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Say hello to MacBook Neo

Apple’s all-new MacBook fea­tures a durable alu­minum de­sign, a stun­ning 13-inch Liquid Retina dis­play, the power of Apple sil­i­con, and all-day bat­tery life — all for the break­through start­ing price of just $599

Apple to­day un­veiled MacBook Neo, an all-new lap­top that de­liv­ers the magic of the Mac at a break­through price, mak­ing it even more ac­ces­si­ble to mil­lions of peo­ple around the world. MacBook Neo starts with a beau­ti­ful Apple de­sign, fea­tur­ing a durable alu­minum en­clo­sure in an ar­ray of gor­geous col­ors — blush, in­digo, sil­ver, and a fresh new cit­rus. Its stun­ning 13-inch Liquid Retina dis­play brings web­sites, pho­tos, videos, and apps to life with high res­o­lu­tion and bright­ness, and sup­port for 1 bil­lion col­ors. Powered by A18 Pro, MacBook Neo can fly through every­day tasks, from brows­ing the web and stream­ing con­tent, to edit­ing pho­tos, ex­plor­ing cre­ative hob­bies, or us­ing AI ca­pa­bil­i­ties across apps. In fact, it’s up to 50 per­cent faster for every­day tasks like web brows­ing,1 and up to 3x faster when run­ning on-de­vice AI work­loads like ap­ply­ing ad­vanced ef­fects to pho­tos,2 com­pared to the best­selling PC with the lat­est ship­ping Intel Core Ultra 5. Providing up to 16 hours of bat­tery life, MacBook Neo al­lows users to go all day on a sin­gle charge.3 A 1080p FaceTime HD cam­era and dual mics make it easy to look and sound great, and the dual side-fir­ing speak­ers with Spatial Audio de­liver crisp, im­mer­sive sound. MacBook Neo also fea­tures Apple’s renowned Magic Keyboard for com­fort­able and pre­cise typ­ing, and a large Multi-Touch track­pad with sup­port for in­tu­itive ges­tures, en­abling smooth and pre­cise con­trol. Completing the MacBook Neo ex­pe­ri­ence is ma­cOS Tahoe, with pow­er­ful built-in apps like Messages, Pages, Calendar, and Safari; seam­less in­te­gra­tion with iPhone; Apple Intelligence; as well as broad com­pat­i­bil­ity with third-party apps. And start­ing at just $599 and $499 for ed­u­ca­tion, MacBook Neo is Apple’s most af­ford­able lap­top ever, pro­vid­ing an un­prece­dented com­bi­na­tion of qual­ity and value. MacBook Neo is avail­able to pre-or­der start­ing to­day, with avail­abil­ity be­gin­ning Wednesday, March 11.

“We’re in­cred­i­bly ex­cited to in­tro­duce MacBook Neo, which de­liv­ers the magic of the Mac at a break­through price,” said John Ternus, Apple’s se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Hardware Engineering. “Built from the ground up to be more af­ford­able for even more peo­ple, MacBook Neo is a lap­top only Apple could cre­ate. It fea­tures a durable alu­minum de­sign in four beau­ti­ful col­ors; a bril­liant Liquid Retina dis­play; Apple sil­i­con-pow­ered per­for­mance; all-day bat­tery life; a high-qual­ity cam­era, mics, and speak­ers; a Magic Keyboard and Multi-Touch track­pad; and the in­tu­itive and pow­er­ful fea­tures of ma­cOS. There is sim­ply no other lap­top like it.”

MacBook Neo pro­vides an un­matched com­bi­na­tion of qual­ity and af­ford­abil­ity for stu­dents, fam­i­lies, small busi­ness own­ers, new Mac users, and more.

A fanned-out ar­ray of MacBook Neo mod­els in its four col­ors: sil­ver, blush, cit­rus, and in­digo.

MacBook Neo comes in four beau­ti­ful col­ors — sil­ver, blush, cit­rus, and in­digo.

MacBook Neo comes in four beau­ti­ful col­ors — blush, in­digo, sil­ver, and cit­rus.

MacBook Neo comes in four beau­ti­ful col­ors — blush, in­digo, sil­ver, and cit­rus.

MacBook Neo comes in four beau­ti­ful col­ors — blush, in­digo, sil­ver, and cit­rus.

MacBook Neo comes in four beau­ti­ful col­ors — blush, in­digo, sil­ver, and cit­rus.

A user an­swers emails and browses the web on their cit­rus MacBook Neo.

A per­son uses ChatGPT and Canva on their blush MacBook Neo.

A per­son mul­ti­tasks be­tween apps on their in­digo MacBook Neo.

With A18 Pro, MacBook Neo can power through a wide range of every­day tasks, from brows­ing the web to send­ing emails and ef­fort­lessly mul­ti­task­ing be­tween apps.

With A18 Pro, MacBook Neo can power through a wide range of every­day tasks, from brows­ing the web to send­ing emails and ef­fort­lessly mul­ti­task­ing be­tween apps.

With A18 Pro, MacBook Neo can power through a wide range of every­day tasks, from brows­ing the web to send­ing emails and ef­fort­lessly mul­ti­task­ing be­tween apps.

A18 Pro fea­tures a 5-core GPU to fa­cil­i­tate smooth per­for­mance for every­thing from FaceTime calls to ca­sual game­play.

A stu­dent uses their cit­rus MacBook Neo in a class­room set­ting.

A per­son lounges in bed us­ing MacBook Neo while lis­ten­ing to mu­sic on AirPods Max.

A per­son uses their sil­ver MacBook Neo in an au­di­to­rium-like set­ting.

MacBook Neo de­liv­ers up to 16 hours of bat­tery life on a sin­gle charge, mak­ing it a per­fect on-the-go com­pan­ion for school, work, or play.

MacBook Neo de­liv­ers up to 16 hours of bat­tery life on a sin­gle charge, mak­ing it a per­fect on-the-go com­pan­ion for school, work, or play.

MacBook Neo de­liv­ers up to 16 hours of bat­tery life on a sin­gle charge, mak­ing it a per­fect on-the-go com­pan­ion for school, work, or play.

MacBook Neo de­liv­ers up to 16 hours of bat­tery life on a sin­gle charge, mak­ing it a per­fect on-the-go com­pan­ion for school, work, or play.

Customers can pre-or­der the new MacBook Neo start­ing to­day at ap­ple.com/​store and in the Apple Store app in 30 coun­tries and re­gions, in­clud­ing the U. S. It will be­gin ar­riv­ing to cus­tomers, and will be in Apple Store lo­ca­tions and Apple Authorized Resellers, start­ing Wednesday, March 11.

MacBook Neo starts at $599 (U.S.) and $499 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion. It is avail­able in four col­ors — blush, in­digo, sil­ver, and cit­rus. Additional tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, con­fig­ure-to-or­der op­tions, and ac­ces­sories are avail­able at ap­ple.com/​mac.

With Apple Trade In, cus­tomers can trade in their cur­rent com­puter and get credit to­ward a new Mac. Customers can visit ap­ple.com/​shop/​trade-in to see what their de­vice is worth.

AppleCare de­liv­ers ex­cep­tional ser­vice and sup­port, with flex­i­ble op­tions for Apple users. Customers can choose AppleCare+ to cover their new Mac, or in the U.S., AppleCare One to pro­tect mul­ti­ple prod­ucts in one sim­ple plan. Both plans in­clude cov­er­age for ac­ci­dents like drops and spills, theft and loss pro­tec­tion on el­i­gi­ble prod­ucts, bat­tery re­place­ment ser­vice, and 24/7 sup­port from Apple Experts. For more in­for­ma­tion, visit ap­ple.com/​ap­ple­care.

Every cus­tomer who buys di­rectly from Apple Retail gets ac­cess to Personal Setup. In these guided on­line ses­sions, a Specialist can walk them through setup, or fo­cus on fea­tures that help them make the most of their new de­vice. Customers can also learn more about get­ting started and go­ing fur­ther with their new de­vice with a Today at Apple ses­sion at their near­est Apple Store.

Customers in the U.S. who shop at Apple us­ing Apple Card can pay monthly at 0 per­cent APR when they choose to check out with Apple Card Monthly Installments, and they’ll get 3 per­cent Daily Cash back — all up front. More in­for­ma­tion — in­clud­ing de­tails on el­i­gi­bil­ity, ex­clu­sions, and Apple Card terms — is avail­able at ap­ple.com/​ap­ple-card/​monthly-in­stall­ments.

Apple’s all-new MacBook fea­tures a durable alu­minum de­sign, a stun­ning 13-inch Liquid Retina dis­play, the power of Apple sil­i­con, and all-day bat­tery life — all for the break­through start­ing price of just $599

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple to­day un­veiled MacBook Neo, an all-new lap­top that de­liv­ers the magic of the Mac at a break­through price, mak­ing it even more ac­ces­si­ble to mil­lions of peo­ple around the world. MacBook Neo starts with a beau­ti­ful Apple de­sign, fea­tur­ing a durable alu­minum en­clo­sure in an ar­ray of gor­geous col­ors — blush, in­digo, sil­ver, and a fresh new cit­rus. Its stun­ning 13-inch Liquid Retina dis­play brings web­sites, pho­tos, videos, and apps to life with high res­o­lu­tion and bright­ness, and sup­port for 1 bil­lion col­ors. Powered by A18 Pro, MacBook Neo can fly through every­day tasks, from brows­ing the web and stream­ing con­tent, to edit­ing pho­tos, ex­plor­ing cre­ative hob­bies, or us­ing AI ca­pa­bil­i­ties across apps. In fact, it’s up to 50 per­cent faster for every­day tasks like web brows­ing,1 and up to 3x faster when run­ning on-de­vice AI work­loads like ap­ply­ing ad­vanced ef­fects to pho­tos,2 com­pared to the best­selling PC with the lat­est ship­ping Intel Core Ultra 5. Providing up to 16 hours of bat­tery life, MacBook Neo al­lows users to go all day on a sin­gle charge.3 A 1080p FaceTime HD cam­era and dual mics make it easy to look and sound great, and the dual side-fir­ing speak­ers with Spatial Audio de­liver crisp, im­mer­sive sound. MacBook Neo also fea­tures Apple’s renowned Magic Keyboard for com­fort­able and pre­cise typ­ing, and a large Multi-Touch track­pad with sup­port for in­tu­itive ges­tures, en­abling smooth and pre­cise con­trol. Completing the MacBook Neo ex­pe­ri­ence is ma­cOS Tahoe, with pow­er­ful built-in apps like Messages, Pages, Calendar, and Safari; seam­less in­te­gra­tion with iPhone; Apple Intelligence; as well as broad com­pat­i­bil­ity with third-party apps. And start­ing at just $599 and $499 for ed­u­ca­tion, MacBook Neo is Apple’s most af­ford­able lap­top ever, pro­vid­ing an un­prece­dented com­bi­na­tion of qual­ity and value. MacBook Neo is avail­able to pre-or­der start­ing to­day, with avail­abil­ity be­gin­ning Wednesday, March 11.

