On a rational level it isn't surprising that the "compute" part is so small, given its origins, but for some reason it still caught me by surprised seeing something barely larger than a Raspberry Pi.
But, yeah, this thing is crazy modular. I particularly want to call out how trivial it is to replace the ports, given how common of a failure point they are. With the keyboard/monitor being more involved, but absolutely still approachable.
I believe he finds just a single piece of light adhesive keeping a cable in place, everything else (inc. the battery) is screws only.
ggreer 1 days ago [-]
It looks like it's still bigger than the logic board on the 12" MacBook from 2015.[1]
I really wish Apple would resurrect that form factor, as every other MacBook since has seemed bulky in comparison. Thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher[2], I still haven't gotten a newer mac. With a modern M series chip, it wouldn't have such rough tradeoffs in battery life and performance. I'd definitely buy it.
The Neo actually has similar dimensions to the 12” overall, though not as tapered. That’s possible because it has a much slimmer bezel. The Neo is about a third heavier though.
retired 1 days ago [-]
If you account for the taper, the Neo has about 50% more volume than the 12”
I sometimes travel with backpack only (cheap European airlines) and that is a big difference.
wolvoleo 17 hours ago [-]
You do get a keyboard that you can actually use though :)
simonh 12 hours ago [-]
Very true. In a way this is demonstrating the tradeoff between cost, repairability and size/weight.
The Neo is getting a lot of praise because it's all modular and screwed together. That should make it very easy to repair and also for Apple to do iterative upgrades, but that makes it bigger and heavier and size/weight does matter to people. Hence this thread.
46493168 1 days ago [-]
What version of MacOS are you running on yours? I have a 2017, 16GB, 1.7ghz and it's DOG slow on Ventura, even with reduce motion and reduce transparency. I have considered downgrading just to see if there's improvement.
ggreer 1 days ago [-]
I'm on Sequoia (v15.7.4). I have the original 2015 model (1.1Ghz Core M-5Y31, 8GB of RAM). It's a little slow, but fine for what I use it for (web browser, syncing music/photos to/from my phone, simple coding tasks). My main gripe is the battery only has 60% of its original capacity. Apple won't replace the battery, and doing it yourself is pretty tricky. At some point it'll break or no longer get security updates, and then I'll probably get a MacBook Air.
If you're using OpenCore Patcher, it's important to install the root patches to enable graphics acceleration. Otherwise it'll be ridiculously slow.
Eric_WVGG 1 days ago [-]
I just helped a friend replace her eleven year old 11" Macbook Air with a new M4 Air.
her review: “this thing is HUGE :( :P ”
Jtsummers 1 days ago [-]
By dimensions, assuming the 2015 ("eleven year old") version, the 13" M4 MBA is 0.17" wider, 0.9" deeper, and 0.32 lbs heavier. Where it's harder to compare is thickness. The M4 is 0.44" thick where the Intel one was tapered (0.11"-0.68").
Kind of hard to see that as "HUGE" in comparison. Bigger? Yes, but not really huge.
microtherion 21 hours ago [-]
It's sort of ironic that at the time, there were many complaints that Apple made its devices thin at the expense of more important features. Now that M series MacBooks are thicker again, there are complaints that they are too thick.
reitzensteinm 21 hours ago [-]
I owned an i9 MBP with a discrete GPU. It absolutely was too thin. The CPU and GPU ran hot, it throttled like crazy. It would drain battery while USB-C docked while idling. Worst laptop I've ever owned.
The M1 Max I replaced it with was the opposite. I don't think I heard the fans for the first month. But it was much larger.
Based on the fanless Air, I strongly suspect an M1 Max in the old chassis would have been totally fine for non synthetic workloads and an M1 Pro would probably have been fine in all scenarios.
But I think they over corrected on the chassis design when they were shipping borderline faulty products and haven't walked it back yet.
choilive 20 hours ago [-]
I speculate they gave themselves a lot of thermal engineering margin to bump up TDP with the M-series MBP design (or perhaps they underestimated how good the M-series chips were going to be) The battery being at the TSA limit of 100Wh is quite nice as well. Another benefit is that it now differentiates the "Pro" line from the rest of the laptop lineup quite significantly. For most people the Air has enough power now and its plenty thin and light. The pro line is for "true" pros with actually intense workflows.
I'm a dev and the MBP line is definitely overkill for me. The 15" MBA handles everything I can throw at it.
Apple could win a lot of likes if they added some form of storage expansion. Even a recessed USB-C for those tiny drives would go a long way.
Doesn't need to be super fast or fancy, just extend the life of device a little more.
