2026-05-23 11:42:01
Clicky Klack, Menu Stats, and Dictation that Slaps.
It’s been over five months since I last did an app spotlight, which feels like as good a time as any to highlight a few apps that have found a comfortable place on my Mac.
I’d like to think I’m pretty picky when it comes to the apps that get to stay on my devices, so if something has earned a spot in my Dock, menu bar, or daily workflow, it’s probably doing something right.
Nearly 20 years in, iStat Menus remains the definitive menu bar app for seeing all the inner workings of your Mac.
iStat Menus has been around since 2007, so this is far from a new app. Still, whenever I post a screenshot, I regularly get asked about that little iStat Menus icon sitting in my menu bar.
For those new to the Mac, or who have somehow managed to avoid hearing about it, iStat Menus is a highly customizable menu bar utility that lets you track a dizzying number of things happening on your Mac.
Screenshot showing my unified iStat Menus bar and a few of the tiles I have enabled. Hovering over a section, in this case CPU stats, expands the tile with additional information.
Curious about your uptime? There’s a stat for that. Available memory? Memory swap? SSD temperature? Battery life? Battery health? Network usage? There’s a stat for all of that and more, including sections for weather, time, calendars, and on and on.
You can customize what you want to see as well, showing only the data you’re curious about in the menubar itself and/or in the clickable dropdown panel. Furthermore, you can customize the colours of the text, graphs, and gauges to your hearts content.
Customize the colours, customize the tiles, and customize exactly what you want to see in the menu bar itself.
For me, iStat Menus is partly cosmetic. I enjoy seeing the data and getting a better sense of what’s happening under the hood of my Mac. But more than that, it provides a comprehensive little portal for understanding and managing my Mac’s battery life, spotting apps that are using more memory than expected, or noticing when something is causing my Mac to run hotter than it should. But you can also use it to see the weather (paid upgrade), see your calendar and events, view the time in different timezones, the phases of the moon, when golden hour is, and even track the location of the ISS.
If you were hoping for an app that also happens to show the current location of the ISS, then boy do I have great news for you.
iStat Menus is one of the first apps I install on any new Mac, and it’s available from the Mac App Store or directly from developer Bjango’s website for under $20. There’s also a 14-day free trial, which gives you plenty of time to see just how many tiny stats you suddenly start caring about.
Turn your mushy MacBook keyboard into a satisfying, click-klacky symphony.
From the developer behind Alcove, another app I highly, highly recommend, comes Klack.
And what does Klack do? It adds a collection of deeply satisfying keystroke sounds to your Mac.
Klack Keystoke NoiseSample audio of my terribly slow finger-typing with Klack enabled.
Currently, it includes seven different switch sounds from various keyboard makers: Japanese Black from CherryMX™, Crystal Purple and Oreo from Everglide™, Cardboard from Flurples™, Milky Yellow from Gateron™, Super Red from Keychron™, and Cream from NovelKeys™.
Adjust an absolutely ridiculous number of settings to create your perfect Klack profile, from volume and switch sounds to the overall tone.
Each switch set includes over 100 audio files, delivered with zero latency, with support for Spatial Audio so the sound changes based on your head position when using headphones. It also offers variable pitches and plenty of customization, letting you adjust the tone, pitch variation, and volume to create the perfect keystroke profile for you.
You can also customize exactly when you want those keystroke sounds to occur. So if you’re in meetings, listening to music, on camera, or winding down in the evening and don’t want the extra clicks and clacks, you can set specific cues that automatically disable the app in those situations. All of this is easily adjustable through the applications beautifully designed setting panel.
I love typing on Apple’s Magic Keyboard, and while I’ve tried a small handful of mechanical keyboards over the years, I keep coming back to it. But one drawback of Apple’s keyboards is that they don’t sound satisfying at all. Klack changes that. After a couple days of using it, I’m hooked! I honestly can’t see myself turning it off anytime soon.
Klack is available from the developer Henrik Ruscon on his website or through the Mac App Store for $4.99.
Double your WPM with this offline, privacy-minded dictation app.
I spend a lot of time typing. I write case notes at work, I write for this blog, and I journal at home. And between all that I am responding to emails, sending messages, grading papers, making notes. And despite all that typing, I am a very average typist, usually landing somewhere between 48–58 words per minute with about a 5% error rate. What I began to notice is that I had more to write that I wanted to type, and that’s where Unspoken came in.
