2026-06-05 22:20:28
It’s nearly time for WWDC26, which means it’s time to make my annual bingo board of predictions, prognostications, and presentation ponderings ahead of this year’s keynote.
Two years ago, Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence, which I think most people would pretty unanimously agree has been a significant miss for the company. The fallout from that failed rollout has led to lawsuits, organizational reshuffling, and a pretty significant directional repivot inside Apple.
Looking back now, I don’t think anyone would have expected that the solution would be Apple adopting Google’s Gemini to power its AI push, as the rumours now seem to suggest. But here we are.
Fortunately, Apple has managed to maneuver these past two years quite adeptly. And as Google battles with other AI makers like Anthropic and OpenAI, Apple has benefited from their sizeable platform base to have these apps installable and usable across most of its platforms. Apple may not have had its own AI story figured out, but it has still benefited from these companies competing for more and more customer attention across its platforms.
This year, I think many of us are expecting to see Apple do a lot more with AI across the OS. Apple and Google have reportedly been working on bringing Gemini into Siri, and we’re expecting to see the fruits of that integration at this year’s event.
But what else does Apple plan to announce at WWDC? And how will all of these integrations come together? That part is still very much shrouded in mystery.
So I’ve done my best to compile as many picks and predictions as I can, from what I think might happen, to what has been rumoured, to a few selections meant purely to manifest the things I want to see. So play along as we watch WWDC together!
Note: The board was assembled in picks made from late May and locked in on June 3.
Winning in Bingo means completing a specific pattern on your card, in this case, a row, column, diagonal, or the entire card. The "Good Morning Free Space" in the centre is already marked and can be part of any winning pattern.
Mockup of a hypothetical macOS Tiburon Wallpaper.
This year, my pick for the name of the next version of macOS is macOS Tiburon.
As of 2025, Apple still had a number of California-themed names protected, including California, Condor, Diablo, Farallon, Grizzly, Mammoth, Miramar, Pacific, Redtail, Redwood, Rincon, Shasta, Skyline, and Tiburon. That list is from before WWDC25, when Tahoe was announced, so it’s far from a guarantee that this is the definitive list of possible names.
It’s also worth noting that Tiburon has shown up in a couple of Apple screenshots, which, again, guarantees absolutely nothing. And now that I think about it, that might actually make it less likely to be the chosen name.
Tiburon, if you’re curious, is a small bayside town just north of San Francisco.
Update: The code word “Big Bear” has been spotted in relation to some of the teaser WWDC images, leading people to belief that might be the name of the next version of macOS.
For the past half decade, virtual WWDC keynotes have regularly cleared the 100-minute mark. But in 2025, Apple’s keynote was noticeably shorter than its predecessors, landing at 92 minutes and 26 seconds.
This year, based on what I’m predicting and hoping to see, I imagine Apple returning to a more true-to-form WWDC keynote. My guess is that we see the presentation stretch closer to the 110-minute mark, which would make it the longest WWDC keynote of the post-COVID era outside of 2023, when Apple debuted Vision Pro and clocked in at a hefty 126 minutes.
There are rumours that Apple is poised to be launching some sort of Wallpaper Creator feature for their platforms. Users may be able to use something like image playgrounds to create custom backgrounds using prompts, photos from the users library, etc.
Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and the 256GB M3 Ultra Mac Studio. What do these three things have in common? Many have claimed to see them, but no one can seem to find them.
Apple appears to have found itself caught up in the global RAM and chip shortage, as supply and demand continue shifting toward powering ever-larger data centres. Shipping dates for some Mac Studio and Mac mini models continue to slide, while more configurations appear unavailable or have been removed from Apple’s website altogether. Earlier this year, the 256GB and 512GB memory configurations of the Mac Studio vanished from Apple’s online store.
Which makes me wonder if Apple will use WWDC to introduce updates to these increasingly hard-to-find desktop devices.