Soldered internal storage and ram is fine if I can store my non-essentials in a cheap drive. Or my essentials in a way that is recoverable if device fails. iCloud helps for photos and families, but it's still far too slow if you don't live near it.
illiac786 14 hours ago [-]
It’s already there on the MacBook Pro lineup: Wouldn’t the MicroSDXC card slot qualify as storage expansion?
dzhiurgis 33 minutes ago [-]
I actually do have that but it failed 2-3 years in. Usbc ones are a bit more reliable as far as i understand.
sumek83 39 minutes ago [-]
That makes me suddenly way more interested in the upcoming redesign of the Pro laptops. I don't care about pretty much anything else that is gossiped about, but a reperaible design would be sweet
cwoolfe 1 days ago [-]
Repairability and cost are key for the education market. Apple sold iPads into this space for awhile but there's been pushback and talk of going to chromebooks. Seems like they are positioning Neo for this segment as well.
intrasight 1 days ago [-]
I am WAY out of school and I still care about repairability and cost ;)
reaperducer 24 hours ago [-]
there's been pushback and talk of going to chromebooks
There's been talk of the education market going to Chromebooks?
Did we just fall into a wormhole to 2014?
ProllyInfamous 9 hours ago [-]
Can we bring computer labs back into education, instead of K-12 all having their own laptops?!? Why does a primary schooler need to "access an online assignment portal" to turn in his assignment?!? You can make a good argument (perhaps) for high schoolers having access to personal laptops, but this shouldn't be allowed on the whim of all classroom hours.
We are failing our next generation, massively — it's already washing out in Gen Alpha's testscores/employability.
----
background: attended college on a teaching scholarship, twenty years ago; immediately left heartbreak of education, breaking repayment contract, to attend grad school; still jaded from that uncredentialed five-figure expense
0xDEFACED 1 days ago [-]
i sure hope so if apple intends to sell these things to school divisions. the levels of abuse i witnessed students dishing out to their chromebooks when i was a teacher was shocking to say the least
drooopy 1 days ago [-]
This is probably going to be my new laptop next year if it gets the A19 Pro with 12 GB of RAM.
qingcharles 1 days ago [-]
Literally the only thing wrong with these is the RAM is so borderline in 2026. 12GB would have been right on the money for an upgrade options.
illiac786 14 hours ago [-]
100% that. So frustrating. Their lifespan is artificially short because of this.
etchalon 1 days ago [-]
I'd bet these things are going to be on a two-year upgrade cycle, instead of yearly. Will be super happy to be proven wrong.
ErneX 1 days ago [-]
They released the 17e a year after 16e so there’s hope.
cocoto 1 days ago [-]
The new naming of iPhones makes sense for a yearly update, not so much for the Neo.
choilive 20 hours ago [-]
Apple has products in their lineup where they refresh and keep the name. Example: Mac Studio is the same every refresh.
intrasight 1 days ago [-]
This one will be my new laptop this year, and I'll then see what happens next year.
dingybat 17 hours ago [-]
might as well get an air
needSomeCoffee 1 days ago [-]
Wow. Beautiful engineering. Please, please Apple use this ethos for all future major laptop re-designs e.g. MBA & MBP.
MBCook 24 hours ago [-]
When they did this to the low end iPhones, it “trickled up” to better models later.
I suspect they’ll do that on laptops too. I hope they do.
wolvoleo 17 hours ago [-]
The one thing I'd really miss here is the backlit keyboard. Too bad they cut it. And made it not even an option.
Including that omission it's very reminiscent of the surface laptop go. I'm surprised other reviews haven't made that connection. Similar price, features, the works. Even missing the fingerprint on the base model, just like the surface laptop go. The funky colours. People are acting like apple invented this class of midrange laptop but they didn't.
vablings 6 hours ago [-]
I always found a backlit keyboard to be visually distracting and had it on the lowest setting for my old M1. I literally never have to look at the keyboard when typing even with mac quirks
wolvoleo 4 hours ago [-]
I do because I have so many different computers so I don't build fingerspitzengefühl. And its not just for typing. I use the keyboard for navigation too. Like Arrow keys and page up/down. Those are a pain to use on Mac laptops which makes finding them even more important.
vablings 1 days ago [-]
Would I be a little crazy to buy one of these and make an SBC adaptor board. Also getting IOS to run on these devices might not be astronomically difficult considering we have seen quite a few M series iPad running MacOS
alex7o 1 days ago [-]
This is the same chip as the iphone, the only thing that need to be done is make something like m1n1 work with iOS and circumvent all the security measures
Brajeshwar 19 hours ago [-]
Wishful thinking: Apple releases Veronica
Veronica is an ultra-light MacBook based on Neo, lighter than the MacBook Air. It becomes way more powerful once you connect your iPhone directly.