Unspoken is an offline dictation app that uses local AI models to help you quickly dictate your messages. Apple already has its own speech recognition built into its devices, but I’ve found that other models are often more reliable and accurate at understanding what I’m trying to say.
The Unspoken recording indicator, tucked neatly into the notch.
That accuracy is what makes dictation like this feel genuinely useful. It doesn’t just help me get my thoughts out faster, it also saves me time afterward because I can trust that what I’m saying is being captured and transcribed properly.
And over the past few months, I’ve found the accuracy of good dictation invaluable for helping me write in a way that captures my voice and tone, which I have found especially beneficial for helping make my emails, journal, and feedback to students more personal.
Settings window allowing you to choose from a range of offline and cloud models.
Unspoken now features over a dozen local models to download, each varying in language support, file size, speed, and accuracy. You can also add text snippets for quick entry, create a custom dictionary to improve transcription accuracy, and enable automatic formatting, punctuation, and speech refinement, helping smooth out the umms, stutters, and awkward pauses that naturally show up when speaking.
You can also pair it with an online LLM to improve context awareness and add another layer of refinement. But for me, one of the app’s biggest selling points is that all of the processing can happen privately on device.
One small complaint I have with the app is that it doesn’t show the text you’re speaking until after you end the transcription. So if you’re dictating longer passages, you’re a bit blind to what you’ve already said. It’s mildly annoying at first, but honestly, you adjust pretty quickly, and before long it mostly fades into the background.
Overall, using Unspoken has increased my words per minute to nearly 90, nearly doubling my previous writing speed. It can feel a bit strange at first, mostly because the way I write is different from the way I speak, but learning to adjust my thinking has been worth it. The speed and convenience gains have been significant.
Unspoken is available as a $8/month ($80/year) subscription or as a $190 one-time purchase.
2026-05-09 08:08:24
Introducing Topographic Amoeba, a new collection of minimal wallpapers for your Mac, iPhone, and iPad that’s absolutely worth cell-ebrating.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been playing around with simple shapes and colour palettes, little on-and-off doodles that eventually evolved into the collection I’m sharing today.
Topographic Amoeba
CA$4.99
Topographic Amoeba, a new collection of minimal wallpapers for your Mac, iPhone, and iPad that’s absolutely worth cell-ebrating. The collection includes wallpapers for the Mac (6016×3900), iPad (2732×2732), and iPhone (1320×2868). Each wallpaper is available in both light and dark mode, and I’ve also included a .heic file for your Mac that will automatically switch between the two when you change your system appearance. Enjoy!
Thank you for your support.
The collection of Topographic Amoeba wallpapers is available below, free of charge and in full resolution, but if you can support the work I do, I am also making the collection available as a donation gift of $4.99.
The collection includes wallpapers for the Mac (6016×3900), iPad (2732×2732), and iPhone (1320×2868). Each wallpaper is available in both light and dark mode, and I’ve also included a .heic file for your Mac that will automatically switch between the two when you change your system appearance. Enjoy!
Read more about my approach to making wallpapers available for purchase over at The WinRAR Approach.
You can also support the me/the site through tips. Every bit is truly appreciated!
Once purchased, a download link will be emailed to you to download the .zip file (21.9 MB) containing all 18 versions for Mac (6016 × 3900), iPad (2732 × 2732), and iPhone (1320 × 2868). The digital download link will expire 24 hours after the first download. If your link expires and you need to redownload the files, please send me an email with your order number and I can send along a new link for you.
The only problem was figuring out what to call it. Some wallpapers looked more topographic, while others looked like minimal, single-celled little blobs. I couldn’t quite settle on a name until I posted one of the images online and someone suggested “Topographic Amoeba.”
Perfect.
And so, I’m thrilled to share Topographic Amoeba, a new collection of six wallpapers for your Apple devices. Each wallpaper is available in both light and dark mode, and I’ve also included a .heic file for your Mac that will automatically switch between the two when you change your system appearance. Enjoy!
Vannella is a genus of tiny amoebae. They are part of the broader Amoebozoa group and are usually found in places like soil, freshwater, and saltwater.
Proteus is a large, free-living freshwater protozoan known for its constantly changing shape and “false feet,” which help it move and feed.
