Apple MacBook Neo review: Can a Mac get by with an iPhone’s processor inside?
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The stronger throttling is probably related to the A18 Pro using DRAM stacked directly on top of the actual SoC die so the DRAM is both hindering heat transfer and the DRAM itself is sensitive to heat as well so the processor needs to keep its heat under control to maintain safe and reliable operation of the DRAM on top.
So the processor also won't generate so much heat that it is significantly noticeable from the outside of the machine.
Heat can only be dissipated through the PCB and through the stacked DRAM, so cooling is much more difficult in that configuration.
The M-SoCs all have their RAM mounted to the sides of the SoC chip, so heat can be pulled from the SoC directly, and also from the DRAM chips separately, so there is a lot more heat and power margin in these bigger machines.
This is one point where the smartphone SoC package shows its limitations, even if it's still a remarkably capable system given what it is.
So the processor also won't generate so much heat that it is significantly noticeable from the outside of the machine.
Heat can only be dissipated through the PCB and through the stacked DRAM, so cooling is much more difficult in that configuration.
The M-SoCs all have their RAM mounted to the sides of the SoC chip, so heat can be pulled from the SoC directly, and also from the DRAM chips separately, so there is a lot more heat and power margin in these bigger machines.
This is one point where the smartphone SoC package shows its limitations, even if it's still a remarkably capable system given what it is.
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As with any larger RAM complement you can tell when your usage exceeds the resources.
So if you're using relatively few programs at the same time, avoid having large numbers of browser tabs or large numbers of document windows open and if you don't need heavy-duty programs you may never notice the limits of 8GB RAM.
And that is indeed the target audience for this machine.
When you're using it more intensely (which you still can) you will at some point notice it slowing down a little, then after further increases of your demands it can slow down a lot more. That's when the bigger Macs can make more sense if you can and want to afford them.
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That was a misunderstanding due to a now long-fixed bug in the reporting API as far as I remember. Apple Silicon Macs actually do not stress their Flash storage any more than Intel Macs do, due to them swapping a lot less they can actually stress their Flash less than the older Macs!
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I guess there may not be an iOS or iPad OS version of LibreOffice but I would be very surprised if its regular Mac version didn't run on the neo!
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It should be within its supported range. You should be able to try it and return the Mac if it wouldn't work.
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The neo has about 4 more years of upgrade support to expect, even if no Apple Silicon Macs have fallen out of update support yet, but it will happen eventually.
The oldest SoC generation currently still supported by iOS 26 is the A13 – the M1 is effectively an A14X, so macOS 27 may be its last full upgrade unless Apple keeps the M SoCs in support for longer than the A SoCs...
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Why wouldn't it? The current entry-level iPad uses an A16 and macOS on Apple Silicon supports it.
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Yes. They are much smaller chips because they have fewer GPU and CPU cores and fewer, simpler port interfaces (only one USB 3 instead of up to 4 Thunderbolt, only 2 display controllers instead of up to 5 etc.).
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Not impossible but unlikely since Thunderbolt interfaces are significantly larger and more power-hungry than USB3. They can also use up more RAM bandwidth.
As far as I'm aware the boot loader situation is very similar between the Apple SoCs; The differences happen mostly in what the primary boot loader then fetches and runs from storage, and that's up to the actual OS installed.
All Apple SoCs have fully locked primary boot loaders in mask-programmed ROM. It is up to the second-level boot loader whether it allows for unsigned OS images to be loaded, and the one for Apple Silicon macOS does allow that if the user explicitly enables this.
Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon already uses that path.
Thunderbolt ports are actually not trivial and use quite a bit of die area; They can also use quite a bit of memory bandwidth which is not as plentyful as on M-SoCs and they use much more power when fully used than USB3 ports do.
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It is almost certainly a thermal constraint, not just for the SoC itself but also for the DRAM chip(s) stacked directly on top of the processor chip.
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Even just the original A7 was a desktop-class 64bit ARMv7 processor already, so the iPhone SoCs have never had crippled cores, only fewer of those same cores than the Apple Silicon Macs ended up with.
My M1 Max Mac Studio has exactly the same CPU and GPU cores as the A14 in the corresponding iPhone model does, only more of them, and many additional port interfaces on top.
So it is no surprise at all that the same cores in the A18 can run macOS which its bigger sibling M4 in last year's Macs could.
