What a strange mistake - another 10 or 20Wh would amount to something like $10 or $20 on a per unit basis. Whatever you think about 8gb of RAM, that was pretty clearly necessary to hit the price point, but battery is an easy feature to provide cheaply if weight and bulk are secondary and you're working with an efficient SoC like the A18.
I wasn't aware this was such a defecit in battery life for this price segment? It really doesn't seem that bad.
QuoteIn the end, it is quite clear that the MacBook Neo's small battery is a purely cost-cutting measure.
Maybe Apple decided to play it safe and opted for a smaller battery to further increase value of Air version. Neo is good but not too good and that's by design.