By Dan Moren

March 10, 2026 7:30 AM PT

M5 MacBook Air Review: Not just more of the same—the same, but more

With the M5 generation, the MacBook Air finds itself in an unfamiliar, though not unprecedented, position: that of the middle sibling.

Previously Apple’s most affordable laptop, the Air has been undercut in that department by the new MacBook Neo, social media darling and—if you’ll pardon the expression—apple of its parents’ eye. Not since the polycarbonate MacBook’s retirement in 2011 has there been a notebook in Apple’s lineup with a lower price point than the MacBook Air, and it’s gotten used to that status, which led it to its long-running and, for the moment still undisputed, title as Apple’s best-selling Mac.

But with the eye-catching Neo now substantially undercutting the Air’s base price (itself now slightly higher than previously), and the MacBook Pro family bringing unmatched performance, what’s the MacBook Air’s role in the modern Mac lineup? Though it might seem like this the Air is on the brink of an identity crisis, the truth is that, in the way of middle children since time immemorial, the truth is simple: the MacBook Air is all about getting its job done without fanfare.

Performance, no anxiety

Though it may not boast the sheer power of the MacBook Pro, the Air, like the rest of its M5 siblings, does feature those newly rechristened “super” cores, of which it features four, in addition to six efficiency cores (none of those newfangled “performance” cores like the M5 MacBook Pro). There’s also the 16-core Neural Engine, as well as either 8- or 10- of the improved GPU cores with their Neural Accelerators.

Of course, we’ve had an idea of the ballpark of M5 performance since last fall’s first slew of products using the latest chip generation, and there’s little surprising here: just the usual generation-over-generation bump, in this case of about 11 percent in both single and multicore performance over the M4 Air. GPU saw more measurable improvement in the M5 Air, with about 31 percent better performance on average. In keeping with previous generations, the MacBook Pros, with their active cooling systems, eke a bit more performance out of those individual cores—but just a bit.

As ever, there’s little reason to upgrade from the immediately previous models—the difference between the M4 and M5 is negligible for most users. But those small improvements do add up: go back to the M3, M2, M1, and you’re talking jumps in the 38 percent, 57 percent, and 75 percent range for single-core performance. I only just replaced an M1 Air with an M4 model last year¹, and it’s a testament to Apple’s engineering how good that first generation of Apple silicon still is, almost six years later.

Memory options are constant with the previous generation, starting at 16GB standard, with options for 24GB or 32GB on the 10-core GPU models. However, memory bandwidth is up to 153GB/s, a bump from the 120GB/s on the M4 Air, even if it’s only half the bandwidth of the higher-end MacBook Pro models.

One place you will find a noticeable bump is in storage. The Air now starts at 512GB of SSD storage, double that of its predecessor, and offers up to 4TB, the same maximum as all but the M5 Max-configured MacBook Pros. That capacity increase comes with a speed improvement as well: Apple says the new SSDs are twice as fast as the previous generation and my tests concur. Compared to my personal M4 MacBook Air, the M5 registered read speed improvements of 125 percent, and an extraordinary 219 percent improvement in write speed, according to Blackmagic’s disk tests. So impressive were those numbers, I ran AmorphousDiskMark as a comparison and came away with ones that were even better: 250 percent improvement at minimum.

I ran an informal test copying a 29GB Final Cut Pro project from an external SSD to both machines, and the M5 was about 30 percent faster. It picked up a more meager 13 percent improvement in compressing that same project, though there are other factors at play there beyond sheer disk speeds. In short, your disk speed is probably not going to be your performance bottleneck here.

Apple’s also updated the wireless in this model via its in-house N1 chip, which first debuted last fall across several product lines. That means support for Wi-Fi 7 (aka 802.11be) and Bluetooth 6, neither of which I have an easy method to test, given my downright decrepit Wi-Fi 6 home network, but it’s perhaps more significant in that we will surely see N2 and N3 chips down the line, ensuring prompt and efficient support for the latest and greatest wireless technologies. And since, as with the M and A series chips, this is Apple’s own effort, the company’s penchant for control comes with a promise to make networking ever more integrated and power efficient.

Still lacking in any of Apple’s laptops, however, are cellular options, all the more apparent as the company touts its C1X modem in recently released iPhones and iPads. Might that finally find its way into a future MacBook? Maybe, but it’s not happening here.

The devil’s in the details

So much is the same with the M5 MacBook Air—the screen, the ports, the webcam, the mic and speakers, the very form factor itself—that it’s all the more significant when this year’s model does deviate from its predecessor. Two small examples caught my attention this time around.

