Apple dropped a surprise in early March. The MacBook Neo arrived at a starting price of $599. It carried a 13-inch Liquid Retina display, an aluminum body in four striking colors and the A18 Pro chip borrowed from the iPhone 16 Pro. Sales took off. Within weeks the device had carved out space once occupied mainly by Chromebooks and low-end Windows machines. John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, captured the intent in the company’s official announcement . “We’re incredibly excited to introduce MacBook Neo, which delivers the magic of the Mac at a breakthrough price,” he said. “Built from the ground up to be more affordable for even more people.” The laptop weighed 2.7 pounds. It promised up to 16 hours of battery life. Everyday tasks ran up to 50 percent faster than the bestselling Windows PC powered by the latest Intel Core Ultra 5 processor. On-device AI workloads showed gains as high as 3 times. Yet the machine carried clear limits.…