MacBook Neo again proves Apple can do cheap without being garbage – now give us Apple TV Neo

For a company built on making computers ‘for the rest of us’, Apple has a reputation for doing anything but. While Apple has long strived to make its gear more usable than rival products, critics grumble that this ‘friendliness’ is wrapped in high prices. Apple suggests otherwise. Steve Jobs once famously said, “We just can’t ship junk”, and argued that once you factor in what rivals strip out to hit lower prices, Apple products are in fact competitive.

So who is right? Neither? Both? Yes. (And no.) Apple in some cases does charge over the odds. Its prices for RAM and storage are frequently eye-watering. And I can only imagine accessories are priced by a high-tech algorithm, driven by a billion Mac Pros (hey, at least someone is using them), to hit the precise point where ‘reassuringly expensive’ nudges on ‘performance art parody’.

Yet there is also truth to the idea that Apple products offer solid value. At least some of them. The question is how they get there. Because while Apple doesn’t offer, as Jobs added, “stripped-down, lousy products”, it has offered – and still offers – non-lousy stripped-down ones. 

Cut it out

What counts as stripped-down depends on how you look at it. Do you design a modest foundation on which to build? Or do you create a flagship and gradually chip away at it to fashion cheaper versions until accountants stop yelling at you?

I remember as a youngling perusing keyboard catalogues (the music kind – I wasn’t getting all excited at the latest QWERTY numbers). Invariably, they would always look like a brand had designed a lovely instrument and then someone had waltzed in with a red pen, scribbling out the bits that had to go at each price point. The gaps were so evident in some cases that it was almost comical.

The iMac veers too close to that territory for my liking. The four-port version with Touch ID feels like the ‘real’ one. The cheaper model comes across like someone sneakily removed a couple of ports and Touch ID just to hit a price. But there are occasions where Apple totally nails the stripped-down thing. In fact, Apple literally positioned the Mac Mini as a response to people asking “Why doesn’t Apple offer a stripped-down Mac that is more affordable?” The MacBook Neo is now doing the same in the land of laptops.

Name game

Neither product felt cheap the day it was announced. Both were pared back but still unmistakably Apple. There was no sense you’d bought the ‘duff’ version, and yet the pricing, in both cases, was surprisingly aggressive.

It worked. In 2005, the Mac Mini pulled people to the Mac who’d either dismissed or never considered it before. The Neo? Same thing. I’m seeing a buzz around Apple that hasn’t been there in a long time, and part of that is because the exclusionary aspect is just gone. Sure, there are still cheaper laptops, but there’s nothing like the Neo that matches its balance of build, performance and price.

Which might make you ask whether Apple should do the same elsewhere. And it kind of already does – just with different branding. There’s the iPad, iPhone ‘e’ and Apple Watch SE. All trimmed, but still great. However, there is one product in Apple’s range that could be ‘Neo-d’, making it almost an impulse purchase and the obvious choice, rather than so often being ignored. And that’s the Apple TV.

TV times

I’ve used Apple TVs for years. They save me from chaotic, ad-infested smart TV interfaces seemingly designed by people who actively hate humans. In an Apple-heavy household, they integrate nicely with Apple Music, iCloud Photos and iPhones.

I’ve tried alternatives, but they felt cheap in the wrong way – and sometimes hateful. If anything, though, Apple TV has the opposite problem. It’s too much. Apple’s black box is relatively spendy and overspecced for what most people need. The headroom could have meant something. It might have enabled a great gaming box, but Apple barely showed a flicker of interest there. It could have allowed Apple to go much heavier on Tim Cook’s declaration that “we believe the future of television is apps”. But, well, it wasn’t and it isn’t.

So rumours about Apple TV Pro don’t interest me. I’d sooner see Apple TV Neo with a simplified design and fantastic software. Like the MacBook Neo, the Apple TV could shake up its corner of the market – and that could transform it from an also-ran into the telly box most people should buy.

• Now read: MacBook Neo is the budget Apple laptop we all wanted – with a major flaw we really didn’t