“We’re in­cred­i­bly ex­cited to in­tro­duce MacBook Neo, which de­liv­ers the magic of the Mac at a break­through price,” said John Ternus, Apple’s se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Hardware Engineering. “Built from the ground up to be more af­ford­able for even more peo­ple, MacBook Neo is a lap­top only Apple could cre­ate. It fea­tures a durable alu­minum de­sign in four beau­ti­ful col­ors; a bril­liant Liquid Retina dis­play; Apple sil­i­con-pow­ered per­for­mance; all-day bat­tery life; a high-qual­ity cam­era, mics, and speak­ers; a Magic Keyboard and Multi-Touch track­pad; and the in­tu­itive and pow­er­ful fea­tures of ma­cOS. There is sim­ply no other lap­top like it.”

MacBook Neo fea­tures a beau­ti­fully crafted alu­minum de­sign that’s built to last. With its soft, rounded cor­ners, MacBook Neo looks el­e­gant while feel­ing solid and com­fort­able to hold. At just 2.7 pounds, it’s also easy to carry in a back­pack or hand­bag. Bringing a fun touch of per­son­al­ity and style to every­day com­put­ing, MacBook Neo comes in a spec­trum of four gor­geous col­ors: blush, in­digo, sil­ver, and cit­rus. These col­ors ex­tend to the Magic Keyboard in lighter shades and new wall­pa­pers, cre­at­ing a co­he­sive de­sign aes­thetic and mak­ing MacBook Neo the most col­or­ful MacBook yet.

A gor­geous 13-inch Liquid Retina dis­play fea­tures a 2408-by-1506 res­o­lu­tion, 500 nits of bright­ness, and sup­port for 1 bil­lion col­ors, bring­ing to life sharp, crys­tal-clear text and vi­brant im­ages. The dis­play is both brighter and higher in res­o­lu­tion than most PC lap­tops in this price range, putting it in a class of its own. Finally, an anti-re­flec­tive coat­ing pro­vides a com­fort­able view­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in a va­ri­ety of light­ing con­di­tions, al­low­ing users to watch movies, edit pho­tos, or take video calls from any­where.

At the heart of MacBook Neo is A18 Pro, en­abling users to power through things they do every day, like brows­ing the web, cre­at­ing doc­u­ments, stream­ing con­tent, edit­ing pho­tos, and tak­ing ad­van­tage of AI. Users can seam­lessly work be­tween their fa­vorite apps, like Messages, WhatsApp, Canva, Excel, Safari, and more. MacBook Neo with A18 Pro is up to 50 per­cent faster for every­day tasks than the best­selling PC with the lat­est ship­ping Intel Core Ultra 5.1 And for more de­mand­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, it’s up to 3x faster for on-de­vice AI work­loads2 and up to 2x faster for tasks like photo edit­ing.4 The in­te­grated 5-core GPU brings graph­ics to life while play­ing ac­tion-packed games or ex­plor­ing cre­ative hob­bies. And a 16-core Neural Engine sup­ports fast on-de­vice Apple Intelligence fea­tures and every­day AI tasks like sum­ma­riz­ing notes in Bear or us­ing the Clean Up tool in the Photos app, while en­sur­ing user data stays pri­vate and se­cure. MacBook Neo is also fan­less, so it runs com­pletely silent.

Thanks to the in­cred­i­ble power ef­fi­ciency of Apple sil­i­con, MacBook Neo de­liv­ers up to 16 hours of bat­tery life on a sin­gle charge.3 This makes it a per­fect on-the-go com­pan­ion for work or play, from the class­room to the cof­fee shop, and every­where in be­tween.

MacBook Neo fea­tures Apple’s much-loved Magic Keyboard, which pro­vides a com­fort­able, pre­cise typ­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, while a large Multi-Touch track­pad lets users click, scroll, swipe, and pinch any­where on its sur­face. The MacBook Neo model with Touch ID en­ables easy, quick, and se­cure lo­gin au­then­ti­ca­tion, and the abil­ity to con­ve­niently au­tho­rize pur­chases us­ing Apple Pay.

The 1080p FaceTime HD cam­era on MacBook Neo has op­ti­mized im­age pro­cess­ing to de­liver vi­brant video calls. Dual mics with di­rec­tional beam­form­ing are de­signed to re­duce back­ground noise and iso­late a user’s voice, al­low­ing it to come across loud and clear for an ex­cel­lent video con­fer­enc­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. And dual side-fir­ing speak­ers with sup­port for Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos pro­duce im­mer­sive sound for watch­ing a movie, lis­ten­ing to mu­sic, or us­ing apps like GarageBand.

MacBook Neo fea­tures two USB-C ports for con­nect­ing ac­ces­sories or an ex­ter­nal dis­play.5 Both ports can be used for charg­ing. MacBook Neo also in­cludes a head­phone jack for wired au­dio. Wi-Fi 6E pro­vides fast wire­less con­nec­tiv­ity, and Bluetooth 6 en­sures re­li­able wire­less con­nec­tions for pe­riph­er­als and ac­ces­sories.

ma­cOS is Apple’s pow­er­ful and in­tu­itive op­er­at­ing sys­tem for Mac.6 With in­cred­i­ble fea­tures and built-in apps like Safari, Photos, Messages, and FaceTime, ma­cOS en­ables users to get started right out of the box. Apple Intelligence fea­tures like Writing Tools, Live Translation, and more are deeply in­te­grated across ma­cOS, el­e­vat­ing the user ex­pe­ri­ence by bring­ing in­tel­li­gence to the apps users rely on every day.7 Advanced pri­vacy and se­cu­rity also come stan­dard, fea­tur­ing in­dus­try‑lead­ing en­cryp­tion, ro­bust virus pro­tec­tions, and au­to­matic free se­cu­rity up­dates to help keep users pro­tected.

iPhone users can tap in to Continuity fea­tures built in to ma­cOS to make work­ing across iPhone and Mac a breeze. Handoff lets users start a task on MacBook Neo and con­tinue it on iPhone, while Universal Clipboard al­lows users to copy and paste con­tent be­tween de­vices. With iPhone Mirroring, users can view and in­ter­act with their iPhone di­rectly on MacBook Neo, and users switch­ing to Mac for the first time can use iPhone to con­ve­niently and se­curely trans­fer set­tings, files, pho­tos, pass­words, and more.

Built with the Environment in Mind

MacBook Neo was built from the ground up to be Apple’s low­est-car­bon MacBook, and brings the com­pany even closer to reach­ing its am­bi­tious plan to be car­bon neu­tral across its en­tire foot­print by 2030. It fea­tures 60 per­cent re­cy­cled con­tent — the high­est per­cent­age of any Apple prod­uct.8 This in­cludes 90 per­cent re­cy­cled alu­minum over­all and 100 per­cent re­cy­cled cobalt in the bat­tery. The en­clo­sure is man­u­fac­tured with a ma­te­r­ial-ef­fi­cient form­ing process that uses 50 per­cent less alu­minum com­pared to tra­di­tional ma­chin­ing meth­ods. MacBook Neo is man­u­fac­tured with 45 per­cent re­new­able elec­tric­ity, like wind and so­lar, across the sup­ply chain. It also meets Apple’s high stan­dards for en­ergy ef­fi­ciency and safe chem­istry. Additionally, the pa­per pack­ag­ing is 100 per­cent fiber-based and can be eas­ily re­cy­cled.9

Customers can pre-or­der the new MacBook Neo start­ing to­day at ap­ple.com/​store and in the Apple Store app in 30 coun­tries and re­gions, in­clud­ing the U.S. It will be­gin ar­riv­ing to cus­tomers, and will be in Apple Store lo­ca­tions and Apple Authorized Resellers, start­ing Wednesday, March 11.

MacBook Neo starts at $599 (U.S.) and $499 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion. It is avail­able in four col­ors — blush, in­digo, sil­ver, and cit­rus. Additional tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, con­fig­ure-to-or­der op­tions, and ac­ces­sories are avail­able at ap­ple.com/​mac.

With Apple Trade In, cus­tomers can trade in their cur­rent com­puter and get credit to­ward a new Mac. Customers can visit ap­ple.com/​shop/​trade-in to see what their de­vice is worth.

AppleCare de­liv­ers ex­cep­tional ser­vice and sup­port, with flex­i­ble op­tions for Apple users. Customers can choose AppleCare+ to cover their new Mac, or in the U.S., AppleCare One to pro­tect mul­ti­ple prod­ucts in one sim­ple plan. Both plans in­clude cov­er­age for ac­ci­dents like drops and spills, theft and loss pro­tec­tion on el­i­gi­ble prod­ucts, bat­tery re­place­ment ser­vice, and 24/7 sup­port from Apple Experts. For more in­for­ma­tion, visit ap­ple.com/​ap­ple­care.

Every cus­tomer who buys di­rectly from Apple Retail gets ac­cess to Personal Setup. In these guided on­line ses­sions, a Specialist can walk them through setup, or fo­cus on fea­tures that help them make the most of their new de­vice. Customers can also learn more about get­ting started and go­ing fur­ther with their new de­vice with a Today at Apple ses­sion at their near­est Apple Store.

Customers in the U.S. who shop at Apple us­ing Apple Card can pay monthly at 0 per­cent APR when they choose to check out with Apple Card Monthly Installments, and they’ll get 3 per­cent Daily Cash back — all up front. More in­for­ma­tion — in­clud­ing de­tails on el­i­gi­bil­ity, ex­clu­sions, and Apple Card terms — is avail­able at ap­ple.com/​ap­ple-card/​monthly-in­stall­ments.

