Apple's MacBook Neo makes repairs easier and cheaper than other MacBooks

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/more-modular-design-makes-macbook-neo-easier-to-fix-than-other-apple-laptops/

by GeekyBear • 4 months ago

191 120 4 months ago

0xDEFACED• 4 months ago

i sure hope so if apple intends to sell these things to school divisions. the levels of abuse i witnessed students dishing out to their chromebooks when i was a teacher was shocking to say the least

entropicdrifter• 4 months ago

I feel like "most repairable macbook" is a bit like saying "most edible dirt". While it's good that there's progress, it's pretty telling that they need to only compare it within the same company's products.

Someone12342• 4 months ago

I'd suggest you watch a teardown video. The Neo is absurdly repairable compared to just about anything in its category. It is extremely modular, and uses screws.

ProllyInfamous6• 4 months ago

Repairability examples:

modular USB ports; battery sans glue; trackpad

Twenty years ago, I worked part-time in a laptop repair facility for a large educational institution; this computer would have been a godsend (e.g. the first MacBooks had hundreds of screws, plastic everywhere).

edhelas2• 4 months ago

Wow screws. Crazy. So the industry standard for many years. But I guess it's Different™ this time.

0_____0• 4 months ago

I've replaced a battery, screen, hinges on a macbook (2015). Did they get considerably worse at repairability after that? Because while there were a fair number of steps, it's not like they required exotic techniques to pull off.

shrubble• 4 months ago

Yes they did. Reminder: your experience is 11 years ago and several Intel and ARM generations old. Also it’s more than $3 Trillion in revenue ago.

Rebelgecko• 4 months ago

Yes

lallysingh• 4 months ago

Yeah, I mean I'm looking at frameworks/thinkpads on one side and chromebooks on the other. Not charging up to $440 (!) for a keyboard isn't a great act of engineering or generosity. This has been ridiculous for a very, very long time. Being less ridiculous isn't worth celebrating. The goal markers have moved so damned much.

Compare to a thinkpad keyboard FRU. They have fluid drains and still cost $99 for a top-end laptop. My daughter's chromebook keyboard replacement at school was $16.

tpmoney2• 4 months ago

This has been ridiculous for a very, very long time. Being less ridiculous isn't worth celebrating.

So what I'm hearing is you don't want Apple to make their computers more repairable? Think of this like training a dog. My dog can open the cabinet in the kitchen on their own, pull out a specific requested item, close the door again and bring the item to me from anywhere in my house. Opening a door is just tugging on something, bringing something to me is just fetch, closing a door is just pushing with its nose. If I went into the training of this with the attitude of "oh wow, you pulled the door open" or "oh wow, you fetched the thing" and didn't reward my dog for doing those simple pieces because "any good dog can tug on a rope or fetch a ball", then my dog would never have gotten to the point of doing all of those things in a repeatable complex sequence that serves a useful purpose. Instead every part of it that my dog got right, they got all sorts of praise and rewards. And so once I started asking more, my dog eagerly tried to do those things because they knew if they did what I wanted, they could get the things they wanted.

Train your companies the same way. Give them the positive PR and praise they're looking for when they do the things you want them to do. You'll get them to do what you want a lot faster if they have an actual incentive to do it.

Someone12342• 4 months ago

I just want to link this teardown; it is a suitable companion to this article:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k7Lv7f-5CQ

On a rational level it isn't surprising that the "compute" part is so small, given its origins, but for some reason it still caught me by surprised seeing something barely larger than a Raspberry Pi.

But, yeah, this thing is crazy modular. I particularly want to call out how trivial it is to replace the ports, given how common of a failure point they are. With the keyboard/monitor being more involved, but absolutely still approachable.

