Parallels Desktop virtualization software is compatible with the new MacBook Neo, according to an update from the company – but Windows VM performance will depend on your intended use case. From…
Apple is continuing to test the iOS 26.4 beta, and the latest update is now available for developers and public beta testers. As testing goes on, there are fewer new features in each beta, but today’s release adds new emoji characters and a few other changes. New Emoji Apple added new emoji characters, including trombone, treasure chest, distorted face, hairy creature, fight cloud, orca,...
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MacBook Neo is going to sell like crazy. In the education market, educators, students, aides... nothing close at this price point. With memory and SSD prices so high I don't see how Dell, Asus and others are going to be able to compete. Unless the build quality is significantly worse than a M1 macbook air not sure budget PC makers will be able to compete.
By auggierose 2026-03-1323:451 reply I don't know. Both of my macs are over 7 years old, and have at least 32GB of RAM. Certainly would not buy an 8GB one now.
By Gigachad 2026-03-1323:50 Going to guess you aren’t a student
PC makers are going to stop some of the artificial segmentation they used on the lower price devices, and that is going to hurt the sales of their higher-end lines. There is no reason they kept pushing 70 percent srgb panels on even the mid tier Thinkpads when the Neo has a good display.
By colechristensen 2026-03-1323:31 I can't imagine the low end materials actually save that much cost anyway.
There's a tremendous amount of Bill-of-Materials inflation where a part that cost $5 more translates to $50 retail price increase when the actual work and engineering cost is exactly the same. This is one of the terribly annoying facts of product design, the incredible premium you have to pay for good parts that don't actually cost very much at all.
In the US, cheap ThinkPads like E14 sometimes sell for a bit less when you factor in all typical discounts. They are good machines that run Linux well and can be repaired.
In EU, and I imagine other markets, there's nothing remotely close. I hope this puts some pressure on Lenovo and the rest of manufacturers to be more competitive.
> and can be repaired
The Macbook Neo is highly repairable too [1]. Not _quite_ as repairable as some Thinkpads with a 10/10 score, but still pretty respectable at a 6/10 with easily replaceable batteries and stuff.
[1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...
By sourcegrift 2026-03-1322:153 reply 8 GB RAM and 6/10 "respectable" repairability.
RAM has no bearing on repairability? And yes, sure stuff is soldered to the motherboard, but everything is basically modular outside of it, you can replace every big part pretty easily, and no glue, even for the battery
The RAM being soldered is a hit against repair ability, you can't expand it or if the ram has issues you can't replace it, you will just be forced to throw out the entire machine. What else is modular here anyways? Can I swap out the CPU, the screen, the keyboard, ports...anything?
By wtallis 2026-03-1322:48 Repairability and upgradability aren't quite the same concept.
By colechristensen 2026-03-1323:341 reply Soldering RAM isn't for compact size or cost or to keep you from upgrading, it's for speed. Soldered RAM can be physically closer with a faster bus than removable RAM.
By okanat 2026-03-1323:51 With old style DIMMs I can understand this excuse, with LPCAMM though, it doesn't fly.
By nextos 2026-03-1323:28 What configuration on the ThinkPad?
By DauntingPear7 2026-03-1323:22 Have you owned an M-series MacBook?
By moffkalast 2026-03-1322:541 reply In the EU it costs $200 more so it's more like a low to mid range laptop.
I have a feeling these are aimed at the same sector as the Framework 12, school provided laptops for kids meant to be bought in bulk by institutions. But there they're competing against $150 Chromebooks and neither is even close.
In the EU, you don't need to buy an extended warranty, since existing consumer protection laws require the sort of extended repair coverage Americans have to pay extra for.
Taxes are also included in the EU price, but not the US price.
By rngfnby 2026-03-1323:30 But sales taxes are significantly lower and easily lowered or even avoided by driving a half hour.
No one does this, because they're low enough to begin with.
By operatingthetan 2026-03-1323:12 M1 macbook air has been available at Walmart priced at $600-650 for years (8gb, 256 ssd). Why did that not cannibalize Apple's laptop market?
By devwastaken 2026-03-1322:59 Mac doesnt run their spyware, they wont use it.
By ActorNightly 2026-03-1321:134 reply ITs going to sell like crazy not because of specs, but because its apple, and its a cheap. Cause god forbid you pull out a chromebook in a starbucks and be seen as a peasant.
