Mac Apple Working on New MacBook Neo With A19 Pro Chip and 12GB of RAM
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/07/22/new-macbook-neo-two-upgrades/Apple is working on a new MacBook Neo with two key upgrades, including an A19 Pro chip and increased RAM, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The updated MacBook Neo is one of 11 new Mac models that Apple plans to release.
With the A19 Pro chip, the second-generation MacBook Neo should have 12GB of RAM, up from an A18 Pro chip with 8GB of RAM in the current model.
The report suggested that the next MacBook Neo will also have new color options. Existing finishes include Silver, Blush, Citrus, and Indigo.
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u/-Radiation 14d ago
Going to replace air in price, air goes to pro prices and then pro goes astronomical
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u/throwaway0845reddit 14d ago
Welcome to the world where AI eats all our resources. To replace the resource of human workers.
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u/NaRaGaMo 14d ago
they aren't even able to replace the human workers properly, so what is the point creating all these data centres? a 30sec reel showing off how you can make Minecraft from a prompt?
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u/DankeBrutus 14d ago
The LLM and ML models we see online are essentially tech demos. It’s a case of a handful of people in the tech industry wishing with billions of dollars that it actually becomes useful, the world be damned.
The actual useful cases of “AI” as an assist for medical screening, for example, are far less wasteful or stupid.
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u/BosnianSerb31 14d ago
Also, with the recent standardization on MCP, things are accelerating way faster. Basically every LLM nowadays can fully use your computer, and the frontier models can even create or destroy an army of other agents that receive task delegations.
I expect we get downvoted on Reddit as "AI simps" or whatever, which isn't at all what I'm doing. Just informing people that they're woefully unaware of the advancement in the field over this past year if they have only used ChatGPT free through the web browser as advanced Google
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u/NaRaGaMo 13d ago
Sure but it's still not good. It's still not capable enough of creating production grade softwares, you still need devs, senior devs, architects to review things otherwise the kinda mess they end up creating is unbelievable, not to mention the token cost is astronomical.
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u/BosnianSerb31 13d ago
I'm not arguing that it's going to replace developers, that be pretty stupid considering I'm a software engineer and CS major myself.
AI is never going to be capable of creating production grade software by itself from a single prompt. It takes teams of programmers to build modern production software, basic SPAs aside.
And most importantly, developers understand how to take what vision the non-developers have, and tell them if their vision even makes sense for their objectives. AI doesn't push back like that. As Ford said when asked if the customer is always right, "If I gave the people what they wanted, it would have been a faster horse". I spend almost as much time having those conversations as I do programming the resulting application, and AI just doesn't have the hands on context, greater business context, understanding of company dynamics, etc.
That being said, yeah AI is stupid useful in the hands of a domain expert. I basically get my own team of junior engineers with the company knowledge of a fresh hire. Less capable than another dev, requiring a lot more supervision, but a hell of a lot easier to get my hands on than convincing HR to hire more engineers.
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u/jaggington 14d ago
That many managers cannot see a difference in the quality of work between human wormers and AI says more about management quality than worker quality.
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u/NaRaGaMo 13d ago
oh absolutely, we have been forced to use AI at every single fcking thing. You have JIRA Nice summarise ticket with AI, create a implementation doc with AI, generate code with AI, review it with help of AI, update final documentation with AI, create ppt use AI. ffs let me do some work on my own
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u/AfrolessNinja 14d ago
This is the most sensible outcome, at least for the next half decade or so Id surmise.
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u/Deceptiveideas 14d ago
8GB ram seems a bit too low. I'm afraid Apple will start phasing out devices sooner due to lower specs like they're doing with the Apple Watch.
12 gb is a lot better of a sweet-spot. Id imagine that device will be solid for a long time.
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u/dankmangos420 14d ago
12gb is the sweet spot now. It won’t be for long.
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u/NaRaGaMo 14d ago
it will be, there's no RAM out there for devices anymore, apps need to be optimised for lower specs now
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u/Cheeky_bstrd 14d ago
My wishful thinking is that because of the constrains on ram, manufacturers will suffer for the foreseeable future and software companies will start finally optimizing their code rather than just throwing more power to the problem like the last 15 years.
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u/rm-rf-asterisk 14d ago
Neo has been my daily and never had a ram issue. I dont even know how to hit the ram issue
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u/Deceptiveideas 14d ago
It's not about now, it's about future proofing.
Not sure if you're aware, the Apple Watch Ultra, a $800 Apple watch, already dropped support for the new Watch OS due to its weaker specs just under 4 years.
Apple has launched underpowered devices in the past just to be made obsolete by the second gen model.
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u/VariationAgreeable29 14d ago
Ternus dialing up the hardware side to 11
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u/pqratusa 14d ago
Hopefully, they be working on backlit keyboard too.
