When the cheap one is the cool one
arun.is127 points by ddrmaxgt37 a day ago
127 points by ddrmaxgt37 a day ago
I bought a Neo to "replace" an M3 MacBook Air "travel/out of the house/outside" laptop. Are there drawbacks? Most certainly, but it feels like something special, and I enjoy the slightly smaller form factor. The main drawback is perhaps the most surprising, the screen, which is really good at 500 nits, draws a disproportionate amount of energy compared to the rest of the system, so you get about 3.5 hours in bright sunlight / maximum brightness.
As the only IT person in an 80 person unit, I can say the Neo trounces Dell Latitudes in a lot of ways, those have awful 250 nit screens out of the box, and they are nearly $1,200!
Weighing up a Neo vs Framework 12 for my kids. The Neo is nicer, but I'll probably get the Framework even though it's more expensive. Apple products seem to have a fixed shelf life; a certain number of years of support and then the machine is slowly incompatible with apps that have since moved on to newer versions of macOS. Meanwhile Framework supports Linux and is still providing hardware/software upgrade paths for their old machines.
Just my personal perspective, every Apple laptop I've ever owned has lasted 10+ years. Their phones may have some planned obsolescence, but I don't find that to be the case at all with their computers.
I still use a 2012 MacBook Air 11” for running Zoom calls.
It’s stuck in Catalina, but I still get updates.
Most apps run fine on it.
Apple kit lasts a long time.
In my experience their phones last far longer than Androids. Only in the last few years Samsung and Pixel have switched to at least 7 years (now it's the question of whether the hardware will suffice).
Until it broke, I was still using my 2018 iPad just last year.
My primary device is still my 2018 iPad Pro. I have lots to choose from, but it’s perfect.
Old intel macbook pros definitely didn't last 10+ years, the overheating problems really reduced their lifetime.
I think this is less true than it used to be? I ran my MBP2013 into the ground after 10+ years, but my circa 2018 imac retina is stuck on pre-Catalina, installing which requires opencore patcher anyway. Hardware is fine, but it's increasingly less useful as a daily driver on account of software.
My 2015 MacBook Air, purchased new in 2017, was already practically dead by 2021.
My personal perspective: 2 out of 3 MacBook Pro, I worked with, had expanding batteries after about 5 years. Replacement was a big hassle and the new no-name batteries are nowhere near as good as the original ones.
I sure wish it was as easy as a battery replacement on a Framework laptop (with an original part).
I know the Neo has easier battery replacement (not glued in), but still it has an iFixit rating of 6/10 whereas the Framework 12 has a 10/10.
> every Apple laptop I've ever owned has lasted 10+ years
.. as long as you avoided the emoji keyboard era, or never used an emoji keyboard laptop outdoors or even with your windo open :)
I have laptops much older than the ~2018 that work perfectly. But not only the 2018's keyboard broke, but to add insult to the injury they used a display cable that was too short in that generation and that broke too.
That is Cook's legacy :)
Tahoe (in particular Liquid Glass) is the harbinger of bringing the iOS planned obsolescence to Mac. It has begun.
Linux on Mac Pro 5.1 from 2009 and 2017 MacBook Air, both working perfectly.
I prefer actually both to my corporate issue M4 one with MacOS.
I'm not a fan of the Mac UX, but the hardware seems pretty damn good and the lifespan extends with it.
If I'd have no limitations though I'd prefer the Framework, but not very clearly.
The question is not as much shelf life, as whether you want your kids to be builders or consumers.
You can put Linux on Macbooks, you can build on macOS.
Environments foster certain behaviors, even restrictions foster certain behaviors, sometimes the opposite of what you try to restrict. There are no right answers :)
It's a shame most companies don't do weird and interesting variants anymore. I suppose it's hard to do when you need mass market appeal.
Especially in regards to cars, often getting a bargain is about finding the cars with faults you personally don't care about but most people do, or versions not many are interested in.
Unfortunately the way speculators have inflated the used market means the rare (because no-one wanted it) versions are priced on their rarity not their utility.
Apple has been doing this for ages. The base tier one always gets the fun colors while the pro models get silver, grey, and maybe some muted blue.
Not sure why they make the cheaper models cooler than the top tier ones. Maybe it's just too expensive to stock multiple colors of every product. The Neo has minimal customization options for specs so making it colorful is cheaper.
Market segmentation? High-end ones have to look "professional", I presume the thinking is you wouldn't give a serious boardroom presentation on a lime-colored laptop.
On the other hand, for students and schoolkids once you've solved "cheap", it's a plus to also tweak for "fun".