It’s not every year Apple launches hardware at WWDC, but the Mac Studio and Mac mini are both due for attention, and they have become especially popular among people working with AI-heavy workflows. So this feels like one of the more plausible places for new models to debut.
That said, I shudder to think what the pricing might look like for any higher-spec memory configurations, given the inflated market we’re in right now.
Currently, Apple only has OpenAI’s ChatGPT available as a direct OS-level plug-in across its platforms. But with Google Gemini coming on board, I imagine users will be able to select the provider of their choice, whether that’s Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or another AI service altogether.
Apple has already added plug-in support for both OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude in Xcode, so seeing that same kind of connectivity and choice expand to other parts of the OS feels like a pretty natural next step.
As AirPods continue to gain features and complexity, the case for a redesigned & dedicated hub to manage their settings keeps getting stronger.
Right now, AirPods settings appear when the earbuds are connected, but that menu has become a mile-long list of options: battery life, listening modes, hearing health, press-and-hold actions, call controls, Camera Control, audio settings, Automatic Ear Detection, Spatial Audio, Live Translation, microphone settings, sleep controls, head gestures, case sounds, Find My, Accessibility, hearing mode, privacy, device information, AppleCare+ details, and finally the Disconnect and Forget Device options.
At this point, I think AirPods are overdue for their own dedicated app or settings redesign. Something that more thoughtfully organizes this laundry list of features and presents them in a cleaner, more structured, and more approachable way.
Alan Dye skipped town for Meta late last year, leaving his role to be filled by longtime Apple user interface designer Stephen Lemay.
Lemay is now in his third decade at Apple, having joined the company back in 1999, and now holds the title of Vice President of Human Interface Design.
Just as Jony Ive and Alan Dye have done in years past, I expect we’ll see a small segment during the keynote where Lemay speaks to some of the design refinements and updates being introduced across Apple’s platforms this year.
Genmoji Billboard.
I don't know how popular this feature continues to be, despite Apple's Pro prolific billboard campaign, but I expect at one point during the keynote that they'll make mention of improvements to Genmoji creation.
I wonder if we’ll see Apple integrate more Apple Intelligence into the Shortcuts app, giving us lay users a simpler and easier way to create shortcuts.
Maybe that looks like chatting with Siri in natural language and saying, “I need you to take these 10 images, crop them, and convert them into JPGs,” and having Shortcuts build the automation for you. Or maybe Apple could surface recommended shortcuts based on common actions you perform, giving people an easier entry point into automation without needing to understand all the fiddly bits that make Shortcuts feel so intimidating.
Lil’ Finder Guy made their debut alongside the launch of the MacBook Neo, and so far, they seem to be a mascot mostly dedicated to marketing the Neo, and Mac features more broadly, via the lens of the MacBook Neo on TikTok.
I have no idea what Apple’s long-term plans are for their tiny viral mascot, but I’m manifesting some kind of easter egg at the event. Maybe they show up in a screenshot, maybe they’re hiding in the background during a feature demo, or maybe Apple sneaks them in somewhere else entirely.
Apple has built an incredibly robust app for cataloguing health information, but so much of that data still feels passive. It gets collected, stored, and occasionally surfaced, but rarely analyzed in a way that feels personal or genuinely useful beyond more basic insights like sleep scores.
I wonder if Apple will start injecting more on-device Apple Intelligence into the Health app to provide users with more personal, dynamic insights into their health trends. Apple has long been rumoured to be working on some sort of fitness coach, and this feels like a natural place for those features to first appear.
Imagine being able to ask the Health app a question about your own health and getting a thoughtful, guardrailed response based on your actual data. If I asked how to build more muscle, it might notice that most of my workouts are walking-based and suggest adding more functional or strength-based training. If I asked about fat loss, it might look at my recent workout heart rate zones and suggest ways to spend more time in higher-intensity zones.
The Health app already has the data. What it needs next is a way to help users better understand what that data actually means.