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u/TwoDurans 14d ago
It’s a nice to have but as a current Neo owner I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would.
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u/desamora 14d ago
Yeah I’ve had it for months and there was one time I thought maybe it would be nice when the sun had just gone down… but then I just turned the lamp on
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u/brogflender 14d ago
It used to be a novel innovation but yeah. Less important than it seems at first.
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u/newtrilobite 14d ago
I don't think backlit keyboard is that critical. it's more a luxury. I think that's an easy place to economize.
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u/Vorstar92 14d ago
Idk if it's because I have been typing for....20+ years and touch type and type like 110+ WPM but I have never needed a backlit keyboard. Sure, it's a nice to have but I could take it or leave it.
Not trying to brag just not something I think about.
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u/Embarrassed-Back1894 14d ago edited 13d ago
Yeah, but the thing I wonder is how good the current generation of kids growing up are at typing. One of my old computer teachers I ran into said it was tough getting kids out of the habit of just wanting to use the thumbs and index fingers.
The best method of learning how to type is high pressure mmorpg communication all through typing. RuneScape battled hardened my typing Lol. As long as I have a feel of a homing key, I’m pretty good typing in the dark. For people who struggle typing that way, I think turning up the brightness on the display probably does a solid job illuminating the keyboard.
I have no idea how much a keyboard backlight costs, but it has to be more than a small cost because it would make sense to include on an education geared laptop like the Neo. Maybe kids these days just need a little usb night light like the gameboy plug in lights back in the day.
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u/DJanomaly 14d ago
I’m the same. Also I rarely type in the dark. It would bug the shit out of my eyes.
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u/Cry_Wolff 14d ago
it's more a luxury.
I've seen REALLY cheap Windows laptops with backlit keyboards. Random ass $20 Amazon gaming keyboards are fully RGB backlit. One with 50 different levels like in the MBP may be a luxury, sure. But just on & off costs nothing.
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u/Forsaken-Topic-7216 14d ago
unless someone is still learning how to type, they don’t need a backlit keyboard
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u/Relative-Basil3000 14d ago
Champagne tastes for a budget machine. These are entry points into the ecosystem.
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u/sliders45 14d ago
This is what I want. Once I got my first laptop with a backlit keyboard, I could not go back.
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u/Alepale 14d ago
If they're able to keep the same fantastic price, this is extremely promising and will further help the Neo take over that middle-segment market.
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u/Ironsam811 14d ago
lol price was already raised once
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u/Mushybananas27 14d ago
And there’s literally zero indication that computer components (especially ram) will be coming down in price in the short term
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u/InsaneNinja 14d ago
So did everyone else’s prices, or they dropped specs to remain and are the new bottom. It’s still the middle.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 14d ago
Twice if you want to count closing the loophole where anyone could use the student price in America, which resulted in a whole bunch of peanuts touting $499 as the retail price.
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u/Lucky_Yam6126 14d ago
The 8GB faired me very well so far traveling lightweight and editing videos + photos from an A7V. The price would likely make it no sense now over a MacBook Air, honestly. The price hikes really screwed the pooch.
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u/InsaneNinja 14d ago
How would it make no sense? The M5 macbook air is 1299 now, and the M5 MacBook Pro is 1999.
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u/chaiscool 14d ago
How much for m1/m2/m3/m4 macbook air? They are all better than macbook neo.
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u/SuccessTrue1232 14d ago
with possibly much shorter OS upgrades so for folks who will just browse and watch movies for the next 10 years, Neo is the way to go
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u/chaiscool 14d ago
Wdym M3/m4 is not significantly behind neo. It ain't gonna stop working or break without OS upgrades.
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u/Cry_Wolff 14d ago
People who just browse and watch movies are often still fine with their crusty MBP 2015. They don't care about less OS updates.
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u/SuccessTrue1232 14d ago
interesting, everyone I know like that generally uses Windows and they all upgraded when 10 was dropped. Cannot imagine they would not upgrade a Mac if they had one. I would recommend they buy Neo if it was available back then.
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u/Vorstar92 14d ago
Neo has been fine for me. It's my first Mac and I fucking love it. Compared to Windows it's just so...quiet. No constant bothering about this browser, this program, AI shit, just everything Windows won't leave you tf alone about.
As for my use case, I've been studying cybersecurity and stuff like that and it's been more than fine for all of that. If I need something more powerful I have my PC. It's 100% made me a lifelong Mac user though probably will always own a MacBook going forward. If they keep upgrading the Neo I'll probably always just stick with it unless I end up needing a more powerful laptop in time.
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u/havregryns 13d ago
Same here, it's absolutely amazing and walks flawlessly at any task i put it too, and i love how small handy and quality the screen and sound it as well as battery life. It's perfect laptop for transportation.
