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Apple Accidentally Leaks 'MacBook Neo'
(www.macrumors.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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I suspect it'll come with 8GB RAM to ensure the price can't justify it's usefulness...
E: looking up the leaks confirms it's supposed to be 8GB RAM. Imagine selling a PC with 8GB RAM for $700+ in 2026. So insane. I can get a better PC than that for $400.
Are you sure? Because at this moment with $400 you only get the RAM.
I'm positive, thanks. 2x8GB CL16 DDR5 RAM currently sells for <$250.
E: here's a whole ass laptop for $360
https://www.amazon.com/HP-Stream-BrightView-N4120-Graphics/dp/B0DC6KMWJS/
And it even has ports and shit
It's a celery with a 128GB emmc. Even with 16GB of ram it'll be so slow.
So pull it out and replace it. A 128GB (like Macs come with) NVMe stick is $50.
Emmc is not nvme. They're not compatible or interchangeable. You'll be limited by the max emmc speeds for storage. It's probably why it comes with an external drive, because they know just how slow the drive is.
It has an NVMe slot.
Nope, still wrong. It has an e key m.2 for Wi-Fi.
Put up, or shut up.
...no, it has NVMe. Why are you making this up?
...what am I supposed to "put up", exactly?
NVME is not a port. M.2 is a port, and there’s lots of versions of it. You can’t put an NVME SSD into all of them.
Which is exactly why I specified "NVMe port" and not M.2
What in the world is an NVMe port?
Jesus Christ... would you drop the pedantry? It's childish.
I mean "what is an Ethernet port? Did you mean a RJ-45 port supporting Ethernet?" "What is an ATM machine, did you mean an ATM?"
Don't be that fuckin guy.
I wonder what he could have possibly meant when he said an NVMe port?
I just checked out the specs, that model does not support NVMe. So yeah, there's that.
It does. It's not listed in the specs but there are teardown videos that show it. Austin Evans did one and showed this.
Intel celeron N150?
I mean, yeah, technically it's got more ram, but that's literally the only thing going for it. I've got a mini-pc server with that exact CPU. It's good enough for what I need it for, by my wife's 5 generation old M1 Air from 2020 trounces it several times over in terms of speed, even with 8GB.
You’re absolutely right, that is an ass laptop.
Almost as ass as a an irreparable, unupgradeable $700 Macbook with a phone processor and 8GB of RAM.
That Celeron ain't got nothing on any phone processor Apple's made in at least the last half decade lol
I'm not sure the Macbook Neo will make sense, but I know for sure that docked tablet doesn't. They're also ass to repair, performance doesn't exist and the screen belongs in 2008.
Now that the neo has been announced at $499 for students with twice the storage of your example, care to reevaluate the overall value differences?
This is already less powerful than an old iPad. My SO is looking for a cheap laptop and this one is one I would tell her to avoid like the plague.
There’s more to a computer than RAM (or even ither specs), comparing what’s shown in the article to the low-cost option you linked the two systems are leagues apart in terms of build quality.
Wouldn’t be surprised if the battery life was miles apart too.
That cheap plastic HP laptop is destined to have its hinge mounts snap away from the upper palmrest through normal day-to-day use.
Sure, but having insufficient RAM sufficiently kneecaps it to the extent that the other specs don't matter.
LOL at least if it's hinge mounts snapped you could repair them. Can't say the same for the $700 Macbook.
Memory utilization is relative to the user though. For someone who wants to do nothing more than check their email and manage online banking, no specs matter (well, within reason, but people do use Chromebooks with 4GB RAM)
Just because such a system would not be suitable for your use-case does not mean that it is not suitable for any use case.
The iPhone 16 Pro is a very capable device, yet it “only” has 8GB of RAM. We don’t have the full picture for these new devices, but it’s possible that Apple will be handling memory in a similar manner to iOS, making it possible to do more with less.
Repairing broken hinges on such a cheap laptop practically has to be a DIY repair. I get this exact repair inquiry every now and then, the owner often balks when the repair cost is more than 50% what they paid for the device. For these low-end laptops, I also find that parts are usually less available than those for most Apple devices. Apple tends to use certain part designs / assemblies for multiple generations. Apple stuff is consistent enough that there are plenty of used parts available aftermarket.
Far as your repair scenario is concerned, I can only think of 2-3 times where a Mac came in with hinge related failure and those cases all stemmed from abuse like opening the lid too far / egregious mishandling. Meanwhile, I’ve bread lots of butter with HP laptops whose hinges break through regular operation.
If something costs more to fix but only breaks 1% as often, are you really saving money by purchasing the cheaper solution with the higher fail rate?
Then don't buy one. Idk why people get so offended when a company releases a product they're not personally interested in.
I have no intention of buying one.
People get offended when customers are swindled. And Apple are expert swindlers.