Speaking of market segmentation - this may vary by country but on https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ (US site accessed from EU VPN) if I scroll down a bit, what gender do you think the "blush" color is most associated with? Is it coincidence that the laptop is being held in a hand with painted nails? (And a wedding ring.)
I agree businesses would probably want dull laptops. But plenty of non corporate users would like color.
I’d still pick the MacBook Pro because it has an SD card slot which any photographer is going to want. I don’t need something that blends in at a board room.
I got the citrus version because it made such a change from the usual. However, I'd love it if Apple could make some truly vibrant non-pastel colours like tangerine and lime devices they did in the early days.
Ah, fond memories of the original CRT iMacs. I think you could take off the color covering and replace it with a different one?
More color choices that there are Pokemon games.
I always wanted one but could never afford it. Now I can afford it, they're not available
In the very olden days of 1999-ish when I worked for a very expensive AV shop in Glasgow, we used to be an agent for Loewe. You could order your expensive (like four times as much as an equivalent top-spec Sony, three times as much as Grundig) TV in any colour you liked - they'd spray it anything you wanted.
One of the last jobs I did for them before moving onto a very early streaming video company in 2000 was opening up this pristine "Oxford Blue Metallic" (stock Landrover colour from the time, mine is that colour) 32" TV and fitting a VGA adaptor board to it so the customer could play videos and games from his PC on his new telly directly. It had a scan line doubler in to reduce flicker, which I guess was the precursor of "Mexican Soap Opera Mode" in modern TVs, and that allowed it to display 1280x720x50p smoothly.
It looked fantastic but I don't know that it was £3700-in-early-2000s-money fantastic - or about seven grand today.
Imagine paying three and a half grand for a telly, even if it was sprayed the same colour as your 80 grand Range Rover.
I'm definitely getting sick of the dull colours in the higher end laptops. Give me a yellow, give me a red, forest green, whatever, anything but silver and darker silver
It's cars too - you'll get muted blue, 5 greys a black, white and better enjoy being boring.
Near 2000 everything came in wild colors. I fondly miss bright red motherboards even, or orange ones.
$10 in enamel paints and a free half hour and you can have as cool looking of a laptop as you like!
You can fairly easily get skins that will customize your laptop. I’ve done that, in the past.
Seems the thing most people are into, these says, is “bumper stickers” on their laptop lids. I suspect neutral colors work best for that.
I’ve found that I tend to replace my primary development machine every 3 years or so. Since retiring, I don’t travel much, so I got an M4Pro Mini. Works great, and I still have my M1Max MacBook Pro (my previous development machine), for when I want to hit the road.
The thing that keeps me questioning is the "its using binned parts" dialogue. I'm sure _some_ parts might be discards from the iphone 16, but the volume they had at launch to me suggests that not the story. I've read somewhere that they made/budgeted for 5 million laptops shipped this quarter/half. but if they are made from binned CPUs, that suggests at least 4-7% yeild loss for the original iphone CPU.
Bear in mind thats this 4-7% loss only counts dies that have just one broken CPU unit. There are many other failure modes as well. That just seems very very high.
I've also not really seen any official channels that support this assertion, even apple insider seems sceptical that this is true: https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/04/07/incredible-macboo...
With my logic hat on, Apple contracts chip manufacturing, so I would have assumed that rejects and failed parts would be recycled at source. I would imagine that apple only pay for parts that pass QC. So I suspect that actually these chips are either leftovers (at best) or specifically manufactured using the old tooling.
I had thoughts along similar lines, but there are other possibilities - it could be the older CPU models are built either on older lines and/or with more mature, higher yield processes, and this offering could in part take demand pressure off of top-of-the-line process M5/M4 parts.
> Bear in mind thats this 4-7% loss only counts dies that have just one broken CPU unit. There are many other failure modes as well. That just seems very very high.
Is it? I thought the average for lastest-architecture chips was around 5%.
Sorry I was unclear about what "very high" meant.
From what I can see, one can expect about 80-90% yield per wafer, the bit that that doesn't make sense is that the "binned" narrative implies that of those broken parts of the wafer, 25-50% are usable with just one GPU disabled.
To me that sounds wrong, and far too high.
I would expect 80% of the failures would have only one core not pass QA.
I remember back in the day it wasn't that unusual for intel to sell quad core CPUs and dual core CPUs that exactly the same hardware-wise, but the dual-core ones didn't pass the QA to be sold as a quad-core.
In fact they sold many functional quad-core CPUs as dual-cores with 2 cores disabled and you could unlock the extra cores with some magic if you got lucky and got one that passed the quad-core QA.
> The thing that keeps me questioning is the "its using binned parts" dialogue.
How is this different from any other computer product?
in my car circles the 968 was seen as a total pos that was really just sort of trying to compete with the RX-7 and Fairlady, do a worse job at being a good sports car than them, and push the brand into further cheapened territory towards the every-person for the sake of financial incentive while inflating the cost of their premium offering, the 911.
1:1 example, but i'm not sure those were the points being made here.
The 968 is such a weird choice for this when the Boxster exists, did basically everything better, was a major commercial success, and has spawned a line of cars that many argue are better than the 911 except for the name and traditionalist-fandom over exact engine position that prevents Porsche from giving them all the biggest engines and fanciest tech.
But the Boxster didn't try to replace the 911 on day one. Or even go after the other 300ZX/Supra/whatever 2+2s on day one. It was instead nearly a whole-cloth "what if pure 2-seater convertible driver's car, but the best possible version" upscale-Miata initially, which wasn't an existing segment at all, and being roadster-first was a key separator from the also-2-seater Corvette.
(The iPhone or iPad were arguable Apple's Boxster "entry-level that ends up dominating sales and growing into full blown new product lines" anyway, except that the comparison eventually falls down because the form factor difference with the Mac is much more of a fundamental separation. So maybe Apple's Boxster is instead the laptop in the first place, which wiped out most of their desktop workstation business by the early-2010s at latest.)
I presume the 968 was chosen because it all seems like the Neo is only the first hurrah into this whole entry-level field for Apple.
Yeah this is looking at the 968 with rose tinted glasses. But a lot of the comparison does check out and the Neo is a fine on-ramp for first time macOS users just like the 968.
I'm surprised "mobile phone specs with laptop form factor" isn't a larger product base. Modern smartphones seem capable enough to run a lot of "normal" software, obviously not super heavy ones like after effects or something, but for lighter tasks (web browsing etc), it seems like a good market
Isnt chromebooks to a large extent just this?
Wikipedia suggests chromebooks generally use normal x86 hardware, they just run chromeOS
> Cut back to Porsche in 1992, and you’ll see a similar story playing out in a very different industry. Back then, Porsche was not in the fantastic position it is in today. Its model lineup was aging.
Perhaps picking Porsche for this analogy wasn't necessarily the best choice: https://investorrelations.porsche.com/en/financial-informati...
So much for "fantastic position it is in today"...
i might be mistaken but you are looking at Porsche AG; the actual car company was made into a holding in 2007 and now called Porsche SE, then founded Porsche AG to make the cars.
Porsche AG is part of the Volkswagen Group that is owned by Porsche SE.
either way car manufacture is not a big profit game
Excellent move by Apple to distract people from the declining software with shiny colours and low price.
I'm thinking about buying a Neo for two reasons: my laptop is only ever used to RDP into my home Windows workstation, which is where I do all my serious work; and because I need to have a Mac to test some software I'm writing (Tela, find it on my GitHub) that has to be multi-platform. The battery life is also a plus for remote work, but that's about it. I don't want to spend four digits where three will do.
Resonates. Reminds me of old Thinkpads. Cheap sometimes means accessible, simple, minimal, functional.
Thinkpads were definitely never cheap.
Should have specified old used thinkpads. I’ve never bought one new. My daily driver is 10+yo, bought for $200 and upgraded mem, battery, and ssd with another $100.
Eh cheaper than now for sure.
I got my old G1 X1 Carbon for somewhere between 900 and 1100 from memory. Theres a fair discount in there mind, but its not a discount I could possibly hope to replicate these days.
(I think that was 1600 dollars partner pricing - charity discount - volume discount (hopped on an order for 12 already identical already going through) - tax incentives)
The cheapest Gen 13 Carbon currently available is ~ 2600 in the same currency, and that's already discounted by 9%, and has a shittier OS (Ships with Home edition instead of Pro), I doubt that would get below 2200 even with partner/channel pricing.
If you add "Winflation" that is, Windows 7/8 running perfectly smoothly on the Gen 1 with 8 Gig of memory, the replacement thinkpad being one that runs Windows 11 comfortably would be the $3150 in the same money, for its 32GB memory. Again doubtful it would go below 2700 or so even with channel.
Macbook NEO is funnily enough 900 bucks landed for me, with 8 gig of memory. I am betting the user experience of the thing is as good or if not better than my old carbon.
Carbon X1 was so hot when it was new, can your laptop do this? (folds flat like a gamer chair). I only was able to afford em 10 years later. I have a gen 6 carbon x1 now 4k screen got it for $200. The batteries are what's not great with old laptops, hard to get replacement batteries that aren't fake.
I like having a Linux laptop handy eg. with gparted
What? They cost a LOT more back then:
https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=125036
26 years ago, a Thinkpad 600X cost $4100, which is the equivalent of around $8k today.
Assuming you read my comment, understood exactly what I was outlining, insofar as "26 years ago" is completely irrelevant and you chose to add that nonsequitur, I have located the thinkpad carbon USD launch price and its within cooee of my recollection.
https://www.engadget.com/2013-01-02-lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbo...
1600 dollars advertised rate via review channels.
And I have confirmed that I wouldnt have been paying much more at all due to currency conversions. AUD/USD 5 cents off parity.
https://www.exchangerates.org.uk/USD-AUD-spot-exchange-rates...
So its still the case that getting a G13 will cost 2-3 times the cost depending on metric for my G1.
But even looking at the data you quoted, the end of the IBM period shows lots of cheap thinkpads. Look at the R40 prices in your own source.
Heck look at these:
765D $6,500 (street! pcmag.com early 97) street $1,999 PC Mag 1 Sep 1998 (-60%) XGA 13.3 first model beyond 12.1" 765L $5459.16 - $6,779.05 street 11/4/97 pcmag.com (765D without cd/modem) street $1,899 PC Mag 1 Sep 1998 (-60%) XGA 13.3
4500 dollar haircut in 12 months?
Thinkpad 500 500 $1,699 IBM PC Direct (PC Mag 31 May 1994), $999 08/24/94
Sub 1000 dollars in 94?
They had defective chips to get rid of.
I am so tired of everything electronic only coming in black and maybe gray.
I like colors!
So it's nice to see apple finally bringing a bit of color back.
I'm fine with a case. I can change the color to match my outfit
https://www.amazon.com/Se7enline-Compatible-MacBook-Protecti...
"Back then, Porsche was not in the fantastic position it is in today. Its model lineup was aging. "
Kinda hard to take this article seriously...
https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2026/company/porsche-deliver...
No it's correct. When the 968 came out it was the absolutely worst years ever for Porsche: they were nearly completely bankrupt and Porsche ceasing to exist was actually on the table. They were selling as little as 15 000 cars in a full year in 1992 or something like that (compared to nearly 60 K, nearly 4x as much, in 1986). Compared that to nearly 300 000 today and an insane lineup.
Sure, the EU pretty much killed its auto car industry, offering the markets to Tesla and Chinese EVs (and there are talks of chinese buying Porsche), but Porsche has a crazy lineup compared to what it used to have: 911, Cayman, Boxster, Panamera, Taycan (the 100% EV), Macan and Cayenne and soooo many different sub-models of those (GT4, GTS, Turbo (S), Targa, GT3 (RS), GT2 (RS), S/T, S/C ...).
They just even announced a 911 GT3 S/C // convertible (heresy for some but I love it). For any Porsche enthusiast, we're pretty much living the golden age of Porsche where you can still buy a normally aspirated, stick shift, driver's car. In 2026: thank you so much Porsche for being sufficiently crazy to still do that in 2026, in an era where people are paying subscription to receive OTA updates for their EVs.
And any Porsche enthusiast knows that the early 1990s were nearly the death of Porsche. It was a close call.
BTW to anyone saying the modern Porsche aren't "real" Porsche cars, I send them love from my 911 Carrera from 1988. You can both love old and new Porsche cars.
> where you can still buy a normally aspirated, stick shift, driver's car
The problem is that you can't buy them. All of these "interesting" 911s are limited production in practice even when not limited editions per se and are sold to most favorite clients only, a good chunk of whom then immediately flip them with delivery mileage---i.e. playing Ferrari games without the Ferrari name. I respect and like Porsche the car manufacturer, and I have put a lot of track miles on my 991.2 GT3 RS across the US, but I despise what their sales model has become.
/rant
Were they worse off in the 90s than they were in the late 70s? Because I’ve heard that the entry model 924 saved them from the brink in that decade.
Funny that each end of the transaxle lineage were saviors
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Ridiculous. First Mac mini was a 1.25GHz G4 with 256MB RAM in 2005 for $499. There have many models since there, ranging from $499 to $799 for the base model. 2018 was indeed the highest at $799, but that was mainly Intel's fault, and Apple's poor refresh timing. Current M4 mini starts at $599, which is over $1000 in 2005 dollars, so the value has largely increased through the model's entire history, especially once we hit the Apple Silicon era.
I dont know hey. I think they want a bigger bite of the wintel market before they raise the drawbridge. This device seems perfectly crafted to grab every non gamer, who needs a daily driver but doesnt want bloated Win11 AI nonsense. These days the Apple ecosystem is basically at parity for Microsoft cloud services, so its even good for WFH/BYOD. I dont think its getting cheaper but I bet the entry model will double its memory allocation without shifting too far north in price.