Customized MacBook Neo with colorful spare parts

The MacBook Neo is Apple's cheapest, most colorful, and easiest-to-repair laptop in years. This means owners can purchase replacement parts in all four available colors and swap them out themselves. So that got us thinking: what if we bought a Neo just to see how awesome we could make it with official parts?

I customized a MacBook Neo with colorful spare parts

And I only broke it a little.

I opted for a replacement trackpad and bottom case in blush, as well as USB-C ports and keys in citrus. My goal was to make it as complicated as possible without changing more labor-intensive parts, like the top case or cover, both of which require disassembling the screen.

Part: | Color: | Price: |

|---|---|---|

| Touchpad | blush | $78.32 |

| Bottom case | blush | $34.32 |

| Keys | citrus | $39 |

| USB-C cards | citrus | $14 |

| Total: $165.64 |

The four pieces we ordered cost $165.64 plus tax, or almost 30% of the price of a new Neo. So while it's fun to experiment, buying all these pieces purely for aesthetic reasons isn't cost-effective. But you may end up with something of your own.

Opening the Neo is simple. Check out iFixit's full guide and video if you want to see how to take everything apart. Replacing the bottom case is of course the simplest, since you have to open it with a pentalobe screwdriver to access the innards of the Neo. The trackpad and USB-C ports were also fairly straightforward, requiring just unplugging a few ribbon cables and removing several Torx screws to insert the freshly colored parts. After about 40 minutes I already had a personalized Neo.

There are lots of fun color combinations you can explore with just the trackpad, ports, and bottom plate. But even those three replacement parts will cost you $126.64, which is nothing for a $599 laptop.

But then came the keys. I was very excited to customize them, as my love for mechanical keyboards and colored keycaps is well documented. I wanted to give the Neo a touch of the two-tone style you see on mechanical keyboards – changing only the alphas, numbers, spacebar, and arrow keys to citrus, with the modifiers remaining indigo. Changing keys on a laptop is obviously more difficult than regular keys, but I figured it would be fine.

Reader, I was not well.

I didn't order the little plastic removal adhesives and pry tools that Apple sells you to remove keys. I forgot about the fact that you have to scroll through each part's page to see if there are tools to purchase with them. In my defense, Apple has outsourced the self-service repair store to a third-party logistics company, and the site is pretty spartan.

You don't need the keycap tool or the adhesive, but I bet it would be easier and less risky than removing them with a spudger like I did. But you definitely shouldn't miss the instructions on how to put the keys back in place. I managed to damage the fragile hinge clips of a few keys, and a metal fin securing the scissor switch of an arrow key was sheared off before I figured out the right way to attach the new keycaps, thanks to a few videos. Notably, the key reassembly instructions are buried in a secondary page linked at the bottom of Apple's written instructions.

Once I had the technique right, I was able to install the citrus keycaps on the alpha and number keys (minus the A, D, 5, and 8 keys, where I had to use the original, undamaged indigo keycaps, and the W and S keys, which I kept indigo for vibration). Unfortunately, reattaching the arrow key's scissor switch will likely require a trip to the Genius Bar. Maybe I should document how they react to seeing my multi-colored Neo.

Despite my avoidable mistakes, these mods are completely doable if you read the instructions first and don't be careless or rush. It may not be cost effective to replace all the parts I made, and spending $80 to replace a perfectly good trackpad seems a bit silly. But just swapping out the keys for $39 (plus $13 for the removal toolkit) will get you pretty far. Please learn from my mistakes.

But even though I didn't achieve these changes as I hoped, I love that it's even possible on a MacBook. While I cursed Apple under my breath while setting up its unintuitive parts site and buried some vital repair instructions, I hope the company continues this trend toward repairability with future MacBook Airs and Pros. And hopefully we'll get some more fun colors for these as well, including some aftermarket pieces to mix and match at our own risk.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge