He MacBook Neolaunched earlier this month, is the laptop Apple cheapest in their catalog. Part of €699in front of the €1,199 of what until now was the most economical model, the Macbook Airand the €719 of the Mac Miniits most affordable desktop computer, but to which you have to add a keyboard, mouse and monitor. Users are receiving it with open arms, but that faces the company with a dilemmaaccording to the Taiwanese technology journalist Tim Culpanwhich also advances that its successor, presumably the MacBook Neo 2 is much closer than expected and has an annual release ratelike iPhones.
Thus, the MacBook Neo 2 would be planned for 2027 and would use Apple’s top-of-the-range processor for the iPhone 17 of 2025, the A19 Pro. In addition, it would increase the RAM memory to 8 GB, the biggest limitation that this device has, to 12GB.
This has everything to do with How Apple ensures a profit margin in an affordable device that has premium features, such as the aluminum chassis. The SoC (System on a Chip) that the Neo has is the same as the iPhone 16 Prohe A18 Probut it is not the same.
This is what in the jargon of the sector is called a ‘binned’ processor, which due to a manufacturing defect does not meet the specifications for the product for which it was intended, but which can be reused as a trimmed version. That is why the A18 Pro GPU in the iPhone has 6 cores and the same chip in the Neo only 5. The linking of the Neo with the ‘binned’ processors of each generation of iPhone explains that the new model can arrive just one year after the first.
Instead of scrapping processors with production failures, Apple reuses them in the Neo and saves the cost of a new SoCsince the ‘binned’ version was not going to end up on any iPhone. The company’s original plan was to produce between five and six million Neotaking advantage of the stock of A18 Pro discarded for the iPhone. But these have an end and Apple is considering what to do.
The options, according to Culpan’s sources, would be order more A18 Pro chips from TSMC, which would reduce profit margin of the Neo as they are new units and not those they already had in inventory, or simply stop manufacturing when the ‘binned’ A18 Pro runs out. Which, given the success that the device is having, does not seem like the best idea. In addition, Apple is interested in the MacBook Neo because it allows it to expand the base of users who in the future could switch to more expensive equipment and make its computers less niche, compared to those who use Windows.