Reference: Veronica is the Iron Man Armor that snaps onto Iron Man to handle Hulk.
nindalf 9 hours ago [-]
The armour is Hulkbuster. The satellite that launches it is Veronica.
ajay-b 1 days ago [-]
This is really good to read. I hung on to my 2012 MBP for the replaceable battery, hard drive, and memory far longer than I wanted to. It's great having a thinner machine, but repairability - really extending its longevity - will always be a huge selling point for me. I have bitterly disliked the idea of "disposable technology."
wvenable 1 days ago [-]
The teardown is impressive. The next question is whether anyone other than Apple will be able to get parts.
I always thought that website was a daughter company from Apple for liability reasons. Never knew it was a third party. TIL.
24 hours ago [-]
euroderf 1 days ago [-]
Is the Neo in a price range where it could be attached to a robot chassis as its processsor and UI ? Connectivity, video, audio, status display, even a Max Headroom. USB-C plug-n-go.
prmoustache 1 days ago [-]
Apple care has always seemed like an extortion scheme to me yet Apple owners seemed to feel it was a good deal, not realizing that you shouldn't even have to replace stuff before the 7 to 10 years mark appart maybe for the battery.
Judging by the sorry state of most second hand Macbook it really feel that they have made their hardware disposable (despite using relatively premium hardware like aluminum compared to plastic stuff on some brands) to force people to subscribe to it. Not that they are the only one to make shitty unreliable stuff (looking at you Asus, Acer and most brand's "family" lines).
hbn 24 hours ago [-]
Apple stuff lasts me longer than any other computers I've purchased in my life. The Mac had a bit of a dark age in the late 2010s but barring that, I think it's incorrect to say Apple products are unreliable.
I bought a late-2013 13" MacBook Pro when I started university and I used that thing up until the end of 2021 when I got a 14" M1 Pro MBP. And it wasn't even because it was performing that terribly, I just wanted the new Apple silicon machine. Now it's ~4.5 years later and that machine runs like it did on day 1 and I have no desire to upgrade anytime soon.
eviks 11 hours ago [-]
It's even less correct to exclude the whole decade of unreliable when discussing unreliable. Any product becomes good if you ignore the times when it's bad
hbn 5 hours ago [-]
Not a decade, it was roughly a 4 year span - from the 2016 super thin chassis redesign with butterfly switches to when they started shipping Apple Silicon in 2020 (they also backtracked on the bad keyboards in 2019 with the i9 MBP I believe)
And anyway, it's an outlier. Exception proves the rule.
Apple's held to such a high standard that people still joke about antenna gate from a decade and a half ago, or the iPhone 6 bending 12 years ago. Every other OEM is nonstop putting out worse devices with worse QC but no one hears about it because no one is shipping units for any individual high-end device in anywhere near the numbers Apple is. They've got a massive magnifying glass on them that no one else does.
I could tell you a swathe of issues I've had with every Android I've owned, all worse than any iPhone I've owned. But most people probably have never heard of those issues and/or don't remember them because it's not notable unless it's Apple. For instance, the Nexus 6P failed so reliably after the first year, it got to a point where you could just call Google, say you're having issues, and they'd fastlane you to sending you a Pixel XL as a replacement. The Nexus 5P from the same year had even worse issues where they practically all started boot looping at some point. If Apple had a dud year to that level, it would have been MAJOR news.
Petersipoi 23 hours ago [-]
Man I've never read a comment so detached from my actual experience
retired 24 hours ago [-]
I had Apple Care on my 2006 MacBook. It covered around €3000 in repairs. Especially the logic board replacements added up fast. Couple of palm rests as well though that was also covered by extended warranty.
I paid $50 for that Apple Care through an eBay listing and got send a code that I could use to register. This was back when Apple Care was sold in physical boxes and people would resell them from foreign countries. So great deal all round.
But for the rest I never had Apple Care on anything.
juancn 24 hours ago [-]
Apple care is about user fuckups, not Apple's.
Some people use computers with utter disregard for their integrity.
Macs, specially Apple silicon ones are extremely reliable.
23 hours ago [-]
wolvoleo 17 hours ago [-]
Not really. AppleCare is about apple's fuckups. AppleCare+ is about the users' ones.
rconti 24 hours ago [-]
> Apple owners seemed to feel it was a good deal, not realizing that you shouldn't even have to replace stuff before the 7 to 10 years mark appart maybe for the battery.
This whole post is a [citation needed] on multiple fronts.
reaperducer 24 hours ago [-]
Apple care has always seemed like an extortion scheme to me yet Apple owners seemed to feel it was a good deal, not realizing that you shouldn't even have to replace stuff before the 7 to 10 years mark appart maybe for the battery.