About Apple

Apple rev­o­lu­tion­ized per­sonal tech­nol­ogy with the in­tro­duc­tion of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in in­no­va­tion with iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s six soft­ware plat­forms — iOS, iPa­dOS, ma­cOS, watchOS, vi­sionOS, and tvOS — pro­vide seam­less ex­pe­ri­ences across all Apple de­vices and em­power peo­ple with break­through ser­vices in­clud­ing the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV. Apple’s more than 150,000 em­ploy­ees are ded­i­cated to mak­ing the best prod­ucts on earth and to leav­ing the world bet­ter than we found it.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January and February 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion MacBook Neo sys­tems with Apple A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 8GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and 256GB SSD, as well as pro­duc­tion Intel Core Ultra 5-based PC sys­tems with Intel Graphics, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and the lat­est ver­sion of Windows 11 Home avail­able at the time of test­ing. Bestselling PC lap­top with the lat­est ship­ping Intel Core Ultra 5 proces­sor is based on pub­licly avail­able sales data over the prior six months. Speedometer 3.1 per­for­mance bench­mark tested with pre-re­lease Safari 26.3 on ma­cOS Tahoe, and both Chrome 144.0.7559.110 and Edge 144.0.3719.104 on Windows 11 Home. Performance tests are con­ducted us­ing spe­cific com­puter sys­tems and re­flect the ap­prox­i­mate per­for­mance of MacBook Neo.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January and February 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion MacBook Neo sys­tems with Apple A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 8GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and 256GB SSD, as well as pro­duc­tion Intel Core Ultra 5-based PC sys­tems with Intel Graphics, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and the lat­est ver­sion of Windows 11 Home avail­able at the time of test­ing. Bestselling PC lap­top with the lat­est ship­ping Intel Core Ultra 5 proces­sor is based on pub­licly avail­able sales data over the prior six months. Adobe Photoshop 2026 27.3.0 tested us­ing the fol­low­ing fil­ters and func­tions: su­per zoom, depth blur, JPEG ar­ti­fact re­moval, style trans­fer, photo restora­tion, and land­scape mixer. Performance tests are con­ducted us­ing spe­cific com­puter sys­tems and re­flect the ap­prox­i­mate per­for­mance of MacBook Neo.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion MacBook Neo sys­tems with Apple A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 8GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and 256GB SSD. Wireless web bat­tery life tested by brows­ing 25 pop­u­lar web­sites while con­nected to Wi-Fi. Video stream­ing bat­tery life tested with 1080p con­tent in Safari while con­nected to Wi-Fi. All sys­tems tested with dis­play bright­ness set to eight clicks from bot­tom. Battery life varies by use and con­fig­u­ra­tion. See ap­ple.com/​bat­ter­ies for more in­for­ma­tion.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January and February 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion MacBook Neo sys­tems with Apple A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 8GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and 256GB SSD, as well as pro­duc­tion Intel Core Ultra 5-based PC sys­tems with Intel Graphics, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and the lat­est ver­sion of Windows 11 Home avail­able at the time of test­ing. Bestselling PC lap­top with the lat­est ship­ping Intel Core Ultra 5 proces­sor is based on pub­licly avail­able sales data over the prior six months. Tested with Affinity v3.0.3.4027 us­ing the built-in bench­mark 30000. Performance tests are con­ducted us­ing spe­cific com­puter sys­tems and re­flect the ap­prox­i­mate per­for­mance of MacBook Neo.

MacBook Neo fea­tures two USB-C ports — USB 3 (left) and USB 2 (right). External dis­play con­nec­tiv­ity sup­ported on left USB 3 port only.

ma­cOS Tahoe is avail­able as a free soft­ware up­date. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or in all lan­guages. See re­quire­ments at ap­ple.com/​os/​ma­cos.

Apple Intelligence is avail­able in beta with sup­port for these lan­guages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese, and Korean. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or lan­guages. For fea­ture and lan­guage avail­abil­ity and sys­tem re­quire­ments, see sup­port.ap­ple.com/​en-us/​121115.

Product re­cy­cled or re­new­able con­tent is the mass of cer­ti­fied re­cy­cled ma­te­r­ial rel­a­tive to the over­all mass of the de­vice, not in­clud­ing pack­ag­ing or in-box ac­ces­sories. Comparison ex­cludes ac­ces­sories.

Breakdown of U.S. re­tail pack­ag­ing by weight. Adhesives, inks, and coat­ings are ex­cluded from cal­cu­la­tions.

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* Customers can pre-or­der the new MacBook Neo start­ing to­day at ap­ple.com/​store and in the Apple Store app in 30 coun­tries and re­gions, in­clud­ing the U.S. It will be­gin ar­riv­ing to cus­tomers, and will be in Apple Store lo­ca­tions and Apple Authorized Resellers, start­ing Wednesday, March 11.

* MacBook Neo starts at $599 (U.S.) and $499 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion. It is avail­able in four col­ors — blush, in­digo, sil­ver, and cit­rus. Additional tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, con­fig­ure-to-or­der op­tions, and ac­ces­sories are avail­able at ap­ple.com/​mac.

* With Apple Trade In, cus­tomers can trade in their cur­rent com­puter and get credit to­ward a new Mac. Customers can visit ap­ple.com/​shop/​trade-in to see what their de­vice is worth.

* AppleCare de­liv­ers ex­cep­tional ser­vice and sup­port, with flex­i­ble op­tions for Apple users. Customers can choose AppleCare+ to cover their new Mac, or in the U.S., AppleCare One to pro­tect mul­ti­ple prod­ucts in one sim­ple plan. Both plans in­clude cov­er­age for ac­ci­dents like drops and spills, theft and loss pro­tec­tion on el­i­gi­ble prod­ucts, bat­tery re­place­ment ser­vice, and 24/7 sup­port from Apple Experts. For more in­for­ma­tion, visit ap­ple.com/​ap­ple­care.

* Every cus­tomer who buys di­rectly from Apple Retail gets ac­cess to Personal Setup. In these guided on­line ses­sions, a Specialist can walk them through setup, or fo­cus on fea­tures that help them make the most of their new de­vice. Customers can also learn more about get­ting started and go­ing fur­ther with their new de­vice with a Today at Apple ses­sion at their near­est Apple Store.

* Customers in the U.S. who shop at Apple us­ing Apple Card can pay monthly at 0 per­cent APR when they choose to check out with Apple Card Monthly Installments, and they’ll get 3 per­cent Daily Cash back — all up front. More in­for­ma­tion — in­clud­ing de­tails on el­i­gi­bil­ity, ex­clu­sions, and Apple Card terms — is avail­able at ap­ple.com/​ap­ple-card/​monthly-in­stall­ments.

* Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January and February 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion MacBook Neo sys­tems with Apple A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 8GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and 256GB SSD, as well as pro­duc­tion Intel Core Ultra 5-based PC sys­tems with Intel Graphics, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and the lat­est ver­sion of Windows 11 Home avail­able at the time of test­ing. Bestselling PC lap­top with the lat­est ship­ping Intel Core Ultra 5 proces­sor is based on pub­licly avail­able sales data over the prior six months. Speedometer 3.1 per­for­mance bench­mark tested with pre-re­lease Safari 26.3 on ma­cOS Tahoe, and both Chrome 144.0.7559.110 and Edge 144.0.3719.104 on Windows 11 Home. Performance tests are con­ducted us­ing spe­cific com­puter sys­tems and re­flect the ap­prox­i­mate per­for­mance of MacBook Neo.

* Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January and February 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion MacBook Neo sys­tems with Apple A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 8GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and 256GB SSD, as well as pro­duc­tion Intel Core Ultra 5-based PC sys­tems with Intel Graphics, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and the lat­est ver­sion of Windows 11 Home avail­able at the time of test­ing. Bestselling PC lap­top with the lat­est ship­ping Intel Core Ultra 5 proces­sor is based on pub­licly avail­able sales data over the prior six months. Adobe Photoshop 2026 27.3.0 tested us­ing the fol­low­ing fil­ters and func­tions: su­per zoom, depth blur, JPEG ar­ti­fact re­moval, style trans­fer, photo restora­tion, and land­scape mixer. Performance tests are con­ducted us­ing spe­cific com­puter sys­tems and re­flect the ap­prox­i­mate per­for­mance of MacBook Neo.

* Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion MacBook Neo sys­tems with Apple A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 8GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and 256GB SSD. Wireless web bat­tery life tested by brows­ing 25 pop­u­lar web­sites while con­nected to Wi-Fi. Video stream­ing bat­tery life tested with 1080p con­tent in Safari while con­nected to Wi-Fi. All sys­tems tested with dis­play bright­ness set to eight clicks from bot­tom. Battery life varies by use and con­fig­u­ra­tion. See ap­ple.com/​bat­ter­ies for more in­for­ma­tion.

* Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January and February 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion MacBook Neo sys­tems with Apple A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 8GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and 256GB SSD, as well as pro­duc­tion Intel Core Ultra 5-based PC sys­tems with Intel Graphics, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and the lat­est ver­sion of Windows 11 Home avail­able at the time of test­ing. Bestselling PC lap­top with the lat­est ship­ping Intel Core Ultra 5 proces­sor is based on pub­licly avail­able sales data over the prior six months. Tested with Affinity v3.0.3.4027 us­ing the built-in bench­mark 30000. Performance tests are con­ducted us­ing spe­cific com­puter sys­tems and re­flect the ap­prox­i­mate per­for­mance of MacBook Neo.

* MacBook Neo fea­tures two USB-C ports — USB 3 (left) and USB 2 (right). External dis­play con­nec­tiv­ity sup­ported on left USB 3 port only.

* ma­cOS Tahoe is avail­able as a free soft­ware up­date. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or in all lan­guages. See re­quire­ments at ap­ple.com/​os/​ma­cos.

* Apple Intelligence is avail­able in beta with sup­port for these lan­guages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese, and Korean. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or lan­guages. For fea­ture and lan­guage avail­abil­ity and sys­tem re­quire­ments, see sup­port.ap­ple.com/​en-us/​121115.

* Product re­cy­cled or re­new­able con­tent is the mass of cer­ti­fied re­cy­cled ma­te­r­ial rel­a­tive to the over­all mass of the de­vice, not in­clud­ing pack­ag­ing or in-box ac­ces­sories. Comparison ex­cludes ac­ces­sories.

* Breakdown of U.S. re­tail pack­ag­ing by weight. Adhesives, inks, and coat­ings are ex­cluded from cal­cu­la­tions.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January and February 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion MacBook Neo sys­tems with Apple A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 8GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and 256GB SSD, as well as pro­duc­tion Intel Core Ultra 5-based PC sys­tems with Intel Graphics, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and the lat­est ver­sion of Windows 11 Home avail­able at the time of test­ing. Bestselling PC lap­top with the lat­est ship­ping Intel Core Ultra 5 proces­sor is based on pub­licly avail­able sales data over the prior six months. Speedometer 3.1 per­for­mance bench­mark tested with pre-re­lease Safari 26.3 on ma­cOS Tahoe, and both Chrome 144.0.7559.110 and Edge 144.0.3719.104 on Windows 11 Home. Performance tests are con­ducted us­ing spe­cific com­puter sys­tems and re­flect the ap­prox­i­mate per­for­mance of MacBook Neo.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January and February 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion MacBook Neo sys­tems with Apple A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 8GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and 256GB SSD, as well as pro­duc­tion Intel Core Ultra 5-based PC sys­tems with Intel Graphics, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and the lat­est ver­sion of Windows 11 Home avail­able at the time of test­ing. Bestselling PC lap­top with the lat­est ship­ping Intel Core Ultra 5 proces­sor is based on pub­licly avail­able sales data over the prior six months. Adobe Photoshop 2026 27.3.0 tested us­ing the fol­low­ing fil­ters and func­tions: su­per zoom, depth blur, JPEG ar­ti­fact re­moval, style trans­fer, photo restora­tion, and land­scape mixer. Performance tests are con­ducted us­ing spe­cific com­puter sys­tems and re­flect the ap­prox­i­mate per­for­mance of MacBook Neo.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion MacBook Neo sys­tems with Apple A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 8GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and 256GB SSD. Wireless web bat­tery life tested by brows­ing 25 pop­u­lar web­sites while con­nected to Wi-Fi. Video stream­ing bat­tery life tested with 1080p con­tent in Safari while con­nected to Wi-Fi. All sys­tems tested with dis­play bright­ness set to eight clicks from bot­tom. Battery life varies by use and con­fig­u­ra­tion. See ap­ple.com/​bat­ter­ies for more in­for­ma­tion.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January and February 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion MacBook Neo sys­tems with Apple A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 8GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and 256GB SSD, as well as pro­duc­tion Intel Core Ultra 5-based PC sys­tems with Intel Graphics, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and the lat­est ver­sion of Windows 11 Home avail­able at the time of test­ing. Bestselling PC lap­top with the lat­est ship­ping Intel Core Ultra 5 proces­sor is based on pub­licly avail­able sales data over the prior six months. Tested with Affinity v3.0.3.4027 us­ing the built-in bench­mark 30000. Performance tests are con­ducted us­ing spe­cific com­puter sys­tems and re­flect the ap­prox­i­mate per­for­mance of MacBook Neo.