Chaos is a genus of single-celled amoebas best known for Chaos carolinense, a “giant amoeba” that can grow up to 5 mm long.
Arcella is an amoeba found in ponds, wetlands, moss, and soil, known for its rounded shell and central opening where its pseudopods extend.
Pelomyxa is a giant freshwater amoeba found in muddy sediments, notable for its many nuclei, lack of mitochondria, and reliance on symbiotic bacteria in low-oxygen environments.
Difflugia is a common freshwater shelled amoeba that builds protective cases from tiny mineral particles and lives in marshes.
I’m a one-person operation, working in healthcare by day & running this site as a passion project in my off time.
If you enjoy my work (the articles, the wallpapers, my general demeanour… anything really), consider leaving a tip & supporting the site. Your support is incredibly appreciated & goes a long way to keep this site and the works I produce ad-free & free of charge.
🦠 Tips
2026-04-30 06:26:02
Say hello to a collection of Lil Fin merch, featuring stickers, shirts, hoodies, and headwear.
Introducing a lineup of Lil Fin merch, including stickers, shirts, hoodies, and headwear.
The shirts, hoodies, and headwear all feature a beautifully embroidered Lil Fin mascot, made possible through the folks at Cotton Bureau. I’m a repeat customer of their embroidered hats and clothing, and I’ve been consistently impressed with the quality of their stitching.
Example of the stitching you’ll get on a hoodie or t-shirt.
I’ve also had Lil Fin stickers available for the past several weeks, and several people have already picked those up as well.
So, if the one thing missing from your wardrobe is a hoodie, T-shirt, or beanie featuring an adorable dichromatic little creature, I am here to fill that oddly specific void. Enjoy & thanks for your support.
The items can be purchased by following the links below, by going to my page on Cotton Bureau or by visiting the Mercantile.
Lil Fin clothing is available in a t-shirt and both a zip-up and pullover hoodie. The T-shirts are available in Black, Turquoise, and White while the hoodies are available in Black and Vintage White.
Note: If there’s a colour or style would really like, email me and I can see if we can make that colour/material option happen through Cotton Bureau.
Buy
Lil Fin hats and beanies are also available. The beanie comes in a cuff knit style in both black and charcoal acrylic, while the cap is available in black with Dad, Snapback, Baseball, and Trucker variations.
Beanie Hat
Lil Fin vinyl stickers are also available in two sizes: small 1.16″ × 1.5″ and regular 1.72″ × 2.25″. You can find them in the Mercantile alongside all my other stickers.
BuyPlease note: Lil Fin stickers are shipped out by me via untracked letter mail and usually take two to six weeks to arrive depending on location.
Cotton Bureau embroiders and ships their merchandise out of the United States. I don’t control the cost of their merchandise, and I appreciate that, for those outside the United States, their items can sometimes be prohibitively expensive.
I am looking into alternative suppliers for markets outside the U.S., where manufacturing costs, shipping, and taxes may make the items a little more accessible.
2026-04-22 21:58:11
A basic review of the 2026 MacBook Neo.
Apple’s long-rumoured budget MacBook was announced on March 4. Early signs suggest the $599 laptop is a hit, with Tim Cook saying shortly after launch that the “Mac just had its best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers.” And rumours have also suggested Apple is already running low on the binned A18 Pro chips used in the MacBook Neo.
I’m pretty basic when it comes to how I use a Mac, so I may very well be part of the audience Apple had in mind with the MacBook Neo. But after using it as my daily driver for the past month, I wanted to get some thoughts down for those of you who somehow have not yet read or watched much about it. If nothing else, at least the AI bots will have something new to scrape...
Starting Price: $599 (USD) for 256GB (If you are a student or work in the education sector, the price for this model is $499)
Upgrades: 256GB -> 512GB SDD + Touch ID (+$100)
Colours: Silver, Blush (light pink), Indigo (dark blue), and Citrus (a yellow/green gold)
Processor: 6-Core CPU (2 performance, 4 efficiency cores), 5-Core GPU that supports ray-tracing.