It's not about "having to" replace parts. It's for just-in-case. It's essentially insurance.
The battery in my M1 MacBook Pro went bad recently. But I have AppleCare, so I was able to walk into an Apple Store and hand it to someone, and the next day I picked it up all repaired. (New keyboard, too, since the keyboard and battery are considered one part.)
Total cost without AppleCare: $250 + tax.
Total cost with AppleCare: $0.
Total I've spent on AppleCare: $150.
If I had some machine from Dell or Acer or even Microsoft, what would I do? Ship it back to China for six months? There's no store I can walk into to get it fixed the next day.
The value in AppleCare is the same value you have in fire insurance. Maybe you want to save a few bucks and take your chances that everything you own won't burn to ashes and you have to start over with nothing. I'm not in college anymore.
brudgers 24 hours ago [-]
With Dell you can get next business day on-site warranties for a reasonable price.
The tech comes out and does the repair at your home or place of business. Because the tech is often a contractor, in my experience there’s not likely to be an inquest for the purpose of denying the claim.
hu3 21 hours ago [-]
That was my experience too with Dell.
They flew a tech next day to where I lived with spare parts.
Replaced mobo/cpu (which burned due my overclock shenanigans) without asking questions.
That was really impressive especially when compared to butterfly keyboard problems with Apple which was problematic to say the least.
reaperducer 19 hours ago [-]
compared to butterfly keyboard problems
No gripes from this decade?
If you have to dig back 11 years for something to complain about, that's pretty good for Apple.
Fluorescence 6 hours ago [-]
They were still selling butterfly keyboards in 2020.
stockresearcher 23 hours ago [-]
Be very, very careful.
Lenovo’s on-site service has changed into a massive security risk. They changed the terms within the last year or two. You have to give one of their contractors full remote admin access to your computer to “run diagnostics” before they’ll dispatch the onsite repairman.
This used to be a service worth every penny. But now: read the fine print carefully.
reaperducer 23 hours ago [-]
on-site warranties
But now you're back to the parent's definition of "extortion."
brudgers 21 hours ago [-]
The comment suggested Dell etc. require shipping to China and waiting months instead of making two trips to the Apple store when the reality is an online diagnostics and then a tech comes to your house or office the next business day.
prmoustache 21 hours ago [-]
> Total cost without AppleCare: $250 + tax.
> Total cost with AppleCare: $0.
> Total I've spent on AppleCare: $150.
Hence my comment about extortion scheme, even $150 would be way too high a price for a keyboard + battery but they kind of forces you subscribe to it by having absurdly high parts replacement prices. It is like a mafia asking you to pay for your protection yet you still think you made a good deal.
Kirby64 20 hours ago [-]
In what world is $150 “way too high” for a battery and a keyboard replacement on a laptop, including installation? Ever looked at pricing from OEMs on their batteries?
wilg 1 days ago [-]
pretty sure apple tops reliability metrics reliably, so this is probably more about your feelings than reality
MBCook 24 hours ago [-]
Just like when they did this on the iPhones I suspect this is all self-serving.
It’s about making it easier and faster for Apple to fix the machines.
It benefits us all. But I suspect the cost of their super tight integration into large non-replaceable components with lots of glue started to show up in repair work costs.
wilg 24 hours ago [-]
This machine is probably more repairable because its simpler and bulkier and more cost conscious.
edhelas 1 days ago [-]
So basically they are trying to reach what Lenovo and others are doing for years.
Nice Apple. That's good :)
brudgers 24 hours ago [-]
The bar set by “Cheaper to repair than other Apple laptops” is wheelchair accessible.
newsclues 1 days ago [-]
I'm not sure if it's possible, but an aftermarket battery with closer to the MB Airs KW/h specs would be a very interesting modification.
The repairability seems to be interesting especially if it leads to framework style upgradability (logic boards, not the ports).
pfortuny 1 days ago [-]
FYI: KWh (it is a product).
hyperhello 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, that would be an interesting modification, wouldn’t it?
newsclues 23 hours ago [-]
Link? Searching for such a generic term didn’t reveal anything
svpk 21 hours ago [-]
They mean in the sense of sum, product, difference, and quotient. The comment they were replying to said KW/h (a quotient), but the term is KWh which is a product.
jajuuka 1 days ago [-]
I'd bet dollars to donuts that it either treats any battery connection like the stock battery or it fails over to a run like crap mode like third party batteries in their phones.
newsclues 23 hours ago [-]
If the BMS onboard the batteries only exposes the same power as the stock battery I don’t know how it would know
tsunamifury 1 days ago [-]
this is a re-arranged iPhone inside a larger case with a bigger battery no?
fckgw 22 hours ago [-]
I mean yeah, the same way an iPhone is a rearranged Macbook in a smaller case with a smaller battery.
tsunamifury 4 hours ago [-]
thats not true at all but the first IS true, are you being dumb on purpose?
butILoveLife 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
butILoveLife 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
Jtsummers 24 hours ago [-]
Apple criticism is actually very common on this site, and often not flagged. Whining gets flagged, though.
