I splurged, sort of. I succumbed and bought a citrus Apple MacBook Neo (the Apple Touch™ model). It’s cheap in the grand scheme of things. Also, I tend to be an “early adopter” of Apple tech. No, it’s never perfect, but it’s pretty good.

Anyway, here are my impressions of the Neo:

- It’s cool! It’s more lemon-lime than yellow. Everything from the packaging logo color to keyboard to wallpapers to selection colors are coordinated. Even the “waxed paper” wrap has a friendly “Hello” on it. It’s the little things that welcome someone to the Apple ecosystem.

So, why did I get it? A couple of reasons:

- I regret getting rid of all of my old Mac hardware, going back to an Apple ][+. I still have my Newton Messagepad and Apple Cube.

- I wanted a “Knock-around” unit to travel with.

- I wanted a light development machine for Python and non-XCode programming.

- I wanted to see how well my own apps run on it (no problems).

So, what are my thoughts, having used it full-time for a day?

- It’s fast. Yup. It handles everything I need. XCode runs on it. Slower than my MacBookPro or Air, but a LOT faster than I imagined it would. It could be my daily-driver.. Games like WoW and League of Legends, have no problem.

- I don’t do any video or audio editing. I’m not an “influencer” and don’t need to be.

- The apps I’ve developed run on it.

- It’s smaller than the MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Perfect for travel.

- It has a nice niche between iPad and MacBook Air.

- It’s cheap, as far as Apple products go.

- The citrus color brings me back to the Bondi iMac days. Fun, and not serious, but can do serious things. It’s a welcome change from the “office-appropriate, corporate” Apple.

 The most surprising things about the Apple Neo:

- It’s faster than I thought it would be

- It’s higher quality than I expected at the price-point.

- It helps me not take myself seriously

- I like it more than I thought I would

Things that are downgrades I don’t miss:

- Backlit keyboard. Nice, but not an issue, since I’m not a spy working in the dead of night.

- Higher quality display. It is good unless you’re picky about that sort of thing and do graphics work. It’s something no one will care about unless they work in digital art/physics.

- More memory/storage. Again, this would be nice. Having said that, I haven’t run into any memory issues. Response time and is equivalent to the MacBook Air for everything I do (again, no heavy video or audio editing and no AI use.). Storage-wise, I’m at about 50% of the drive. I’ve just loaded everything I use every day and a couple of games (World of WarCraft and League of Legends), which takes up about 170Gb of storage, alone. But I have XCode, several IDEs, utilities, and social apps such as Micro.blog, Skeets (Bluesky) and Ivory (Mastodon).

- Trackpad isn’t tactile/haptic. It’s physical, but quite nice and I don’t care.

- Ports. USB-C 2 and 3. I see an earphone jack. Um, why?

Things I wish it had:

- MagSafe charger. I have cats that like to play with cords. And MagSafe is a nice safety feature, anyway.

- MicroSD card reader. I do a lot of RaspberryPi stuff, so having one would be nice to have it built-in.

- An Apple-branded ultra-thin slim case for traveling.

Things I don’t like:

- Boot-up time. This is NOT Neo-specific. The latest versions of MacOS are slow enough to get a boot-up progress bar, even on a MacBookPro. It’s all the AI and LiquidGlass -nonsense. Power-on is instant. Boot up can take up to 20seconds. Yes, it’s a minor quibble for many.

- MagSafe. I want this. I don’t care about a faster CPU for what I do (and I do heavy dev.)

Things I don’t need:

- AI integration. I can do my work, thank you. Apple needs to free up memory and CPU by eliminating AI as an option.

- Allow me to choose which apps I want to have “pre-installed” at initial boot. Yes, Apple isn’t known for spamware/marketing-crap when selling their hardware. But I have no use for FaceTime, GarageBand, etc. I’d like to have an option to delete those on first-launch.

Who is the Apple Neo for:

- Most people.

- Anyone who doesn’t care about feeds/speeds or who doesn’t do video/audio editing because they are “influencers”/content-creators. But even then, it’s fine.

- Non XCode developers. But, as I said, XCode works and compiles within a few seconds of a MacBook Air.

- Students. I think Apple is trying to get back into this market. This is a GREAT student laptop.

- People new to Apple. The Apple Neo is capable and “friendly.” No drivers, no spam-ware, no difficult setup.

- Your mom/dad/grandparent. Anyone who wants an “in” but is not tech-saavy.

- Someone who wants a cheap, but not at the expense of quality, device.

Who is the Apple Neo not for?

- Influencers

- Editors of heavy video

- Someone who can’t focus and needs to run multiple programs.

- Someone who likes having hundreds of web tabs open (PSA: Use Safari. Chrome eats memory).

- Someone who needs to code in absolute darkness.

- Someone who keeps tripping over the power cord.

- Someone who has a ton of money to spend (but even then, you should consider the Neo)

- Someone who wants to use AI to replace their personal brain.

- Someone who hates fun.

OK. The most important question: why did I choose the citrus color?

- As I said, I was tired of the “corporate-ready” colors. Life is meant to be fun (if you aren’t in it for survival.)

I like fruit, the citrus variety. Yes, the other Neo colors are “fun”, but somehow they are more staid.

What’s missing?

- MagSafe™

- A way to attach/charge an iPhone while switching the Neo’s display to the iPhone’s. Yes … I know.

Make up your own mind.