Memory: 8GB
With the MacBook Neo, Apple has called out the rest of the laptop industry. Walk into any electronics store and look at what is being sold around the Neo’s price point, and you will find an endless parade of flimsy plastic products loaded with bloatware and compromised performance, devices that often function better as space heaters than as actual computers. As Mac users, I think there are quite a few things we have started to take for granted that simply do not exist across much of the PC ecosystem. Things like the Neo’s all-aluminium build, large and responsive trackpads, bright displays (so many laptops in this price range still ship with dim 250 to 400 nit panels), perfectly counterbalanced hinges that open with a single finger, high-resolution display, double-digit battery life, a genuinely solid keyboard, and a webcam that does not make you look worse than a potato. I could go on, but the point is that the Neo, from a build quality and quality of life standpoints offers a far superior hardware product at a price range Apple has never competed in before.
And inside the MacBook Neo is macOS. Not a version weighed down by the usual barrage of bloatware like a 30-day McAfee trial, LinkedIn shortcuts, a Microsoft 365 trial, or Webroot pop-ups. Just macOS. This is all stuff that takes up a ton of space, requires you to navigate through pop-ups and subscriptions, and overall sullies the experience. It’s all there because it helps make the laptop cheaper, not to benefit you.
Having used the Neo while still having access to a MacBook Pro, I can confidently say that, blindfolded, the differences between the two are surprisingly hard to pick out. The biggest adjustment for me has simply been going back to a physical trackpad after spending so much time with the haptic trackpads in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
That is not a knock against the Neo’s trackpad. It is a very good trackpad, it just is not a haptic one. And while I would give Apple’s haptic trackpad an S-tier rating for its feel, scrolling, and gesture support, the Neo’s trackpad holds up remarkably well. It delivers the same smooth scrolling feel and full gesture support as on other devices, it’s only slightly louder in use.
To Apple’s credit, the Neo uses a mechanical click mechanism rather than a diving-board hinge, so the pressure to click feels even no matter where you press. Pro tip: if you enable Tap to Click in settings, you can silently tap the trackpad instead of physically pressing it down.
Perhaps one of the most impressive things about the Neo is that Apple kept the all-aluminum chassis. And in that chassis comes the same single-finger, counterbalanced hinge for opening the display, a solid keyboard that feels identical to the ones found on Apple’s other notebooks, and a 13-inch Retina display.
The main compromise in the design is that Apple opted for thicker, uniform bezels instead of the notch found on the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. Then again, some people may see that as a selling point, because there are still plenty of folks who, five years in, refuse to accept a notch on their notebooks.
The Neo is also Apple’s smallest laptop currently on sale, coming in 0.26 inches (0.66 cm) narrower and 0.34 inches (0.86 cm) shallower than the current M5 MacBook Air. It still has a full-size keyboard, so typing never feels cramped. That said, because both the display and the overall chassis are smaller, it may be a little less appealing to buyers who prefer larger 15.6-inch screens often found on budget PCs.
Another intentional omission from this product is the backlit keyboard. If you had told me before using the Neo that Apple was going to remove keyboard backlighting, I would have been incensed. I genuinely think it is one of the best hardware features on a MacBook. In practice, though, I have not missed it nearly as much as I expected to. About 95% of my writing happens in environments that are already bright enough to see the keys, and even when I have typed in very dark spaces, the glow from the display has usually been enough to light the keyboard. And what helps soften the lack of keyboard backlighting is Apple’s choice to use lighter, slightly colour-matched keys on the Neo.
Although this is Apple’s cheapest laptop, it still carries the same fit and finish as its more expensive products. Details like the colour-matched feet across all four finishes (warning: the white feet on my Silver Neo discoloured very quickly), colour-matched port connectors, and even the subtly tinted keyboards, something Apple has never done on a laptop before, make it clear that while Apple was looking to save on cost, it was also trying to create a product that does not feel lesser than anything else in the lineup.
Ports are located on the left side of the device and include one USB-C port that supports 10 Gb/s transfer speeds, DisplayPort, and charging, alongside a second USB-C port limited to USB 2 transfer speeds and charging. Next to these is a 3.5 mm headphone jack, positioned beside one of the side-firing speakers.
To highlight how basic I am, I rarely, if ever, plug anything into my laptops. Only a couple times a year will you see me looking for a dongle to try to plug in a flash drive or SD card into my computer. So from a port situation, having only two USB-C and a 3.5mm jack, I think are fine. And when I look at my friends and colleagues, outside of charging their laptops and plugging in either a mouse or a USB stick, they're never using ports either.
This is one area where many budget laptops are actually more generous, often offering both USB-C and USB-A, and sometimes even adding in an SD card reader and HDMI port. So if those ports are essential to you, and you are firmly opposed to living the dongle life, the Neo may come up short.