> You are lucky if you see this.
You're new here so you may not know this, but you can turn on "showdead" in your profile and you won't need luck to see [dead] comments and submissions. It's been a feature since the beginning (or near it).
rconti 24 hours ago [-]
I've never felt lucky when reading a post from someone whining about downvotes.
It's unbelievable how many EU haters are on this sub. Literally anything good it does, if you point it put you get downvoted. Stay classy.
Or perhaps you believe that this year all manufacturers, Apple especially, decided out of the goodness of their hearts that their devices need to be repairable?
oybng 1 days ago [-]
Just 20 steps and 18 screws to replace a battery, easy!
tpmoney 1 days ago [-]
The guy in the linked video up thread tore the whole computer down in 6 minutes. I'm pretty sure most people can manage to find 12 minutes out of their life every 5 years to replace the battery if they want. But if that is too arduous, you can pay Apple to do it for you for a mere $149, with the battery included in that price. Given that a comparable battery from iFixit will cost you $80-$100, that's just ~$50 to have someone save you the hassle of having to remove 18 screws from your laptop every 5 years.
cromka 1 days ago [-]
Bingo. People will go lengths to find a reason to complain about things they would otherwise never be actually bothered by in their lives.
vablings 6 hours ago [-]
There is a huge difference between threaded holes inside metal vs the horrible plastic self-tappers that are used by literally every other laptop on the market. Laptops are possibly one of the worse items to be made of plastic due to the shape because any compliance or bending will strip out self-tapped threads and there is no option for suitable replacement
SoKamil 1 days ago [-]
But no adhesive under the battery. That’s huge.
butILoveLife 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
ryandrake 1 days ago [-]
I'll take it over the plastic pieces of garbage that flex and bend and creek, and feel like they were taped together by a 6 year old, which is most other PC laptops in this price range.
butILoveLife 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
ryandrake 1 days ago [-]
This is part of what's plagued the PC laptop industry for decades: Obsession with specs and measurements and geekbenches and similar things, over "does this feel like a cracker jack toy?" and "will the hinge break if I open the lid?"
rogerrogerr 1 days ago [-]
It's functional to have a laptop you can pick up from a corner without waking anyone sleeping in the same building.
wvenable 1 days ago [-]
Probably could get the battery directly without all the other disassembly steps...
kotaKat 24 hours ago [-]
Apple’s official illustrated guide shows you only need to pop the 8 case screws, 2 screws holding down the battery connector, then route the cables away and remove the 18 battery screws.
The MacBook Neo has a rechargeable battery. By the time the battery goes bad from too many charge cycles people will want to upgrade to a newer one.
alwillis 1 days ago [-]
The Neo’s battery is rated for 1,000 charge cycles, same as the MBP.
SirMaster 1 days ago [-]
Right, but his point is the battery last like 2-3x longer than most other similar laptops, so the charge cycles wear out 2-3x slower.
throw737458t8t8 1 days ago [-]
And xray, microscope and soldering station to replace ssd.
Clamchop 1 days ago [-]
I mean, yes, it is easy. No adhesive and just a couple of clips on the case. You could replace the battery in 20 minutes with little anxiety that you're going to cause damage getting to it.
crooked-v 1 days ago [-]
As it turns out, once battery life hits a certain baseline, people prefer devices where the battery is harder to replace but larger over devices where the battery is hot-swappable but smaller.
entropicdrifter 1 days ago [-]
I feel like "most repairable macbook" is a bit like saying "most edible dirt". While it's good that there's progress, it's pretty telling that they need to only compare it within the same company's products.
Someone1234 1 days ago [-]
I'd suggest you watch a teardown video. The Neo is absurdly repairable compared to just about anything in its category. It is extremely modular, and uses screws.
ProllyInfamous 1 days ago [-]
Repairability examples:
modular USB ports; battery sans glue; trackpad
Twenty years ago, I worked part-time in a laptop repair facility for a large educational institution; this computer would have been a godsend (e.g. the first MacBooks had hundreds of screws, plastic everywhere).
MBCook 24 hours ago [-]
Keyboard that doesn’t require half the computer to be thrown away to replace it!
That probably bit them HARD during the butterfly days.
