The MacBook Neo Is the Best Budget Laptop You Can Buy Today

I’ve been pining for an Apple return to the bold laptop colors of its old iBook G3s for years. The new MacBook Neo, which comes in four colors that aren’t just black or silver, gets close to that, and does something else I’m not sure I expected. With the Neo, Apple made a $599 laptop that feels like it should cost hundreds of dollars more. And did it using, of all things, an iPhone processor. For years, Windows laptops and Chromebooks have set an expectation that a budget laptop can be good enough to surf the web, but that if you want to do much else, well, it sucks to be you. Their compromises are immediately obvious; things like dim displays that are hard to see from any angle other than directly in front of them, or cheap-feeling plastic bodies that creak and bend under the slightest pressure. They’re underpowered and won’t last more than a few hours on a full charge. The Neo has none of these compromises; instead, it is a full-fledged, genuinely good computer, able to handle everything from casual use to some true workloads without complaint, for hours and hours. You can pick up a brand-new MacBook New online from Apple, or at the usual third-party outlets such as Best Buy or A