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But on the other hand you will be able to get refurbished and/or discounted neos before long as well, opening up the pricing range even further down.
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US prices are always barebones without any taxes or add-on fees which only wait for you as a surprise at the checkout register. Sales tax can be state-wide or even local.
EU consumer prices, on the other hand, are by law always all-inclusive with all taxes (notably VAT) and all fees, so exactly the amount you end up paying. Also by EU law the manufacturer has to grant two years of mandatory warranty whose cost is also part of the complete price, together with some additional fees and costs which are higher on this side of the pond.
As far as I'm aware even the Tories had not diverged the UK from those EU rules, so what you see is what you actually pay, in contrast to the deceptive US sticker prices.
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Apparently its case is not machined from one block of aluminium as the more expensive MacBooks are but extruded/stamped, so there is probably much less material taken out even where it doesn't contribute much to stability after forming it.
The A18 has its RAM not mounted next to the SoC but stacked on top of it which saves precious space in the iPhone but limits cooling at the same time. It is inherent in its design.
Of course they want to limit cannibalization but your conspiracy theories are not realistic.
Let's have a look at the inevitable teardowns first.
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It makes more sense to compare the actual likelihood of the user ending up with an unrepairable device, and there the dominant aspect is the probability of it breaking in the first place, and then if it does the probability to actually get it repaired.
Repairability is useless to me if the device actually needs repairs a lot more often than the alternative does, and even more so if the manufacturer abandons its devices without support.
Having Apple Stores in many cities which can directly support users in case of problems is a big advantage by comparison.
When you choose the PC platform the only commercially supported OS is Windows, and we all know the craptastic state that's in. Even more so with Windows 11 now barely running on older/cheaper PCs, or not at all. You can also run Linux on some PCs but especially on cheap PC laptops only some components will actually work.
When you choose the Mac platform you can still run Windows on ARM and Linux in VMs and the native Asahi Linux project is also progressing. Of course VMs are not the strongest suit of the MacBook neo with its smaller SoC and smaller RAM size, so on this machine this option will be more limited.
I'm not noticing that, really.
You do you, of course.
Self-inflicted wound if on the one hand you activate automatic updates but then fail to actually run the update when the system tells you that it's downloaded and ready for installation.
I personally have updates always set to manual, so I only get notified when one is available but it's my decision when to actually download and install it, so only then it uses extra space for a few minutes until it's done.
Not noticed that yet.
Can't confirm. I'm still on Sequoia by my own choice and that works very well, very, very far from the absurdist, user-hostile mess that is Windows nowadays.
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As I said, you get two years of mandatory warranty (at least in the EU, should still be the same in the UK) and that needs to be budgeted for. Effectively you always get a basic form of Apple Care for two years included in the regular price, which then reflects that fact, in addition to some other expanded consumer rights provisions which US customers don't have.
Also transportation and personnel costs are higher over here due to higher fossil fuel taxes and higher social standards (among other things the NHS in the UK).
That leaves a few quid for some additional fees and to safeguard against currency fluctuations which Apple usually does not follow with their consumer prices.
On the other hand due to the e-waste avoidance regulation there is no USB charger included in Europe so that adds to the difference, but not that much.
I'll be sad to see you fall, then!
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No, it is literally two years, at least in the EU.
Why? It's a regular loan you're committing yourself to.
When you take a loan for a holiday trip you're also expected to still pay it off once you're back home!
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That looked a lot like a last-minute cut of the expensive magnets (both the magnets themselves and the effort to mount them) needed for holding the MagSafe connection in place to make their production cost limits and the backlash for it probably wasn't even worth it.
Of course Apple looks closely at market segmentation, but just sabotaging products to that end does not really have any compelling evidence. Feature differences are a lot more plausibly explained by actual cost cutting.
The interesting question is what the shell parts actually weigh and what their thickness is.
If they really used a cheaper manufacturing process that could well explain both the price and the weight. Aluminium as such is not that expensive, but milling it to very narrow tolerances in intricate forms very much is.
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At least refurbished Apple products are generally "like new" including fresh batteries and the same full warranty as the regular products, they just come in a neutral box and potentially may have very minor cosmetic blemishes. I have not heard of any significant issues so far.