The first, which surprised me, is the keyboard. Gone, in this generation (including the new MacBook Pros), are several keys’ text labels: tab, caps lock, return, shift, and delete. In each case, they’ve been replaced by glyphs, of the same kind long used for keyboard shortcuts in drop-down menus.

If you’re sitting there thinking “Wait, what do you mean—it’s been that way forever?” then congratulations, you’re probably outside the United States. The U.S. has remained an outlier even as the rest of Apple’s international keyboard layouts use this near universally agreed-upon standard.² This standardizes this style across Apple’s laptops (and probably soon its standalone keyboards as well), while also bringing them into line with iOS and iPadOS keyboards, which now use the same symbols (and, in some cases, have for a very long time). Labels are not totally gone, though: the Air’s keyboard still sports text on the function, control, option, and command keyboards, alongside their long-used symbols.

The second thing that I noticed was that Apple is now shipping a new power adapter with the M5 Air. Previously, the company included either a 30W adapter for the base model or a 35W adapter with 2 USB-C ports. With this model, we’re back to a single port “Dynamic Power Adapter” that is rated for 40W with a maximum of 60W. It’s a little smaller than the old dual port design—and, interestingly, lacks the standard holes on the prongs that you find on most plugs, which can add some degree of stability to the connection—but can handle fast charging with the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and Air, as well as the 11-inch and 13-inch M5 iPad Pro models. Honestly, I’ll miss the convenience of the second USB-C port, though that adapter model is still available for purchase separately from Apple.

Air to the empire

Like the M4, the M3, the M2, and even the M1 before it, the MacBook Air remains what it’s long been—even going back to the days before Apple silicon: the best Mac for most people.

Once upon a time, the MacBook Air may have been the newest and flashiest of Apple’s laptops, whether it was being plucked from a manila envelope on stage or compared to the thickness of a pencil. But nothing stays new and flashy forever.³ After 18 years, the Air isn’t a kid anymore, and that’s okay. Squeezing between the Neo and the Pro means there’s room for the Air to chart its own course. The pressure of being the cheapest MacBook is off—all too clearly, given the $1099 base price in this generation. Apple may very well try to get that back under a thousand in the future, but for now it’s okay, because if price is your main factor, you now have a far better option.

The Air remains a truly great Mac. Those who butt up against the limitations of the Neo will be more than comfortable here: after all, it’s unquestionably better than the Neo in pretty much every way—with the exception of its color options. There’s a clear value proposition with the Air: pay more to get more. And that higher cost is reasonable for what you get, especially when you compare the starting prices of the MacBook Pro.

The Neo may vie for the title of Apple’s bestselling Mac, but it’s got its work cut out for it: the crown remains the MacBook Air’s to lose and if you come at the king, you better not miss.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]

By Jason Snell

March 10, 2026 6:00 AM PT

MacBook Neo review: Fresh-squeezed laptop

The two most important things about the MacBook Neo are these: It has a base price of $599 ($499 for education buyers), and it’s a full-fledged Mac.

The price is staggering. The lowest list price for a new Mac, ever, was $499 for the original Mac mini, which famously required you to bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse. While Apple has experimented with lowering laptop prices by selling older models at a discount, and savvy shoppers have been able to find MacBook Airs on sale for $799 or even below, a new Mac laptop with a base price of $599 is a major breakthrough.

For that price, you might be suspicious that the MacBook Neo is not a real Mac. Before the product was announced—and we’ve been anticipating its arrival for more than two years—I saw a lot of speculation that this low-cost laptop would be broken in a bunch of artificial ways in order to separate it from more expensive and full-featured Macs.

So to be clear: Beyond the price, the most impressive thing about the MacBook Neo is that it is just a Mac like any other. It does all the things you’d expect a Mac to do. Yes, it’s got lesser specs than more expensive Macs, just as an M5 MacBook Air is not as powerful than an M5 Max MacBook Pro. Yes, it’s powered by a processor that was previously spotted in 2024’s iPhone 16 Pro, which might make you suspicious that it’s some kind of baby Mac that can barely run Safari.

It’s not like that at all. It runs all the apps. If you’re patient and careful, you could use it in ways that are wildly beyond what Apple recommends. (I’ve been misusing Logic Pro as a podcast editing app for more than a decade, on devices vastly more underpowered than the MacBook Neo, and it hasn’t been a problem.) In many ways, the MacBook Neo is a remix of the M1 MacBook Air, which is a pretty incredible computer even five years after its introduction.

From the ground up

In creating the MacBook Neo, Apple could probably have upgraded the guts in the M1 MacBook Air and called it a day. But that would have sent the message to potential customers that they were buying a rehashed old product, and Apple wisely didn’t want to do that.