I believe he finds just a single piece of light adhesive keeping a cable in place, everything else (inc. the battery) is screws only.

ggreer2• 4 months ago

It looks like it's still bigger than the logic board on the 12" MacBook from 2015.[1]

I really wish Apple would resurrect that form factor, as every other MacBook since has seemed bulky in comparison. Thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher[2], I still haven't gotten a newer mac. With a modern M series chip, it wouldn't have such rough tradeoffs in battery life and performance. I'd definitely buy it.

1. See step 11 on https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+MacBook+2015+Teardown...

2. https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

46493168• 4 months ago

What version of MacOS are you running on yours? I have a 2017, 16GB, 1.7ghz and it's DOG slow on Ventura, even with reduce motion and reduce transparency. I have considered downgrading just to see if there's improvement.

simonh2• 4 months ago

The Neo actually has similar dimensions to the 12” overall, though not as tapered. That’s possible because it has a much slimmer bezel. The Neo is about a third heavier though.

Eric_WVGG• 4 months ago

I just helped a friend replace her eleven year old 11" Macbook Air with a new M4 Air.

her review: “this thing is HUGE :( :P ”

jeffbee• 4 months ago

It seems like a normal-sized motherboard? For comparison here is the ifixit teardown of a PixelBook Go (happens to be the laptop I am using right now). https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/LT6YEIeE1Svh4WCk.hug...

dzhiurgis2• 4 months ago

Apple could win a lot of likes if they added some form of storage expansion. Even a recessed USB-C for those tiny drives would go a long way.

Doesn't need to be super fast or fancy, just extend the life of device a little more.

Soldered internal storage and ram is fine if I can store my non-essentials in a cheap drive. Or my essentials in a way that is recoverable if device fails. iCloud helps for photos and families, but it's still far too slow if you don't live near it.

illiac7862• 4 months ago

It’s already there on the MacBook Pro lineup: Wouldn’t the MicroSDXC card slot qualify as storage expansion?

drooopy• 4 months ago

This is probably going to be my new laptop next year if it gets the A19 Pro with 12 GB of RAM.

etchalon• 4 months ago

I'd bet these things are going to be on a two-year upgrade cycle, instead of yearly. Will be super happy to be proven wrong.

ErneX• 4 months ago

They released the 17e a year after 16e so there’s hope.

intrasight2• 4 months ago

This one will be my new laptop this year, and I'll then see what happens next year.

qingcharles• 4 months ago

Literally the only thing wrong with these is the RAM is so borderline in 2026. 12GB would have been right on the money for an upgrade options.

illiac7862• 4 months ago

100% that. So frustrating. Their lifespan is artificially short because of this.

FrojoS• 4 months ago

Not saying you are wrong or the option shouldn't exist, but what specifically makes 8 GB too little but 12 GB sufficient? Planned obsolescence and software that is written with the idea that "8 GB is borderline in 2026" seems to be blame. But perhaps there are genuine limitations that 8GB RAM runs into. Certain AI models, rendering at certain resolutions maybe?

My 8GB M1 Air is my daily driver for over 5 years now and so far it has worked out well. Sometimes, I have to replace badly optimised software for good alternatives. I hope that by the time that MacOS becomes unusable, Asahi Linux is mature enough to replace the OS rather than the hardware. I'm still on Sequoia and from what I've heard going to Tahoe would be terrible for the usability of my Air. So, no idea how much longer I will be able to hold out and if Asahi is ready now. It looks ok on first glance.

Edit: On second glance it seems not ready at all https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m1/ "Video Decoder: WIP"

dingybat• 4 months ago

might as well get an air

oybng• 4 months ago

Just 20 steps and 18 screws to replace a battery, easy!

SoKamil• 4 months ago

But no adhesive under the battery. That’s huge.

crooked-v• 4 months ago

As it turns out, once battery life hits a certain baseline, people prefer devices where the battery is harder to replace but larger over devices where the battery is hot-swappable but smaller.

Clamchop• 4 months ago

I mean, yes, it is easy. No adhesive and just a couple of clips on the case. You could replace the battery in 20 minutes with little anxiety that you're going to cause damage getting to it.

throw737458t8t8• 4 months ago

And xray, microscope and soldering station to replace ssd.

tpmoney2• 4 months ago

The guy in the linked video up thread tore the whole computer down in 6 minutes. I'm pretty sure most people can manage to find 12 minutes out of their life every 5 years to replace the battery if they want. But if that is too arduous, you can pay Apple to do it for you for a mere $149, with the battery included in that price. Given that a comparable battery from iFixit will cost you $80-$100, that's just ~$50 to have someone save you the hassle of having to remove 18 screws from your laptop every 5 years.

cromka• 4 months ago

Bingo. People will go lengths to find a reason to complain about things they would otherwise never be actually bothered by in their lives.

charcircuit• 4 months ago

The MacBook Neo has a rechargeable battery. By the time the battery goes bad from too many charge cycles people will want to upgrade to a newer one.

alwillis2• 4 months ago

The Neo’s battery is rated for 1,000 charge cycles, same as the MBP.

wvenable2• 4 months ago

Probably could get the battery directly without all the other disassembly steps...

kotaKat• 4 months ago

Apple’s official illustrated guide shows you only need to pop the 8 case screws, 2 screws holding down the battery connector, then route the cables away and remove the 18 battery screws.

Not bad, not terrible?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/126157

vablings3• 4 months ago

There is a huge difference between threaded holes inside metal vs the horrible plastic self-tappers that are used by literally every other laptop on the market. Laptops are possibly one of the worse items to be made of plastic due to the shape because any compliance or bending will strip out self-tapped threads and there is no option for suitable replacement

newsclues3• 4 months ago

I'm not sure if it's possible, but an aftermarket battery with closer to the MB Airs KW/h specs would be a very interesting modification.

The repairability seems to be interesting especially if it leads to framework style upgradability (logic boards, not the ports).

pfortuny• 4 months ago

FYI: KWh (it is a product).

hyperhello• 4 months ago

Yeah, that would be an interesting modification, wouldn’t it?

newsclues3• 4 months ago

Link? Searching for such a generic term didn’t reveal anything

jajuuka• 4 months ago

I'd bet dollars to donuts that it either treats any battery connection like the stock battery or it fails over to a run like crap mode like third party batteries in their phones.

newsclues3• 4 months ago

If the BMS onboard the batteries only exposes the same power as the stock battery I don’t know how it would know

needSomeCoffee• 4 months ago

Wow. Beautiful engineering. Please, please Apple use this ethos for all future major laptop re-designs e.g. MBA & MBP.

MBCook4• 4 months ago

When they did this to the low end iPhones, it “trickled up” to better models later.

I suspect they’ll do that on laptops too. I hope they do.

cwoolfe3• 4 months ago

Repairability and cost are key for the education market. Apple sold iPads into this space for awhile but there's been pushback and talk of going to chromebooks. Seems like they are positioning Neo for this segment as well.

intrasight2• 4 months ago

I am WAY out of school and I still care about repairability and cost ;)

reaperducer4• 4 months ago

there's been pushback and talk of going to chromebooks

There's been talk of the education market going to Chromebooks?

Did we just fall into a wormhole to 2014?

ProllyInfamous6• 4 months ago

Can we bring computer labs back into education, instead of K-12 all having their own laptops?!? Why does a primary schooler need to "access an online assignment portal" to turn in his assignment?!? You can make a good argument (perhaps) for high schoolers having access to personal laptops, but this shouldn't be allowed on the whim of all classroom hours.

We are failing our next generation, massively — it's already washing out in Gen Alpha's testscores/employability.

----

background: attended college on a teaching scholarship, twenty years ago; immediately left heartbreak of education, breaking repayment contract, to attend grad school; still jaded from that uncredentialed five-figure expense

cwoolfe3• 4 months ago

To clarify: Talk of going from iPads to Chromebooks. Because kids view the iPads as a toy to play games on.

euroderf• 4 months ago

Is the Neo in a price range where it could be attached to a robot chassis as its processsor and UI ? Connectivity, video, audio, status display, even a Max Headroom. USB-C plug-n-go.

edhelas2• 4 months ago

So basically they are trying to reach what Lenovo and others are doing for years.