ProllyInfamous 9 hours ago [-]
>the butterfly days
I skipped that entire generation, but the modern silicon keyboards are slick. My workshop computer is a 2012 MacBook "Pro" (disabled GPU), which also has fantastic keys. Best Apple keyboard ever has to be the 12" PowerBook G4, but that may just be nostalgic...
----
My major critique of the Neo is: for its intended market (younger), it should be more durable, not less — why is there no MagSafe power connector?
From a computer repair technician's POV, there will be lot$ of U$B port replacement$, due to power supply abusers (have you seen some students' charging cables?!). From manufacturer's POV: if they had MagSafe, they probably wouldn't need separate USB ports (IMHO).
It's almost guaranteed that the second revision of this product line will use MagSafe (you own the patent already!).
MBCook 6 hours ago [-]
Cost. It’s 100% cost.
The USB-C port that’s already there anyway is free, thus way cheaper. No special port. No special cable in the box.
I don’t think it will come in the next revision.
mmmlinux 24 hours ago [-]
Most laptops back then were filled with tons of screws.
ProllyInfamous 9 hours ago [-]
Tell me about it. Even decades later, whenever my limbic dreaming needs "random technical noise" it still pulls up images of early 2000s laptop screw bins.
For nightmares, the screwbin either tips over repeatedly, or a dropped screw poofs indefinitely. Sometimes I wake up sweated, snackycaked crumb constellations jambed up'gainst bedsheets and fattie.
Screws, everywhere. Me.
edhelas 1 days ago [-]
Wow screws. Crazy. So the industry standard for many years. But I guess it's Different™ this time.
lallysingh 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, I mean I'm looking at frameworks/thinkpads on one side and chromebooks on the other.
Not charging up to $440 (!) for a keyboard isn't a great act of engineering or generosity. This has been ridiculous for a very, very long time. Being less ridiculous isn't worth celebrating. The goal markers have moved so damned much.
Compare to a thinkpad keyboard FRU. They have fluid drains and still cost $99 for a top-end laptop. My daughter's chromebook keyboard replacement at school was $16.
tpmoney 1 days ago [-]
> This has been ridiculous for a very, very long time. Being less ridiculous isn't worth celebrating.
So what I'm hearing is you don't want Apple to make their computers more repairable? Think of this like training a dog. My dog can open the cabinet in the kitchen on their own, pull out a specific requested item, close the door again and bring the item to me from anywhere in my house. Opening a door is just tugging on something, bringing something to me is just fetch, closing a door is just pushing with its nose. If I went into the training of this with the attitude of "oh wow, you pulled the door open" or "oh wow, you fetched the thing" and didn't reward my dog for doing those simple pieces because "any good dog can tug on a rope or fetch a ball", then my dog would never have gotten to the point of doing all of those things in a repeatable complex sequence that serves a useful purpose. Instead every part of it that my dog got right, they got all sorts of praise and rewards. And so once I started asking more, my dog eagerly tried to do those things because they knew if they did what I wanted, they could get the things they wanted.
Train your companies the same way. Give them the positive PR and praise they're looking for when they do the things you want them to do. You'll get them to do what you want a lot faster if they have an actual incentive to do it.
0_____0 1 days ago [-]
I've replaced a battery, screen, hinges on a macbook (2015). Did they get considerably worse at repairability after that? Because while there were a fair number of steps, it's not like they required exotic techniques to pull off.
Rebelgecko 1 days ago [-]
Yes
shrubble 1 days ago [-]
Yes they did. Reminder: your experience is 11 years ago and several Intel and ARM generations old. Also it’s more than $3 Trillion in revenue ago.
ceejayoz 1 days ago [-]
They’ve gotten largely more repairable since then, including adhesives you can electrically debond.
malmeloo 1 days ago [-]
That's a relatively recent development. Repairability has been very poor for quite a while, but now they're finally starting to improve the situation somewhat.
the_biot 1 days ago [-]
...electrically debond, are you serious? More details please, this sounds very interesting.
Over 11 years, they exceeded $3 trillion in revenue, actually. I knew it was a lot, hadn't actually looked at the totals before. 2015-2025 sums to $3.429 trillion.
Rendered at 20:42:17 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k7Lv7f-5CQ
On a rational level it isn't surprising that the "compute" part is so small, given its origins, but for some reason it still caught me by surprised seeing something barely larger than a Raspberry Pi.
But, yeah, this thing is crazy modular. I particularly want to call out how trivial it is to replace the ports, given how common of a failure point they are. With the keyboard/monitor being more involved, but absolutely still approachable.
I believe he finds just a single piece of light adhesive keeping a cable in place, everything else (inc. the battery) is screws only.
I really wish Apple would resurrect that form factor, as every other MacBook since has seemed bulky in comparison. Thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher[2], I still haven't gotten a newer mac. With a modern M series chip, it wouldn't have such rough tradeoffs in battery life and performance. I'd definitely buy it.
