I’m not after your clicks…I simply want to be honest…

Let’s get this out of the way straight away. The MacBook Neo is a stunning bit of kit!

It’ll go down as one of Apple’s finest!

The trouble for me is the world I work in – the tech review space can be murky and disingenuous. There are good sides to what I do, but one side I dislike with a passion is that of writers and creators who invent issues and problems where none exist and whose sole mission is to gain clicks and grab your attention.

It may work to my detriment and mean I don’t get quite as many views, reads, or clicks as those guys, but you know what, I’m here for the long run. I need to sleep at night knowing I’ve been as honest as possible.

Of course, I have bills to pay and need some food on the table, but surely, there must also be some space for honesty even in this space, right?

I know, I’m in one of those moods, I can feel it!

I’ve seen videos coming down on the MacBook Neo for all manner of reasons, from the chip to the battery or the screen’s brightness, but these aren’t problems. Not really.

It seems as if they feel the need to come up with a storyline that is going to shock, but the moment you pull the covers back and start to use the MacBook Neo as it was intended to be used, you quickly realise they’re talking, well, rubbish!

At the start of the year, I completely changed my approach to the review side of my job. I decided I’d not post anything until I’d had a chance to use whatever device I was talking about for a good while and in real-life scenarios.

That’s why I love getting away from the studio to make sure I’m using these devices as they’ll eventually be used. It’s when I sit back and think that, in some small way, the videos I make and the stories I write may have a tiny influence on what people end up spending their money on that adds a sense of reality and morality to what I do.

The MacBook Neo shines

All of that is what has led me to sit down today to write this piece.

This past week, I was in London overnight for a hybrid video & photo shoot. I knew I’d need to get some work done both on the train and in the room, and it was a close call between me taking either my M4 iPad Pro or the MacBook Neo with me.

As I knew I’d want to top & tail my daily vlog, I decided to take the MacBook Neo with me as I no longer have Final Cut on the iPad. As much as I’ve fallen in love with my iPad Pro recently, sometimes, macOS still wins the day. And this was going to be one of those occasions.

Over the couple of days I was using the MacBook Neo, I came up against a few limitations, but here’s the thing: it was by far the most portable of the two devices and overall was better suited to what I’d need to get done on the trip.

I mean, you wouldn’t choose a Ferrari if you were going to spend most of your time off-road, would you? You pick the right tool for the job, right?

And so it is when choosing and buying a Mac.

That’s why it gets under my skin when people start picking needless holes in the mighty little MacBook Neo. As I said, I hit some limits with it, but am I going to start writing some shock and awe story about how woeful it is?

No, I’m bloody not! Instead, I’d rather celebrate what Apple has managed to offer us with the MacBook Neo rather than be unfairly harsh on it.

This isn’t me being an Apple FanBoy in the slightest, either. Of course, I like using Apple gear. I mean, after all, why else would I spend my time making all manner of content about this gear?

But, I still feel I’m reasonably objective about the iPhones, Macs or iPads I use. None is perfect, but equally all have their strengths. And at the moment, it seems to me as if Apple is on a winning streak!

I’ll call out the things I don’t like, but equally, I’ll applaud the bits I do like.

A dose of reality

When it comes to the MacBook Neo, let’s not forget the price.

The fact that you can buy a brand new Mac from £599 is pretty remarkable. This Mac is based on an iPhone chip, and yet here we are running full macOS with it.

That’s remarkable!

I bet even if you’d have said that even at CES earlier this year that this would be possible, you’d have been laughed out of court.

Yet here we are!

I made some misguided comments about the MacBook Neo over the past couple of weeks, and I’m here to apologise! I moaned about the lack of a backlit keyboard and the battery life, but in honesty, on reflection, both of those were non-problems.

The Magic Keyboard on my desk isn’t backlit, yet I don’t sit here moaning about that, do I? And as for the battery life, it runs down a little bit quicker than I’d have expected, but it’s an Apple silicon Mac, so it still lasts long enough to get most of my average work done on it, and it does it whisper quietly.

How quickly we forget those Intel days, eh?

I imagine the Apple boffins designed this Mac with travel and working away from your desk in mind. And from that standpoint, they have scored a huge success.

It’s a stunning and portable Mac to work on. Although the figures will tell you that it’s similar in size and weight to the MacBook Air, it somehow feels smaller and lighter. How and why I have no idea, but it does.

If you think I’m losing it, go to a store and check it out for yourself – you’ll soon see what I mean.

Horses for courses

I mentioned earlier that I’d hit some of the limits of the MacBook Neo, and I did, but only because I was asking it to do something that it was never designed to do!

The MacBook Neo, with its A18 Pro iPhone chip, was able to handle me importing chunky 10-bit 4K video, doing a basic edit, and exporting it. The MacBook Neo handled that bit fine. There was no lag on the timeline, even though it was shot in C-Log 3 and colour graded.

You’ve gotta admit, that’s pretty impressive, right?

The only buffer I hit was when exporting. It took a tidy moment, and everything else on the MacBook Neo felt a bit laggy while it was exporting. But…

But it did it! It got the job done, and I think that is bloody amazing. This Mac was never designed or engineered to handle that kind of workflow, yet it managed to deal with it. A phone chip with no cooling, and it exported a 10-minute 4K video.

Just let that sink in!

I only mention video editing as an example, as it’s what I do. You may be into 3D rendering or running some coding, and yes, you too may experience some of the Neo’s limits – but just think this is a £600 Mac with an iPhone chip and it gets on with what you ask of it without too many grumbles.

Final thoughts

As I mentioned earlier, you buy the kit that’s best suited to your needs and what you intend to do with it. That surely stands to reason.

Would I have bought this MacBook Neo with the intention of it being my main video editing rig? No, but when I turned to it and asked it to get me out of a spot, it did it.

And it’s that which we should be celebrating here, not that Apple saved a few pence or cents by not adding a backlit keyboard or a slightly bigger battery.

This Mac is within reach of so many more people, which has to be a good thing, and it’s not as if we are having to sacrifice buying a ‘real’ Mac, either. Make no mistakes about it, the MacBook Neo is in every way a proper Mac.

So, there will be no clickbait from me about the MacBook Neo.

Quite simply, this has to be one of the best Macs they’ve ever made. It costs the same as my iPhone 17e, and yet there I was this week editing 4K video on it in a hotel room, and I wasn’t even plugged in to mains power!

This MacBook Neo feels as important a statement as the first Apple silicon Macs did a few years ago.

This Mac has changed everything all over again!

This thing is a bloody joy to use, so rather than look for problems, for once, let’s just be happy about something.

Is that really too much to ask for?