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The return of the glowing Apple logo has been bouncing around at the back of my mind. It is confirmed that the Apple logo’s brightness is tied to screen brightness and that the illumination can be disabled.

From this, I’m willing to make a prediction: it will be used as a status light for conveying information while the lid is closed.

Paired with optimisations to lid-closed audio, I think they’re priming the Mac for virtual assistant and AI functionality while closed. Apple are putting a focus on smart-home offerings presently (new HomePod Mini, HomeView), and the new MacBook is now also properly suited for that functionality. I would be unsurprised if they made Siri voice commands work smoothly with a closed MacBook.

MacBooks are very popular with the AI crowd, and there are common jokes about leaving the lid open just a bit so that agents can do their work. I think this will become a fairly major feature, especially as it ties into the investments Apple has been making into Siri AI as of late.

If Apple doesn’t do this and an API is exposed, a third party will certainly implement the functionality. If I had the money to splash on an (at minimum) $4,599 AUD computer so I could develop an app implementing the functionality, I’d certainly cash in on this opportunity.

Previous MacBooks with the glowing Apple logo achieved the effect by simply having a cutout that let the backlight of the LED display shine through. It used no extra power, however external light could shine through the logo, causing a bright spot on the MacBook’s display

However, the new 2026 MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display has an OLED screen as the name implies, which doesn’t have a separate blacklight. This means the logo will have to be illuminated independently. I wonder what the impacts are on power usage and if it will be controllable in macOS.

I despise the hideous 12-inch MacBook (also known as Retina MacBook or the new MacBook).

Apple are renowned for their fantastic design, but this series of laptops was a resounding misfire. The 12-inch MacBook is certainly the ugliest Mac and is in the running for one of the ugliest laptops in general. Especially in gold, it looked awful.

The keyboard is disgusting. To squish it onto a 12″ frame, Apple extended it right to the edges of the chassis, and it just looks haphazard. The Air’s minimum 13″ size allows for a slight border, which makes the whole device look so much nicer. That, of course, isn’t to mention the horrid functionality of the keyboard. To achieve the pointlessly thin design, Apple invented the ‘Butterfly Keyboard’ with a mechanism departing from the traditional scissor style. The design was flawed, and people were quick to experience issues due to heat and detritus.

Speaking of heat, that was a problem too. Also in pursuit of thinness, and despite the use of hot-running x86 Intel chips, the models were fanless. They naturally overheated and were incapable of anything even slightly strenuous. The compromise in desire for thinness didn’t cease there, however, for it continued into the sole USB-C port. Charging your laptop? Well, unless you’ve got a dongle, you won’t be able to plug in a mouse, drive, or external display. If you do have a bulky dongle, does it not defeat the sole value of such an unreasonably thin laptop?

I personally think this terrible Mac line set back Apple’s laptops by years. In typical Apple fashion, they refused to acknowledge their mistake and kept producing the computers for years, making only half-baked attempts to address the intrinsic problems. Apple didn’t manage to get things back on track until 2020 with Apple silicon. The cooler-running M series chips would ironically have made the 12-inch MacBook a not completely unreasonable proposition, but by the time it released, Apple had already canned the line.

I’m looking for a device I can use for WebKit/Safari testing. However, I can’t justify splashing too much cash on a Mac that I’ll scarcely use.

I’m looking at something with Apple Silicon so that it won’t be dropped by the next software update. Currently considering a 2020 M1 MacBook Air with a broken screen, which I can use headless. Maybe a Mac Mini, but they’re pretty scarce on the second-hand market. People seem to hang onto iMacs long-term, so they aren’t really around.

Thinking the Neo down the line, perhaps.

Any thoughts?

I’m excited for the MacBook Neo from the perspective of it being a reasonably priced Safari/WebKit testing machine.

I imagine they’ll be cheap second-hand as well due to the education market.

The lower-end specs shouldn’t be an issue for testing either. They might even prove a benefit.