Instead, it built the MacBook Neo using the laptop look first introduced with the M1 MacBook Pro in 2021 and exported to the M2 MacBook Air in 2022: It’s got a flat top and bottom and curved corners, and a non-enthusiast would probably assume it was a MacBook Air if they were looking at a silver one. It weighs 2.7 pounds, just like the MacBook Air, and is roughly the same dimensions. (The Air is slightly wider and deeper, and the Neo is slightly thicker.)

Apple has decided to differentiate the Neo by giving it a set of color options that include hues not generally found in other Apple laptops. Yes, there’s a standard silver that will allow the Neo to blend in with almost every other MacBook out there. Indigo is a somewhat lighter cousin to the Midnight MacBook Air, a dark blue that will satisfy those who prefer their devices to be on the darker side. The more interesting choices are blush, which adds a pink pop to the traditional silvery MacBook look, and citrus, a bright yellow gold that’s undoubtedly the most aggressive laptop color Apple has made since the days of the tangerine iBook.

Clearly, Apple expects that MacBook Neo buyers might be a bit younger and more open to their laptops expressing a bit of fun and personality. And as someone who has been advocating for Apple to embrace colors in their designs, I’m happy that this moment has come. That said, Apple remains pretty conservative with its color choices. It probably has data to back those decisions up, and may have even tested brighter colors and decided they were just too much to stare at when you’re trying to use your computer. I admit that as I write this story on a citrus MacBook Neo, I can not for a moment forget that the keyboard plane is bright yellow-gold, with a yellow-gold frame encircling the display. (It doesn’t bother me, though.)

In a nice touch, the MacBook Neo has white keys that are slightly tinted to fit the theme of the device’s color. So this citrus model’s keys are white, pushing into the yellow. It’s a very subtle and frankly unnecessary choice that shows that Apple really did sweat the details when it came to giving the Neo a proper design that makes it feel unique and part of the MacBook family, rather than some cut-rate monster built out of parts found in a bin. The Apple logo on the top has changed, too: it’s still a separate part, but made of anodized aluminum rather than polished steel, with a slightly different color shade than the rest of the device’s body. It’s a subtle difference that sets the Neo apart.

The tough choices

So how did Apple manage to build a new laptop that’s roughly half the price of the MacBook Air? It made some difficult decisions. When I talked to Apple people about the process, they were quick to emphasize that the MacBook Neo was not created by pulling features out of the MacBook Air, but was built from the ground up. Fair enough, but Apple still had to make choices that resulted in a full-on Mac laptop while reducing costs enough to sell that laptop for $599 instead of $999 or $1099.

It starts with the processor: The MacBook Neo uses an A18 Pro chip with six CPU cores (two performance, four efficiency) and five GPU cores. Yes, this is the iPhone 16 Pro processor, now put into a Mac. That would worry me more if we hadn’t spent six years watching Apple ship generations of new Macs that run on Apple silicon chips based on the very same architecture.

Apple built the M series chips because iPhone chips didn’t quite have enough juice to power a Mac. But that was then. My best guess is that the entire project of making the MacBook Neo began with the realization that Apple’s chips have become so capable, the base performance of even the MacBook Air has become so powerful, that even an A-series chip could run a Mac just fine. And they’re right, as these benchmark tests show:

In terms of single-core performance, the MacBook Neo performs somewhere between an M3 and an M4. For multi-core and GPU, it’s more like an M1. That combination is not going to break any records, but the fact is, the vast majority of computer use by computer users will be covered by that level of power, and easily. I’ve spent days working on the MacBook Neo, writing and using the Web and browsing PDFs and playing music—you know, computer stuff—and the fact that it’s running a chip originally meant for an iPhone has not revealed itself once.

Of course, this laptop is a bad choice for people who need to do more with their computers. (You know who you are.) I do find it funny that at the product’s launch event in New York earlier this month, Apple representatives said several times that people seeking more power should opt for a MacBook Air instead. Remember when the MacBook Air was the compromise and the MacBook Pro was the upgrade option? (Obviously, the MacBook Pro is still there for the most demanding users.)

A lot of the technical limitations of the MacBook Neo do come from the original decision to put an iPhone chip inside. iPhones come with a single port, but Apple tried to make a one-port MacBook and it learned that was not a great idea. So Apple has done the work to put two USB-C ports on the Neo—and those ports reveal a bit more of the struggles Apple had in building this computer. Both of the USB-C ports will let you charge (which is good, because there’s no MagSafe), but only the one that’s furthest back is a fully functional USB 3 port with support for driving an external display at 4K, 60 frames per second. The closer-in USB port only offers USB 2 speeds. (The good news is that Apple has built alerts into macOS that will warn you if the device you’ve plugged into the slow port would be better off plugged into the faster one, so you won’t be transferring files slowly unnecessarily.)