If you know what you are doing and don't want to spend a lot of money, its really not that hard to buy a refurbished thinkpad, swap in more ram, and install your linux disro of choice, for a lower price and get very similar usable performance.
By mountainriver 2026-03-1321:581 reply MacBooks are a far superior product, not just a status symbol
By ActorNightly 2026-03-1322:25 [flagged]
By raw_anon_1111 2026-03-1321:161 reply And run what on the Chromebook exactly?
By ActorNightly 2026-03-1322:232 reply Web browser and youtube. You know, what people mostly do on macbooks.
By hodgehog11 2026-03-1323:09 Aside from gaming, I can do basically everything on Mac that I can on Linux or Windows. That's a hell of a lot more than a Chromebook. Take it from someone who has owned both a Chromebook and a Macbook; suggesting that they are in the same league is silly.
Also, used != new. I'm surprised people need to be reminded of this.
By raw_anon_1111 2026-03-1322:242 reply But that’s all you can do on Chromebooks.
By emilbratt 2026-03-1323:04 In 2012, that would be true! :)
By ActorNightly 2026-03-1322:271 reply Are you sure about that?
By hodgehog11 2026-03-1323:11 You can do more if you have a lot more RAM. Otherwise you really are that restricted.
In the country I live in, there is no comparable Chromebook spec-wise on par with the Neo at a similar price point. You're basically stuck with 4GB RAM.
The Chromebook would be slow and run worse software. So… but also yeah nobody wants to look like a peasant.
By assaddayinh 2026-03-1321:59 [dead]
By incanus77 2026-03-1322:04 What school IT director does this?
By Someone1234 2026-03-1316:535 reply If Apple continues with the budget Neo brand into a 12 GB iteration, I can see this becoming more realistic (rather than a novelty). That being said, Parallels may need to review its licensing with a budget tier in mind. Few will buy a cheap computer and then pay what Parallels charges for a license (regardless if one-time or subscription).
They need to introduce something below the Standard license targeting the Neo. What I'd personally consider is:
- Standard gets 16 GB vRAM (to perfectly target the base MacBook Air). But leave it at 4-6 vCPUs to not compete with the Pro (still for general computing, not power-users)
- New "Lite" tier with 8 GB vRAM max for the Neo (4 vCPUs). Increasing to 12 GB vRAM if the Neo does.
Then you target a $89 price point one-time-purchase for the "Lite" tier. Essentially three plans, targeting your three major demographics: budget, standard, and pro/power-user.
By zitterbewegung 2026-03-1318:333 reply This isn't a novelty it will crush the low end of the PC market. No one cares if the next iteration will be better with 12GB of ram. The workloads that people say that 8GB can't handle will be ones that the actual users will either wait or tolerate. I've been noticing that people who review the Macbook Neo basically don't get the point [1] and just the headline of this article matters that VMs work and thats a big win. The most ridicuous thing about the laptop is that it appears to be reparable which sort of tells me this is a template similar to the M1 Air of the future laptop designs that Apple will come out with. [2]
[1] https://samhenri.gold/blog/20260312-this-is-not-the-computer...
By Someone1234 2026-03-1318:382 reply > This isn't a novelty it will crush the low end of the PC market.
You took what I said out of context and then replied to something else. Running Parallels on a Neo is a novelty. Parallels is both what the thread is about AND what my reply was expressly about.
Nobody can reasonably read what I wrote, in context, and believe I was referring to the computer itself as a novelty.
By zitterbewegung 2026-03-1320:53 Sorry, I misread your post I can't edit it anymore and I should have read into your post and it was a knee jerk reaction on my part.
By awesome_dude 2026-03-1320:381 reply I saw the other day people complaining about AI slop being posted on this site by new accounts - which I agree is bad.
Someone suggested that people with 10k karma and/or 10 years subscription to this site should be able to do things (such as auto-ban) to those accounts.
The account that misrepresented your comment and thus acted in bad faith is one of those 10k+ accounts.
To me, this is a data point showing the fallacy of long term subscription and/or karma accrual as evidence of their quality/good faith abilities
By zitterbewegung 2026-03-1320:53 I admit now after rereading that I did misrepresent what they said and I should have read their comment more closely and it was a knee jerk reaction and that its my fault.
By mikkupikku 2026-03-1323:29 How is VM support relevant to mass adoption? Norms don't use VMs.
By gamblor956 2026-03-1318:573 reply Most people run Windows just fine on cheap laptops with 4GB of RAM.
These won't run Crysis, but they don't need to.
