[00:00] Today is the day that pigs learn to fly.&nbsp; Apple released a budget laptop that appears&nbsp;&nbsp; to be rather excellent on paper. This is&nbsp; the blush MacBook Neo. It kind of looks&nbsp;&nbsp; like the color of Santa's socks after he&nbsp; does the laundry, or maybe it's a glass of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:15] milk that's had a strawberry dipped in it.&nbsp; Or how about an embarrassed marshmallow? Oh, I got it. It's the color of a flamingo that's&nbsp; lacking sufficient shrimp in its diet. That's it.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:30] From now on, we'll call it "famished flamingo."&nbsp; You would think that for being only 500 bucks,&nbsp;&nbsp; Apple would want to make their logo a bit&nbsp; bigger to help offset the lost revenue with&nbsp;&nbsp; increased advertising, but we'll get into&nbsp; the nitty-gritty later. Inside the box,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:45] we have a new 20-watt charger and a&nbsp; USB-C cable. And you might be like,&nbsp;&nbsp; "Hey, Jerry, why would they include a&nbsp; smartphone charger inside a laptop box?" And that's a fantastic question. See,&nbsp; it turns out that this MacBook Neo is,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:58] in fact, a smartphone with a laptop keyboard,&nbsp; laptop screen, and a laptop battery. The Neo is&nbsp;&nbsp; using an A18 Pro chip, which is the exact&nbsp; same processor that we find in the iPhone&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:10] 16 Pro Max that just happens to be sitting on my&nbsp; desk up in the corner. And here, let's prove it. If we flip over the Famished Flamingo&nbsp; MacBook Neo and grab my screwdriver,&nbsp;&nbsp; we can start removing all the pentalobe screws on&nbsp; the back panel. There are eight of them. And it's&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:26] important to keep them all organized since each&nbsp; of the screws has a different shoulder lengths,&nbsp;&nbsp; the back panel and pull it off to the&nbsp; side. It has cool little hooks embedded&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:39] into the metal that allow it to slide up&nbsp; and off, but then can get pressed straight&nbsp;&nbsp; back down again when we go to reassemble&nbsp; it later—assuming it survives that long. And there we go. We have the antennas up top,&nbsp; like the Bluetooth 6 and Wi-Fi 6. Then the long,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:53] thin motherboard, a massive battery here in&nbsp; the center, and the lower clicky trackpad and&nbsp;&nbsp; dual stereo loudspeakers near the bottom.&nbsp; You'll notice that the MacBook Neo has the&nbsp;&nbsp; same shape of motherboard that we find&nbsp; inside of the M4 iPad. But of course,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:06] instead of the M4 computer chip running a&nbsp; laptop operating system, we have an iPhone&nbsp;&nbsp; chip running the entire laptop. And we'll&nbsp; compare the two a bit closer in a second. But it is wild to see that there is no heatsink&nbsp; or heat pipes to help cool off anything in here.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:21] Not even a fan, which I'm not a huge fan of. I&nbsp; guess we'll turn it off before we go too much&nbsp;&nbsp; farther. I'll remove two more pentalobe screws&nbsp; near the battery, unplug it like a little Lego,&nbsp;&nbsp; and then take out a whopping 18 more screws.&nbsp; I'll unplug the two stereo loudspeaker wires&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:36] so the entire battery can come free. This&nbsp; might be the fastest Apple laptop battery&nbsp;&nbsp; removal of all time. Theres no pull tabs,&nbsp; just screws. And I'd bet that anyone who&nbsp;&nbsp; knows how to work a screwdriver could swap&nbsp; out this battery in about 5 or 10 minutes,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:50] which is actually wild—especially if you&nbsp; know what Apple used to be giving us inside&nbsp;&nbsp; their laptops, like this monstrosity&nbsp; of a battery inside the MacBook Pro. What the heck? It feels like Apple is turning&nbsp; over a new leaf this year, especially since&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:03] the Neo's battery is made with 95% recycled&nbsp; lithium and 100% recycled cobalt—all 36.5 Watt&nbsp;&nbsp; of it. That's a pretty big deal. Apple’s&nbsp; taken a page out of Framework's playbook,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:15] and I'm totally fine with that. We'll get&nbsp; back to the processor in just a second,&nbsp;&nbsp; but first, continuing on with our teardown,&nbsp; we'll remove the clicky trackpad next. It's really interesting here that Apple has added&nbsp; a very substantial metal bracket to the back&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:28] side of the trackpad. Humans naturally think&nbsp; that heavier items should be more expensive.&nbsp;&nbsp; And while this bracket does double as rigid&nbsp; support for the back side of the clicky trackpad,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:41] I'm sure Apple didn't go out of their way&nbsp; to reduce the weight all that much either.&nbsp;&nbsp; And for those curious, it does resonate around a&nbsp; C-sharp. Lifting the trackpad out of the laptop,&nbsp;&nbsp; we can see it has two parallel plates that&nbsp; provide the spring-back force to level the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:55] trackpad out after it's been compressed.