My first MacBook: Apple debuts the striking, candy-coloured MacBook Neo

Behold the Apple MacBook Neo, Cupertino’s concession towards affordable computing for all. Not content with building the world’s most popular laptop in the MacBook Air – Apple’s own best-seller out of the 20 million-plus laptops it shifts each year – the company has now revealed a more affordable, youthful all-rounder as a way of making its stamp on the premium end of entry-level computing.

If you’re in the market for an educational discount, then MacBook Neo starts at a very reasonable £499, complete with base level 256GB of storage. Otherwise, it’s an extremely competitive £599 ($599 in the US). Unveiled alongside a smorgasbord of new hardware (and just two days after the new iPhone 17e) in a simultaneously global release event in London, Shanghai and New York, the Neo was the undoubted star of the show.

Partly this is down to the retention of its essential Apple-ness at a price point that slips well below the Air (which starts at £1,099). Aluminium chassis? Check. Thirteen-inch Liquid Retina screen? Check. Full quota of ports and a 1080p camera? Check. Not only that, the Neo comes in a couple of jazzy new colours and still manages to achieve a quota of 60 per cent recycled material.

That price point was greeted by whoops and cheers from the assembled Applerati at the company’s London HQ in the heart of Battersea Power Station. How has this quality- and detail-obsessed manufacturer managed to get beneath the price point of a high-end Chromebook?

The Neo promises the ‘magic of the Mac at a breakthrough price’, and its arrival was made possible by new manufacturing advances, particularly around the ways that new aluminium alloys are carved up to form the chassis of the laptop.

Unsurprisingly, Apple is tight-lipped about the exact nature of what it is the company has done to achieve these efficiencies (other than to acknowledge that ‘no, the Neo is not manufactured in America’).

The impressive specs keep on coming (although naturally not all will be available on the lowest price model); side firing Dolby Atmos enabled speakers, an A18 Pro chip, 16 hours of battery life and the optional Touch ID keyboard and 1TB of onboard storage. Engagement and interconnection with your iPhone has also been ramped up – you can cut and paste between the devices and operate the iPhone and its apps remotely.

To reinforce the youthful tilt of this most affordable of all Apples, the Neo comes in blush, indigo, traditional silver, and a new citrus finish, complete with matching Magic Keyboard and feet. The Multi-Touch trackpad is large and satisfyingly smooth, and the latest macOS Tahoe brings all the cross-app integration you need. It’s a bold move into the mass market for a company that has signalled an aloof premium status for way too long.

What else is new from Apple?

The other new devices on display were decidedly more premium. In addition to a new iPad Air, now powered by the M4 chip, Apple also debuted a new MacBook Air with the M5 chip, available as both 13-inch and 15-inch formats in sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver, and the newest variants of the top-of-the-range MacBook Pros, now with the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. The Pro comes as 14-inch and 16-inch variants – the latter can be maxed out to around £7,349 if you tick all the available boxes.

Finally, there’s the new Studio Display and Studio Display XDR. These exquisitely engineered monitors really cement Apple’s status at the peak of creative computing, with a new XDR model incorporating a new type of mini-LED backlit for maximum brightness and definition. An integral 12MP Center Stage camera is probably the most sophisticated webcam around, and the six-speaker Spatial Audio system is the icing on the creative cake.

All of the new Apple products are now available for pre-order.

Apple MacBook Neo, from £599, Apple.com

Apple MacBook Air 13-inch with M5, from £1,099, Apple.com

Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch with M5 Pro, from £2,199, Apple.com

Apple Studio Display XDR, from £2,999, Apple.com