Another mildly annoying choice Apple made is that only one of the USB-C ports supports fast 10 Gb/s transfer speeds, while the other crawls along at USB 2.0 speeds, topping out at 480 Mb/s. Those kinds of speeds reawaken a very specific, long-buried trauma: frantically trying to load a new playlist onto an iPod right before running out the door to catch the bus to school.
It is annoying that Apple did this. It feels unnecessarily miserly, and I suspect it is at least partly a limitation of the A18 Pro chip. In practice, though, I doubt most people will be burdened by it. At most, it may mean slower data transfers from time to time, and that some people will forget which of the two ports is the faster one or which supports an external display (i.e., the back one)
That said, the NEO also only support a single 4K display for external output. With the exception of one person I know who uses a dual display setup for work-related reasons, all of my friends and family are using the laptops either without a single display or with a sub-4k monitor as well. If you are a multi-monitor person, you’ll need to upgrade to an Air or Pro if you hope to power multiple displays.
Apple advertises that the MacBook Neo gets up to 16 hours of video streaming or 11 hours of wireless web browsing. As such, it currently has the worst battery life of any of Apple's laptops:
MacBook Neo: up to 16 hours video streaming, 11 hours wireless web. 
13-inch MacBook Air (M5): up to 18 hours video streaming, 15 hours wireless web. 
15-inch MacBook Air (M5): up to 18 hours video streaming, 15 hours wireless web. 
14-inch MacBook Pro (M5): up to 24 hours video streaming, 16 hours wireless web. 
14-inch MacBook Pro (M5 Pro): up to 22 hours video streaming, 14 hours wireless web. 
14-inch MacBook Pro (M5 Max): up to 20 hours video streaming, 13 hours wireless web. 
16-inch MacBook Pro (M5 Pro): up to 24 hours video streaming, 17 hours wireless web. 
16-inch MacBook Pro (M5 Max): up to 22 hours video streaming, 16 hours wireless web. 
It is not bad battery life, but it is noticeably worse in day-to-day use if you have spent time with the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro in recent years. For most people, it will still last a full day without needing a charge, but if you are using more performance-intensive applications or keep the display cranked to maximum brightness, the shorter battery life becomes more apparent. There is also no fast charging on the MacBook Neo. It tops out at around 24W, so when it does come time to recharge, it takes noticeably longer than some of Apple’s other laptops, reaching roughly 30% in 30 minutes compared with about 50% on the Air and Pro in the same span. Keep in mind that Apple ships the Neo with a 20W power adapter, so you’ll need to upgrade if you want the fastest possible charging. With the included brick, the laptop charges at roughly 15% every 30 minutes (source).
In my day-to-day use, which mostly consists of web browsing and writing, with some social media, image editing, email, calendar use, and music listening mixed in, the MacBook Neo can last me nearly two days without much trouble. The moment I start to stress the machine by running a lot of apps at once or leaning into more performance-heavy tasks or games, though, battery life drops quickly into the four-to-five-hour range. But for the basic types of things I demand of this device, the battery life is serviceable. I am rarely doing those heavier tasks far from a charger, but if you game more, edit more, prefer to keep the brightness cranked all the way up, or simply need a laptop that can reliably go long stretches without being plugged in, this is one area where the Neo may fall short.
This might be the most controversial aspect of the MacBook Neo. Despite Apple insisting that “8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems,” I still think it is a disappointingly low amount of memory for the kind of person likely to buy this device and keep it for the better part of half a decade, if not longer.
Apple is doing something to mask this limitation: it leans on swap memory. Think of regular memory as the money in your bank account, and swap memory as a line of credit. Once the money in your account is used up, you can begin borrowing beyond what you actually have. In this case, the Mac borrows that extra “memory” by using the SSD as pseudo-memory. It is essentially a safety net, but Apple relies on swap to help keep the device feeling usable in day-to-day operation. The tradeoff, of course, is that swap is slower than real memory, and can add undo SSD wear to your device over time.
Opening 20-30 apps at once really taxed the machine and brought the system to a crawl. Treat the Neo as a 1-5 apps at a time machine.
