Apple unveils all-new MacBook Neo with A18 Pro processor, 8GB unified memory, 16-hour battery life, and a US$599 starting price

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/05/macbook-neo-first-benchmarks/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

It's a good article, but after Samsung's shady benchmark reports, I just don't trust what people say about tech until I get mine own hands on it.

Here are a couple of articles for anyone curious on what I am referring to. Check the dates of each article to see how long this has been going on... 😣

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/13/samsung-benchmarking-apps

https://www.techspot.com/news/94969-samsung-once-again-accused-cheating-benchmark-tests.html

I wish it was easy as window. you know to close a program I just do alt f4 and to go to desktop, window M, and so on. VO looks complicated when I listen to podcast on using it to move around the PC. Long live cats.

To a point yes, however you have to from time to time I think its 48 hours if memory serves, you'll have to enter your password to reinable touch id and unlocking with apple watch which not a big deal but its not just enter password once and your set, but again not a big deal as this doesn't happen too much, although the ability to turn off the 48 hours password prompt would be nice but we'll see.

What's the point you're trying to make? TouchID has similar issues, so I don't really understand what you mean with that comment.

If I were to pick up this machine, I'd pay the extra for the TouchID. In my case, I just do not own an Apple Watch. 🤷

Command + 'q', if I am remembering correctly. That is how one closes a program on macOS. 🙂

That the watch assuming one didn't purchace the touch ID would still have caveats. Its true touch ID gets that same as with the watch though.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong as per usual, but I have my Mac setup to allow the watch to unlock it. It maybe does it a couple of times a week but it almost never works. Just randomly every now and again my wrist vibrates and it does it - usually when I don't want it to.

(Also thanks for the explanation of the A vs M chipsets - very interesting.)

For the record, thanks to apple genius marketing team I got my apple watch last after my mac for that reason alone :)
And yes it's very unstable at best. Sometimes it works but often time it doesn't, once I was 3m away and suddenly my mac randomly unlocked. They could do a favour to everyone by putting u1s in macs and watches for actual precision because the current way of doing things is unreliable at best. Never a binary it works it doesn't work. And this similar issue is present with continuity as well as other interop within the apple ecosystem, which is quite bad given that it's the main software and marketing pitch since forever... But I'm quite happy with how things are daily.

Whenever I unlock phone, the watch suppose to do so. Most time I had to unlock the phone 2 times or touch the watch and unlock phone again to make the watch work. Bug in iOS 26. Long live cats.

This has never really worked for me. I think possibly in the time I've had my watch it has managed to unlock the phone twice. iOS 26 has made no difference either way to this.

Unless there is some Nave there is some mysterious magical incantation you need to do with the watch to make it happen but I pretty much gave up on this idea straight away.

First, thanks for reminding me of this.
But why I forgot, is because it rarely works with my Mac. I think my experience mirrors Mr. Green's.
The only direction of unlocking that is reliable for me is each morning my iPhone will unlock my Apple Watch after I put it on.
I have had Apple Watch unlock iPhone when iPhone's FaceID thinks it can't see me, but I do not think this has worked in the past year and it has been demanding my Pin instead.
HomeKey to unlock my Apple HomeKey compatible deadbolt works really well with the watch though. So maybe the Macs just need an NFC chip so we can bump our watches against it.

The mac might ask for a lawyer. When I finished charging watch and use phone to unlock have to do it several times before the watch does also. No issues in iOS 18. 26 is the worse iOS for me. Long live cats.

