Apple’s MacBook Neo is most repairable notebook since 2014

• Uses screws instead of glue or rivets to secure the battery and keyboard, and simplifying replacements for parts like the camera and fingerprint sensor.

Apple’s new MacBook Neo—the laptop it announced last week with a starting price of $499 for students—is the most repairable Mac notebook since 2014, according to an iFixit analysis released Friday.

iFixit, which publishes repair guides and sells parts and tools, also rates devices for ease of repair; laptop makers including Dell and Lenovo have used those ratings to improve their designs.

In its Friday teardown, iFixit found Apple made key changes from previous MacBooks, such as using screws instead of glue or rivets to secure the battery and keyboard, and simplifying replacements for parts like the camera and fingerprint sensor.

Apple is widely seen as targeting education markets also served by Google’s low-cost Chromebooks. According to iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens, Chromebooks are frequently repaired in schools, with some districts—such as Oakland, California—training student interns to perform fixes.

Even so, the MacBook Neo scored only 6 out of 10 on iFixit’s repairability scale; some recent Lenovo ThinkPads have scored 9s or 10s. Apple’s pursuit of thinner, lighter devices over the past decade has generally made repairs harder.

Wiens noted that the Neo’s 8 GB of DRAM is soldered directly to the logic board as part of the main processor package—consistent with recent Mac designs—preventing memory upgrades. He argued this could hinder the Neo’s ability to run increasingly complex on-device AI applications, despite Apple’s emphasis on the privacy benefits of local AI processing.

He suggested Apple could improve future models by adding an upgradeable layer of memory. “Apple’s future for privacy-centered AI has to be local models,” Wiens said. “I would argue this is a flaw across Apple’s entire Mac product line.”