In another time, the MacBook Neo could have caused a substantial realignment of the lowish-end laptop business. Sure, it has shortcomings compared to the MacBook Air, but it could have at least encouraged PC makers to start shipping consistently decent keyboards, screens, and build quality in the Neo's $599 price window.

The PC makers did start responding, thanks in part to Intel's actually new non-Ultra Core Series 3 processors (codenamed Wildcat Lake). Intel has resisted its usual compunction to serve the budget market with aging, re-labeled silicon and has created a lower-end, lower-performance processor with the same building blocks (and the same manufacturing processes) as this year's high-end, high-performance models.

The likes of Dell, Acer, Asus, and Lenovo began hopping on the Wildcat Lake train fairly quickly, announcing would-be Neo competitors. But it felt like most of them were having trouble matching the Neo's barebones specs, let alone undercutting them. Dell's XPS 13 started at $599, but only for students. It would be $699 for everyone else. Acer's Swift Air 14 was announced at $699, too. Sure, sometimes these offered features the Neo didn't have. But the point of the Neo is that it eschews frills and frippery in favor of nailing the basics.

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It seems fair to say that Apple's MacBook Neo took the rest of the PC industry by surprise. Companies are used to competing on price and features with $1,000-and-up Apple laptops like the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, but their $600 and $700 models usually come with cut corners and compromises that are more noticeable than the Neo's. The CEO of Asus admitted to being surprised by the laptop's price (while simultaneously trying to downplay the Neo's value); a Microsoft-backed study comparing PCs to the MacBook Neo included several laptops that can't compete with the Neo's price unless they're deeply discounted.

In the last couple of weeks, we've started to see a more intentional and targeted response to the MacBook Neo from PC makers. These mostly seem to revolve around Intel's low-end Core Series 3 processors, codenamed Wildcat Lake; while Intel's last few generations of low-end chips have mostly been rebrands of older and less power-efficient parts, Wildcat Lake is a new purpose-built budget chip that benefits from Intel's latest CPU and GPU architectures and its 18A manufacturing process. This should help these chips compete better with the Apple A18 Pro in the MacBook Neo.

Many early Wildcat Lake systems have already been announced, though not all have included a price tag, and several have only been announced for the Chinese market as of this writing. Lenovo is planning to launch some IdeaPad Slim models with the new processors, with some optional spec upgrades including 16GB of RAM and a 120 Hz high-refresh-rate display. Asus and HP have also announced some early products.

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