Honestly, I’m more disappointed by the fact that mismatched ports can lead to user frustration—no, not that port, the other one—than I am about the one slow USB port. I’m struggling to imagine likely scenarios where MacBook Neo users will need to use two high-speed ports at once and find themselves frustrated. Yes, only offering two ports—and needing one of them for charging—could potentially be frustrating, but we did survive with that scenario for several years with the retina MacBook Air. And I’m convinced that most users just won’t care, because they’ll just use these ports for charging and the occasional plugging in of a flash drive or projector.

The other limitation baked into the choice of the A18 Pro is that Apple only built 8GB of RAM into that chip. At the time, that was an important step forward because it conferred Apple Intelligence on iPhones, but in late 2024, Apple raised the lowest amount of RAM in a new Mac from 8GB to 16GB, and we all cheered. Welp!

More RAM is always nice, but Apple does a good job of managing memory in macOS and swapping it to disk when necessary. I’m sure there are some specific, RAM-hungry applications that will not do well on a MacBook Neo. But again, I used the Neo for days performing all sorts of normal, computery tasks with many apps open and never felt that I was running into a wall.

Apple prides itself on the quality of its displays, and as a result, the MacBook Neo’s display is good, if a little compromised. At 13.0 inches diagonal, it’s slightly smaller than the MacBook Air’s 13.6, and as a result, it’s got bigger bezels and no menu bar notch—which many users might see as a positive. It only supports the sRGB color space, not P3 wide color, and doesn’t support True Tone color adjustment—but again, these are limitations that seem worth accepting given the price of the device. The screen is good. It’s up to Apple’s standards, even though better screens are available on more expensive laptops.

Speaking of not repeating old errors, the MacBook Neo sports the familiar Magic Keyboard Apple design that’s pretty much in all of Apple’s keyboards these days. There’s no backlighting, which is understandable as a cost-saving measure but also a bit of a bummer. And the $599 model only has a lock key, while Touch ID is reserved for the $699 model with 512GB of storage. It took me no time to get used to opening the Neo and typing my password¹ like I used to do in the olden days, but there’s no denying that this is an area where Apple is straining to find ways to lower the cost of the Neo.

The keyboard is coupled with a bit of a throwback: a trackpad that doesn’t sense force and vibrate with haptics, but physically depresses. It supports the full range of multi-touch gestures, and reminds me a lot of the trackpad on the original Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. Users familiar with other modern MacBook trackpads will notice the difference—a real click makes a real click noise!—but it’s entirely functional and after a few minutes I forgot that it was any different from the other trackpads I use.

Similarly, the MacBook Neo doesn’t have Apple’s latest 12MP forward-facing camera with Center Stage, but an older 1080p camera with no Center Stage support. It looks fine, in the same way that the old MacBook Air and iMac cameras were fine. They do the job, and it’s understandable why Apple saved some money here.

The speakers on the Neo are neither the four-speaker array on the current Air nor the rear-firing stereo speakers from older Airs. Instead, two speakers fire outward from slits in the sides of the laptop just to the left and right of the wrist rests below the keyboard. Once again, Apple has done a good job of making laptop speakers that sound surprisingly decent, even if they’re not up to the standards of Apple’s latest and greatest.

Welcome to the party, pal

If you do the math, the sheer number of iPhones sold every year means that most iPhone users can’t be Mac users. Most quarters, Apple claims that roughly half of the Macs it sells are going to first-time Mac buyers. Even with Mac sales at all-time highs, Apple has an enormous opportunity to sell Macs to more iPhone customers, and the MacBook Neo gives Apple access to a huge slice of the market that simply would never consider buying a laptop for $1000.

This doesn’t make the MacBook Neo a “ChromeBook killer”—the education-market dynamic is much more complicated than that, regardless. But it does put Apple up against a lot of lower-cost PC laptops that previously didn’t have to face this level of competition. And, despite all the compromises, the MacBook Neo is unmistakably an Apple product that upholds the company’s fundamental brand promise. This is not a computer anyone will be embarrassed by, but it may very well embarrass many of the laptops it’s now competing against.

It may come as a shock and disappointment for people who read websites like this one, but a lot of people (even if they have the money, which many of them do not!) just don’t prioritize computers enough to consider that a $1000 MacBook Air would ever be worth the additional cost over a $500 notebook from Hewlett-Packard. Even if the Apple device was clearly nicer, and even if it offered some nice integrations with their iPhone, at the end of the day… why buy a $1000 computer when a $500 one will do the trick?

