Apple can finally do something interesting with the iPad. I hope they don’t screw it up

It’s fair to say that the MacBook Neo has taken the world by storm. Apple’s products have been expensive for quite a long time, but the Neo’s unique combination of affordable price (thanks in part to the laptop’s iPhone chip), fun colors, and clever hardware compromises make it a legitimately good option for people in the market for a new computer.

The Neo’s mere existence also upsets the company’s laptop lineup in interesting ways. Some of these, like the MacBook Air’s new starting cost of $1099, can be partially blamed on the growing price of RAM and a helpful storage bump. But it’s hard to not see Neo as a more fundamental reimagining of Apple’s entire product line. The iPad has long existed as Apple’s cheapest “computer.” You can quibble about its ability to actually replace a laptop for some tasks and the high cost of the accessories that make it more laptop-shaped, but the fact remains that Apple was comfortable with its tablets serving that role. With the Neo available, and on sale for cheaper than an iPad with accessories costs, there’s a good chance people will opt for the colorful laptop instead of Apple’s tablets. And rather than that being bad for the company’s tablet sales, it could be an opportunity to let the iPad lean into its tablet qualities rather than continuing the process of making it even more like a Mac.

The $500 starting price sweet spot

The Neo’s price and ability to run macOS is hard to beat

With Apple’s $100 education discount applied, you can purchase a MacBook Neo for as little as $499. That’s a strikingly cheap price for what’s otherwise a normal Mac, and a premium experience. Apple carried over plenty of the hallmarks of its more expensive laptops to its budget model, like an aluminum, unibody construction, high-resolution screen, and power-efficient chip (in this case the iPhone 16 Pro’s A18 Pro chip). It even redesigned its trackpad to be cheaper to make, but still as functional as its haptic, Force Touch models. The biggest way the laptop comes up short is in memory and storage: The Neo comes with either 256GB or 512GB of storage, and only has 8GB of RAM, regardless of which model you pick.

A $500 price has long been the domain of Apple’s tablets. The mid-tier iPad Air starts at $599, but you can purchase used models for as low as $469. An entry-level iPad starts even lower at $349. Accessories make both tablets significantly more expensive — a Magic Keyboard for the iPad Air starts at $269, while a Magic Keyboard Folio for the iPad costs $249 — and in particular brings a base iPad’s price in line with the Neo. But Apple’s long argued that the flexibility of its tablet operating system is what makes that price worth paying. iPadOS is designed to work without a keyboard and mouse, or just with an Apple Pencil, or with all three interchangeably. The company has made iPadOS look and behave more like macOS over the years, sure, but its utility has remained consistent.

There’s people who use an iPad as their main computer based on those strengths, but a common sentiment circulating on social media since the MacBook Neo was released is that it eliminates the need to purchase an iPad at all. Looking at the price and the standard productivity work most people do on an iPad, that’s not surprising. But it doesn’t necessarily spell doom for the tablet, either. In fact, it might be a sign of where Apple should take it next.

Let the iPad be even more of a tablet

Apple should expand on the unique qualities of the iPad

Multitasking has been a consistent problem on the iPad and one that Apple has made several attempts to solve. Being able to look at multiple apps at once feels natural on a larger screen, but offering a windowing system that works exactly the same as the one used on a desktop operating system naturally feels kind of awkward. Which is why Apple almost seemed to invent multitasking from first principles, progressing through split-screened apps, Slide Over windows that act as stacks of open apps, Stage Manager, and now the macOS-style windowing system it introduced in iPadOS 26. The company took a long time to arrive at a much more complicated place, but the instinct to create something custom for the iPad is not necessarily a bad one. It might be exactly what the tablet needs.

If people would rather choose a cheap MacBook over an iPad, Apple should try and make the tablet parts of the iPad even more essential. Besides multiple unusual approaches to multitasking, the tablet has plenty of unique features worth expanding on, whether support for the Apple Pencil (enabling things like writing and drawing in apps, and inputting text everywhere else through Apple’s Scribble feature), Sidecar for using an iPad like an external monitor, or Universal Control for working with and moving files between a Mac and an iPad.

All these features position the iPad — when it’s not acting as a Mac — as a mix between an external monitor and a tool for taking notes and drawing. While even the original was sold alongside the keyboard, clearly the thing that makes the iPad unique is the fact it has a roomy, increasingly high-resolution touchscreen display. All the tablet’s exclusive features are built on that. It would make sense then that if the Neo really does impact the sales of the iPad in the long-term, the company should focus on expanding on those tablet-specific features. What does an iPad that tries to win back people who fell in love with a Boox or reMarkable devicelook like? What about a version of iPadOS that takes touch or stylus input as a given?

It’s possible, if not likely, that Apple has data to support its slow transformation of the iPad into a Mac. Whether there’s a good reason or not, the company is no doubt making a pretty penny upselling people on keyboard accessories. If those accessories sales run out on account of the Neo, there’s plenty of room to experiment with something new.

Putting tablet-ness over the product ladder

It’s only going to get harder to make an iPad stand out

The MacBook Neo is specifically pitched at people who have iPhones, but who haven’t bought in to Apple’s wider ecosystem. The framing was built into Apple’s announcement of the new laptop, and it makes sense considering it’s much cheaper to buy a smartphone on contract than it is to pay full price for a tablet or laptop. The overlapping features of the company’s products — that you can view iMessages you write on your phone on your Neo, for example — are as much about convenience as they are enticing you to purchase more of the company’s products, and the pricing of those products is often set up to get you to upgrade. The Neo changes, but things are about to change even more.

Operating System

macOS 26

CPU

A18 Pro

RAM

8GB

Storage

256GB, 512GB

Apple’s new most affordable laptop has an aluminum body that comes in fun colors and uses an A18 Pro to run macOS.

Apple is reportedly working on a new version of the MacBook Pro with a touchscreen that could confuse things even further. The laptop will apparently come in the same general form factor as current Pros, but with a display that accepts touch input, and a version of macOS with some tweaks to make it more comfortable to poke with a finger. If the Neo doesn’t make it worth figuring out how to differentiate the iPad from the Mac, then a touchscreen MacBook surely should.