John Ternes was indispensable when Apple introduced the MacBook Neo. He held an intimate media event for the Neo, pitching it as a transformational machine for Apple due to its low $599 cost ($499 for education customers) and premium build quality. He was interviewed on Good Morning America, the kind of major media feature CEO Tim Cook usually handles. And when I asked Apple employees about the Neo at its launch event, they almost always brought up Turnus’s vision of the laptop.
For all intents and purposes, Tetanus was Apple’s frontman for the MacBook Neo.
Turns is set to be crowned Apple’s CEO on September 1 and the Neo is not only an accomplishment in his career, but a potential indication of the company’s approach to products in the future. It’s a sign that Apple is becoming more comfortable taking risks.
Apple lives and dies on its premium image. It quit making cheaper iPhones like the SE and 5C altogether, and the $599 iPhone 16e and 17e are more expensive than common mid-range Android phones (though the $249 Apple Watch SE is certainly one of the cheapest smartwatches out there). Putting a mobile processor into a full computer was risky, which could make it very vulnerable. And sticking with only 8GB of RAM was a gamble, almost sacrilege within the Apple pantheon. It’s not breaking new ground for product categories, but the Neo, being a budget laptop, is surprisingly different from Apple.
And yet, thanks to Ternus’ hardware leadership and Apple’s control over the software, the MacBook Neo has been a resounding success. It has the best build quality, screen, keyboard, speakers, and trackpad I’ve ever seen in a $600 laptop. As I wrote in my review, “Every Windows PC manufacturer, Involved Microsoft should be ashamed.”
Although we don’t know the full manufacturing costs of the Neo, Apple’s margins for selling it will undoubtedly be much lower than those of a MacBook Air or Pro. But Neo is more than a profit-making company. It is a device that can serve as a gateway to the Apple ecosystem for children and students. Even better, it can easily entice Windows users.
We can’t give Ternus all the credit for the Neo, of course, there’s a whole team of product managers and engineers underneath him doing the actual design work. But it’s hard to deny the trend of making a $600 laptop that doesn’t feel like complete garbage. The MacBook Neo surprised me, a tired technology reporter, on practically every level. And its existence makes me wonder how a Turnus-led Apple can continue to iterate without compromising quality or Apple’s signature attention to detail.
Ternes is the rare Apple engineer who has played a role in nearly all of its current products — in his 25-year tenure, he has been in charge of the creation of the Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. This gives him a unique perspective on where the company can go next, as well as how Apple can enhance its capabilities. And based on what I’ve seen of the MacBook Neo, it’ll be interesting to see how Apple reshapes itself for the future.
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