Nice Apple. That's good :)

ajay-b• 4 months ago

This is really good to read. I hung on to my 2012 MBP for the replaceable battery, hard drive, and memory far longer than I wanted to. It's great having a thinner machine, but repairability - really extending its longevity - will always be a huge selling point for me. I have bitterly disliked the idea of "disposable technology."

vablings3• 4 months ago

Would I be a little crazy to buy one of these and make an SBC adaptor board. Also getting IOS to run on these devices might not be astronomically difficult considering we have seen quite a few M series iPad running MacOS

alex7o• 4 months ago

This is the same chip as the iphone, the only thing that need to be done is make something like m1n1 work with iOS and circumvent all the security measures

wvenable2• 4 months ago

The teardown is impressive. The next question is whether anyone other than Apple will be able to get parts.

jacobp100• 4 months ago

Apple has a third party sell them - https://selfservicerepair.eu/en-GB/home

retired3• 4 months ago

I always thought that website was a daughter company from Apple for liability reasons. Never knew it was a third party. TIL.

anhner2• 4 months ago

Thanks, EU! A lot more gadgets will come out this year with improved repairability because of an EU requirement starting next year: https://repair.eu/news/making-batteries-removable-and-replac...

anhner2• 4 months ago

It's unbelievable how many EU haters are on this sub. Literally anything good it does, if you point it put you get downvoted. Stay classy.

Or perhaps you believe that this year all manufacturers, Apple especially, decided out of the goodness of their hearts that their devices need to be repairable?

prmoustache2• 4 months ago

Apple care has always seemed like an extortion scheme to me yet Apple owners seemed to feel it was a good deal, not realizing that you shouldn't even have to replace stuff before the 7 to 10 years mark appart maybe for the battery.

Judging by the sorry state of most second hand Macbook it really feel that they have made their hardware disposable (despite using relatively premium hardware like aluminum compared to plastic stuff on some brands) to force people to subscribe to it. Not that they are the only one to make shitty unreliable stuff (looking at you Asus, Acer and most brand's "family" lines).

wilg2• 4 months ago

pretty sure apple tops reliability metrics reliably, so this is probably more about your feelings than reality

MBCook4• 4 months ago

Just like when they did this on the iPhones I suspect this is all self-serving.

It’s about making it easier and faster for Apple to fix the machines.

It benefits us all. But I suspect the cost of their super tight integration into large non-replaceable components with lots of glue started to show up in repair work costs.

reaperducer4• 4 months ago

It's not about "having to" replace parts. It's for just-in-case. It's essentially insurance.

The battery in my M1 MacBook Pro went bad recently. But I have AppleCare, so I was able to walk into an Apple Store and hand it to someone, and the next day I picked it up all repaired. (New keyboard, too, since the keyboard and battery are considered one part.)

  Total cost without AppleCare: $250 + tax.
  Total cost with AppleCare: $0.
  Total I've spent on AppleCare: $150.

If I had some machine from Dell or Acer or even Microsoft, what would I do? Ship it back to China for six months? There's no store I can walk into to get it fixed the next day.

The value in AppleCare is the same value you have in fire insurance. Maybe you want to save a few bucks and take your chances that everything you own won't burn to ashes and you have to start over with nothing. I'm not in college anymore.

brudgers3• 4 months ago

With Dell you can get next business day on-site warranties for a reasonable price.

The tech comes out and does the repair at your home or place of business. Because the tech is often a contractor, in my experience there’s not likely to be an inquest for the purpose of denying the claim.

prmoustache2• 4 months ago

Total cost without AppleCare: $250 + tax. Total cost with AppleCare: $0. Total I've spent on AppleCare: $150.

