Apple just announced the MacBook Neo. A $599 laptop powered by an iPhone chip, wrapped in citrus and blush plastic, positioned as the company’s entry into the budget laptop market. It costs $599, comes in four colors, and runs on the Apple A18 Pro chip from the iPhone 16 Pro. On paper, it sounds like a smart play against Chromebooks and Windows laptops.
But watching this rollout unfold over Apple’s three-day announcement marathon, I can’t help feeling like something fundamental has shifted in how they approach product launches.
I don’t really like this direction Apple is headed. This feels like a cop-out, a lazy method of product releases. Over the past three days, they’ve announced the MacBook Air M5, MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, iPhone 17e, iPad Air M4, and new Studio Displays, alongside the Neo. That’s a lot of products. But these updates are marginal, chip upgrades with no changes to device chassis. Nothing groundbreaking.
Maybe it’s reasonable. They don’t really have much to show off, and their events are made to be big cultural moments. But when the actual announcements are just spec bumps, that format starts to feel hollow.
The aura of Apple events in past years was real. These were cultural touchstones. People would plan their days around them. Now? A drip feed of press releases across a week, some hands-on sessions in Chelsea and Shanghai, and we’re supposed to feel the same excitement.
This is part of a hybrid effort from Apple. They’re not abandoning big events, but their strategy for launching these specific devices in early 2026 seems designed to generate a particular wave of articles and media coverage. These are budget devices, or at least budget by Apple standards. The Neo slots in below the MacBook Air. The iPhone 17e starts at $599. These aren’t flagship products.
So instead of one massive keynote where a $599 laptop would get lost among M5 Max demos and AI features, they spread it out. Each product gets its moment. Each one generates its own headlines. It’s efficient. It’s controlled. It’s corporate. And that’s fine, strategically speaking. But it does strip away some of the magic that used to surround Apple product launches.
There’s something else I’ve noticed across their recent commercials and advertisements. A specific vibe, a sort of cluttered, more organic feeling layered over what still reads as a corporate backdrop. Punchy audio. Weirdly amateur, deliberately beginner style of design and filming.
It’s a broader shift toward trying to appeal to the masses. Whether that ends up successful, whether it helps them achieve whatever vibe they’re trying to capture with these advertisements, only time will tell.
The old Apple aesthetic was minimalism. Clean lines, white backgrounds, the product floating in space. Now there’s texture, clutter, realness. It feels like they’re chasing relatability. But Apple built its brand on aspiration, not relatability. The tension between those two approaches is palpable in their current marketing.
The MacBook Neo itself is probably a solid device. First impressions describe it as feeling like a smaller, slightly thicker MacBook Air with a great Magic Keyboard and trackpad. At $599, it’s positioned to pull people into the ecosystem. Students. Switchers from Windows. People who want macOS but couldn’t justify the price before.
From a product standpoint, it makes sense. But product releases don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re wrapped in narrative, in cultural context, in the way a company chooses to present itself to the world. And right now, Apple feels like it’s in transition. The spectacle is quieter. The releases are more frequent and less monumental. The aesthetic is shifting from aspirational minimalism toward something more accessible and human.
I’m not sure I like where this is headed, but I understand it. The iPhone moment doesn’t come every year. Sometimes you just have spec bumps and budget devices. The question is whether you can maintain that ineffable sense of specialness when the products themselves are iterative. Based on what I’m seeing in early 2026, I’m not convinced they’ve figured that out yet.