I know, I know, all of us veteran Mac users shake our heads when we hear talk like that, but it’s true. The MacBook Neo gives Apple a fighting chance to get in front of those people at a price where they might actually consider buying a Mac, perhaps for the first time. An old boss of mine used to say, “You must be considered to be bought.” At $599, the MacBook Neo is going to be considered by a whole selection of people who have never considered a Mac before. Some of them will buy it. And what they’ll get is the full-fledged Mac experience.

I think they’ll like it.

By Jason Snell

March 9, 2026 1:00 PM PT

M5 Pro MacBook Pro review: Fast, familiar friend

These days, Apple is approaching its Mac releases a little bit like how a car company approaches its model years: Every once in a while, it does a complete redesign, and there’s a whole new generation of devices. In the intervening years, the devices don’t change much, other than some of the internals. In Apple’s case, the regular release of new generations of Apple silicon drives the changes.

So when I say that the M5 Pro MacBook Pro, released this week, is very much the same pro laptop we’ve seen from Apple for the last few years, I’m not trying to be insulting. It’s the familiar, definitive MacBook Pro that was introduced with the M1 Pro and Max in 2021 and updated with new processors for the M2, M3, and M4 generations.

The display still rocks. It’s a 120-hertz ProMotion display with a wide color gamut, backlit by mini-LED display technology that allows it to run bright and peak even brighter, while also maintaining black levels that contribute to a remarkably extended level of dynamic range. The design, with flat sides and top and curved corners, defined what a 2020s Apple laptop looks like.

Some reports suggest that this fifth iteration of this design will be the end of the line, and that a new generation awaits later this year or in early 2027. That may be, but if you need a new Mac laptop now, or prefer to buy your Macs at the end of a design cycle after all the theoretical bugs have been shaken out, you will not find a finer Mac laptop available today than the M5 MacBook Pro with M5 Pro or Max processors.

Apple sent me the M5 Pro model, with 18 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores. It was like welcoming an old friend into my house, especially since I switched to an M4 Max MacBook Pro a year ago. This is a familiar, solid laptop, but the new generation of high-end M5 chips changes the game a bit.

In the end, it’s all about those chips. So here are the numbers in handy chart form:

To summarize, the M5 CPU core is about 15% faster than the M4 generation, and the Pro and Max 15- or 18-core CPU configurations are going to blow my 14-core M4 Max out of the water. My review unit is 23% faster than my M4 Max laptop.

As you might expect, GPU performance on the Pro laptops really depends on which chip class you buy. The Max versions have way more GPU cores and will generate much better performance. That said, my M4 Max’s Metal score was only about 14 percent ahead of the M5 Pro’s, despite my M4 Max having 32 GPU cores instead of the M5 Pro’s 20. It’s pretty impressive, and the M5 Max is there if you really want a ridiculous number of GPU cores to apply to your GPU-intensive workflows.

Of course, I need to mention that Apple has renamed its CPU cores as a part of the upgrade to M5 Pro and M5 Max. The top-speed cores, previously called performance cores, have been redubbed “super cores.” Meanwhile, the new lower-speed/higher-efficiency cores in the M5 Max and M5 Pro have been confusingly rebranded as “performance cores.”

The bottom line is still the same: In normal use, you’ll see the lower-tier cores grinding away on tasks efficiently, while the more power-consuming cores will leap into action when there is CPU heavy lifting to be done. On my 18-core review unit, there are 6 super cores and 12 performance cores, while those who choose the lower-end 15-core configuration will get 5 super cores and 10 performance cores.

The pace of Apple silicon progress is breathtaking, not just at the base level that powers the MacBook Air and iPad Pro, but up here at the level of bespoke chips designed for Apple’s most powerful systems. The M5 Pro and M5 Max both look like major steps above the M4 equivalents, let alone against older chip generations.

In the end, the question for upgraders coming from older Apple silicon MacBook Pros will be: Is it worth it to get a more powerful chip to do whatever it is you’re doing? And, secondarily: Are you willing to wait to see what Apple might have up its sleeve with the first iteration of an entirely new design, if that’s indeed what’s coming?

These are questions I can’t answer for you. But I will say that the M5 Pro chip seems really impressive. Even if the laptops look the same on the outside as they did in 2021, the stuff inside just keeps getting better.

By Glenn Fleishman

March 9, 2026 9:45 AM PT

How to view edits in Notes

The Notes app is a handy way to share material with other people. My family—particularly my spouse and I—has about 15 to 20 shared notes that let us collaboratively update various household, financial, college-related, and other details. We even use it with meal planning.