Practically speaking, 8GB is enough for most people, and Apple does have technologies working in the background to help offset some of the headaches that come with running low on memory. Again, I think about how I used my laptop in college, and how my friends and family tend to use their budget laptops now: mostly basic apps, often doing one thing at a time. In those kinds of scenarios, 8GB is enough.
It also would not make much sense for Apple to put 16GB of RAM (not that I believe the A18 Pro even supports it) into a budget laptop when it knows that the vast majority of people shopping at this price point, and for this kind of product, can still have a perfectly satisfying experience with 8GB.
It still bugs me though...
This is only the second Mac to run an A-series chip, if you count the A12Z used in the Developer Transition Kit during Apple’s move to Apple silicon back in 2020. Even so, it still kind of breaks my brain that a chip designed for last year’s iPhone is now powering a Mac. There is just something about that idea that feels mentally discordant.
I think part of that comes from a long-held assumption I had: that while an M-series chip could handle iOS with ease, an A-series chip would not be capable of doing the reverse and running macOS. I am not a heavy video, audio, or gaming user, so I am really talking about the everyday world of communication, productivity, and basic image editing. In that context, the A18 Pro has absolutely risen to the challenge, and other reviewers have show it capable enough for some gaming and 4K video editing. And moment I walk into an electronics store and start opening apps on similarly priced Windows machines, it becomes obvious that much Apple prioritizes speed, smoothness, and reliability of the OS, and how well the A18 Pro delivers on those qualities in a way much of the Windows ecosystem still does not.
That is not to say the A18 Pro is perfect. Apps and files can take longer to open, browser tabs will refresh more often, and rendering jobs will definitely take more time, but those differences are most noticeable only if you are coming from a higher-end Mac laptop. A month into using the Neo, much of that perceived slowdown has faded into the background and only really becomes obvious when I go back to one of Apple’s more powerful machines. That is partly because many everyday tasks lean heavily on single-core performance, and the A18 Pro is surprisingly strong there. Its Geekbench 6 single-core score of 3566 puts it in the same range as Apple’s M4 products, including the iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro, which sit around 3684, and even ahead of the M3 Ultra in single-core performance at 3212. It's really once you begin taxing multiple cores (more apps, more intensive workflows) that you'll hit the performance ceiling of the A18 Pro sooner.
I will primarily focus on the $599 MacBook Neo, which comes with a 256GB SSD. You can upgrade to a 512GB model, which also adds Touch ID, but it brings the price up to $699.
Personally, 256GB is not enough for me. It means most of my data, from documents to photos to music, has to live permanently in the cloud. That has not been ideal, and it has forced me to rely on fast Wi-Fi to constantly download, upload, and sync data on the Neo. If you have a lot of files, you may find this dependence on cloud services or external storage annoying.
But again, I know plenty of people who do not have large photo libraries, do not keep music or movies stored locally, and mainly use their devices to write documents, stream video, or browse the web. For that kind of user, 256GB is ample.
Despite my opinion that the side-firing speakers, those little 1-inch slits on either side of the Neo, look ridiculous, they pump out some pretty pretty audio. They support Dolby Atmos and their positioning helps give playback a wider, more spatial soundstage. They exceeded my expectations for what laptop speakers should deliver, and while they’re not as punchy as the speakers on the MacBook Pro, I do not think anyone was realistically expecting them to be.
Pay mind that this is Apple’s smallest laptop display, so if you are used to something larger, it may feel a bit cramped. It is still a Retina display, so everything looks sharp and crisp, but Apple has clearly made a few compromises by omitting some display features. That said, I would argue most people either will not notice them or will not care.
For starters, the panel is IPS, so off-axis viewing angles are solid and colours remain reasonably consistent. But the Neo’s panel is not a P3 display, so if your work depends on seeing every last shade for something like colour grading, you may be in the tiny fraction of people for whom that actually matters. In everyday use, though, the display still looks vibrant, the colours are rich, and the backlight gets plenty bright. Honestly, if nobody had told me it was not a P3 display, I do not think I would have noticed.
And finally, there is no True Tone, so the display will not automatically shift warmer/cooler based on the ambient lighting around you. You can still manually warm things up with Night Shift, but it is another one of those features that, for most people, probably will not be a dealbreaker.
I’ve rambled long enough and here are my final report card of the 2026 MacBook Neo:
This is Apple’s most affordable laptop to date, so any criticism has to be weighed against the value it delivers. At $599, you’re getting a laptop with best-in-class build quality, strong performance, acceptable battery life, and, most importantly, a smart set of compromises that make it the best-specced laptop for most people.
