The MacBook Neo Was Supposed to Be the Cheap Option. It Still Is, Barely.
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Apple just raised education prices, and the numbers are bad enough to reopen device strategy conversations you thought were settled.
The MacBook Air now sits at $1,199 under education pricing. The Mac Studio took an even bigger hit, with its top configuration jumping $1,300, the steepest single increase in Apple's entire lineup. The MacBook Neo, which many districts had been eyeing as a more affordable entry point for student use, jumped to $599 in the education store. That's still the cheapest Mac you can buy, but it's not the $499 student device price districts budgeted for last spring, and anyone who built a three-year refresh plan around those numbers is now looking at a shortfall.
Apple's blaming a global memory and storage shortage tied to the AI data center buildout, and pricing moves across the entire PC industry back that up. This isn't an Apple-specific cash grab. RAM and flash storage costs have spiked everywhere, and Apple held the line longer than most expected before passing it on.
Here's why this lands hard right now. Most districts are mid-cycle on budget approvals or already locked into next fiscal year's spending. Surprise price jumps of this magnitude don't just affect new purchases; they ripple into lease agreements, grant projections, and bond spending that assumed stable Apple pricing. If you submitted a tech plan to your board in January with line items based on what Airs and Neos cost then, you're already underwater on paper.
The staff device question is the one that stings most. A lot of districts moved to MacBook Airs for teachers because Chromebooks felt underpowered for the creative and productivity workflows staff actually run. At $1,199 per unit, that calculus changes. You're now one refresh cycle away from a full-scale policy renegotiation with administration, and "why not Chromebooks or Windows laptops" becomes a harder question to deflect.
Chromebook pricing has stayed relatively flat. Windows hardware from Dell and Lenovo still offers competitive education tiers, and some vendors are explicitly pricing against the MacBook Neo now that it's no longer the unbeatable $599 outlier it was at launch. Neither ecosystem is perfect, but both are suddenly looking more defensible in a budget meeting.
Bottom line: Audit your Apple refresh budget now, before someone else does it for you in a room you're not in.
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Tech Tip of the Week
Enable enhanced Admin password reset alerts in Google Workspace immediately
Attackers who compromise a super admin account often change the password first, buying time before your team notices anything is wrong.
Google Workspace has an enhanced alert for exactly this scenario, but it ships turned off by default. Fix that now: go to Admin Console, open the Alert Center, then select "Manage Rules." Find the "Admin password changed" alert, open it, and confirm that notifications are enabled and routed to your security contact or IT distribution list, not just the default admin account that could already be locked out. While you're in there, set the severity to High and make sure email delivery is active. The whole thing takes under five minutes.
Getting that alert the moment a super admin password changes gives you a real shot at catching a breach before the attacker pivots to your student data, financial systems, or MDM console.
Bottom line: Turn on this alert today. A five-minute config change can be the difference between a contained incident and a full district emergency.
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