However, once you start adding a shared note, you get alerts about modifications. Notes let you see the editing history and highlight changes. But the stapled-on interface for this makes it harder to figure out what to choose and what you’re seeing than, say, the version history in Google Docs.

All the options to see what’s changed over time can be reached via the Shared Note menu, by clicking or tapping the profile icon with either a generic head and shoulders with a checkmark in it or a tiny profile pic from your contacts for the shared person:

• Show All Activity: This displays a pane revealing the editing history, as well as when people accepted the invitation.
• Show Highlights: You can get a clearer idea of what changes were made when and by whom.

• Show Updates: If you haven’t clicked or tapped the Shared Note menu, you may see a button that reveals changes since your last visit. This status doesn’t appear synced: although I had already viewed a note on my Mac months ago, when I opened it on my iPhone, it still displayed “Show Updates.”

You can use activity and highlights in a couple of different ways.

First, you can use the Activity pane (Profile Pic: Show All Activity) to find previous revisions, listed from the top, oldest to newest, with a profile pic and name next to each. Click or tap the revision, and the note shows additions and changes; deletions don’t appear to be marked, and I don’t see any way to roll back to earlier versions. (If you need version history for shared documents, you can turn to Google Docs or Pages, among many apps.)

Second, when you choose Show Highlights, you see changes in the margin reflecting all edits across the history of the document tagged with the editor’s name and the date. If there are too many edits to fit, you will see +1 next to the name—click or tap it to reveal all names and dates associated with the dit, and that highlight is isolated from the rest of the document.

Third, you can combine Activity and Show Highlights: with a revision selected, choose Show Highlights, and you see just the edits in the margin associated with that set of changes.

For further reading

Take a gander at my revision of Take Control of Notes, which tells everything you need to know about Apple’s Notes app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the web, from basic features like formatting text and creating lists to advanced features like scanning documents, protecting notes with passwords, making sketches, and managing attachments.

[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]

[Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian, Jeopardy champion, and serial Kickstarterer. His latest book, which you can pre-order, is Flong Time, No See. Recent books are Six Centuries of Type & Printing and How Comics Are Made.]

By Dan Moren

March 6, 2026 6:29 AM PT

In defense of the “new” Studio Display

When Apple announced the “revision” to its Studio Display last week, I—among others—did a bit of a Spock eyebrow raise. That new tag was doing a lot of heavy lifting: aside from a revamped camera and the addition of Thunderbolt 5¹, the display is the same as the 2022 model, right down to the $1599 price tag and tilt-only stand.

Is this disappointing? From one point of view, sure. After all, it’s almost four years since the last model; are we to believe that the state of the art hasn’t changed at all? That point is, of course, somewhat belied by the addition of the Studio Display XDR to the lineup, though it has many of the same specs, such as size and resolution.

The argument to the contrary—and one that shouldn’t shock longtime Apple watchers, since it’s often their modus operandi—is that if it ain’t broke, why fix it? Compare a newly released M5 MacBook Air to the M2 model, also from 2022, and guess what: those displays didn’t change either. Honestly, you’re probably going to find more similarities between those models than differences.

Now, I concede this could all just be cognitive dissonance reduction doing its work. I’ve been using a 2022 Studio Display since around the time of its release, paired first with my MacBook, and later with an M2 Pro Mac mini.

Frankly, it’s great. Perhaps I’m basic, but I didn’t even shop around for displays: I was a longtime 27-inch iMac user before making the switch, and the panel on the Studio Display being essentially the same as in the iMac eased my transition. Granted, I don’t consider myself particularly exacting when it comes to the visual, and I’m certainly not doing any professional graphics or video work that relies on perfect reproduction. To wit, I definitely do not know the difference between sRGB and P3. But for everything I do, the Studio Display is, in the manner of Apple’s best technology, completely transparent.² I was honestly surprised to see Nick Heer’s comment about sketchy firmware issues—I cannot remember the last time I touched anything on my Studio Display. Again, as per Apple’s most famous maxim: it just works.

So, as a happy owner of a Studio Display, I applaud Apple for not changing it³—I consider this a boon to my wallet and my mental health, since there’s no reason for me to crave an update I don’t need. I can remain confident that my Studio Display is just as good as this one, which Apple will probably keep selling for several years—because they are essentially the same. And I can continue to amortize the not inconsiderable cost I paid back in 2022 over the foreseeable future, making it an even better investment. Even if this Mac mini gets shuffled off my desk in the next couple years, the Studio Display will keep on trucking.

So, I’m okay with all of it: after all I’ve saved myself $1599. And, honestly, I’m going to need that—and probably then some—when that folding iPhone comes around this fall.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]

By Dan Moren

March 4, 2026 12:46 PM PT

Apple makes a Trojan horse play for the education market

Apple’s history with education is a long and twisty one. Like many folks my age, my earliest school experience with computers were an Apple IIs, carted in to a classroom, on which you could wait your turn to play Number Munchers. Later on, it was labs full of newer models where we cleverly wrote infinite BASIC loops to print “DAN IS AWESOME” all up and down the rows.

By the time I got to college, though, Macs were already in the minority. Even then, the year that the iMac debuted, I was one of just a few folks in my dorm that had an Apple computer at all.¹

In more recent years, Apple’s found itself squeezed out of the K12 education market by the advent of cheap Chromebooks, which often cost just a couple hundred bucks for a unit—a price point that Apple couldn’t (or chose not) to meet with either the Mac or iPad. Couple that with Google’s dominance in courseware, and some big splashy Apple deals ended up evaporating—or worse—and it hasn’t been the best time for the company in education.

A couple recent moves by Apple, however, have me wondering if Cupertino hasn’t decided to take a different tack when approaching education—one that plays more to its strengths.

Continue reading “Apple makes a Trojan horse play for the education market”…

By Jason Snell

March 4, 2026 7:23 AM PT

Apple introduces colorful MacBook Neo at $599

The rumors are true: Apple has announced a new, low-price MacBook based on an A-series processor. It’s the MacBook Neo and it starts at $599, the lowest price ever for a new Mac laptop.

This product is the result of Apple’s manufacturing ability and the rise of Apple silicon. With Intel processors, the MacBook Air has basically occupied the bottom limit of what Apple would consider acceptable performance for a Mac. But even the original M1 MacBook Air still offers solid performance, and the A series chips primarily used in iPhones have kept getting better alongside them. The MacBook Neo is the outcome: Apple can now sell a capable laptop below the MacBook Air, powered by the same A18 Pro processor found in the iPhone 16 Pro.

For $599—keep in mind, the cheapest standard price for any new Mac was $499 for a Mac mini—you get a complete 13-inch laptop that shares a family resemblance (right down to the rounded corners) with the rest of the MacBook product line. (The education price is $499!) The base model doesn’t offer Touch ID and only has 256GB of storage, but there’s also a $699 model with 512GB storage and Touch ID.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the colors: Apple has dropped its longstanding moratorium on bright colors on Mac laptops. The Neo comes in silver, yes, but also blush, indigo, and citrus. I’ve seen them all in person, so let me translate: Blush is pink enough that even I, a person who has a hard time seeing pinks, can tell that it’s pink. Indigo is sort of like the MacBook Air’s Midnight color lightened up a few notches. And citrus is a bright yellow-gold that nobody is going to mistake for some other Apple laptop.

No $599 Mac laptop is going to exist without compromises, but they’re surprisingly minimal, in my opinion. (And I’ll point out that if they’re too much for a potential buyer, the MacBook Air is right there.) There’s no MagSafe charging or Thunderbolt, but there are two USB-C ports and a headphone jack. One USB-C port is capable of driving 4K external video at 60 frames per second. Both models offer only 8GB of RAM, which is enough to run Apple Intelligence but is shy of the MacBook Air’s 16GB base.

If you’re wondering if an iPhone processor can really drive a Mac, let me reprint this chart that I posted last year:

In short, that A18 CPU core is fast. That will carry the day for the MacBook Neo, and I’d call multi-core and GPU performance “good enough,” certainly for a $599 laptop. (Of course, we’ll see how the MacBook Neo actually performs once we get our hands on one for extended testing and review.)

In introducing the MacBook Neo at an Apple event in New York City, Apple VP of Hardware John Ternus emphasized that nearly half of all Macs Apple sells are to people new to the Mac. If you look at the MacBook Neo product page you’ll see that Apple is well aware that a $599 laptop allows it to address a market that may have never really considered buying a Mac before. In addition to establishing that it’s a bona fide, full-featured Mac, there’s a prominent “Switch from PC to Mac” element.

It’s also clear that Apple’s attempts to use the iPad as a way into that part of the market, most notably education, have been limited. The MacBook Neo gives Apple a traditional computer (complete with display, keyboard, and pointing device) to sell into that market. That $499 education price is really aggressive. Apple’s never going to win on price alone in any market—it’s not the game they play—but this puts them in the mix more than an iPad-keyboard combo or an education-priced MacBook Air.