Aside from that, the choices other people make affect your choices available on the market. No better example than the headphone jack. Apple removes it and people scream DONT BUY IT IF YOU DONT LIKE IT, ignorant of the fact that not only this an option that's no longer available, but that the market as a whole would follow Apple's greedy lead until the only thing left is a handful of budget devices, for inexplicable reasons.
So it's a case of "everyone's stupid except for me"?
Incredibly vocal minority on reddit/Lemmy aside, your average consumer doesn't give a shit about having a 3.5 jack in their phone. The market prefers thinner, lighter, and better waterproofing. Know how I know? Because if there was a big market for a phone with a 3.5 jack, someone would be making it, and lots of people would be buying it. It's not saving these companies a ton on manufacturing to not include one. They cost pennies each when purchased in bulk.
that's not how it works, so I'd argue you don't know... as Jobs said, he'll tell you what you want.
Jobs is dead, had been dead for 5 years when apple removed the 3.5 jack, and was never in charge of the myriad other phone manufacturers who also removed their 3.5 jacks. I'm not sure he's as relevant here as you're implying.
Anyway, as an adult, "company made a product that isn't catered to my specific preferences" is well below my threshold for outrage. I actually can't imagine living like that. It must be horrible.
No, lots of other people also understand that they're swindlers.
Whoosh. It wasn't about "the average consumer", it's about why people are upset about trends in a market, even if it's not something they would ever buy.
LOL you actually thought this ever had anything to do with saving money? Did you not notice that they also released another product simultaneously that now makes enough money on its own to be a Fortune 500 company? They created a problem and then immediately turned around and sold people a solution. Absolute masterclass in swindling.
And lots of other people like their stuff and might want to buy this. I'm not one of them, but I'm happy they can get something they like. Why isn't that good enough?
It's absolutely about the average consumer. Do you honestly believe Samsung removed the 3.5 jack simply because apple did and they're conditioned to follow apple? They follow money. The money is in thinner, lighter, and better water resistance. The money is there because that's what the average consumer actually wants.
And how does that help the competing manufacturers who also removed their 3.5 jack?
I got a 16GB RAM M4 MacBook Air for 600USD so it better be cheaper than that if it comes with 8GB…
Apple heard you and released it for $599-699!
I'm not planning on touching them, but in this economy + the Apple tax, I'm almost impressed
The 17e or whatever new phone is supposedly available for 599 with 256GB of internal storage.
Honestly: If the phone i know little android competition in that price range witg comparable specs and polish.
But I'd still get one at a higher price because I don't like Mr.WalledGarden
Unified memory, so more efficient with that. Also MacOS has RAM compression.
I suppose more is better, and 8GB seems like bare minimum for something useful. But one should always mind that now (unlike before 2020) Apple's hardware has caught up with their advertising in the fact that it's really specifically optimized for the job.
It's fine for an "Apple Chromebook" I think, especially if bulk orders for institutions will get different deals.
LMAO you actually bought into that 8GB = 16GB marketing nonsense
No, that's you happily laughing at the nonsense you yourself said attributing that to me.
I said that RAM compression in MacOS is an OS feature, well-tested and always on. You can play with something similar under Linux and find out it really makes things better. Which means you can fit more there. Like 10%-20% more is notable enough.
And I said that unified memory is a feature of their hardware, which is correct. Which is the reason Intel and AMD were playing with that X86-S idea (a new architecture with much of legacy removed, and also, yes, unified memory), until they dropped it because Intel is going to shit.
I don't see any marketing nonsense in technical facts. Your GPU can use all the same RAM with less expense for doing that. And RAM allocated to applications does get compressed, which is more CPU-intensive obviously, but happens.
These are obviously correct.
RAMDoubler!
but is it pretty pink with an iconic apple on it? I think not.
Spray paint
some computer shops have scrap computers with 8GB of RAM 💀
I have an M1 mini with 8Gb of RAM that I use as my Home Assistant server. I've given 4Gb to HAOS running in UTM, and let Ollama use the rest to run a modest LLM for speech to text. It's flawless.
I'm not suggesting that 8Gb is the gold standard or anything, but for some applications it's still perfectly usable.
I have an M2 Air with 16Gb, and for what I need it to do, I couldn't have any less, but the target market for a bargain basement entry level MacBook almost certainly won't ever notice. It'll literally just be a portal to access iCloud and whatever browser they use to get on their socials. And if they do find they need more, then Apple will happily sell them a new laptop.
Don't get me wrong, I think Apple's approach to RAM pricing has been criminal for years, and as a company they're really figuring out how to plumb the depths of scumminess, but on this I don't really see the issue.
With that said, the cost of an extra 8Gb to them is literally pennies, so withholding it is shitty. But it won't really make that much difference to the average performance of the computer.