TARLAKENYO — Public education in the Philippines is receiving a massive technological upgrade as the Department of Education rolls out 172,654 units of the new MacBook Neo across more than 16,400 K-12 public schools.
Apple announced the deployment during its Q4 earnings call, with CEO John Ternus confirming that the company secured its largest education Mac deal to date with the agency.
The P7.4 billion initiative equips teaching and non-teaching personnel with reliable hardware designed to streamline lesson preparation, ease administrative burdens, and elevate classroom engagement nationwide.
The new hardware represents a sharp departure from the traditional “blue laptops” previously distributed by the government, which typically arrived burdened by polycarbonate body, outdated hard disk drives and minimal RAM.
The MacBook Neo serves as Apple’s most budget-friendly laptop offering, packing Apple silicon performance and built-in artificial intelligence capabilities alongside enterprise-grade security tailored for institutional use.
Built with a durable aluminum unibody enclosure and a silent, fanless design, the device handles daily wear and tear while offering all-day battery life. Educators gain access to native productivity applications like Pages, Keynote, Numbers, and Freeform without extra licensing fees or subscription costs, lowering the total cost of ownership.
The new DepEd MacBooks pair with the Apple Education Community platform, providing foundational training programs and over 70 locally developed lesson plans tailored to the K-12 curriculum by Filipino educators.
DepEd Secretary Sonny Angara emphasized the broader impact of the rollout, noting that investing in teachers remains central to future-ready education initiatives.