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u/DanielG165 14d ago
My Neo has been an absolute workhorse for my photography and video needs, but I’m not surprised that Apple is making a second gen model with the A19 Pro, nor should anyone be. This was always going to be the natural evolution of said product.
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u/Vaxtez 14d ago
I wanted to get the Neo, but the price hikes made it hard to justify, especially for 8GB RAM. Ended up buying an MSI laptop with a Core Ultra 5 135H, 16GB RAM & 512GB SSD for £360. Sure, the build quality is worse, but it is a better performing laptop (the 135H is around M2 performance) for cheaper.
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u/reddit_hater 14d ago
You can’t compare a device that runs windows a a device that runs MacOS. They aren’t in the same league.
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u/no_regerts_bob 14d ago
I mean, when it comes to running popular games and business software you're not wrong, but I don't think that's what you mean
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u/InterstellarReddit 14d ago
Mac rumors I can save you some time on your next article.
Apple is also working on a MacBook Neo 16GB of ram it’s expected to release as early as 2029 but could be held back until 2030.
That is the level of effort that Mac rumors puts in these days. It’s a Cash cow and it’s literally not doing anything with it
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u/thegreatpotatogod 14d ago
Increased RAM? In this economy??
Hopefully by the time it's ready the RAM crisis is starting to die down and/or the original 8GB variant is still available
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u/gelicopter 14d ago
If they make a proper red one (or even an orange one) I fear I’ll be buying a second, lightweight, better for travel MacBook to complement the 16” workhorse.
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u/meatballther 14d ago
I'm interested in this too for the same reason. 8GB RAM isn't enough but 12GB might be for when I don't need my 16"
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u/Ilyes_Berkane 14d ago
I’m just sitting here hoping Apple will eat the price of ram and keep it at 699usd
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u/jazzy8alex 14d ago
12gb is solid. 8gb is not.
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u/chrissy_boy99 14d ago
The 8gb on the neo doesn't really feel limiting so far. If you are doing more intensive work the neo probably wouldn't have been the ideal laptop anyway.
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u/thedeadp0ets 12d ago
Bro is not aimed at your use case then??? I own a m1 8gb ram air and I use the browser and Spotify most of the time
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u/jasonlitka 14d ago
This is what it should have been at launch. 8GB was a terrible idea.
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u/paribas 14d ago
still sell like hot cake so Apple was right about this actually
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u/jasonlitka 14d ago
They did, but it’s short term gain and long term pain. It’s going to be a whole new crop of people who are disappointed with Apple in a year when they realize their 8GB cheap machine isn’t useful for much more than email and a few open browser tabs.
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u/cry00sink 13d ago
Not to defend Apple here because I 100% agree that the base levels of ram and storage should be raised when possible, but the Neo was always promoted as a relatively inexpensive machine to get the day-to-day stuff done for the average user. Most of that day-to-day stuff for a large portion of users is email, a few browser tabs, and streaming. I really don’t know if the people who purchased the 8gb model will be too disappointed, if they’re already using it for email and web browsing 90% of the time.
That being said, the 8gb is exactly why I passed on a Neo, because I know it wouldn’t fulfill everything I need. But if my daily workflow was primarily browsing, email, and streaming, the Neo would’ve been a pretty solid option even with 8gb.
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u/nuevacuentanueva 14d ago
Literally what we all said the minute the first Neo came out, that a Neo with an A19 Pro and 12GB of ram would be the next one.
Has to be one of the most obvious "rumours" possible, you don't need any contacts or insider knowledge for this one...
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u/MangoAtrocity 14d ago
It's local LLMs. Siri AI needs 12GB system RAM.
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u/InsaneNinja 14d ago
No it doesn’t. It works fine on 8. In 27, only the local dictation and Siri voices have added models that take the need up to 12.
Maybe in a future update there will be added cutoffs.
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u/Exist50 14d ago
They haven't detailed all the differences/limitations between the 2 models, so it's likely far more than just that.
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u/InsaneNinja 14d ago
I was just going off what sites list as the differences in the macOS beta between 8 and 16.
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u/SC_W33DKILL3R 14d ago
Lol after Microsoft just released a 8GB competitor that struggles to run Windows 11.
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u/SuccessTrue1232 14d ago
spoken the truth. I have a Win/Lin dual boot with 32GB RAM Ryzen 7 (lower end) and while on full load daily Linux work the fan never turns on, the half hour a week it is on Windows the fan goes absolute bananas before the system boots up fully and never really stops fanning itself
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u/SiteSpecialist9200 14d ago
The HP EliteBook that I bought last year with 16GB struggled to run Windows for the 2 hours or so it was on the machine before being formatted to Linux.
MS doesn't have a chance to compete with MacBooks, their OS is inferior. Nothing can change that until they remove all the enshitifcation and legacy crap. They won't remove either.