Apple’s parkour-loving, golf-cart-racing, three-headed-guitar-playing, skydiving madman, last seen racing donuts on the roof of Apple Park, is sure to surprise us with another memeable… I mean, memorable WWDC performance.
I believe Tim Cook, who will still be Apple’s CEO at the time of the event, will open the video presentation with his signature Southern-style “Good morning” for the last time.
Customizable Camera App. Source: Bloomberg
I’d like to see Apple take a step toward making the Camera app in iOS 27 more customizable. Apple has so many buried featured inside their camera app and I would like them give users the ability to surface and customize the layout of their controls to better suit their needs. For example, if someone wants a persistent exposure controller, let them pin it. If someone regularly adjusts aperture, let them keep that control closer at hand. The Camera app is already incredibly powerful. I’d just like to see Apple give users a little more say in how that power is organized.
Siri Chat Bot mockup. Source: Bloomberg
Chatbots have proven to be incredibly popular interfaces for interacting with AI, and I expect Apple to compete by introducing a chatbot interface of its own.
I imagine this’ll be a standalone app that allows users to talk or text directly with Apple’s AI to ask questions, perform functions on device, or access world knowledge. Depending on the complexity of the request, Apple could choose to handle the task locally or hand it off to its Private Cloud Compute models when more power or broader context is needed.
Gurman seemed to reveal as much in late May, when he published concept artwork showing what these interfaces are expected to look like.
According to the rumours, Apple has been sitting on a nearly finished lineup of new home accessories designed to be powered by Apple Intelligence. However, since Apple Intelligence has spent the past couple of years mostly being used to make parrot popsicle Genmoji, these products appear to have been stuck in a bit of a holding pattern.
I expect Apple will preview the first wave of these devices, along with the new operating system powering them, at this year’s WWDC. These are widely rumoured to be smart home devices in the vein of Amazon Echo or Google Home, featuring a screen, speaker, and a modified version of iOS. Let’s call it homeOS.
I don’t expect any of this hardware to be available at WWDC. My guess is that Apple previews the category, gives developers the summer to start thinking about how their apps might work on this new accessory line, and possibly offers some form of developer kit to select partners so they can begin testing these experiences in the real world.
Extending on the promises of 2024, I wonder if Apple could use all of the Apple Intelligence features being built across the OS to create some sort of daily brief.
Whether it appears as a notification, email, widget, Siri summary, or something else entirely, the idea would be to give you a bird’s-eye view of your day before it really gets going.
In the morning, it could surface traffic reports, suggest when to leave, recommend alternate routes, provide an outline of your schedule, highlight relevant reminders, and maybe even make suggestions about when to get certain things done. For example, if traffic is expected to be heavier after work, it could suggest stopping at the grocery store near your office before heading home. Or if you have a meeting later in the day, it could surface the relevant emails, links, notes, or files you might need before you’re scrambling to find them.
The whole purpose would be to quietly connect the dots between Calendar, Reminders, Mail, Maps, Weather, etc., and then give you a useful snapshot of what matters most that day.
In addition to the expected drone footage around Apple Park, at some point, we'll transition from one place to the next via some fancy corridor, escape hatch, portal, or secret underground tunnel accessed via the fountain inside the courtyard of Apple Park.
It was all too easy to poke fun at some of the more glaring oddities of Liquid Glass. The skewampus and inconsistent rounding of windows. The transparency issues. The overall afterthought quality liquid glass got on macOS.
This year, I expect we’ll see a much more refined version of Liquid Glass now that Apple has had an entire calendar year, and our collective jeers, to fuel them.
I don’t think the rumours suggest some radical redesign. Rather, it might looks more like a year tightening things up, improving the shadowing, bringing more consistency to the system, and hopefully revisiting some of the more dreadfully lazy icons.
I also expect we’ll see more of a push to bring Liquid Glass properly into macOS, which lacked a lot of the animations, depth, and polish that iOS and iPadOS debuted with.
