Apple Photos Clean Up
The Neo may not replace a real production laptop, but it could quietly become the utility machine churches didn’t know they needed.
Earlier this Month, Apple announced the iPhone 17e, new studio displays, MacBook Air and MacBook Pros with upgraded internals and the new entry level MacBook Neo. The MacBook Neo stands out as a colorful edition to the MacBook lineup. Rather than being powered by Apple’s M-series chip, the Neo is powered by the same A-series processor found in their flagship iPhone 16 Pro, the A18 Pro. It looks like MacBook Neo is aiming to disrupt the budget laptop market starting at $599, and it is also eligible for the education pricing at $499. The Neo is an exceptional device for word processing, browsing and other day to day tasks. So how does it perform in production environments?
FROM PRE-PRODUCTION TO POST PRODUCTION
The Neo is a capable machine. In our testing, the MacBook Neo performed better than expected, but it did struggle when running multiple power-hungry applications simultaneously. The device comes standard with only 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The only upgrade option is to increase the storage to 512GB, which also adds touch ID support replacing the lock button on the standard edition. While more RAM does generally equal better performance, the 8GB does go further than it would in an equivalent PC, due to the memory swapping that takes place because on the Apple processor.
The MacBook Neo is a great daily driver for productivity and utility tasks. It is capable of rendering 4K timelines with color grades, speed ramps and other effects on camera footage filmed by iPhone, drones or action cameras. The limitations of the 8GB of RAM show when layering several clips simultaneously, and the longer the project timeline gets the more it struggles. File transfers and exports will be slower given the Neo only has two USB C ports that are not created equal, one is USB 3.0 and the other is USB 2.0 rather than Thunderbolt found on other Macs.
It performs better than expected—until you start stacking demands.
Another limiting factor of the Neo is it can only power one external display natively from the USB 3.0 port. Lyric projection in a church production environment typically requires at least two additional outputs from the computing device (one output for your audience display and another for a confidence monitor). The Neo is capable of running presentation software like Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, Google Slides and popular lyric projection software (like ProPresenter) with only one output and the 13” liquid retina display on the laptop itself as the operator display. However, as soon as you need an additional independent output, you’re out of luck with the Neo (some YouTubers have had success using an external USB C 3.0 graphics card to overcome this limitation).
Apple’s new budget MacBook is powerful enough to tempt production teams—and limited enough to frustrate them.
Utilizing tracks in a live music performance has become very common and the Neo can record and playback audio from programs like Apple’s GarageBand and Logic better than expected for the budget device. As with video editing, the more and more layering in a project eventually it will slow down showcasing the need for a more capable machine like the MacBook Pro. Multitracks’ Playback app worked in our testing with an audio interface and utilizing MIDI control for slide changes.
Running ProPresenter is possible—but expanding beyond a single output quickly becomes a challenge.
Lighting software, like LightKey opened and was responsive. Generally speaking, lighting software is a light weight program due to the nature that it is sending code to the lights through DMX/ArtNet and not doing much heavy lifting in the program itself.
So who’s the MacBook Neo really for? While it is capable of running production tasks, the best option would be the similarly priced Mac mini. While not a “portable” solution, you get better value when it comes to using it in a production environment. Even though it still operates a generation behind on the M4 chip. It clearly has a leg up in performance. The MacBook Air is probably the best valued portable computer Apple makes, but the Neo is a close second. The real win for the MacBook Neo is that it provides a full portable desktop experience at a lower cost of entry into the Mac ecosystem. This is an easy recommendation for people who want to get their first portable Apple computer. A bonus use of the MacBook Neo is to control other more powerful Apple computers using the Screen Sharing App built into the operating system of all Macs.
At this price point, the Mac mini still offers better performance for production environments.
All in all, the MacBook Neo does provide some use cases in the production world, but really stands out as a great computer for someone who is looking to get started learning how to do creative tasks like photo and video editing, graphic design, building slideshow presentations, controlling lighting software, and networked equipment. The MacBook Neo can make for a great admin device, but when it comes to mission-critical production environments another tool may serve you better. It’s certainly more than a Chromebook; it’s a MacBook.