MacBook Neo fea­tures two USB-C ports — USB 3 (left) and USB 2 (right). External dis­play con­nec­tiv­ity sup­ported on left USB 3 port only.

ma­cOS Tahoe is avail­able as a free soft­ware up­date. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or in all lan­guages. See re­quire­ments at ap­ple.com/​os/​ma­cos.

Apple Intelligence is avail­able in beta with sup­port for these lan­guages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese, and Korean. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or lan­guages. For fea­ture and lan­guage avail­abil­ity and sys­tem re­quire­ments, see sup­port.ap­ple.com/​en-us/​121115.

Product re­cy­cled or re­new­able con­tent is the mass of cer­ti­fied re­cy­cled ma­te­r­ial rel­a­tive to the over­all mass of the de­vice, not in­clud­ing pack­ag­ing or in-box ac­ces­sories. Comparison ex­cludes ac­ces­sories.

Breakdown of U. S. re­tail pack­ag­ing by weight. Adhesives, inks, and coat­ings are ex­cluded from cal­cu­la­tions.

“Simplicity is a great virtue, but it re­quires hard work to achieve and ed­u­ca­tion to ap­pre­ci­ate. And to make mat­ters worse, com­plex­ity sells bet­ter.” — Edsger Dijkstra

I think there’s some­thing qui­etly screw­ing up a lot of en­gi­neer­ing teams. In in­ter­views, in pro­mo­tion pack­ets, in de­sign re­views: the en­gi­neer who over­builds gets a com­pelling nar­ra­tive, but the one who ships the sim­plest thing that works gets… noth­ing.

This is­n’t in­ten­tional, of course. Nobody sits down and says, “let’s make sure the peo­ple who over-en­gi­neer things get pro­moted!” But that’s what can hap­pen (and it has been, over and over again) when com­pa­nies eval­u­ate work in­cor­rectly.

Picture two en­gi­neers on the same team. Engineer A gets as­signed a fea­ture. She looks at the prob­lem, con­sid­ers a few op­tions, and picks the sim­plest. A straight­for­ward im­ple­men­ta­tion, maybe 50 lines of code. Easy to read, easy to test, easy for the next per­son to pick up. It works. She ships it in a cou­ple of days and moves on.

Engineer B gets a sim­i­lar fea­ture. He also looks at the prob­lem, but he sees an op­por­tu­nity to build some­thing more “robust.” He in­tro­duces a new ab­strac­tion layer, cre­ates a pub/​sub sys­tem for com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween com­po­nents, adds a con­fig­u­ra­tion frame­work so the fea­ture is “extensible” for fu­ture use cases. It takes three weeks. There are mul­ti­ple PRs. Lots of ex­cited emo­jis when he shares the doc­u­ment ex­plain­ing all of this.

Now, pro­mo­tion time comes around. Engineer B’s work prac­ti­cally writes it­self into a pro­mo­tion packet: “Designed and im­ple­mented a scal­able event-dri­ven ar­chi­tec­ture, in­tro­duced a reusable ab­strac­tion layer adopted by mul­ti­ple teams, and built a con­fig­u­ra­tion frame­work en­abling fu­ture ex­ten­si­bil­ity.” That prac­ti­cally screams Staff+.

But for Engineer A’s work, there’s al­most noth­ing to say. “Implemented fea­ture X.” Three words. Her work was bet­ter. But it’s in­vis­i­ble be­cause of how sim­ple she made it look. You can’t write a com­pelling nar­ra­tive about the thing you did­n’t build. Nobody gets pro­moted for the com­plex­ity they avoided.

Complexity looks smart. Not be­cause it is, but be­cause our sys­tems are set up to re­ward it. And the in­cen­tive prob­lem does­n’t start at pro­mo­tion time. It starts be­fore you even get the job.

Think about in­ter­views. You’re in a sys­tem de­sign round, and you pro­pose a sim­ple so­lu­tion. A sin­gle data­base, a straight­for­ward API, maybe a caching layer. The in­ter­viewer is like: “What about scal­a­bil­ity? What if you have ten mil­lion users?” So you add ser­vices. You add queues. You add shard­ing. You draw more boxes on the white­board. The in­ter­viewer fi­nally seems sat­is­fied now.

What you just learned is that com­plex­ity im­presses peo­ple. The sim­ple an­swer was­n’t wrong. It just was­n’t in­ter­est­ing enough. And you might carry that les­son with you into your ca­reer. To be fair, in­ter­view­ers some­times have good rea­sons to push on scale; they want to see how you think un­der pres­sure and whether you un­der­stand dis­trib­uted sys­tems. But when the take­away for the can­di­date is “simple was­n’t enough,” some­thing’s off.

It also shows up in de­sign re­views. An en­gi­neer pro­poses a clean, sim­ple ap­proach and gets hit with “shouldn’t we fu­ture-proof this?” So they go back and add lay­ers they don’t need yet, ab­strac­tions for prob­lems that might never ma­te­ri­al­ize, flex­i­bil­ity for re­quire­ments no­body has asked for. Not be­cause the prob­lem de­manded it, but be­cause the room ex­pected it.

I’ve seen en­gi­neers (and have been one my­self) cre­ate ab­strac­tions to avoid du­pli­cat­ing a few lines of code, only to end up with some­thing far harder to un­der­stand and main­tain than the du­pli­ca­tion ever was. Every time, it felt like the right thing to do. The code looked more “professional.” More en­gi­neered. But the users did­n’t get their fea­ture any faster, and the next en­gi­neer to touch it had to spend half a day un­der­stand­ing the ab­strac­tion be­fore they could make any changes.

Now, let me be clear: com­plex­ity is some­times the right call. If you’re pro­cess­ing mil­lions of trans­ac­tions, you might need dis­trib­uted sys­tems. If you have 10 teams work­ing on the same prod­uct, you prob­a­bly need ser­vice bound­aries. When the prob­lem is com­plex, the so­lu­tion (probably) should be too!

The is­sue is­n’t com­plex­ity it­self. It’s un­earned com­plex­ity. There’s a dif­fer­ence be­tween “we’re hit­ting data­base lim­its and need to shard” and “we might hit data­base lim­its in three years, so let’s shard now.”

Some en­gi­neers un­der­stand this. And when you look at their code (and ar­chi­tec­ture), you think “well, yeah, of course.” There’s no magic, no clev­er­ness, noth­ing that makes you feel stu­pid for not un­der­stand­ing it. And that’s ex­actly the point.

The ac­tual path to se­nior­ity is­n’t learn­ing more tools and pat­terns, but learn­ing when not to use them. Anyone can add com­plex­ity. It takes ex­pe­ri­ence and con­fi­dence to leave it out.

So what do we ac­tu­ally do about this? Because say­ing “keep it sim­ple” is easy. Changing in­cen­tive struc­tures is harder.

If you’re an en­gi­neer, learn that sim­plic­ity needs to be made vis­i­ble. The work does­n’t speak for it­self; not be­cause it’s not good, but be­cause most sys­tems aren’t de­signed to hear it.

Start with how you talk about your own work. “Implemented fea­ture X” does­n’t mean much. But “evaluated three ap­proaches in­clud­ing an event-dri­ven ar­chi­tec­ture and a cus­tom ab­strac­tion layer, de­ter­mined that a straight­for­ward im­ple­men­ta­tion met all cur­rent and pro­jected re­quire­ments, and shipped in two days with zero in­ci­dents over six months”, that’s the same sim­ple work, just de­scribed in a way that cap­tures the judg­ment be­hind it. The de­ci­sion not to build some­thing is a de­ci­sion, an im­por­tant one! Document it ac­cord­ingly.

In de­sign re­views, when some­one asks “shouldn’t we fu­ture-proof this?”, don’t just cave and go add lay­ers. Try: “Here’s what it would take to add that later if we need it, and here’s what it costs us to add it now. I think we wait.” You’re not push­ing back, but show­ing you’ve done your home­work. You con­sid­ered the com­plex­ity and chose not to take it on.

And yes, bring this up with your man­ager. Something like: “I want to make sure the way I doc­u­ment my work re­flects the de­ci­sions I’m mak­ing, not just the code I’m writ­ing. Can we talk about how to frame that for my next re­view?” Most man­agers will ap­pre­ci­ate this be­cause you’re mak­ing their job eas­ier. You’re giv­ing them lan­guage they can use to ad­vo­cate for you.

Now, if you do all of this and your team still only pro­motes the per­son who builds the most elab­o­rate sys­tem… that’s use­ful in­for­ma­tion too. It tells you some­thing about where you work. Some cul­tures gen­uinely value sim­plic­ity. Others say they do, but re­ward the op­po­site. If you’re in the sec­ond kind, you can ei­ther play the game or find a place where good judg­ment is ac­tu­ally rec­og­nized. But at least you’ll know which one you’re in.

If you’re an en­gi­neer­ing leader, this one’s on you more than any­one else. You set the in­cen­tives, whether you re­al­ize it or not. And the prob­lem is that most pro­mo­tion cri­te­ria are ba­si­cally de­signed to re­ward com­plex­ity, even when they don’t in­tend to. “Impact” gets mea­sured by the size and scope of what some­one built, which more of­ten than not mat­ters! But what they avoided should also mat­ter.

So start by chang­ing the ques­tions you ask. In de­sign re­views, in­stead of “have we thought about scale?”, try “what’s the sim­plest ver­sion we could ship, and what spe­cific sig­nals would tell us we need some­thing more com­plex?” That one ques­tion changes the game: it makes sim­plic­ity the de­fault and puts the bur­den of proof on com­plex­ity, not the other way around!