If Apple had done the macbook neo with 12 gb of ram and 256 gb of storage, for $600, I think that would be a great compromise to cut corners. it's a shot above the standard iPhones, and it's still budget enough to where it shouldn't be too bad. Also, regarding safari not responding and things like that... perhaps. but even on newer installations of Mac OS, I had the issue. I have seen anything from finder, mail, safari, chrome, etc. go not responding. There is one app, however, that I like on the mac, and if it wasn't paid, I wish I could use it. It's Ulysses. To answer the question about garage band and logic pro... it will TECHNICALLY run, but don't expect to get a whole lot done with it without the mac freezing up. Or doing the dreaded not responding. If a 16 gb ram machine does it, an 8 gb ram machine is going to do it even more. Yet again, I have a friend that has am m3 base macbook air with 8 gb of ram, and she's happy with it, so... I also wish, if we were going to have the specs be this stripped down, we should have had a 12 inch machine. but yet again, that would be more r&D for Apple to remake the design and all that jazz.

Personally I only have problems logging in with the watch when my Mac is configured to share its own Internet connection as a Wi-Fi hotspot, and the authentication screen does alert to that fact when it happens, so my guess is that it's working as intended. As for logging in, I cannot personally claim that I've ever experienced any more issues than with TouchID, and that's both with my old 2022 Apple Watch SE as well as the 2025 Apple Watch Ultra 3 that I'm wearing right now. This also includes unlocking the iPhone, which I may have to perform once manually before leaving home, but after that it just logs in automatically even when FaceID is completely obstructed. Making payments with Apple Pay on iPhone, however, still requires manually entering my passcode even if it would unlock with the watch in other situations. Since I do believe that, in order for the Mac to be unlocked by the watch, both devices have to be on the same Wi-Fi network and logged in to the same Apple Account.

The A18 Pro in the MacBook Neo seems roughly comparable to the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H based on Geekbench scores. The A18 Pro is better at single core (3500 vs 2500), while the Ultra 5 is better at multi-core (10000 vs 8500). The 125H is probably the CPU the BrailleNote Evolve will use, unless it uses a second generation Ultra, which makes this very interesting. The Evolve has much more RAM of course (32 GB) but the two CPUs are pretty close. And people are saying the Evolve has good performance, so unless the RAM is a limitation the MacBook Neo should perform about the same.

I understand the above comment should have referred to A18 Pro and not the nonexistent A9 Pro.

That is the chip is in the 16 pro? Why not just use the chip for the 17 pro? I am sure next year apple will do so and increase RAM to 10. Just heard a android phone middle tear to have 12 RAM that would be close to 600$ or higher.

That's odd, usually the phone asks for face id then you can pay instead of putting in passcode, only reason I can think of which would be causing this is not having the contactless and payments option turned on in settings face id and passcode, but if that's turned on then yea that would be odd for sure.

Well, it does but it doesn't. In theory, an m3 or m4 or higher should thoroughly outclass windows machines of a similar caliber. according to geekbench, it does. but geekbench and similar benchmarks are artificial, meaning you don't see how it's going to behave in the real world. just open something like a non apple app like chrome on the mac. It'll take several seconds. before you say, "Patience is a virtue, get some", yes, that is true and good. but when the competition for less money has real-world faster performance with a screen reader... just saying. one thing overall I will give to apple, they have insanely fast processors for all of their devices. their hardware is top-notch, but their software, to me, is where it falls flat.

Yes, I meant the A18 Pro, sorry.

That's odd, usually the phone asks for face id then you can pay instead of putting in passcode, only reason I can think of which would be causing this is not having the contactless and payments option turned on in settings face id and passcode, but if that's turned on then yea that would be odd for sure.

For starters we were talking about unlocking with Apple Watch, so FaceID was never the subject, and secondly for some reason you decided to ignore my explicit mention of an obstructed FaceID for reasons that I don't really expect you to explain, since it's becoming clear that you joined the thread just to harass me in particular again, however as you know I love to argue, so bring it on!

