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iFixit:

Is Apple’s most affordable laptop ever also one of its most repairable? For years, opening a MacBook has usually meant fighting your way through glue and buried parts.

But the Neo stands out, with increasingly good day-one manuals, less-painful keyboard repairs, and a screwed-in battery tray that sent cheers across the iFixit office. This laptop proves that things can be made more affordable and more repairable at the same time.

That conclusion is backwards, I think. I suspect the MacBook Neo is more repairable not despite of its lower price, but because of its lower price. It’s designed and engineered to be easier, and thus cheaper, to assemble. And the aspects that make it easier to assemble make it easier to disassemble.

Regarding the Neo’s 2.7-pound weight:

We were all a bit curious as to why the cheaper and less feature rich Neo weighed the same as a MacBook Air M3, each 13″ laptop weighing in at about 1.24kg. It’s especially puzzling when considering the Neo supposedly uses a lighter chassis, and is, uh, smaller.

Here’s what we found: The Neo’s chassis is actually only barely lighter than the Air’s. Together, its chassis, keyboard, and bottom cover are just 8g lighter than the Air’s. But the Neo’s screen is 48g heavier, and the solid chunk of metal that supports its trackpad makes up 7% of the laptop’s overall weight! The Neo’s full trackpad assembly is almost exactly twice as heavy as the M3 MacBook Air’s, too.

Antonio G. Di Benedetto, The Verge:

Somehow, the PC makers still don’t see it coming. Here’s how [Asus CFO Nick] Wu described the MacBook Neo, specifically its 8GB of RAM limitation:

“I think when Apple positioned the product, it’s probably focused more on content consumption. This differs somewhat from mainstream notebook usage scenarios, because in that case, the Neo feels more like a tablet — because tablets are mostly for content consumption.”

Hang on. Can we hold up for a second here? [...]

The proof of the MacBook Neo’s performance for the money is in the numbers. In single-core benchmarks tests — which most accurately measure the kinds of everyday tasks you do on a computer — the Neo’s A18 Pro chip beats out all manner of Windows laptops, including the new flagship Intel Panther Lake chip in Asus’ own $2,400 Zenbook Duo. Is a Zenbook Duo more capable than the MacBook Neo for heavier tasks, like photo and video editing or playing more graphically demanding games? Yes, and it’s part of why I loved that dual-screen laptop when I reviewed it. But the Zenbook Duo also costs four times as much. And, again, the Neo can hang with it for most common tasks, even with its 8GB of RAM.

This idea that because it’s “an iPhone chip” the Neo is not capable of, say, editing 4K video is utterly ignorant. You know what computers are fully capable of editing 4K video? iPhones. So of course the same chip that enables smooth 4K video editing in an iPhone can do the same in a Mac.

It’s folly to look at the MacBook Neo and presume that an Apple laptop with iPad-like specs must be iPad-like in its capabilities. Anyone who finds iPads limiting for work — and I’m one of them! — isn’t limited because of the hardware. It’s because iPadOS isn’t designed to suit the way we work. The MacBook Neo is a full-fledged kick-ass Macintosh. It really is. If PC makers think it’s something akin to an iPad in a laptop enclosure, they’re even dumber than I thought, and I’ve long thought most of them are pretty dumb.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

iPhone cameras have come a long way over the years, but if you find yourself yearning for more of a classy, filmic look versus the computational photography of today, Kiosk 27 might be a fun fit for you.

Ever since the announcement of the $599 MacBook Neo over a week ago, I’ve been wondering: does this destroy the value proposition of other non-Pro laptops in Apple’s lineup? It’s a rather interesting question, because even at its incredibly affordable price point, MacBook Neo still manages to feel quite premium.

After actually trying out the laptop after its launch on Wednesday, I find myself even more perplexed on how this thing fits in Apple’s lineup – but not in a bad way.

Maggie Harrison Dupré, writing for Futurism:

Earlier this month, Ars retracted the story after it was found to include fake quotes attributed to a real person. The article — a write-up of a viral incident in which an AI agent seemingly published a hit piece about a human engineer named Scott Shambaugh — was initially published on February 13. After Shambaugh pointed out that he’d never said the quotes attributed to him, Ars’ editor-in-chief Ken Fisher apologized in an editor’s note, in which he confirmed that the piece included “fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them” and characterized the error as a “serious failure of our standards.” He added that, upon further review, the error appeared to be an “isolated incident.”

Shortly after Fisher’s editor’s note was published, Edwards, one of the report’s two bylined authors, took to Bluesky to take “full responsibility” for the inclusion of the fabricated quotes.

Edwards:

I sincerely apologize to Scott Shambaugh for misrepresenting his words. I take full responsibility. The irony of an Al reporter being tripped up by Al hallucination is not lost on me. I take accuracy in my work very seriously and this is a painful failure on my part.

When I realized what had happened, I asked my boss to pull the piece because I was too sick to fix it on Friday. There was nothing nefarious at work, just a terrible judgement call which was no one’s fault but my own.

Ars fired him at the end of February.

Basic Apple Guy:

Where I and the rest of the internet take this from here remains to be seen. All I know is that Apple should definitely keep this Lil Finder around.

But no, I do not think this is the last we’ve seen of Lil Finder Guy…

Apple’s MacBook Neo ad campaign on TikTok — and seemingly exclusive to TikTok — is the most fun they’ve had with a campaign in ages. I love it.