In pro­mo­tion dis­cus­sions, push back when some­one’s packet is ba­si­cally a list of im­pres­sive-sound­ing sys­tems. Ask: “Was all of that nec­es­sary? Did we ac­tu­ally need a pub/​sub sys­tem here, or did it just look good on pa­per?” And when an en­gi­neer on your team ships some­thing clean and sim­ple, help them write the nar­ra­tive. “Evaluated mul­ti­ple ap­proaches and chose the sim­plest one that solved the prob­lem” is a com­pelling pro­mo­tion case, but only if you ac­tu­ally treat it like one.

One more thing: pay at­ten­tion to what you cel­e­brate pub­licly. If every shout-out in your team chan­nel is for the big, com­plex pro­ject, that’s what peo­ple will op­ti­mize for. Start rec­og­niz­ing the en­gi­neer who deleted code. The one who said “we don’t need this yet” and was right.

At the end of the day, if we keep re­ward­ing com­plex­ity and ig­nor­ing sim­plic­ity, we should­n’t be sur­prised when that’s ex­actly what we get. But the fix is­n’t com­pli­cated. Which, I guess, is kind of the point.

There are “repairable” lap­tops, and then there are ThinkPad T-series lap­tops: the ones cor­po­rate IT buys by the pal­let, im­ages by the thou­sands, and ex­pects to sur­vive years of all-day use. During their lives they’ll weather count­less com­mutes, on-the-go pre­sen­ta­tions, and in­evitable splashes of cof­fee.

That’s why Lenovo’s newest ThinkPads are such a big deal: the new T14 Gen 7 and T16 Gen 5 score an eye-pop­ping 10 out of 10 on our re­pairabil­ity scale. It’s the first time the T-series has ever earned our top rat­ing. (The score is pro­vi­sional, for now—we’ll fi­nal­ize it when of­fi­cial parts and in­struc­tions be­come avail­able through Lenovo’s sup­port site, which we fully ex­pect will hap­pen in the near fu­ture.)

This is­n’t re­pairabil­ity as a niche fea­ture for tin­ker­ers. This is re­pairabil­ity show­ing up in the ma­chine that prac­ti­cally de­fines the main­stream busi­ness lap­top cat­e­gory.

Two years ago at MWC 2024, Lenovo in­tro­duced a re­pairabil­ity-fo­cused gen­er­a­tion of ThinkPad T14 lap­tops that scored an al­ready-phe­nom­e­nal 9/10. Our Solutions team had been work­ing di­rectly with Lenovo dur­ing de­vel­op­ment—dis­as­sem­bling, eval­u­at­ing, and feed­ing back what we found. Lenovo lis­tened, it­er­ated, and shipped a ThinkPad that looked fa­mil­iar on the out­side, but took some big re­pairabil­ity leaps for­ward on the in­side.

And then Lenovo did the thing you want a prod­uct team to do when they see a big im­prove­ment: they did­n’t de­clare vic­tory and go home. They kept push­ing.

As Lenovo puts it, “Lenovo’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with iFixit be­gan with a shared un­der­stand­ing that re­pairabil­ity was be­com­ing a core el­e­ment of prod­uct ex­cel­lence, not just a cus­tomer re­quire­ment or a ser­vice con­sid­er­a­tion.” They wanted “an in­de­pen­dent, trusted part­ner who could chal­lenge our as­sump­tions, val­i­date our progress, and help us iden­tify blind spots.”

They weren’t wrong about the “challenge” part.

Going from a high score to the high­est score is­n’t usu­ally about mak­ing mi­nor tweaks. It re­quires fight­ing for every small, bor­ing, con­se­quen­tial de­ci­sion—the ones that de­ter­mine whether a re­pair is­n’t merely pos­si­ble or prac­ti­cal, but within easy reach. We cheered Lenovo on as they pushed be­yond “great,” kept re­fin­ing, and arm-wres­tled every last tenth of a re­pairabil­ity point into sub­mis­sion.

This is the treach­er­ous, fi­nal-boss stage where re­pairabil­ity usu­ally dies, and Lenovo re­fused to give up.

Lenovo tells us, “The biggest chal­lenge in get­ting to a 10/10 was bal­anc­ing re­pairabil­ity with all the other ex­pec­ta­tions of a com­mer­cial de­vice: per­for­mance, re­li­a­bil­ity, ther­mal ef­fi­ciency, form fac­tor, and de­sign in­tegrity. Repairability is­n’t achieved by a sin­gle change: it re­quires many small, in­ten­tional de­ci­sions across the en­tire sys­tem, and each of those de­ci­sions can in­tro­duce trade-offs.

“One of the biggest chal­lenges was shift­ing the mind­set early in the de­sign process. Serviceability is typ­i­cally op­ti­mized later in de­vel­op­ment, of­ten con­strained by struc­tural, ma­te­r­ial, or lay­out de­ci­sions that are al­ready locked. To reach a 10/10, we had to bring those con­ver­sa­tions for­ward and chal­lenge long‑stand­ing as­sump­tions about what ‘good de­sign’ re­ally means. We ad­dressed this by bring­ing de­sign, en­gi­neer­ing, ser­vice, qual­ity, and sus­tain­abil­ity to­gether from day one.”

From our per­spec­tive, the re­sults speak for them­selves. The new T-Series re­pair ecosys­tem is built around ac­ces­si­ble, re­place­able parts:

* An eas­ily swapped bat­tery with a nearly tool-free pro­ce­dure

* One of the eas­i­est key­board re­place­ment pro­ce­dures we’ve ever seen

All of that is soon to be backed by of­fi­cial, pub­licly avail­able re­pair doc­u­men­ta­tion and a re­place­ment parts pipeline de­signed for real-world ser­vice. Bravo, Lenovo.

10/10 is the high­est re­pairabil­ity score we award, and the new T-series earns it.

That said, there are al­ways ways to im­prove—mak­ing re­pairs faster, sim­pler, more for­giv­ing, with fewer tool re­quire­ments and more com­po­nents that can be swapped with­out es­ca­lat­ing into a ma­jor tear­down.

For ex­am­ple, Lenovo made the high-wear USB-C/Thunderbolt-side of things mean­ing­fully bet­ter by go­ing mod­u­lar where it mat­ters most. That alone is a huge win. But not every port on this ma­chine gets the same fully mod­u­lar treat­ment yet—some of the lesser-used I/O still lives on the main board or on a smaller break­out board, rather than be­ing a quick-swap mod­ule on its own.

We noted a sim­i­lar lack of mod­u­lar­ity on the Wi-Fi mod­ule, where re­pairs or up­grades will be im­prac­ti­cal at best. And while whole dis­play as­sem­bly re­place­ments are thank­fully straight­for­ward, there’s still a bit of ad­he­sive to nav­i­gate if you want to drill into the dis­play it­self for a panel swap or a we­b­cam re­pair.

These are not com­plaints—merely ac­knowl­edg­ments that 10/10 does­n’t nec­es­sar­ily mean “perfection,” and our score­card does­n’t cap­ture every nu­ance of the re­pair ex­pe­ri­ence. That’s ex­actly why we treat re­pairabil­ity as an on­go­ing prac­tice, rather than a sin­gu­lar end goal.

And to their credit, Lenovo seems to fully un­der­stand that dis­tinc­tion. They told us straight out: “10/10 is­n’t the des­ti­na­tion. From our per­spec­tive it’s the new base­line…. But the real op­por­tu­nity is to go be­yond the score. A per­fect rat­ing only mat­ters if it leads to mean­ing­ful out­comes: quicker re­pairs, longer‑last­ing de­vices, lower own­er­ship costs, and less waste. Measuring suc­cess through cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence and real‑world re­pair data will be just as im­por­tant as ex­ter­nal bench­marks. Ultimately, re­pairabil­ity will con­tinue to evolve. As ex­pec­ta­tions, reg­u­la­tions, and tech­nolo­gies change, so must our ap­proach.”

We could­n’t agree more, and we can only hope that other lap­top mak­ers are tak­ing notes.

After go­ing through this process, we wanted to know what Lenovo learned from their suc­cess (and what, we hope, other OEMs can em­u­late).

Christoph Blindenbacher, di­rec­tor of ThinkPad prod­uct man­age­ment, tells us, “This jour­ney fun­da­men­tally changed my per­spec­tive from see­ing re­pairabil­ity as a ‘nice-to-have’ or cus­tomer-dri­ven re­quire­ment to rec­og­niz­ing it as a core pil­lar of good prod­uct de­sign. Repairability forces bet­ter en­gi­neer­ing dis­ci­pline. It re­quires clar­ity, in­ten­tion­al­ity, and em­pa­thy for the peo­ple who will ac­tu­ally ser­vice and use the de­vice over its life­time.

“I also gained a deeper ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the trade-offs in­volved. Designing for re­pairabil­ity does­n’t mean com­pro­mis­ing in­no­va­tion or pre­mium ex­pe­ri­ences; when done well, it ac­tu­ally dri­ves smarter in­no­va­tion, bet­ter mod­u­lar­ity, and more re­silient plat­forms.”

We also asked if col­lab­o­rat­ing with iFixit for this process was an easy de­ci­sion, or if it re­quired win­ning over any in­ter­nal stake­hold­ers who might have been skep­ti­cal about the part­ner­ship. Christoph says, “Was there skep­ti­cism in­ter­nally? Of course. Inviting an ex­ter­nal ex­pert into the de­vel­op­ment process, es­pe­cially one known for be­ing di­rect and un­com­pro­mis­ing, nat­u­rally raised con­cerns. Teams wor­ried about added com­plex­ity, de­sign con­straints, and the per­cep­tion that we were ex­pos­ing our­selves to crit­i­cism.

“What changed minds was the way the part­ner­ship ac­tu­ally worked. iFixit ap­proached the re­la­tion­ship as col­lab­o­ra­tors, not crit­ics. Their feed­back was prac­ti­cal, grounded, and fo­cused on help­ing us build bet­ter prod­ucts. And once teams saw how early in­sights could pre­vent down­stream is­sues and how small de­sign de­ci­sions could sig­nif­i­cantly im­prove re­pairabil­ity with­out sac­ri­fic­ing per­for­mance, the value be­came clear. The new T-Series per­fect 10/10 score is a di­rect re­flec­tion of that trust and shared com­mit­ment.”

If you want re­pairabil­ity to go main­stream, it has to show up where the vol­ume is. Lenovo is the largest PC ven­dor world­wide, and the ThinkPad T-series is their com­mer­cial back­bone: the “trusted work­horse” line that large or­ga­ni­za­tions rely on every day, where down­time costs real money and pro­duc­tiv­ity.

It would be one thing to make a highly re­pairable but low-vol­ume niche de­vice or con­cept. Instead, Lenovo just threw down a gaunt­let by notch­ing a 10/10 re­pairabil­ity score on their main­stream-iest busi­ness lap­top.

This is how ex­pec­ta­tions change, and how re­pair goes from be­ing an en­thu­si­ast’s “nice-to-have” to be­ing baked into pro­cure­ment check­lists and fleet-man­age­ment de­ci­sions.

Our com­pli­ments to Lenovo for pulling this off. We can’t wait to see what they do next.