&nbsp; And the physical clicky button on the&nbsp;&nbsp; back is what presses up against the thick&nbsp; metal plate we took out a few seconds ago. The dual loudspeakers come out next. These&nbsp; are big old blocks of side-firing spatial&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:08] audio stereo speakers, and they are glued&nbsp; shut pretty well. I thought we would need&nbsp;&nbsp; to get all catastrophic with them, but then I&nbsp; remembered we have magnet paper and teardown&nbsp;&nbsp; skins. And these MacBook Neo magnets are&nbsp; really as small as they look. Basically&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:21] the same size as an earpiece from the Samsung&nbsp; Galaxy S26 Ultra or even the iPhone 16 Pro Max,&nbsp;&nbsp; which we'll get to more in a second. There are&nbsp; smartphone parts all over the place in here. With both speakers out, we can remove the&nbsp; color-matched headphone jack. Also pink,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:37] but with plausible deniability. To remove&nbsp; the antenna board, we have five more screws,&nbsp;&nbsp; including the wire attachment points on&nbsp; the motherboard. And then we can work on&nbsp;&nbsp; the motherboard herself. There are two&nbsp; display ribbon cable connectors. These&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:50] have metal locking latches that flip up so the&nbsp; connector can slip out. Then the motherboard has&nbsp;&nbsp; five screws of its own, plus the two USB-C&nbsp; ports using a single screwed-in Lego-style&nbsp;&nbsp; connector on the right-hand side. Three more&nbsp; ZIF connectors with little plastic latches are&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:05] in the center. And I assume these are for&nbsp; the power button, trackpad, and keyboard. Finally, the motherboard is released. This, my&nbsp; friends, is the entire brains of the MacBook Neo.&nbsp;&nbsp; It's the smartphone running the whole computer.&nbsp; And I don't say that condescendingly at all.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:19] According to the benchmarks, this laptop can hold&nbsp; its own for all the basics and work great for the&nbsp;&nbsp; vast majority of the human population, except&nbsp; for—oh no, what is this? What have they done?&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:31] I can't believe Apple installed the processor logo&nbsp; upside down. Inconceivable. Even from the keyboard&nbsp;&nbsp; side of your Neo resting on your lap, the Apple&nbsp; stem on the A18 Pro will be pointing towards you,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:44] not away from you. I bet they thought nobody&nbsp; would notice, but here we are noticing. Speaking of noticing, let's grab the motherboard&nbsp; out of the iPhone 16 Pro Max. You can already&nbsp;&nbsp; tell that the iPhone motherboard is quite a bit&nbsp; smaller than what we see inside the MacBook Neo,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:59] but it should still have the same&nbsp; processing chip. A phone board can't&nbsp;&nbsp; be spread out like a laptop or an iPad&nbsp; board can. There's less real estate,&nbsp;&nbsp; so it has to be folded over and stacked on&nbsp; top of itself. If I take my razor knife,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:13] I can pop open the two halves. And then we&nbsp; can see, indeed, that the Neo and the iPhone&nbsp;&nbsp; 16 Pro Max have the same chip. The chip in the&nbsp; iPhone doesn't have an Apple logo on it, though,&nbsp;&nbsp; which is surprising. Apple normally tries to&nbsp; slap that logo everywhere it can, but it does&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:28] still look super cool, though, so thumbs up&nbsp; for getting to see both chips side by side. There are a few things left inside the laptop&nbsp; that we need to check out, like the four screws&nbsp;&nbsp; holding in the dual USB-C ports. The one closer&nbsp; to the back side of the laptop is USB 3.0,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:42] and the one closer to the user is USB 2.0,&nbsp; but both can be used to charge up the battery.&nbsp;&nbsp; Then we have the large metallic sticker&nbsp; over the back side of the Magic Keyboard,&nbsp;&nbsp; and this helps keep any gunk or dust from&nbsp; getting inside of the MacBook components.
[06:56] the laptop is completely disassembled.&nbsp; Not bad for 500 bucks. Rather amazing,&nbsp;&nbsp; actually. Apple says one of the ways they&nbsp; managed to decrease costs is by using a&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:08] metal-forming process instead of a machining&nbsp; process. They take 90% recycled aluminum and&nbsp;&nbsp; mold out the inner and upper housings in such&nbsp; a precise way that hardly anything needs to be&nbsp;&nbsp; milled down after the fact to reach that&nbsp; final tolerance. You can see some minor&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:23] milling around the trackpad cutout, but reducing&nbsp; machine times helps reduce cost by quite a bit. machine markings everywhere. And if Apple had to&nbsp; machine every MacBook Neo frame this extensively,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:38] well, let's just say it wouldn't be 500&nbsp; bucks anymore. And I'm glad Apple found&nbsp;&nbsp; I put it back together. But there's&nbsp; only one way to find out for sure. I think Apple's really onto something here. An&nbsp; easy-to-repair, dedicated email, web browsing,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:54] and typing machine is going to sell super well,&nbsp; especially in the education space. When I was a&nbsp;&nbsp; kid in school, our whole computer lab was made&nbsp; up of the translucent Apple desktop computers.&nbsp;&nbsp; share from the Chromebooks, which currently&nbsp; dominate the school space. Chromebooks also&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:12] sometimes have mobile processors inside,&nbsp; like the Qualcomms. You might be like,&nbsp;&nbsp; they're probably just trying to trap kids&nbsp; into their ecosystem at a younger age.
[08:25] But hey, it looks like everything is working.&nbsp; Speaking of which, though, if Apple isn't going&nbsp;&nbsp; to make the logo any bigger, we'll just have&nbsp; to make the Apple logo better, 1984 style.&nbsp;&nbsp; My channel sponsor, dbrand, has a new series&nbsp; of skins that perfectly hide the scratches I&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:40] made earlier. Apple actually used a super colorful&nbsp; logo in 1984 to bring awareness to their recently&nbsp;&nbsp; introduced color displays. And now all MacBooks&nbsp; can look ultra-friendly on retro midnight, silver,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:53] classic, and space black. Each 1984 skin is&nbsp; perfectly matched to their modern MacBook&nbsp;&nbsp; counterpart. Steve Jobs wanted the colorful&nbsp; logo to be more friendly. As everyone knows,&nbsp;&nbsp; Apples always last longer with a skin. Get&nbsp; some protection for your computer today with&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:09] the link in the description. And thanks&nbsp; a ton for watching. I'll see you around.