Review: Apple MacBook Neo

At $599, the MacBook Neo is Apple’s first budget laptop. For the most part, Apple cut corners in the right places and made a MacBook its intended buyers will adore.

It's not the basic MacBook. Or the cheap MacBook. Or the mini MacBook. It's the MacBook “Neo,” meaning new or young—a fresh take on an old idea. Love the name or hate it, you likely see what Apple was attempting to communicate from a marketing perspective. It's meant to be a new kind of Mac for a new generation—perhaps an attempt to recapture a generation that's only been exposed to iPads and Chromebooks.

But is there anything new here, beyond marketing hype? That was the question in my mind as I pulled the laptop out of its box, gawking at how Apple made a lime green laptop look classy. Apple ...