Full dis­clo­sure: iFixit has an on­go­ing busi­ness re­la­tion­ship with Lenovo, and we are hope­lessly bi­ased in fa­vor of re­pairable prod­ucts.

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Patterns for get­ting the best re­sults out of cod­ing agents like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex. See my in­tro­duc­tion for more on this pro­ject.

Principles

Hoard things you know how to do

Testing and QA

TikTok and Bytedance have re­peat­edly tried to al­lay con­cerns about the Chinese state ac­cess­ing data be­long­ing to Western users, for ex­am­ple by set­ting up what it calls Project Clover, which it says pro­vides ex­tra lay­ers of pro­tec­tion for cus­tomers in Europe.

I’m be­hind on writ­ing about Qwen 3.5, a truly re­mark­able fam­ily of open weight mod­els re­leased by Alibaba’s Qwen team over the past few weeks. I’m hop­ing that the 3.5 fam­ily does­n’t turn out to be Qwen’s swan song, see­ing as that team has had some very high pro­file de­par­tures in the past 24 hours.

It all started with this tweet from Junyang Lin (@JustinLin610):

Junyang Lin was the lead re­searcher build­ing Qwen, and was key to re­leas­ing their open weight mod­els from 2024 on­wards.

As far as I can tell a trig­ger for this res­ig­na­tion was a re-org within Alibaba where a new re­searcher hired from Google’s Gemini team was put in charge of Qwen, but I’ve not con­firmed that de­tail.

More in­for­ma­tion is avail­able in this ar­ti­cle from 36kr.com. Here’s Wikipedia on 36Kr con­firm­ing that it’s a cred­i­ble me­dia source es­tab­lished in 2010 with a good track record re­port­ing on the Chinese tech­nol­ogy in­dus­try.

The ar­ti­cle is in Chinese—here are some quotes trans­lated via Google Translate:

At ap­prox­i­mately 1:00 PM Beijing time on March 4th, Tongyi Lab held an emer­gency All Hands meet­ing, where Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming frankly told Qianwen em­ploy­ees.

Twelve hours ago (at 0:11 AM Beijing time on March 4th), Lin Junyang, the tech­ni­cal lead for Alibaba’s Qwen Big Data Model, sud­denly an­nounced his res­ig­na­tion on X. Lin Junyang was a key fig­ure in pro­mot­ing Alibaba’s open-source AI mod­els and one of Alibaba’s youngest P10 em­ploy­ees. Amidst the in­dus­try up­roar, many mem­bers of Qwen were also un­able to ac­cept the sud­den de­par­ture of their team’s key fig­ure.

“Given far fewer re­sources than com­peti­tors, Junyang’s lead­er­ship is one of the core fac­tors in achiev­ing to­day’s re­sults,” mul­ti­ple Qianwen mem­bers told 36Kr. […]

Regarding Lin Junyang’s where­abouts, no new con­clu­sions were reached at the meet­ing. However, around 2 PM, Lin Junyang posted again on his WeChat Moments, stat­ing, “Brothers of Qwen, con­tinue as orig­i­nally planned, no prob­lem,” with­out ex­plic­itly con­firm­ing whether he would re­turn. […]

That piece also lists sev­eral other key mem­bers who have ap­par­ently re­signed:

With Lin Junyang’s de­par­ture, sev­eral other Qwen mem­bers also an­nounced their de­par­ture, in­clud­ing core lead­ers re­spon­si­ble for var­i­ous sub-ar­eas of Qwen mod­els, such as:

Binyuan Hui: Lead Qwen code de­vel­op­ment, prin­ci­pal of the Qwen-Coder se­ries mod­els, re­spon­si­ble for the en­tire agent train­ing process from pre-train­ing to post-train­ing, and re­cently in­volved in ro­bot­ics re­search.

Bowen Yu: Lead Qwen post-train­ing re­search, grad­u­ated from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, lead­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the Qwen-Instruct se­ries mod­els.

Kaixin Li: Core con­trib­u­tor to Qwen 3.5/VL/Coder, PhD from the National University of Singapore.

Besides the afore­men­tioned in­di­vid­u­als, many young re­searchers also re­signed on the same day.

Based on the above it looks to me like every­thing is still very much up in the air. The pres­ence of Alibaba’s CEO at the “emergency All Hands meet­ing” sug­gests that the com­pany un­der­stands the sig­nif­i­cance of these res­ig­na­tions and may yet re­tain some of the de­part­ing tal­ent.

This story hits par­tic­u­larly hard right now be­cause the Qwen 3.5 mod­els ap­pear to be ex­cep­tion­ally good.

I’ve not spent enough time with them yet but the scale of the new model fam­ily is im­pres­sive. They started with Qwen3.5-397B-A17B on February 17th—an 807GB model—and then fol­lowed with a flurry of smaller sib­lings in 122B, 35B, 27B, 9B, 4B, 2B, 0.8B sizes.

I’m hear­ing pos­i­tive noises about the 27B and 35B mod­els for cod­ing tasks that still fit on a 32GB/64GB Mac, and I’ve tried the 9B, 4B and 2B mod­els and found them to be no­tably ef­fec­tive con­sid­er­ing their tiny sizes. That 2B model is just 4.57GB—or as small as 1.27GB quan­tized—and is a full rea­son­ing and multi-modal (vision) model.

It would be a real tragedy if the Qwen team were to dis­band now, given their proven track record in con­tin­u­ing to find new ways to get high qual­ity re­sults out of smaller and smaller mod­els.

If those core Qwen team mem­bers ei­ther start some­thing new or join an­other re­search lab I’m ex­cited to see what they do next.

If you ever want a good laugh, ask an aca­d­e­mic to ex­plain what they get paid to do, and who pays them to do it.

In STEM fields, it works like this: the uni­ver­sity pays you to teach, but un­less you’re at a lib­eral arts col­lege, you don’t ac­tu­ally get pro­moted or rec­og­nized for your teach­ing. Instead, you get pro­moted and rec­og­nized for your re­search, which the uni­ver­sity does not gen­er­ally pay you for. You have to ask some­one else to pro­vide that part of your salary, and in the US, that some­one else is usu­ally the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. If you’re lucky—and these days, very lucky—you get a chunk of money to grow your bac­te­ria or smash your elec­trons to­gether or what­ever, you write up your re­sults for pub­li­ca­tion, and this is where the mon­key busi­ness re­ally be­gins.

In most dis­ci­plines, the next step is send­ing your pa­per to a peer-re­viewed jour­nal, where it gets eval­u­ated by an ed­i­tor and (if the ed­i­tor sees some promise in it) a few re­view­ers. These peo­ple are aca­d­e­mics just like you, and they gen­er­ally do not get paid for their time. Editors maybe get a small stipend and a bit of pro­fes­sional cred, while re­view­ers get noth­ing but the warm fuzzies of do­ing “service to the field”, or the cold thrill of tank­ing other peo­ple’s pa­pers.

If you’re lucky again, your pa­per gets ac­cepted by the jour­nal, which now owns the copy­right to your work. They do not pay you for this! If any­thing, you pay them an “article pro­cess­ing charge” for the priv­i­lege of no longer own­ing the rights to your pa­per. This is con­sid­ered a great honor.

The jour­nals then pay­wall your work, sell the ac­cess back to you and your col­leagues, and pocket the profit. Universities cover these sub­scrip­tions and fees by charg­ing the gov­ern­ment “indirect costs” on every grant—money that does­n’t go to the re­search it­self, but to all the things that sup­port the re­search, like keep­ing the lights on, clean­ing the toi­lets, and ac­cess­ing the jour­nals that the re­searchers need to read.

Nothing about this sys­tem makes sense, which is why I think we should build a new one. In the mean­time, though, we should also fix the old one. But that’s hard, for two rea­sons. First, many peo­ple are in­vested in things work­ing ex­actly the way they do now, so every stu­pid idea has a con­stituency be­hind it. Second, our cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion seems to be­lieve in pol­icy by blood­let­ting: if some­thing is­n’t work­ing, just slice it open at ran­dom. Thanks to these hap­haz­ard cuts and can­cel­la­tions, we now have a sys­tem that is both dys­func­tional and ane­mic.

I see a way to solve both prob­lems at once. We can sat­isfy both the sci­en­tists and the scalpel-wield­ing politi­cians by rid­ding our­selves of the one con­stituency that should not ex­ist. Of all the crazy parts of our crazy sys­tem, the cra­zi­est part is where tax­pay­ers pay for the re­search, then pay pri­vate com­pa­nies to pub­lish it, and then pay again so sci­en­tists can read it. We may not agree on much, but we can all agree on this: it is time, fi­nally and for­ever, to get rid of for-profit sci­en­tific pub­lish­ers.

The writer G. K. Chesterton once said that be­fore you knock any­thing down, you ought to know how it got there in the first place. So be­fore we show for-profit pub­lish­ers the pointy end of a pitch­fork, we ought to know where they came from and why they per­sist.

It used to be a huge pain to pro­duce a phys­i­cal jour­nal—some­one had to op­er­ate the print­ing presses, lick the stamps, and mail the copies all over the world. Unsurprisingly, aca­d­e­mics did­n’t care much about do­ing those things. When gov­ern­ment money started flow­ing into uni­ver­si­ties post-World War II and the num­ber of ar­ti­cles ex­ploded, pri­vate com­pa­nies were like, “Hey, why don’t we take these jour­nals off your hands—you keep do­ing the sci­en­tific stuff and we’ll han­dle all the bor­ing stuff.” And the aca­d­e­mics were like “Sounds good, we’re sure this won’t have any un­fore­seen con­se­quences.”

Those com­pa­nies knew they had a cap­tive au­di­ence, so they bought up as many jour­nals as they could. Journal ar­ti­cles aren’t in­ter­change­able com­modi­ties like corn or soy­beans—if your sci­ence sup­plier starts goug­ing you, you can’t just switch to a new one. Adding to this lock-in ef­fect, pub­lish­ing in “high-impact” jour­nals be­came the key to suc­cess in sci­ence, which meant if you wanted to move up, your uni­ver­sity had to pay up. So, even as the in­ter­net made it much cheaper to pro­duce a jour­nal, pub­lish­ers made it much more ex­pen­sive to sub­scribe to one.

The peo­ple run­ning this scam had no il­lu­sions about it, even if they hoped that other peo­ple did. Here’s how one CEO de­scribed it:

You have no idea how prof­itable these jour­nals are once you stop do­ing any­thing. When you’re build­ing a jour­nal, you spend time get­ting good ed­i­to­r­ial boards, you treat them well, you give them din­ners. […] [and then] we stop do­ing all that stuff and then the cash just pours out and you would­n’t be­lieve how won­der­ful it is.