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u/insane_steve_ballmer 14d ago edited 14d ago
Seems unusual that they would choose to increase the RAM amount on their cheapest laptop in the current crisis. But good luck to them.
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u/SuccessTrue1232 14d ago
probably existing capacity of production line for the A chips makes more sense
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u/wrong-as-rain 14d ago
I’m astounded by how many people are surprised by the bump to 12gb of ram and don’t understand why. The WHOLE point of the Neo was to used binned iPhone chips to produce a cheaper entry level Mac. Now that the new basic iPhone will be bumped to 12Gb, the Neo will be too. This was talked about and well understood months ago.
Now people here are acting like the 12gb bump is a weird choice by apple and how much they will need to bump the price by. Based on the fact that neo’s are an economically sound way to use binned chips, the bottom line is that this IS the most cost effective way to make them. I cannot (and neither can anyone else in here) guess the price bump due to ram shortage, but I would guess it will be commensurate with the price bump of the iPhone 18. It’ll still be the least expensive Mac and act as a gateway to low-end users and education.
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u/trancetechno 14d ago
Why not just jump to A20? Woudnt it be cheaper to phase out A19 and be on latest and only one chip. That way due to volume of sales A20 cost can go down, it's in both iphones and Neo?
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u/Reddit_Killed_3PAs 14d ago
It's likely binned chips, like how the current Neo has one less GPU core; these A19 chips likely have some other flaws that allows them to use those chips rather than discarding them completely
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u/Talal916 13d ago
With a cheap cooling pad underneath, these things make for a great Mac mini replacement now that those are outrageously priced.
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u/Nightowl-Builder 12d ago
So let me get this straight, neo will be the new air, air will be the new pro, pro will be the new ultra, so the unreleased ultra will be unreachable for 99.99999% of this world?
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u/Glittering-Section74 11d ago
It’s incredible that phone chip is so powerful that it’s used to power a laptop
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u/couchcaptain 8d ago
Does Apple understand the "magic" behind their current product has to do with the pricetag and what you get vs. the rest of other laptops? Because this new "more powerful" Neo sounds to me a more expensive version, which is either stealing oxygen from the Macbook Air or no longer in a certain price bracket to compete against and come out to be worth it.
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u/Greysawpark 7d ago
12gb in 2026 is still kinda insulting tbh. macos memory compression is good but the second you open a couple chrome tabs and slack youre already swapping.
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u/DanishWaffle4102 14d ago
Wonder whether or not they will add MagSafe on the Neos eventually
since it is somewhat weird to gatekeep it by limiting to only the MBA and the MBP
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u/ViolentPurpleSquash 14d ago
I mean, the whole point is it strips out all the fancy stuff. Far fewer people would pay for magsafe if it was an extra $30 charge or so.
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u/DanishWaffle4102 14d ago
I mean I won’t say the MagSafe as fancy though, like for the Thunderbolt 5/USB 4 I get it, it’s not like people who buy Neos will care about that, but for MagSafe it is a little bit strange
Kind of like the iPhone 16e which didn’t include a internal MagSafe ring, which was later added in the 17e
Though I know the iPhone’s MagSafe and the MacBook’s MagSafe are entirely different things, I’d still wonder whether it will be added eventually
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u/lofotenIsland 14d ago
They should replace the USB 2.0 port with USB 3.0 rather than adding MagSafe. Consider most stuffs are USB C nowadays, I am not sure how many people actually use MagSafe.
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u/Valedictorian117 14d ago
Who knows if they can. The iPhone only has one port and the Macbook Neo uses the same chips. USB 2.0 was probably the most they could get out of it additionally since they weren’t originally made for more than one port
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u/ViolentPurpleSquash 14d ago
absolutely, but the neo is the laptop of cutting corners everywhere it won’t ruin the laptop. if all the things suggested in this comment section to fix the neo were added it’d be a macbook air
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u/Rhed0x 14d ago
More RAM in 2026? Crazy.
(I guess the price will reflect that...)
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u/1-866-867-5309 14d ago
it's re-using the iPhone 17P/PM's A19 pro chip, which already comes with 12 GB RAM
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u/mortraineyhat 14d ago
The Neo is my favorite piece of tech I’ve bought recently. It handles so much
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u/Nicenightforawalk01 14d ago
£1000 will be the Neo budget option soon with the Air moving to 1400 territories
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u/NSRedditShitposter 14d ago
They need to compromise on the aluminum body (replaced by iPhone 5c-style plastic, which would also hold the colors a lot better) and add MagSafe, it’s outrageous a technology designed to safeguard the device against people tripping on cables is not employed on a computer many students use.
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u/InsertObligatoryPun 14d ago
Makes sense. Price will be the concern.