By dragonwriter 2026-03-1321:172 reply > Most people run Windows just fine on cheap laptops with 4GB of RAM.
And if they can do that, they can get them (at full MSRP) for about half the price of a MacBook Neo.
Heck, you can get 8GB Windows laptops with twice the SSD size of the MacBook Neo's for a little over half of the Neo’s price (again, at full MSRP.)
By kstrauser 2026-03-1321:55 > Heck, you can get 8GB Windows laptops with twice the SSD size of the MacBook Neo's for a little over half of the Neo’s price (again, at full MSRP.)
Let's see one of these $300 Windows laptops with 512GB of SSD (in a reasonable format, e.g. not an SD card), a body that isn't disposable, a screen that isn't a dim potato, a CPU that's within 20% of the Neo's performance, and a GPU that isn't embarrassed to be called a GPU.
I doubt they exist.
I went looking, and did find stuff on Amazon, though none were made of an aluminum chasis, and none had the geekbench score anywhere near, and none had the screen brightness.
By kstrauser 2026-03-1322:24 As I write this, the top Amazon search for "windows laptop" is a
> Lenovo IdeaPad 15.6 inch Business Laptop with Microsoft 365 • 2026 Edition • Intel Core • Wi-Fi 6 • 1.1TB Storage (1TB OneDrive + 128GB SSD) • Windows 11
The person who approved describing its 128GB storage as 1.1TB should be hanged.
The CPU also has[0] 31% of the single core and 14% of the CPU Mark rating. The screen has 220 nits (vs 500) brightness, comes with 4GB of RAM, and weighs 30% more. At least it's half price, though.
The shopping situation for Windows laptops is utterly dire.
[0]https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/6268vs4227/Apple-A18-Pr...
Windows doesn't run "just fine" on 4 GiB of RAM. I had a laptop with 6; Windows 10 became barely usable. If you want to run one, small, program at a time I think you'll be ok. Forget about web browsing; you'll get one tab and it'll be slow.
Agreed. Windows 10/11 can run just fine on 4GB of RAM. You just can't run anything inside of Windows 10/11 with 4GB of RAM.
The last version of Windows that felt like 4GB of RAM was performant for me with applications was Windows XP. Not that every computer running the 32-bit edition of Windows XP could even see/utilize a full 4GB of RAM properly, but at least it was fast.
By alpaca128 2026-03-1323:28 My Windows 7 laptop had 4GB RAM and I played Crysis 2 on it. 4GB was absolutely enough for a performant system.
By accrual 2026-03-1322:37 I found even Windows 7 ran very well with just 4GB of DDR2. I only upgraded to 8GB when I started testing Windows 8/8.1 on that rig.
Though I get by just fine with 512MB on my favorite Pentium 3 XP system. :D
By bitwize 2026-03-1323:39 I ran a Windows 7 system with 3GiB as a gaming machine and it was just fine. Windows 7... the last Windows release that was acceptable-ish. Memories...
By zozbot234 2026-03-1321:34 A lightweight Linux desktop can keep a decent amount of browser tabs (using Firefox; avoid Chrome) on 4GB RAM if you set up compressed RAM properly. It's not foolproof like 8GB would be, but it's absolutely fine for casual use.
HDD or SSD? SSD can effectively make up for SOME amount of less RAM due to faster swapping, in my experience.
2015 laptop, spinning rust. Nevertheless, it was at least somewhat acceptable at purchase, but crapware installed with successive system updates brought it to a standstill. An SSD might've helped, but not by much. I wiped it and put Kubuntu on it to give to my wife, for whom it ran acceptably. She gave it back when she got a shiny new MacBook Air.
By wolrah 2026-03-1321:55 > An SSD might've helped, but not by much.
A SSD would have made an absolutely massive difference.
Source: I have clients that still have 2nd/3rd gen i5 systems running 3-4 GB of RAM with Windows 10 and they're tolerable solely thanks to SSDs. Swapping that much on a hard drive would just be painful to use.
Nobody should be interactively using a computer post-2018ish (whenever SSDs fell below $1/GB) that's booting and running primary applications off spinning rust. They're perfectly fine for bulk storage drives but anyone waiting for an operating system booting off one has wasted enough of their life in the last year to have paid for the SSD. Companies that wouldn't spend $100 on an upgrade are literally throwing money away paying their employees to wait on a shit computer.
> Most people run Windows just fine on cheap laptops with 4GB of RAM.