It’s widely expected that Apple will debut its Google Gemini-powered Siri at WWDC. After a two-year botched rollout of Apple Intelligence, Apple appears to be turning to Google Gemini, an established player in the AI space, to help power the next generation of Siri.
And that’s a pretty massive move. If Gemini becomes part of Siri, Google’s AI model suddenly becomes one of the most dominant AI systems across platforms around the world. Between Android and iOS, nearly every modern smartphone user will have a device that could soon be powered, in some way, by Gemini.
There are also rumours about how this new Siri might appear beyond the traditional “Hey Siri” (Yes, I still say the “Hey...”) command. Some reports have suggested it could be pulled down from the Dynamic Island, using the same glowing effect Apple has been teasing in its WWDC invite.
Photos AI tools. Source: Bloomberg
Back in 2024 with iOS 18.1, Apple introduced Clean Up, a photo-editing tool that uses on-device AI to remove people and objects from photos. It’s a handy feature, but it feels like just the beginning. This year, rumors suggest Apple is planning to bring even more AI-powered editing tools to the Photos app, potentially giving users the ability to extend, reframe, or otherwise enhance their photos with on-device models.
If Apple does indeed announce updated M5 Mac Studios & minis, we’re almost guaranteed to John Ternus feature during the video. But even if that hardware isn’t announced, I fully expect we see him make an appearance in some capacity during the event. This is, after all, his ship after August 31st.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you. But fool me a third time? Shame on both of us.
For the past three WWDCs, I have been banging the drum for Apple to bring more of its native apps properly to visionOS. Apps like Reminders, Calendar, Podcasts, Pages, and Apple Books are still largely iPad versions, and many of them continue be very mid ports on Vision Pro.
I don’t think bringing a native version of Pages to visionOS is going to suddenly send people stampeding into Apple Stores to buy a Vision Pro. But it would be an important show of commitment to the platform. A sign that Apple is still investing in visionOS not just as a place for immersive videos and floating Safari windows, but as a real computing platform with first-party apps that feel considered, polished, and native.
Apple has recently made a bunch of changes to upgrade their Creator Studio apps, so it’s time to push those spoils into Vision Pro as well.
But I have pleaded for this for the last two years and been disappointed both times.
I’m ready to be hurt again.
Some in the Apple community have been waiting for this current generation of macOS to have its “Snow Leopard” glow up.
Snow Leopard, released in 2009, is still held in high regard because it focused less on obvious new features and more on core system performance, stability, and refinements to the architecture of the Mac.
If this year really is that kind of moment, I imagine Apple will spend time talking about improvements to the foundation of the operating system, and how those changes trickle down into faster performance, better efficiency, and improved battery life during everyday tasks.
I wonder if we’ll see Tim add a slightly more personal note to his sign-off at the end of the keynote, acknowledging that this may likely be his final widely-public words as Apple’s CEO.
Normally, he wraps things up by recapping the event, highlighting what developers can look forward to, and touting the exciting week ahead. But given that he has now been leading Apple for nearly a decade and a half, I wonder if we’ll see him add a small line reflecting on his role at the company. Nothing dramatic, of course, just a little extra feels.
If Apple announces an increase to its base 5GB iCloud storage (even if that change comes in the form of 5GB per device), then an instant BINGO is declared.
2026-06-02 02:16:29
Apple has stolen my thunder and released an official set of WWDC26 wallpapers.
For the past several years, I’ve released my own WWDC wallpapers (2023, 2024, 2025) ahead of Apple’s annual developer event, inspired by the logos Apple shares in the lead-up to its week-long developers conference.
But this year, I’ve been Sherlocked.
Apple has taken it upon itself to release a trio of high-quality wallpapers for the Mac, iPad, and iPhone, giving everyone a way to adorn their devices ahead of WWDC.
The wallpapers are available on Apple’s developer page, but I’m also sharing them here for posterity’s sake, because who knows if or when they’ll disappear.
Enjoy!
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.
