Welcome to the TechBrew Ride Home for Wednesday, March 4th, 26. I'm Brian McCullough today. Apple unveils its

Chromebook sort of competitor, the MacBook Neo. Anthropic might be the fastest growing startup in history.

Polymarket will no longer let you bet on thermonuclear war and Sony will no longer release its big single-player

PlayStation 5 games on PC. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.

Apple has finally launched a low-end MacBook. It is the starting at $600 MacBook Neo with a 13-inch

liquid retina display, an A18 Pro chip, side-firing speakers, a 1080p webcam, two USBC ports, and

touch ID. Well, caveats on all of that. The baseline Neo at $600 gets you $256 gigabytes of storage and no touch ID.

For $700, you get touch ID and $512 gigabytes of storage, both available in citrus, silver, indigo, and blush colors.

Also a note on those two USBC ports.

They come with different specs. One is USBC3

with up to 10 GBS transfer speeds, and the other is USBC 2, limited to 480MBS transfer speeds.

Quoting Tom's hardware. With this cheaper machine, Apple is taking aim at Chromebook and low-end Windows users,

as well as those who may have wanted a MacBook but felt the price was out of reach.

This new system, while still made of aluminum, comes in a variety of colors.

They're the most vibrant colors on an Apple laptop since the iBook G3 in 1999.

It is a relatively light device weighing just 2.7 pounds and measuring half an inch thick.

Apple says the MacBook Neo can last up to 16 hours on a single charge thanks to its 36.5 watt hour battery.

Apple says that the MacBook Neo will start at $599 for the 256

gigabyte version and will be available in silver, indigo, blush, and citrus. The 512

gigabyte version will come with touch ID and be priced at $699. Both versions ship with just

8 gigabytes of RAM and support Apple Intelligence, and there are

no build-to-order options for additional RAMs. So what you see is what you get. Pre-orders go live today,

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