The last few years, Apple has been selling an M1 MacBook Air at Walmart for very low prices. It was a curious choice and Apple hasn’t really talked much about it, but it sure seemed like the company was testing the viability of selling laptops into a never-before-seen price point. Was that all a test of viability for the MacBook Neo? Either way, this new laptop may very well bring the Mac to an entirely new set of users who would have never considered buying a Mac before. That’s very exciting.

By Jason Snell

March 3, 2026 4:45 PM PT

Apple gives in to temptation and renames its CPU cores

One of the most surprising parts of Apple’s announcement on Tuesday of new M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models was its decision to change how it describes the two different types of CPU cores in its processors.

What’s in a name? It’s really a marketing decision, more than anything else. And most people will not care, or even notice. But those of us who pay close attention to this stuff will notice, and you may be hearing about it from us for some time to come.

Here’s what happened:

• Apple renamed its most powerful CPU cores, which had previously been called performance cores. As of the M5 Pro and Max, those cores are now called “super cores.”
• Surprise! Since those cores also shipped in the M5 MacBook Pro, M5 iPad Pro, and M5 Vision Pro, they have all been retroactively renamed as super cores. I am writing this very story on a device that sports four super cores, but I didn’t even know that until I heard the news early Tuesday morning.
• The M5 Pro and M5 Max chips also feature the debut of a brand-new core design derived from the super core design. (I assume the efficiency cores in the base M5 were probably the same cores that Apple used in the M4.) This new core design is still power efficient, but it can offer high performance in multithreaded tasks. In the past, the second-tier core was referred to as an efficiency core, but Apple has decided that these new ones are better described as performance cores. In other words, Batman has become Superman and Robin (or is it Supergirl?) has become Batman.

Here’s the backstory: With every new generation of Apple’s Mac-series processors, I’ve gotten the impression from Apple execs that they’ve been a little frustrated with the perception that their “lesser” efficiency cores were weak sauce. I’ve lost count of the number of briefings and conversations I’ve had where they’ve had to go out of their way to point out that, actually, the lesser cores on an M-series chip are quite fast on their own, in addition to being very good at saving power!

Clearly they’ve had enough of that, so they’re changing how Apple’s second-tier cores are marketed to emphasize their performance, rather than their efficiency. Which is fine on its face, but by re-using an existing term of art, it’s going to be a bit confusing when it comes time to explain what’s going on. I wonder if Apple should’ve come up with two different names for these cores, rather than recycling one of them.

Leaving the naming aside, a new secondary core design is actually great news. Apple doesn’t iterate every aspect of its chips every time, but chooses different bits to upgrade—and the power-efficient cores got the big update with the high-end M5 generation. The “super” cores really are meant to be used for peak workloads, and a huge amount of the everyday life of a Mac doesn’t need to tap that power. Also, presumably these new cores will also crop up on the base M6 chips next year, making them appreciably better than the base M5.

In the end, I suspect this is entirely a marketing issue: Apple didn’t think the lesser of the two core types was getting its due, and I understand why. In a few years maybe none of us will flinch when we read about a chip with so many super cores and so many performance cores. Not today, though.

One last, tangential observation: Apple announced its new Fusion Architecture today as well, which allows the company to mix and match different “chiplets” in a single package. This is another esoteric chip thing (is there any other kind?) but it has real ramifications for the future of Apple’s chip designs. It means that Apple can be a bit more modular with its designs, building a standard CPU set (for the M5 Max and Pro) while offering two different GPU variants with 20 (Pro) and 40 (Max) cores. I’m also curious what this means for a future Ultra chip, assuming there will be one whenever the M5 Mac Studio is announced.

By Jason Snell

March 3, 2026 7:17 AM PT

New M5 MacBook Air arrives with raised specs, price

On Tuesday Apple updated the MacBook Air, its most popular Mac laptop, by adding the M5 chip it introduced last fall.

Beyond the new chip, the M5 MacBook Air is very much the same as last year’s M4 MacBook Air. It does get Apple’s new N1 chip, with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and improved memory bandwidth of 153GB/s. But the primary changes are in two areas: price and storage.

The base-model M5 Air starts at 512GB of storage, twice what the base-model M4 Air offered. But in true Apple fashion, that generous spec bump comes at a price. Literally. The M5 Air’s starting price is $1099 ($999 for education), $100 more than the M4 Air’s $999 base price.

When Apple raises base prices, this is generally how it does it. Just last year, it raised the base price of the iPhone 17 Pro by $100 but also doubled the onboard storage. So you get more, but you don’t have an option to pay less and get less.

It’s a little disappointing, since Apple had finally gotten back to that magic sub-$1000 non-education price for the MacBook Air. Perhaps, as rumors suggest, Apple has another low-cost laptop on the way that provides it some cover to increase the base price of the MacBook Air. We’ll see.