This modded MacBook Neo is the version Apple never made
The MacBook Neo is a massive success for Apple. Despite being a laptop with passive cooling, the A18 Pro chip on board still proves powerful enough for everyday tasks. When Apple launched the entry-level MacBook Neo, it brought the impressive efficiency of the A18 Pro SoC to an affordable laptop form factor. However, it also came with a strict official storage limit of 512 GB.
Because the MacBook Neo shares its A18 Pro silicon with the iPhone 16 Pro, a device that officially supports up to 1 TB of storage, it stands to reason that the Neo should be capable of the same capacity. To test this theory, the YouTube channel dosdude1 took a 1 TB NAND chip designed for an iPhone 16 Pro and soldered it directly onto the MacBook Neo’s logic board.
Before firing up the soldering iron and voiding the warranty, the YouTuber established a baseline. Out of the box, booting into a fresh install of macOS 26, the Neo performs exactly as expected for an Apple Silicon machine.
If you're wondering why the 8 GB of memory isn't being upgraded, the A18 Pro uses a package-on-package (PoP) design, as the YouTuber explains, meaning the RAM is physically stacked directly on top of the SoC. And since there are no alternative RAM packages manufactured for this specific chip layout, upgrading the memory is physically impossible, no matter the soldering skills.
Moreover, the YouTuber explains that one cannot simply harvest a used NAND chip from an old iPhone. The replacement chip must be entirely blank and unprogrammed to bind to the new hardware. They used a JC P15 programmer to verify that the new 1 TB chip was detected and “bound to the general state,” meaning it was a clean slate ready for macOS.
After the soldering and reassembly process, the YouTuber discovered that the A18 Pro uses a NAND-only boot chain instead of the NOR-based system seen on M-series Macs.
Unlike traditional Macs that boot loop with a blank NAND, the MacBook Neo remains stable and automatically enters DFU mode, similar to an iPhone or iPad.
Using Apple Configurator on a host Mac, the YouTuber selected a macOS IPSW file, and the system detected the new 1 TB chip, formatted it, and completed the restore without any issues.
Upon booting into macOS 26, About This Mac and Disk Utility confirmed the Apple SSD AP1024Z with 1 TB of installed storage. Running the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test showed speeds of around 1700 MB/s, roughly 200 MB/s faster than the stock 256 GB drive.
While the procedure is a resounding success, the economics are currently brutal. Due to the ongoing AI-driven component shortage, the YouTuber said that sourcing a blank 1 TB K8A5 NAND chip is incredibly difficult. What used to be a sub-$100 part now costs upwards of $200.
You can watch the entire MacBook Neo storage upgrade process in the video linked below.
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