Apple's new $599 MacBook Neo borrows iPhone chip to make play for budget-laptop market share

By Christine Ji

Apple wraps up three days of product launches with its cheapest laptop yet

A MacBook Neo on display at the "Special Apple Experience" launch event Wednesday at an Apple Store in New York.

Apple debuted its newest - and cheapest - MacBook on Wednesday, finishing a three-day stretch of new hardware announcements that also featured a new iPhone 17e, iPad Air, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

The MacBook Neo is priced at just $599, the same as the iPhone 17e that debuted Monday. It's an aggressive push into the budget-laptop category by Apple (AAPL), as its previously lowest-priced laptop retailed for $999.

"MacBook Neo is Apple's most affordable laptop ever," the company shared in the press release. The laptop features a 13-inch Liquid Retina display, and the base model features 256 gigabytes of storage. For $699, customers can purchase the model with 512 gigabytes of storage and Touch ID.

To achieve the budget price, the Neo runs on an older chip, the A18 Pro, instead of the M5 chips used in the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. The A18 Pro was previously used in the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, and is a generation older than the iPhone 17e's A19 chip.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives anticipates that the Neo will drive upside to MacBook sales, he said, writing in a note on Wednesday morning that nearly half of MacBook buyers are new to the platform. "It addresses all consumers looking to upgrade their laptops," Ives said.

Read: Apple launches new iPhone and iPad Air as it gears up for a major AI push

Meanwhile, Apple's stock slipped 0.5% on Wednesday, bucking a rally in the broader stock market, with the S&P 500 index SPX up 0.8%.

The hardware launches this week are laying the groundwork for Apple's upcoming artificial-intelligence refresh, which will be powered by Alphabet (GOOGL) (GOOG) unit Google's Gemini. The Neo's A18 Pro chip drives "incremental improvements in AI performance across the board with greater memory capabilities and improved battery life," Ives wrote.

Additionally, the new MacBook Pro and Max models running on the M5 chip boast over four times the peak computing power for AI workloads when compared with the previous M4 generation, Ives highlighted. This performance increase was achieved through Apple's new Fusion Architecture, which merges two silicon dies into a single system on a chip.

"We believe that the launch of its new products (at good price points) lowers the risk profile around Apple's revenue growth profile over the coming quarters as the company launches a wide array of products that can leverage AI workflows across the product suite," Ives wrote.

-Christine Ji

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03-04-26 1849ET