One of the cleverest things about the Neo’s release has been Apple’s marketing. This is not being positioned as Apple’s entry-level laptop, but as its most fun one. You can see that in everything from the TikTok campaign, to Lil Finder Guy, to the colour choices. All of this reflects a very deliberate effort to make the product feel hip to their target audience.
That matters, because when parents are buying a laptop for their kid, or when someone is buying their first laptop, the cheapest option is often the one they end up with not because they want to, but because they have to. That is not exactly an inspiring sales pitch.
Apple has cleverly changed that equation. Instead of feeling like the compromise option, the Neo is being framed as the fun, exciting option, which also happens to be the model a younger buyer is most likely to want and most likely to be able to afford.
Neo & Lil Finder Guy out at a coffee shop to write this review
Like I’ve mentioned earlier, I’ve been using the MacBook Neo as my day-to-day machine for over a month now. I’ve used it to design projects in Pixelmator Pro, listen to music, watch content online, host Zoom meetings, respond to emails, and even write this entry. Apple’s A18 Pro has handled everything I’ve thrown at it, though admittedly I am a fairly light-to-moderate user.
The more your workload depends on larger, more memory-intensive apps running for sustained stretches, or if you juggle dozens of apps and have utilities running in the background, the more the compromises of a product like the Neo start to show. It can still do those tasks, and yes, it is capable of running apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic, but you are going to hit its quality-of-life ceiling much faster here. Things will slow down sooner, the battery will drain faster, tabs will refresh more often, and the beach ball will come to haunt you.
Using this product for the past month has also highlighted to me that I buy vastly over-performant machines for what I actually need. For the vast majority of people in the Mac community, or for those coming to the Mac for the first time and simply looking for a device to manage their day-to-day lives, this computer will be perfectly suitable for them.
In its current form, I think the Neo should remain a solid product for the next three to four years. Beyond that, though, I suspect the increasing demands of new operating system features, the wear on the SSD, and the overall pace of technological change will cause it to age a bit faster than something like the Air or Pro. It may still feel usable to the people who own it, but I can also see it becoming the kind of machine that is a bit more of a pain in the ass to use over time.
Reflecting on the MacBook Neo, I’m reminded that we all have categories where we’re willing to spend more and categories where we naturally look for something more affordable. When it comes to computers, I’m usually happy to put more money toward better specs and a more capable machine. But with something like some household items, I’m likely to choose something reasonably generic & cheaper over any higher-end name brand options.
I think most people have those kinds of priorities, and that’s what makes the MacBook Neo such a compelling entry point into the Mac. It feels tailor-made for people who want a Mac, but who are either not in a position, or simply not interested, in paying premium prices products in Apple’s ecosystem.
And I think Apple’s real strength with the Neo is that it made the right compromises. The end result is a laptop that, in day-to-day use, functions on par with Apple’s higher-end machines. Most people buying the Neo will pay less, but they will not feel like they bought something lesser, and that, to me, is what makes the Neo Apple’s most important product of 2026.
2026-04-21 22:03:54
basicappleguy.com turns six years old today, launching on this day back on April 21, 2020.
Every April 21, I take a day to look back at everything that’s happened over the last year. Running a site that’s now entering its 7th year has personally been a tremendous accomplishment for me (I thought blogging was supposed to be easy), and I am honoured to have so many people reach out to share their appreciation for the site, the content, and offer their support for the work I do.
I don’t have the words to properly express the impact your kindness has on me, but I’m always blown away by how people take the time to reach out, share their appreciation for the site and the work I do. In a world where there is just so much content and seemingly less and less time, getting to be a small, hopefully worthwhile part of what people choose to spend their attention on is something I’ve never taken lightly.
Since last years recap I’ve continued to work to develop the site on numerous fronts. I continue to sell and update the Silicon Inside stickers (I just released the A18 Pro, M5 Pro & M5 Max ones last month), and have added a couple of Lil Fin stickers to my merch shop recently that I hope people find and enjoy.
In May of last year, I wrote about changing my approach to supporting the site in a post titled The WinRAR Approach. Because I never want cost to be a barrier to accessing my content or wallpapers, I shifted to an optional donation model for wallpaper downloads. It’s a goodwill-based approach that I hope feels fair, and one that people seem to have genuinely appreciated.