As for the rest of the crowd more in touch with reality and without a petty personal vendetta against me, the obstructed FaceID cases that I was talking about include situations at the supermarket where I just happen to be holding the phone with my hand covering FaceID, or just wearing a face mask and sunglasses to protect myself and others from spreading respiratory diseases. I can't even imagine why anyone would decide to challenge the claims I made regarding this in good faith, but as usual I'm always willing to be educated.

that reply was to suggest what might possibly be causing it; I wasn't arguing, tipical though, you pivit to something something personal vendetta as per usual. Trust me, when I want to argue, I will; this wasn't it. I was troubleshooting. of course, big differense between this, harassing, but clearly you don't get the difference; to be expected. But hey, think what you want. Interesting how every little thing is a argumennt, vendetta, someone going after you... Superiority complex much? Meh. Whatever. If you have it... Best of luck. If you don't, don't care either way. As said though, trust me, not arguing this time. But since your the smartest person in the room, apparently and enjoy lording it over everyone else... By all means, my lord, have at it. Keep trotting over people, clearly that's what you think of most if not everyone here, as per usual.

Interesting how every little thing is a argumennt, vendetta, someone going after you... Superiority complex much?

No, just stating the fact that your only interventions on this thread were to directly target my comments, not to add anything constructive, but specifically to criticize what I say, though from previous interactions I take it that you live in a different reality where I might be some kind of lord according to your own words...

If you have it... Best of luck. If you don't, don't care either way.

The fact that you bothered replying like that shows how little you really care...

But since your the smartest person in the room, apparently and enjoy lording it over everyone else... By all means, my lord, have at it. Keep trotting over people, clearly that's what you think of most if not everyone here, as per usual.

So that's your issue? You couldn't be farther from the truth! But since you aren't even asking, I won't spend time explaining, because you are clearly not interested in knowing, maybe because the delusional reality that you live in feels more comfortable...

Read the thread again. My first reply was troubleshooting, not an argument. You’re the one who jumped straight to ‘personal vendetta.’ If you want to keep inventing conflicts where none exist, knock yourself out. I’m done with the detour — back to the actual topic.
I personally wouldn't get this one for personal use, but for a workplace computer that work / employer gets for you... I mean its not a bad option. Although the 8 GB of RAM might not make it so popular for workplace computers that offices large corporations get their employers, because of the 8 GB of RAM. The touch ID, or lack thereof in the base model, partially I feel like it’s sort of a cash grab, but then again, if Apple is intending to market this computer as like for the workplace, competing with traditional workplace computers, like Dell etc? Not including the touch ID from the get go kind of makes sense, from what I remember, the workplace computers we have which our PCs, del to be specific, for the office do not include the touch ID either. overall, if we’re talking off work, I wouldn’t necessarily say this is a bad option to compete with other brands that make more traditional office work computers, like del, etc. Which, at least to me? Is kind of what I think, Apple is trying to do with this one. Could be wrong, but that’s what it seems like the aim for this one is. Will be interesting to see if schools start adopting these though, although compared to a chrome computer which is cheeper even than this one? We'll see.

Read the thread again. My first reply was troubleshooting, not an argument. You’re the one who jumped straight to ‘personal vendetta.’ If you want to keep inventing conflicts where none exist, knock yourself out. I’m done with the detour — back to the actual topic.

Your first comment to this thread had my name in its very subject line, was totally pointless as I demonstrated in a later reply, then people disagreed with me, and you decided to step up the harassment with yet another comment with my name on it because you felt supported. Not only that but you are yet to make a single on-topic comment to this thread, since that was clearly never your intention, you just came here to criticize whatever I say and are now playing victim as usual. Notice that I'm only taking issue with you in particular, not any of the other people who disagreed with me, because my problem is not with people disagreeing as I'm always open to being educated, my problem is with people trying to manipulate others into questioning my values as a human being.

With or without the touch ID, I can absolutely see this being bought in bulk for public schools, like maybe K through 12, etc. I have to agree with the person that said ChromeBooks might be more viable though, especially with all of the Google web-based applications, including Google classroom. I guess we shall see over the next few months.

On a sidenote, to @Igna Triay & @João Santos, just a little advice.

Get. A. Room.

Thank you, that is all. 🙇