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Apparently it holds up pretty well even under more significant load, not perfectly, but things like 4k video editing are indeed practically possible, too:
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-VOt9559Gk
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-VOt9559Gk
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So the number of tracks it can do will be limited, of course. But even just those two P-cores are M4 caliber ones so each one should still be able to service multiple audio tracks at the same time if there aren't too many power-hungry effects involved.
Musical quality is not automatically a matter of quantity.
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Yes, but one of the interesting features of Apple Silicon is that it can operate with very little or no swap for a lot longer than Intel Macs or PCs can, clearly a legacy of iPhones and iPads which operate under permant memory pressure but cannot use swap at all (just except some of the biggest iPad models).
Right now I have 641 Safari tabs (no typo!) and 20 apps open, one of them Xcode with two projects open. Yes, I have 64GB RAM in my M1 Max but also three 27" displays connected (2*5k + 1*4k) with well over 100 windows visible at the same time in Exposé and it is still rather fluid and responsive with very little lag, with the colour wheel mouse cursor nowhere to be seen. (Yeah, I should muck out again but there's not been a real need for it yet...)
And after 28 days of continuous runtime since the last system update it still has only 3.2GB of swap in use, so basically nothing.
My previous Intel iMac with also 64GB RAM would be in complete meltdown, almost completely unresponsive with near-constant colour wheel mouse cursor and tens of gigabytes of swap churning all the time under the same workload. I've been there!
Apple Silicon makes a massive difference, and the MacBook neo tests confirm again that 8GB on Apple silicon is very different from 8GB on a PC or even on an Intel Mac!
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You will have no trouble linking to a TV with a 13" display in 16:10 format and a 2408x1506 resolution then.
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Or as somebody else had proposed an internal USB hub providing two equally capable ports which would be more flexible, but slightly more expensive.
I don't see Apple ever putting any USB-A ports into a MacBook again. Only the Mac Studio has two USB-A in addition to its six USB-C ports any more, and I wouldn't bet on those still being there on the upcoming M5 models...
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I had already given an obvious estimate:
Right now the A13 is the oldest generation still supported by iOS26, so it is possible that iOS27 will drop the A13 and only support the A14 any more.
And the M1 is of the same generation (it is basically an A14X) so macOS27 may be the last to support the M1 unless Apple chooses to extend the legacy support again which they of course might – it is ultimately a political decision on how many developer resources to expend on this.
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Apple Silicon Macs aren't more responsive because they swap faster, they are more responsive because they swap a lot less in the first place, using memory compression instead, practically without performance penalty using hardware (de)compression in their DRAM interface and likely some additional SoC tricks.
Which works very well with unchanging pixel buffers such as in loaded Safari tabs but not so much with dynamically edited massive photo or video files.
The various YT videos testing the MacBook neo demonstrate that it holds up remarkably well even under more demanding workloads at least for occasional uses like that, if not for professional heavy-duty workflows.
Looks like the system applied RAM compression to your bitmap which must have worked very well if it wasn't changing very much. The remarkable aspect is that Apple Silicon Macs hardly slow down even if the majority of their RAM is actually compressed.
Memory issues with Chrome and Firefox may be related to how they are using that RAM – if they keep fiddling with their buffer contents instead of leaving most of them read-only that may lead to macOS memory compression leaving it alone which then leads to swap becoming the only way out eventually.
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You can check the release date but as far as I can tell this had just been an unfounded rumour, possibly based on the false assumption that it had anything to do with the processor that there isn't an iOS version of Libre Office while in reality it takes a lot of work on the UI to turn a desktop application into one which works on a smartphone with its completely different user interface.
So it was never an issue with the A18, but such a mobile version of Libre Office just not having been developed.
As far as Mac apps care there really isn't a significant difference between the A18 and the M4. The M4 just has more CPU cores of the same kinds the A18 does.
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You are seriously trying to use ChatGPT as you witness for factual argumentation? That's adorable!
"Idle RAM" is a completely useless metric as modern systems employ unused RAM as Cache which actually makes them more efficient and as mentioned memory compression works very differently between Apple Silicon with it in hardware and conventional CPUs without that.
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It predates the presentation of the MacBook neo by a few days (2026-02-23), so it won't have been changed specifically for it.
Fits with the assumption that there was actually never a problem running LibreOffice on a Mac with an A-SoC but that it was only a rumour based on a misunderstanding.
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