Apple's launch of the new MacBook Neo is a brilliant commercial move that will boost its revenue for years to come — and the fulfillment of a prophecy that was simply ahead of its time: Windows RT.
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The MacBook Neo is a laptop Apple recently launched at just $599, a genuine competitor to budget Windows machines and a remarkable departure from the company's famously snobbish pricing policy.
Early users report an excellent and highly enjoyable experience, despite minor hardware compromises compared to the pricier MacBook Air. What makes this model truly exceptional is its reliance on the A18 Pro chip — originally designed for the iPhone 16 Pro, not for use in a computer.
This launch matters enormously for Apple's future, because it will draw younger, budget-conscious users into the company's ecosystem, from which the natural path leads toward more expensive models as their financial situation improves over the course of their careers.
That same fact has also allowed Apple to raise prices on its higher-end lines without taking flak — price-sensitive customers now have an alternative that costs roughly half the price of a MacBook Air.
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One of the product's most enthusiastic early admirers is Steven Sinofsky, former President of the Windows Division at Microsoft and the man responsible for developing Windows 8.
Alongside his genuine enjoyment of a laptop built on a mobile phone chip, he recalled with some sadness Microsoft's failed attempt to build a similar solution back in 2012: Windows RT.
Windows 8 was designed at the time to be the operating system for everything — desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
Microsoft developed a laptop called the Surface RT, based on a version of Windows 8 named Windows RT, whose headline feature was its reliance on ARM architecture — the foundation of smartphone processors — rather than Intel's x86 chips.
The ambition was to capture the low power consumption, instant-on capability, and fanless design that characterize smartphone processors, and significant compromises were made to the operating system in pursuit of that goal.
The device could only run compatible apps from the Microsoft Store, and customers felt deceived when they bought what looked like a Windows PC only to discover they could install almost nothing on it. The project ended in failure.
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Apple's success stems from a combination of factors.
The first is timing. Processors have improved steadily and relentlessly, and today they genuinely deliver performance high enough to serve as the primary processor for a full, unrestricted desktop operating system.
Apple also migrated its entire developer ecosystem to support Apple Silicon — a process pursued with stubborn determination over several years that ultimately succeeded.
As an additional layer of protection, Apple developed Rosetta 2, which translates legacy applications for its new hardware in real time.
The end result is that users get a complete Mac experience without compromising on anything, and it looks as though this combination of factors will crown the product a resounding success.
In the meantime, Microsoft has also closed the gap: Windows laptops based on Snapdragon processors now exist, complete with a compatibility layer similar to Rosetta 2. Even so, Microsoft has far less control over its developer community than Apple does, and not every application can run on that processor even with the compatibility layer's help.
For now, these models remain niche products, and it's hard to see them becoming the standard anytime soon.
Microsoft was probably right — just not at the right pace or the right time. And in business, timing is everything.
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👋 Hi, I'm Shlomo Strauss — follow me for more content on science and technology.