Hence my comment about extortion scheme, even $150 would be way too high a price for a keyboard + battery but they kind of forces you subscribe to it by having absurdly high parts replacement prices. It is like a mafia asking you to pay for your protection yet you still think you made a good deal.

juancn• 4 months ago

Apple care is about user fuckups, not Apple's.

Some people use computers with utter disregard for their integrity.

Macs, specially Apple silicon ones are extremely reliable.

wolvoleo4• 4 months ago

Not really. AppleCare is about apple's fuckups. AppleCare+ is about the users' ones.

hbn2• 4 months ago

Apple stuff lasts me longer than any other computers I've purchased in my life. The Mac had a bit of a dark age in the late 2010s but barring that, I think it's incorrect to say Apple products are unreliable.

I bought a late-2013 13" MacBook Pro when I started university and I used that thing up until the end of 2021 when I got a 14" M1 Pro MBP. And it wasn't even because it was performing that terribly, I just wanted the new Apple silicon machine. Now it's ~4.5 years later and that machine runs like it did on day 1 and I have no desire to upgrade anytime soon.

eviks• 4 months ago

It's even less correct to exclude the whole decade of unreliable when discussing unreliable. Any product becomes good if you ignore the times when it's bad

retired3• 4 months ago

I had Apple Care on my 2006 MacBook. It covered around €3000 in repairs. Especially the logic board replacements added up fast. Couple of palm rests as well though that was also covered by extended warranty.

I paid $50 for that Apple Care through an eBay listing and got send a code that I could use to register. This was back when Apple Care was sold in physical boxes and people would resell them from foreign countries. So great deal all round.

But for the rest I never had Apple Care on anything.

rconti• 4 months ago

Apple owners seemed to feel it was a good deal, not realizing that you shouldn't even have to replace stuff before the 7 to 10 years mark appart maybe for the battery.

This whole post is a [citation needed] on multiple fronts.

Petersipoi• 4 months ago

Man I've never read a comment so detached from my actual experience

tsunamifury2• 4 months ago

this is a re-arranged iPhone inside a larger case with a bigger battery no?

fckgw• 4 months ago

I mean yeah, the same way an iPhone is a rearranged Macbook in a smaller case with a smaller battery.

tsunamifury2• 4 months ago

[flagged]

brudgers3• 4 months ago

The bar set by “Cheaper to repair than other Apple laptops” is wheelchair accessible.

Brajeshwar• 4 months ago

Wishful thinking: Apple releases Veronica

Veronica is an ultra-light MacBook based on Neo, lighter than the MacBook Air. It becomes way more powerful once you connect your iPhone directly.

Reference: Veronica is the Iron Man Armor that snaps onto Iron Man to handle Hulk.

nindalf• 4 months ago

The armour is Hulkbuster. The satellite that launches it is Veronica.

wolvoleo4• 4 months ago

The one thing I'd really miss here is the backlit keyboard. Too bad they cut it. And made it not even an option.

Including that omission it's very reminiscent of the surface laptop go. I'm surprised other reviews haven't made that connection. Similar price, features, the works. Even missing the fingerprint on the base model, just like the surface laptop go. The funky colours. People are acting like apple invented this class of midrange laptop but they didn't.

vablings3• 4 months ago

I always found a backlit keyboard to be visually distracting and had it on the lowest setting for my old M1. I literally never have to look at the keyboard when typing even with mac quirks

wolvoleo4• 4 months ago

I do because I have so many different computers so I don't build fingerspitzengefühl. And its not just for typing. I use the keyboard for navigation too. Like Arrow keys and page up/down. Those are a pain to use on Mac laptops which makes finding them even more important.

sumek83• 4 months ago

That makes me suddenly way more interested in the upcoming redesign of the Pro laptops. I don't care about pretty much anything else that is gossiped about, but a reperaible design would be sweet

Apple's MacBook Neo makes repairs easier and cheaper than other MacBooks

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