So here’s the re­port we can make to Mr. Chesterton: for-profit sci­en­tific pub­lish­ers arose to solve the prob­lem of pro­duc­ing phys­i­cal jour­nals. The in­ter­net mostly solved that prob­lem. Now the pub­lish­ers are the prob­lem. These days, Springer Nature, Elsevier, Wiley, and the like are ba­si­cally gi­ant op­er­a­tions that proof­read, for­mat, and store PDFs. That’s not noth­ing, but it’s pretty close to noth­ing.

No one knows how much pub­lish­ers make in re­turn for pro­vid­ing these mod­est ser­vices, but we can guess. In 2017, the Association of Research Libraries sur­veyed its 123 mem­ber in­sti­tu­tions and found they were pay­ing a col­lec­tive $1 bil­lion in jour­nal sub­scrip­tions every year. The ARL cov­ers some of the biggest uni­ver­si­ties, but not nearly all of them, so let’s guess that num­ber ac­counts for half of all uni­ver­sity sub­scrip­tion spend­ing. In 2023, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment es­ti­mated it paid nearly $380 mil­lion in ar­ti­cle pro­cess­ing charges alone, and those are sep­a­rate from sub­scrip­tions. So it would­n’t be crazy if American uni­ver­si­ties were pay­ing some­thing like $2.5 bil­lion to pub­lish­ers every year, with the ma­jor­ity of that ul­ti­mately com­ing from tax­pay­ers.

To put those costs in per­spec­tive: if the fed­eral gov­ern­ment cut out the pub­lish­ers, it would prob­a­bly save more money every year than it has “saved” in its re­cent at­tempts to cut off sci­en­tific fund­ing to uni­ver­si­ties. It’s un­clear how much money will ul­ti­mately be clawed back, as grants con­tinue to get frozen, un­frozen, lit­i­gated, and ne­go­ti­ated. But right now, it seems like ~$1.4 bil­lion in promised sci­ence fund­ing is sim­ply not go­ing to be paid out. We could save more than that every year if we just stopped writ­ing checks to John Wiley & Sons.

How can such a scam con­tinue to ex­ist? In large part, it’s be­cause of a com­puter hacker from Kazakhstan.

The po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist James C. Scott once wrote that many sys­tems only “work” be­cause peo­ple dis­obey them. For in­stance, the Soviet Union at­tempted to im­pose agri­cul­tural reg­u­la­tions so strict that peo­ple would have starved if they fol­lowed the let­ter of the law. Instead, cit­i­zens grew and traded food in se­cret. This made it look like the reg­u­la­tions were suc­cess­ful, when in fact they were a sham.

Something sim­i­lar is hap­pen­ing right now in sci­ence, ex­cept Russia is on the op­po­site side of the story this time. In the early 2010s, a Kazakhstani com­puter pro­gram­mer named Alexandra Elbakyan started down­load­ing ar­ti­cles en masse and post­ing them pub­licly on a web­site called SciHub. The pub­lish­ers sued her, so she’s hid­ing out in Russia, which pro­tects her from ex­tra­di­tion. As you can see in the map be­low, mil­lions of peo­ple now use SciHub to ac­cess sci­en­tific ar­ti­cles, in­clud­ing lots of peo­ple who seem to work at uni­ver­si­ties:

Why would re­searchers re­sort to piracy when they have le­git­i­mate ac­cess them­selves? Maybe be­cause jour­nals’ in­ter­faces are so clunky and an­noy­ing that it’s faster to go straight to SciHub. Or maybe it’s be­cause those re­searchers don’t ac­tu­ally have ac­cess. Universities are al­ways try­ing to save money by can­cel­ing jour­nal sub­scrip­tions, so aca­d­e­mics of­ten have to rely on boot­leg copies. Either way, SciHub seems to be our mod­ern-day ver­sion of those Soviet se­cret gar­dens: for-profit pub­lish­ing only “works” be­cause peo­ple find ways to cir­cum­vent it.

In a punk rock kind of way, it’s kinda cool that so many American sci­en­tists can only do their work thanks to a data­base main­tained by a Russia-backed fugi­tive. But it ought to be a huge em­bar­rass­ment to the US gov­ern­ment.

Instead, for some rea­son, the gov­ern­ment in­sists on sid­ing with pub­lish­ers against cit­i­zens. Sixteen years ago, the US had its own Elbakyan. His name was Aaron Swartz. He down­loaded mil­lions of pay­walled jour­nal ar­ti­cles us­ing a con­nec­tion at MIT, pos­si­bly in­tend­ing to share them pub­licly. Government agents ar­rested him, charged him with wire fraud, and in­tended to fine him $1 mil­lion and im­prison him for 35 years. Instead, he killed him­self. He was 26.

Scientists have tried to take on the mid­dle­men them­selves. They’ve founded open-ac­cess jour­nals. They’ve pub­lished preprints. They’ve tried al­ter­na­tive ways of eval­u­at­ing re­search. A few high-pro­file pro­fes­sors have pub­licly and dra­mat­i­cally sworn off all “luxury” out­lets, and less-fa­mous folks have fol­lowed suit: in 2012, over 10,000 re­searchers signed a pledge not to pub­lish in any jour­nals owned by Elsevier.

None of this has worked. The biggest for-profit pub­lish­ers con­tinue mak­ing more money year af­ter year. “Diamond” open ac­cess jour­nals—that is, pub­li­ca­tions that don’t charge au­thors or read­ers—only ac­count for ~10% of all ar­ti­cles. Four years af­ter that mas­sive pledge, 38% of sign­ers had bro­ken their promise and pub­lished in an Elsevier jour­nal.

These ef­forts have fiz­zled be­cause this is­n’t a prob­lem that can be solved by any in­di­vid­ual, or even many in­di­vid­u­als. Academia is so cut­throat that any­one who right­eously gives up an ad­van­tage will be out­com­peted by some­one who has fewer scru­ples. What we have here is a col­lec­tive ac­tion prob­lem.

Fortunately, we have an or­ga­ni­za­tion that ex­ists for the ex­press pur­pose of solv­ing col­lec­tive ac­tion prob­lems. It’s called the gov­ern­ment. And as luck would have it, they’re also the one pay­ing most of the bills!

So the so­lu­tion here is straight­for­ward: every gov­ern­ment grant should stip­u­late that the re­search it sup­ports can’t be pub­lished in a for-profit jour­nal. That’s it! If the pub­lic paid for it, it should­n’t be pay­walled.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion tried to do this, but they did it in a stu­pid way. They man­dated that NIH-funded re­search pa­pers have to be “open ac­cess”, which sounds like a so­lu­tion, but it’s ac­tu­ally a psyop. By re­plac­ing sub­scrip­tion fees with “article pro­cess­ing charges”, pub­lish­ers can sim­ply make au­thors pay for writ­ing in­stead of mak­ing read­ers pay for read­ing. The com­pa­nies can keep skim­ming money off the sys­tem, and best of all, they get to call the re­sult “open ac­cess”.

These fees can be wild. When my PhD ad­vi­sor and I pub­lished one of our pa­pers to­gether, the jour­nal charged us an “open ac­cess” fee of $12,000. This arrange­ment is a tiny bit bet­ter than the al­ter­na­tive, be­cause at least every­body can read our pa­per now, in­clud­ing peo­ple who aren’t af­fil­i­ated with a uni­ver­sity. But those fees still have to come from some­where, and whether you charge writ­ers or read­ers, you’re ul­ti­mately charg­ing the same ac­count—namely, the US gov­ern­ment.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion some­how found a way to make a stu­pid pol­icy even stu­pider. They sped up the time­line while also fir­ing a bunch of NIH staffers—ex­actly the peo­ple who would make sure that gov­ern­ment-spon­sored pub­li­ca­tions are, in fact, pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble. And you need some­one to check on that, be­cause re­searchers are no­to­ri­ously bad about this kind of stuff. They’re al­ready re­quired to up­load the re­sults of clin­i­cal tri­als to a pub­lic data­base, but more than half the time they just…don’t.

To do this right, you can­not al­low the rent-seek­ers to re­brand. You have to cut them out en­tirely. I don’t think this will fix every­thing that’s wrong with sci­ence; it will merely fix the wrongest thing. Nonprofit jour­nals still charge fees, but at least the money goes to or­ga­ni­za­tions that os­ten­si­bly care about sci­ence, rather than go­ing to CEOs who make $17 mil­lion a year. And al­most every jour­nal, for-profit or not, uses the same failed sys­tem of peer re­view. The biggest ben­e­fit of shak­ing things up, then, would be al­low­ing dif­fer­ent ap­proaches to have a chance at life, the same way an oc­ca­sional for­est fire clears away the dead wood, opens up the pinecones, and gives seedlings a shot at the sun­light.

Science phil­an­thropies should adopt the same pol­icy, and some of them al­ready have. The Navigation Fund, which over­sees bil­lions of dol­lars in sci­en­tific fund­ing, no longer bankrolls jour­nal pub­li­ca­tions at all. Seemay Chou, its di­rec­tor, re­ports that the ex­per­i­ment has been a great suc­cess:

Our re­searchers be­gan de­sign­ing ex­per­i­ments dif­fer­ently from the start. They be­came more cre­ative and col­lab­o­ra­tive. The goal shifted from telling pol­ished sto­ries to un­cov­er­ing use­ful truths. All re­sults had value, such as failed at­tempts, aban­doned in­quiries, or untested ideas, which we fre­quently re­lease through Arcadia’s Icebox. The bar for util­ity went up, as prox­ies like im­pact fac­tors dis­ap­peared.

Fifteen years ago, the open sci­ence move­ment was all about abol­ish­ing for-profit jour­nals—that’s what open sci­ence meant. It seemed like every speech would end with “ELSEVIER DELENDA EST”.

Now peo­ple barely bring it up at all. It’s like a lion has es­caped the zoo and it’s gulp­ing down school­child­ren, but when peo­ple sug­gest zoo im­prove­ments, all the agenda items are like, “We should add an­other Dippin’ Dots kiosk”. If you bring up the loose tiger, every­one gets an­noyed at you, like “Of course, no one likes the tiger”.

I think two things hap­pened. First, we got cyn­i­cal about cy­ber­space. In the 1990s and 2000s, we re­ally thought the in­ter­net would solve most of our prob­lems. When those prob­lems per­sisted de­spite all of us get­ting broad­band, we shifted to think­ing that the in­ter­net was, in fact, caus­ing the prob­lems. And so it be­came cringe to think the in­ter­net could ever be a force for good. In 1995, for-profit pub­lish­ers were go­ing to be “the in­ter­net’s first vic­tim”; in 2015, they were “the busi­ness the in­ter­net could not kill”.

Second, when the repli­ca­tion cri­sis hit in the early 2010s, the open sci­ence move­ment got a new vil­lain—namely, naughty re­searchers. The fak­ers, the fraud­sters, the over-claimers: those are the real bad boys of sci­ence. It’s no longer cool to hate in­ter­na­tional pub­lish­ing con­glom­er­ates. Now it’s cool to hate your col­leagues.

