hearing is you don't want Apple to make their computers more repairable? Think of this like training a dog. My dog can open the cabinet in the kitchen on their own, pull out a specific requested item, close the door again and bring the item to me from anywhere in my house. Opening a door is just tugging on something, bringing something to me is just fetch, closing a door is just pushing with its nose. If I went into the training of this with the attitude of "oh wow, you pulled the door open" or "oh wow, you fetched the thing" and didn't reward my dog for doing those simple pieces because "any good dog can tug on a rope or fetch a ball", then my dog would never have gotten to the point of doing all of those things in a repeatable complex sequence that serves a useful purpose. Instead every part of it that my dog got right, they got all sorts of praise and rewards. And so once I started asking more, my dog eagerly tried to do those things because they knew if they did what I wanted, they could get the things they wanted.
Train your companies the same way. Give them the positive PR and praise they're looking for when they do the things you want them to do. You'll get them to do what you want a lot faster if they have an actual incentive to do it.
I've replaced a battery, screen, hinges on a macbook (2015). Did they get considerably worse at repairability after that? Because while there were a fair number of steps, it's not like they required exotic techniques to pull off.
Yes
Yes they did. Reminder: your experience is 11 years ago and several Intel and ARM generations old. Also it’s more than $3 Trillion in revenue ago.
They’ve gotten largely more repairable since then, including adhesives you can electrically debond.
That's a relatively recent development. Repairability has been very poor for quite a while, but now they're finally starting to improve the situation somewhat.
...electrically debond, are you serious? More details please, this sounds very interesting.
Video (use SponsorBlock): https://youtu.be/M6jBXI6CR9s?t=156
Article: https://www.ifixit.com/News/100352/we-hot-wired-the-iphone-1...
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623251
Not $3 trillion in revenue; a $3 trillion market cap.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/revenue
Over 11 years, they exceeded $3 trillion in revenue, actually. I knew it was a lot, hadn't actually looked at the totals before. 2015-2025 sums to $3.429 trillion.