Club Benefits
I've been hooked on the MacBook Neo ever since Apple unveiled it on Wednesday. We've been covering the latest announcements from Apple all week here on Tom's Guide and finishing on the MacBook Neo was the masterstroke.
It's an affordable, colorful little MacBook that my colleague Mark said was "game over for cheap Windows laptops" in his hands-on review. But have you spotted the Easter Egg hiding in plain sight? I'll admit I hadn't seen it until those eagle-eyed folks at Macworld pointed it out for me.
As well as matching the keyboard and feet of the laptop to each of the colors, Apple has done the same with the wallpaper. Those colorful glass bubbles come in Indigo, Blush, Citrus and Silver to match the laptop and, at first, I thought it was just a fun reference to Apple's Liquid Glass UI.
But if you look closer, there's a hidden message there.
MacBook Neo wallpaper message
The bubbles on the MacBook Neo wallpaper are more than just decorative. They spell out the word "M-A-C". The three lines on the left are your "M", the "A" comprises the two middle bubbles with the smaller one at the top forming the arch and the "C" is created by the long bubble and two short ones on the far right.
Did you notice? I'll be willing to bet once you see it, you can't un-see it.
We can only speculate on why Apple decided on this fun little message, but if I had to guess, I'd bet that it's a way to reaffirm that even though the MacBook Neo runs on the same processor as an iPhone (the A18 Pro from the iPhone 16 Pro) it's still very much a part of the Mac family.
Some commenters have cast doubt on buying a MacBook with a phone chip inside, but single-core benchmarks for the A18 Pro outperform the M1 in a 13-inch MacBook Air. Apple's A18 Pro is built on the same architecture (a 64-bit ARMv9.2-A chip) as its M4 line, just with two fewer CPU cores and three fewer GPU cores.
In fact, we've gone into detail on just how the MacBook Neo compares to an iPhone based on these benchmarks right here.
So, while the Neo isn't the option for hardened video editors, that's not the point. It's a colorful low-cost option for those with minimal computing needs who still want to be part of the Apple ecosystem. And every time they look at that wallpaper, they'll be reminded they're using a Mac.
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