Both of these shifts were a shame. The in­ter­net utopi­ans were right that the web would elim­i­nate the need for jour­nals, but they were wrong to think that would be enough. The repli­ca­tion po­lice were right to call out sci­en­tific malfea­sance, but they were wrong to for­get our old foes. The for-profit pub­lish­ers are just as bad as they ever were, and while the in­ter­net has made them more vul­ner­a­ble then ever, now we know they won’t go un­less they’re pushed.

If we want bet­ter sci­ence, we should catch the tiger. Not only be­cause it’s bad for the tiger to be loose, but be­cause it’s bad for us to look the other way. If you al­low an out­ra­geous scam to go unchecked, if you par­tic­i­pate in it, nor­mal­ize it—then what won’t you do? Why not also goose your stats a bit? Why not pub­lish some junk re­search? Look around: no one cares!

There are so many prob­lems with our cur­rent way of do­ing things, and most of those prob­lems are com­pli­cated and dif­fi­cult to solve. This one is­n’t. Let’s heave this suc­cubus off our sci­en­tific sys­tem and end this scam once and for all. After that, Dippin’ Dots all around.

Share your link — you both get €200 caßh when they place their first bet.

Voxile, the co-op, ray traced, mi­cro-voxel, sur­vival-craft­ing game from VoxRay Games, has just re­leased its largest up­date yet: THE BUILDER’S UPDATE (release notes here). You can check out the Steam demo here and Voxile is now 40% off on Steam un­til March 9th.

Keep up with all the lat­est up­dates in VoxRay Games Discord Channel.

I first met Wouter von Oortmersen for lunch in down­town San Francisco in July of 2023. Friends had put his stu­dio on my radar (shout out to Dan Levine and Jeffrey Rosen) so when we con­nected on LinkedIn, I was ex­cited to arrange an in-per­son meet­ing.

I ex­pected to spend the af­ter­noon chat­ting ca­su­ally about high-level gamedev and de­sign. I had seen video of Voxile’s high-fi­delity, ray traced, global il­lu­mi­na­tion with re­flec­tions. So my plan was to ask for a Steam key and then boot it up on my gam­ing rig when I got home. Instead, Wouter bran­dished a slen­der lap­top from his back­pack (with no wall power out­lets in sight) and in sec­onds, the Voxile demo loaded up and was sus­tain­ing high frame rates with­out jit­ter in all its high-de­f­i­n­i­tion glory.

I climbed up from the tran­quil beach to for­age in the for­est but was vi­o­lently in­ter­rupted by an an­gry skele­ton. After los­ing sub­stan­tial health, I smashed him into pieces. As I caught my breath… I re­al­ized that the sun was arc­ing through the sky while all the shad­ows (even the shad­ows on the lit­tle voxel blades of voxel grass) were dy­nam­i­cally up­dat­ing in real-time. Soon the sun had set and now the glow of flick­er­ing torch­light and phos­pho­res­cent mush­rooms made the en­gine even more beau­ti­ful.

“Is this Unity or Unreal?” I asked even though I knew I had never seen any­thing like it be­fore.

“Neither,” Wouter replied. “VoxRay Games uses our own cus­tom en­gine writ­ten in our own cus­tom pro­gram­ming lan­guage, Lobster.”

Wouter’s ac­com­plished ca­reer had dri­ven him to this mo­ment (just check out his github). There are very few game de­vel­op­ers who have the tal­ent, in­tel­li­gence and for­ti­tude to tackle game de­vel­op­ment at both the en­gine and lan­guage level. Let’s be clear, be­fore Jai was a twin­kle in Jon Blow’s eye: Wouter had in­vented and helped de­sign nine lan­guages: Amiga E, FALSE, Bla (created dur­ing his Masters in Computer Science), Aardappel (invented dur­ing his PHD re­search), WadC, SHEEP, CubesScript, CryScript and Restructor.

Lobster is Wouter’s tenth lan­guage and was built from the ground up to en­able pro­to­typ­ing games like Voxile. It amal­ga­mates every­thing Wouter has learned at com­pa­nies like: Amiga Inc., Crytek (building the orig­i­nal Cryengine for Far Cry), Maxis (SimCity), Gearbox (Borderlands 2) and Google (where he helped de­sign Web Assembly and in­vented FlatBuffers while work­ing on LLVM and Android VR/gaming tech). If you’re tech­ni­cal, I rec­om­mend you watch some of Wouter’s lec­ture videos (linked above and be­low) to un­der­stand just how much Wouter knows about game en­gine cod­ing and lan­guages.

Wouter also be­lieves in giv­ing back to the greater gamedev ecosys­tem (something that is re­ally im­por­tant to EGG and its com­mu­nity). He wants to share his knowl­edge and his joy for games with oth­ers. Beyond all his open source con­tri­bu­tions to ma­jor pro­jects, he was also one of the cre­ators of SMU Guildhall, teach­ing stu­dents how to build en­gine com­po­nents (such as shader sys­tems, skele­tal char­ac­ter an­i­ma­tion, script­ing com­pil­ers) while su­per­vis­ing their Master’s pro­jects. At DICE this year, I watched as a for­mer stu­dent, upon see­ing his for­mer pro­fes­sor, ran across the room to thank Wouter for teach­ing him game de­vel­op­ment and in­spir­ing him to start his suc­cess­ful gamedev ca­reer (he is now an ex­ec­u­tive at a promi­nent com­pany).

In his spare time, Wouter made the 3D Cube Engines in­clud­ing Cube 2/Sauerbraten with Lee Salzman for Mac, Windows and Linux (now open-sourced with over 1,000,000 down­loads). It’s a per­for­mant mul­ti­player, death­match en­gine (like the Quake en­gine) but also en­ables real-time, mul­ti­player, map edit­ing (and this was in the year 2000 al­most a decade be­fore Minecraft would make this a core me­chanic).

After years of ex­pe­ri­ence, Wouter de­cided it was time to form VoxRay Games and up-res, voxel-based world craft­ing. He suc­cess­fully raised ven­ture cap­i­tal led by the well-known VC firm Accel. When he of­fered EGG a chance to join his round, it was a no-brainer for us to par­tic­i­pate as well.

Most game en­gines in­ter­act with pro­gram­ming lan­guages sim­i­lar to the im­age be­low.

However, a game en­gine writ­ten in Lobster can be built like fol­low­ing di­a­gram. Unlike Jai, which aims to re­place 100% of C++, Wouter’s de­sign par­a­digm only re­places 90% of it. C++ is still used with Lobster but it’s rel­e­gated to the leaf nodes of the call graph.

The re­sult is record-speed com­pile times even af­ter sub­stan­tial changes to the code base. Cold start times are gen­er­ally well un­der 2 sec­onds for Voxile. Nine out of ten changes in the VoxRay code­base don’t need to touch the C++ code at all. Most lan­guages have ei­ther good sta­tic typ­ing and per­for­mance or fast startup times but it’s very rare for them to have both. Lobster has both.

Lobster is there­fore ideal for fast, it­er­a­tive pro­to­typ­ing with­out rigidly con­fin­ing the user to a par­tic­u­lar en­gine ar­chi­tec­ture. Wouter him­self has been able to quickly craft wildly dif­fer­ent game ideas (each with be­spoke en­gines in­stanced in Lobster) to “find the fun”. You can check out his many pro­to­type ideas here.

Voxile emerged from this pro­to­typ­ing cru­cible as the pro­ject with the most com­pelling game­play and pret­ti­est graph­ics.

Wouter has ex­plained that his de­sign goals for Voxile in­volve a grow­ing list of foun­da­tional en­gine fea­tures that yield emer­gent prop­er­ties:

* 3D Volumetric Worlds: Polygonal meshes are like a hol­low shell with­out sub­stance. Building and de­stroy­ing are in­te­gral parts of Voxile and they are seam­less, mol­e­c­u­lar prop­er­ties of the en­tire mi­cro-voxel world. I fondly re­mem­ber Red Faction from my child­hood but even that was es­sen­tially a ve­neer of poly­gons used to sim­u­late the de­struc­tion of pre-scripted set pieces whereas EVERYTHING in the Voxile world is build­able and de­struc­tible.

* Performant Ray Tracing: Dynamic shad­ows, global il­lu­mi­na­tion, am­bi­ent oc­clu­sion and re­flec­tions are all built in to Voxile’s graph­ics pipeline and cre­ate a won­der­ful vi­sual style. Art and de­sign work­loads are re­duced be­cause the en­gine au­to­mat­i­cally makes all the vox­els look and feel right.

* Co-op Multiplayer: Both world craft­ing and de­struc­tion hap­pen seam­lessly and per­sis­tently in real-time. This opens the door for group game­play and mod­ding ex­pe­ri­ences like you find in Valheim, Minecraft, Helldivers, Peak, and more… For ex­am­ple: a level where you build a fortress with your friends by day be­fore you have to de­fend it from zom­bie raiders at night can be triv­ially con­structed in Voxile.

* Quest and Inventory Systems: Wouter has men­tioned be­ing heav­ily in­spired by Fallout. Each Voxile world map can of­fer the player RPG-style quests, pro­gres­sion and up­grades.

* Tactile Combat: Weapons are juicy and re­spon­sive. Melee weapons have weight and im­pact to them while cus­tomiz­able range weapons, guns and ex­plo­sives (why would Wouter add grenades to a “Builder’s Update”!?) cause pro­ce­dural voxel dam­age. Just like the world, en­e­mies ex­hibit voxel-based dam­age mod­el­ing. The re­sult is like Soldier of Fortune’s vis­ceral dam­age sys­tem.

* UGC: The mod­ding po­ten­tial for Voxile is ob­vi­ous and ex­pan­sive. Making cus­tom as­sets is like play­ing with Legos.

Just look at the way the look and feel of the game changes dra­mat­i­cally across worlds.

As new worlds get cre­ated, the pre­fabbed as­sets they con­tain be­come re­cy­clable mod­ules for fu­ture level de­sign and mod­ding (à la LittleBIGPlanet).

While Wouter has never pub­licly stated any plans what­so­ever to use AI, it’s clear that with his skill and con­trol over the lan­guage, the en­gine and the game, he could add any num­ber of pro­ce­dural world gen­er­a­tion fea­tures to Voxile in the fu­ture… stuff that most other gamedevs could only dream of (or at the very least they’d have to sub­mit a fea­ture re­quest ticket to their game en­gine provider).

In an in­dus­try that is hun­gry for growth and in­no­va­tion, Wouter has cre­ated a full-stack, farm-to-table game tech­nol­ogy that is truly one-of-a-kind. Everyone should take a mo­ment to check out the free Voxile Demo and if you like the con­tent or want a rich sand­box to mod your own worlds in… you should con­sider sup­port­ing his stu­dio by buy­ing the game on Steam now for 40% off. You can join the pub­lic VoxRay Games Discord chan­nel to keep tabs on their lat­est news. Wouter, con­grats again on The Builder’s Update! EGG is ex­cited by what you have built and to go on this jour­ney with you.