MacBook Neo can be modded to run faster, but you probably shouldn't (opens in new tab)

Good lord you people truly don’t have any understanding of what normal people like or why Apple is so successful.

That's a very un-Apple idea. Their philosophy is that the user shouldn't have to think about things like thermals. You buy the system that can handle your workload. They don't want you buying the cheap option and hot rodding it.

Maybe this makes more sense in 2026 with the focus on local AI models, but I think Apple would prefer to sell high end desktops AND high end laptops to people who want both portability and maximum performance.

On the other hand I see a very hot bottom case as an engineering problem that Apple solved by not using a thermal pad. Sometimes higher clock speeds don't really mean much for the user experience. For example I can set my gaming laptop to run in eco mode, or turbo mode, and the performance with simple tasks like web browsing is roughly the same. In these sorts of situations, its better to let the chip slow down a bit to preserve my thighs.