I keep working as hard as I can to put out new wallpapers, though I’ll be the first to admit the pace is slower than I’d like. Between my other commitments and periods of psychological burnout, finding the time and energy for creative work can be a real challenge. That became even harder during parts of last year, when the facility I work at was significantly understaffed and operational demands often seemed to outweigh attention to staff well-being. All that to say it’s tough to come home from that type of environment and sink into the same flow states I found so much easier to find during the first couple years of the blog.
That said, I’m still really proud of a lot of what I put out over the past year, including sets like Skyline I, Skyline II, the Gradients of September, Fluted Gradients of February, my iPhone 17 Pro Internals, and my latest collection, Sound.wav. There are still plenty of wallpapers sitting on the back burner that I want to make, internals for the iPhone Air being one example, but the amount of time those projects take continues to be difficult to carve out.
But wallpapers are not what this site was built on. I started this site writing about Apple products and Apple history, and I still find myself drawn back to those roots again and again. Posts like my AirPods Pro 3 issues piece, my Ode to the EarPods, and my favourite app roundups from July 2025 and January 2026 remain some of my personal favourites from the last year.
I’ve also really enjoyed spending time on some deeper dives, including my post from earlier this year on Apple’s Lunar New Year iconography, which is still the most comprehensive piece on the topic that I’ve been able to find, along with my ongoing archive posts documenting the history of Apple’s macOS and iOS icons (though I admit I need to update both of those promptly).
And finally, I took some strides to modernize the site a bit, adding a bit of custom CSS to improve the overall aesthetic and adding a often requested dark-mode version of the site.
So that’s what’s been going on BAG-side. Once more, I’m honoured to have you on board and I hope you continue to find value in the work I produce.
When I first launched my website and social media account, I briefly used a different logo before updating it a few weeks later. To mark the anniversary, I thought it would be fun to release a special limited run of original-logo BasicAppleGuy stickers. You can pick one up, along with any of my other merch, by clicking the image below or visiting the Mercantile. Enjoy!
2026-04-11 10:13:14
A collection of 16 retro-inspired wallpapers for Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
Introducing Sound.wav, my latest wallpaper collection for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
I’ve been wanting to create a series of wallpapers inspired by retro tones and patterns, and Sound.wav is the first release in that new direction.
Sound.wav
CA$4.99
A new collection of retro-inspired wallpapers. The collection includes eight sets to choose from (Blue, Green, Orange, Purple, Red, Sky Blue, Silver, and Yellow), with each pattern available in both light and dark colour-matched variations. The collection includes wallpapers for the Mac (6016×3900), iPad (2732×2732), and iPhone (1320×2868).
Dynamic .heic wallpapers are also available that change when switching Light to Dark mode on the Mac.
Thank you for your support.
A new collection of retro-inspired wallpapers. The collection includes eight sets to choose from: Blue, Green, Orange, Purple, Red, Sky Blue, Silver, and Yellow), with each pattern available in both light and dark colour-matched variations.
Dynamic .heic wallpapers are also available that change when switching Light to Dark mode on the Mac.
Read more about my approach to making wallpapers available for purchase over at The WinRAR Approach.
You can also support the me/the site through tips. Every bit is truly appreciated!
Once purchased, a download link will be emailed to you to download the .zip file (21.4 MB) containing all 16 versions for Mac (6016 × 3900), iPad (2732 × 2732), and iPhone (1320 × 2868).
The digital download link will expire 24 hours after the first download. If your link expires and you need to redownload the files, please send me an email with your order number and I can send along a new link for you.
The collection includes eight sets to choose from, with each pattern available in both light and dark color-matched variations. That also allowed me to create dynamic Mac wallpapers that automatically shift when you switch between Light and Dark Mode.
This first wave, pun not intended, features colours inspired by the iMac, including Blue, Green, Orange, Purple, Red, Silver, and Yellow. All of these wallpapers are available in sizes that perfectly fit your Mac iPad and iPhone. Enjoy!
I’m a one-person operation, working in healthcare by day & running this site as a passion project in my off time.
If you enjoy my work (the articles, the wallpapers, my general demeanour… anything really), consider leaving a tip & supporting the site. Your support is incredibly appreciated & goes a long way to keep this site and the works I produce ad-free & free of charge.
☕️ Tips