1. See step 11 on https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+MacBook+2015+Teardown...
2. https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher
I sometimes travel with backpack only (cheap European airlines) and that is a big difference.
The Neo is getting a lot of praise because it's all modular and screwed together. That should make it very easy to repair and also for Apple to do iterative upgrades, but that makes it bigger and heavier and size/weight does matter to people. Hence this thread.
If you're using OpenCore Patcher, it's important to install the root patches to enable graphics acceleration. Otherwise it'll be ridiculously slow.
her review: “this thing is HUGE :( :P ”
Kind of hard to see that as "HUGE" in comparison. Bigger? Yes, but not really huge.
The M1 Max I replaced it with was the opposite. I don't think I heard the fans for the first month. But it was much larger.
Based on the fanless Air, I strongly suspect an M1 Max in the old chassis would have been totally fine for non synthetic workloads and an M1 Pro would probably have been fine in all scenarios.
But I think they over corrected on the chassis design when they were shipping borderline faulty products and haven't walked it back yet.
I'm a dev and the MBP line is definitely overkill for me. The 15" MBA handles everything I can throw at it.
Doesn't need to be super fast or fancy, just extend the life of device a little more.
Soldered internal storage and ram is fine if I can store my non-essentials in a cheap drive. Or my essentials in a way that is recoverable if device fails. iCloud helps for photos and families, but it's still far too slow if you don't live near it.
There's been talk of the education market going to Chromebooks?
Did we just fall into a wormhole to 2014?
We are failing our next generation, massively — it's already washing out in Gen Alpha's testscores/employability.
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background: attended college on a teaching scholarship, twenty years ago; immediately left heartbreak of education, breaking repayment contract, to attend grad school; still jaded from that uncredentialed five-figure expense
I suspect they’ll do that on laptops too. I hope they do.
Including that omission it's very reminiscent of the surface laptop go. I'm surprised other reviews haven't made that connection. Similar price, features, the works. Even missing the fingerprint on the base model, just like the surface laptop go. The funky colours. People are acting like apple invented this class of midrange laptop but they didn't.
Veronica is an ultra-light MacBook based on Neo, lighter than the MacBook Air. It becomes way more powerful once you connect your iPhone directly.
Reference: Veronica is the Iron Man Armor that snaps onto Iron Man to handle Hulk.
Judging by the sorry state of most second hand Macbook it really feel that they have made their hardware disposable (despite using relatively premium hardware like aluminum compared to plastic stuff on some brands) to force people to subscribe to it. Not that they are the only one to make shitty unreliable stuff (looking at you Asus, Acer and most brand's "family" lines).
I bought a late-2013 13" MacBook Pro when I started university and I used that thing up until the end of 2021 when I got a 14" M1 Pro MBP. And it wasn't even because it was performing that terribly, I just wanted the new Apple silicon machine. Now it's ~4.5 years later and that machine runs like it did on day 1 and I have no desire to upgrade anytime soon.
And anyway, it's an outlier. Exception proves the rule.
Apple's held to such a high standard that people still joke about antenna gate from a decade and a half ago, or the iPhone 6 bending 12 years ago. Every other OEM is nonstop putting out worse devices with worse QC but no one hears about it because no one is shipping units for any individual high-end device in anywhere near the numbers Apple is. They've got a massive magnifying glass on them that no one else does.
I could tell you a swathe of issues I've had with every Android I've owned, all worse than any iPhone I've owned. But most people probably have never heard of those issues and/or don't remember them because it's not notable unless it's Apple. For instance, the Nexus 6P failed so reliably after the first year, it got to a point where you could just call Google, say you're having issues, and they'd fastlane you to sending you a Pixel XL as a replacement. The Nexus 5P from the same year had even worse issues where they practically all started boot looping at some point. If Apple had a dud year to that level, it would have been MAJOR news.
I paid $50 for that Apple Care through an eBay listing and got send a code that I could use to register. This was back when Apple Care was sold in physical boxes and people would resell them from foreign countries. So great deal all round.
But for the rest I never had Apple Care on anything.
Some people use computers with utter disregard for their integrity.
Macs, specially Apple silicon ones are extremely reliable.
This whole post is a [citation needed] on multiple fronts.
It's not about "having to" replace parts. It's for just-in-case. It's essentially insurance.
The battery in my M1 MacBook Pro went bad recently. But I have AppleCare, so I was able to walk into an Apple Store and hand it to someone, and the next day I picked it up all repaired. (New keyboard, too, since the keyboard and battery are considered one part.)