Windows 7. Windows 10 eats about 6GB (custom IoT with a lot of things disabled).
Neo is a parody of a computer.
By littlecranky67 2026-03-1322:59 Don't underestimate what you can do with the 8 GB RAM. My mid-tier, Intel 2019 Macbook Pro with 32GB RAM suddenly died by the end of 2023. I quickly got a basemodel 256GB/8GB MacMini M2 as a replacement. While initialy supposed to be a temporary replacement until my MBP gets fixed, I ended up using it for another year as my main daily machine for everything, inluding professionally (fullstack software dev).
There was simply no need to upgrade, the MacMini was faster in all regards then my Intel MBP. Out of curiosity of its capability I wanted to see how gaming performs - I ended up playing through all three Tomb Raider reboots (Mac native, but using Rosetta!) at 1080p in high settings. Absolutely amazed how fast it was (mostly driven by the update to M2).
Only one thing ever made me notice the lack of RAM, and that was when I was running the entire test suite of our frontend monorepo. This runs concurrently and fires up multiple virtual browser envs (vitest, jest, jsdom) to run the tests in parallel. Stuttering and low responsiveness during the execution, but would complete in 3-4 minutes - it takes around 1 minutes on my current M4 MBP.
By akst 2026-03-1323:04 There’s something called menu pricing, in order to keep its existing customer base buying their more expensive higher end models there need to be an unjustifiable drop in quality to switch.
The gap in spec is no mistake, if it was appealing enough for existing air-book users to downgrade it would cannibalise their bottomline.
VMWare Fusion is free, even if it is a pain in the butt to download. It also has GPU paravirtualization for Linux/Windows which is the only reason I use a proprietary VMM on macOS these days.
You can also use UTM to run Windows for free and it is open source.
By littlecranky67 2026-03-1323:12 Because I was fed up with parallels subscription model and they make me pay for the upgrade the non-subscription version with every new macOS release, I dropped parallels for UTM. I barely need windows, only every other month or so and often just for some small tasks. UTM is nice, but performance running windows is waaay below parallels. It is free, however, so I won't complain.
Last I checked UTM doesn't have GPU acceleration. Parallels' proprietary GPU driver is the only reason to pay for it.
By spullara 2026-03-1323:35 fair
By fragmede 2026-03-1318:45 http://tart.run works great for running macOS (and Linux) VMs on macOS if you're technical. It's free for non-commercial uses too! (Don't think there's GPU acceleration tho).
I’m excited that Apple now has a reason to keep MacOS small. Their soon to be top-selling machine has 8GB and they won’t want to make all those millions of Neos unusable by shipping a bloated OS.
I wrote about how Unified Memory, SSD directly attached to the SoC and Apple's use of real-time compression saves memory, reduces power consumption and wear on SSDs [1].
By benoau 2026-03-1321:15 In practice I think this is going to be very specific to your data being good for compression and not already compressed - so not gaming, where textures can fill up the Neo's 8GB very fast depending on the game: Cyberpunk, Robocop, Bioshock and Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmarks are showing 9 - 10 GB of RAM used at just 720p.
By detourdog 2026-03-1323:32 I would have gone with 7.5.3 or 6.0.7. I’m also fine with OS X and once they started shipping SSDs the virtual memory has been performant.
By raw_anon_1111 2026-03-1321:21 As long as you ignore that whole part of the OS was still running 68K code on PPC Macs, it crashed like a drunk driving a semi truck without protected memory and the end user still had to fiddle with the amount of memory an app could use
By calf 2026-03-1323:36 I miss having snappy menubar lists, at the Apple Store yesterday I noticed on the Neo that the transparencies and iconified menu items with shortcut glyphs are still perceptibly less buttery smooth.
By ActorNightly 2026-03-1321:141 reply Compared to Windows sure. Compared to linux, its incredibly bloated.
There's a difference between bloated and batteries included. From a development point of view, macOS has native system libraries for things no other platform seems to include native system libraries for. And by "native system libraries" I do not mean downloadable content, dynamic support or anything similar, even if they're first-party. Though having unremovable system apps for every one of Apple's services MAY count as bloated if you don't use them.
The definition of bloat is something that you don’t use, even if someone else does.
By victorbjorklund 2026-03-1321:43 There are a lot of stuff in all Linux distros that I never use.
By phs318u 2026-03-1321:01 There’s a big difference between unnecessary applications taking up space on your storage device, and unnecessary services running in the background competing for RAM and CPU with the applications you actually want to run.
