MacBook Neo launch, ‘Ultra’ rumors

Welcome to 95 Mac Daily for Wednesday, March 11th, 2026.

I'm your host, Chance Miller.

We are supported this week by card pointers.

Leading off today, Apple just launched their remarkably low-cost MacBook Neo, but the latest

reporting from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg says the company is also planning to push deeper

into the high end with more quote-unquote ultra devices.

One point to five upcoming products from Apple that he describes as having a higher

end ultra experience.

Gurman is careful to say that Apple might not use the ultra branding for all of them,

but they will be ultra in terms of things like features and of course pricing.

There's the upcoming iPhone Fold, new AirPods equipped with computer vision cameras to

feed visual intelligence to Siri, the new M6 MacBook Pro with OLED and touch support,

the foldable iPad with a rumored 18.8 inch display, and higher end iMacs featuring beefier

processors and larger displays.

Three of those products are reportedly set to launch this year, including the AirPods

with cameras, the foldable iPhone, and the M6 MacBook Pro with OLED and touch support.

In regards to the MacBook Pro update in particular, Gurman says that the upcoming laptops will likely

sit above the current M5 Pro and M5 Mac's MacBook Pro models rather than replace them.

So while Apple could keep the traditional MacBook Pro name, a MacBook Ultra label would

more clearly signal their position at the top of the lineup.

This so-called MacBook Ultra is set to be released before the end of the year.

In other news today, speaking of the MacBook Neo, Asus Co-CEO-SY Shu reacted to Apple's

announcement of this budget-friendly machine and its effect on the PC market.

Speaking during the company's earnings call, Shu said, quote, In the past, Apple's

pricing situation has always been high.

So for them to release a very budget-friendly product, this is obviously a shock to the

entire industry.

In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete

with this product, end quote.

Shu, however, did question the MacBook Neo's ability to handle productivity-heavy workloads.

He described the MacBook Neo as a, quote, content-consumption device similar to the iPad.

He said the MacBook Neo is a different use case from a mainstream notebook, which can often

handle more compute-intensive tasks.

Unfortunately for Shu, the reviews of the MacBook Neo paint a picture that the product

is more than capable of handling most productivity tasks that you can throw at it.

While it's powered by an iPhone chip and has 8GB of RAM, the MacBook Neo holds its

own in benchmarking and in real-world usability testing.

While it is true that the MacBook Neo won't match higher end products in terms of speed

and performance, it certainly holds its own against similarly priced PCs on the market.

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In other news today, supply chain analyst Ming Qi Quo has some interesting insights around

the new MacBook Neo and potentially what could come next.

Quo has quite a bit of credibility around MacBook Neo.

He claimed last June that Apple had released a 13-inch MacBook powered by the A18 Pro

processor in late Q4 2025 or 2026.

So nearly a year ago, Quo nailed the screen size and the processor of the new MacBook Neo,

and he even accurately predicted the silver, blue, pink, and yellow colors.

So with that in mind, Quo says that he expects Apple to ship between 4.5 and 5 million MacBook

Neo units.

Looking to the future, Quo says that the second generation MacBook Neo was originally expected

to feature a touch panel to compete with Chromebooks, but his latest industry checks revealed

that the MacBook Neo 2 might not have that upgrade after all.

Instead, Apple is planning to reserve touch interactions for the higher-end MacBook Pro

that we just talked about.

And finally, Quo says that Apple is continuing its work on an OLED MacBook Air, slated

for a launch around 2028 or 2029.

Writing out today the first reviews of Apple's Studio Display XDR were published earlier

this week, providing our first in-depth looks at the Mini-LED panel, the 120Hz refresh rate,

and more.

The general consensus is that the Studio Display XDR is a beautiful screen, though it comes

with the traditional Apple external display, price tag.

One interesting tidbit, however, came in the Verges review, where John Higgins spotted

that there's still one Studio Display XDR feature coming in a future update, support for

full calibration.

Apple Touts at the Studio Display XDR offers a ton of built-in reference modes, ranging from

Apple's own modes to ones from Adobe, and even a new mode designed for medical imaging

presets.

Higgins writes, however, that the factory calibration of the Studio Display XDR has one noticeable

flaw.

Brightness at the lower end of the grayscale is too high, so shadows aren't as deep as

they should be, and some of the darker colors are too bright.

In the future, however, Studio Display XDR will have full calibration support.

Higgins explains that this is something he expects every true professional or studio to

do.

Right now, there's only fine-tuned calibration adjustments, for things like white point

and luminance, but full calibration support that covers a wider spectrum of settings will

be enabled with a future software update for the Studio Display XDR.

There's no timeline on when this update will be available, but today is officially the

Studio Display XDR launch day, and you can order it for $3,299.

This wraps up another episode of Ninety-Five Mac Daily.

As always, you can find all of the latest Apple news on NinetyFiveMac.com, follow along

with me on Threads at Chance H. Miller, and we'll be back tomorrow for a new episode

of Ninety-Five Mac Daily.