If I had some machine from Dell or Acer or even Microsoft, what would I do? Ship it back to China for six months? There's no store I can walk into to get it fixed the next day.The value in AppleCare is the same value you have in fire insurance. Maybe you want to save a few bucks and take your chances that everything you own won't burn to ashes and you have to start over with nothing. I'm not in college anymore.
The tech comes out and does the repair at your home or place of business. Because the tech is often a contractor, in my experience there’s not likely to be an inquest for the purpose of denying the claim.
They flew a tech next day to where I lived with spare parts.
Replaced mobo/cpu (which burned due my overclock shenanigans) without asking questions.
That was really impressive especially when compared to butterfly keyboard problems with Apple which was problematic to say the least.
No gripes from this decade?
If you have to dig back 11 years for something to complain about, that's pretty good for Apple.
Lenovo’s on-site service has changed into a massive security risk. They changed the terms within the last year or two. You have to give one of their contractors full remote admin access to your computer to “run diagnostics” before they’ll dispatch the onsite repairman.
This used to be a service worth every penny. But now: read the fine print carefully.
But now you're back to the parent's definition of "extortion."
Hence my comment about extortion scheme, even $150 would be way too high a price for a keyboard + battery but they kind of forces you subscribe to it by having absurdly high parts replacement prices. It is like a mafia asking you to pay for your protection yet you still think you made a good deal.
It’s about making it easier and faster for Apple to fix the machines.
It benefits us all. But I suspect the cost of their super tight integration into large non-replaceable components with lots of glue started to show up in repair work costs.
Nice Apple. That's good :)
The repairability seems to be interesting especially if it leads to framework style upgradability (logic boards, not the ports).
> You are lucky if you see this.
You're new here so you may not know this, but you can turn on "showdead" in your profile and you won't need luck to see [dead] comments and submissions. It's been a feature since the beginning (or near it).
Or perhaps you believe that this year all manufacturers, Apple especially, decided out of the goodness of their hearts that their devices need to be repairable?
Not bad, not terrible?
https://support.apple.com/en-us/126157
modular USB ports; battery sans glue; trackpad
Twenty years ago, I worked part-time in a laptop repair facility for a large educational institution; this computer would have been a godsend (e.g. the first MacBooks had hundreds of screws, plastic everywhere).
That probably bit them HARD during the butterfly days.
I skipped that entire generation, but the modern silicon keyboards are slick. My workshop computer is a 2012 MacBook "Pro" (disabled GPU), which also has fantastic keys. Best Apple keyboard ever has to be the 12" PowerBook G4, but that may just be nostalgic...
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My major critique of the Neo is: for its intended market (younger), it should be more durable, not less — why is there no MagSafe power connector?
From a computer repair technician's POV, there will be lot$ of U$B port replacement$, due to power supply abusers (have you seen some students' charging cables?!). From manufacturer's POV: if they had MagSafe, they probably wouldn't need separate USB ports (IMHO).
It's almost guaranteed that the second revision of this product line will use MagSafe (you own the patent already!).
The USB-C port that’s already there anyway is free, thus way cheaper. No special port. No special cable in the box.
I don’t think it will come in the next revision.
For nightmares, the screwbin either tips over repeatedly, or a dropped screw poofs indefinitely. Sometimes I wake up sweated, snackycaked crumb constellations jambed up'gainst bedsheets and fattie.
Screws, everywhere. Me.
Compare to a thinkpad keyboard FRU. They have fluid drains and still cost $99 for a top-end laptop. My daughter's chromebook keyboard replacement at school was $16.
So what I'm hearing is you don't want Apple to make their computers more repairable? Think of this like training a dog. My dog can open the cabinet in the kitchen on their own, pull out a specific requested item, close the door again and bring the item to me from anywhere in my house. Opening a door is just tugging on something, bringing something to me is just fetch, closing a door is just pushing with its nose. If I went into the training of this with the attitude of "oh wow, you pulled the door open" or "oh wow, you fetched the thing" and didn't reward my dog for doing those simple pieces because "any good dog can tug on a rope or fetch a ball", then my dog would never have gotten to the point of doing all of those things in a repeatable complex sequence that serves a useful purpose. Instead every part of it that my dog got right, they got all sorts of praise and rewards. And so once I started asking more, my dog eagerly tried to do those things because they knew if they did what I wanted, they could get the things they wanted.
Train your companies the same way. Give them the positive PR and praise they're looking for when they do the things you want them to do. You'll get them to do what you want a lot faster if they have an actual incentive to do it.
Article: https://www.ifixit.com/News/100352/we-hot-wired-the-iphone-1...
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623251
Over 11 years, they exceeded $3 trillion in revenue, actually. I knew it was a lot, hadn't actually looked at the totals before. 2015-2025 sums to $3.429 trillion.