Is the MacBook Neo like my Xiaomi phone: fully locked down; no way to put custom software on it? That would be bad. My laptop is the last bastion of control left.
MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
391–400 of 524 posts
Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
It hurts, but I'll pay a premium for worse hardware that will run Linux. But for others in my family Macbooks are just far better value by a wide margin than Windows laptops. Vertical integration really wins these days.
This seems to be key. People must want Windows or Linux so badly they will pay 25-30% for a thinkpad with a track pad that is almost as good. Don't these manufacturers sell more machines than Apple and could benefit from better economies of scale. Maybe the scale is just at the low end and the iPhone subsidizes premium Mac hardware. I have yet to read about someone who priced out something "as good" as the MacBook Ai…
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Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
and an iPhone 17e for $599
well, also apple has been inflating the price for phones since forever. the iphone launched at $499 EDIT: hmm.. I guess iphone 1 was $499 or $599 and that required a 2-year AT&T contract. Don't know what the actual price was. I do know the top iphone 17 pro max is $1,999. but it does have 2tb of storage, which is amazing in a different way.
The first iPhone launched without a carrier subsidy.
When the iPhone 4 launched on Verizon in 2011, you could either spend $200 and get locked into a 2-year contract, $300 and get locked into a 1-year contract, or buy the thing outright for $650. Since you didn't get a discount for bringing your own phone to Verizon, it was more cost-effective to get the subsidized phone.
Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
It hurts, but I'll pay a premium for worse hardware that will run Linux. But for others in my family Macbooks are just far better value by a wide margin than Windows laptops. Vertical integration really wins these days.
This seems to be key. People must want Windows or Linux so badly they will pay 25-30% for a thinkpad with a track pad that is almost as good. Don't these manufacturers sell more machines than Apple and could benefit from better economies of scale. Maybe the scale is just at the low end and the iPhone subsidizes premium Mac hardware. I have yet to read about someone who priced out something "as good" as the MacBook Ai…
> People must want Windows or Linux so badly they will pay 25-30% for a thinkpad
Yup, I got Thinkpad X9, the idea being "Air 15 but with Windows". It does the job. I still think Air 15 is better (and cheaper), but the software compatibility and not needing to switch platforms outweighs that.
Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The thing about Apple is that as the "IT" guy for my family, its ecosystem is the one which needs the least attention from me. This is true in business/enterprise IT also. Any big company that's done a switch, or at least offered an employee choice, almost immediately saw a huge drop in help desk workload from mac users. Legacy win32 apps aside, it's baffling to me that Windows is still the dominant share of comput…
Part of that reason is Microsoft office is a third class citizen on macOS. Edit: Not sure why this would get downvoted. Weird. It absolutely lags behind windows version of the products by years. Excel did not get ribbon key shortcuts until 6 months ago. It’s a pretty terrible experience for most power users.
Anecdotal but I’m a sysadmin in the IT dept in my rather larger company and have zero issues with office on my daily driver m2 Mac Pro. On my Dell precision running win 11 I constantly have issues with outlook, teams, etc.
Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
#396I ended up getting two (one for each of my daughters). The thing about Apple is that as the "IT" guy for my family, its ecosystem is the one which needs the least attention from me. It really just works. They have used Windows and Linux before (my kids and wife, that is), but something is always not quite right and needs my involvement. These days gone 100% Mac, my interventions are usually initial setup and whenever…
I unironically like the trackpad and keyboard on the Neo better than Air/Pro's.
It's not a perfect laptop, but I promise you people who spend $600 on their computer have never seen anything comparable.
Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
The price thing is really true. My current laptop i got at 48000 INR student discount (retailer at 65000) (the older HP Pavilion Aero 13inch). It's great 950g, 16gb ram, etc etc. still works well. this was many years ago. During this time macbooks were 90000 INR, and M1 was just coming out. Now the next era of laptops are all 1 lakh NR. Including the windows ones. Importantly, the mac is still 1 lakh. So it makes no…
It hurts, but I'll pay a premium for worse hardware that will run Linux. But for others in my family Macbooks are just far better value by a wide margin than Windows laptops. Vertical integration really wins these days.
Yeah, I'm waiting for the panther lake (or similar) ones to become mainstream and I'll get a higher end laptop with those next. The latest framework once they open their parts marketplace in india is my first choice for now.
Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used Linux for a long time. I still prefer it. But I can’t justify the extra work. Last time I tried to move back to Linux, I spent far too long admiring the machine. This was only 5 years ago.
AI agents are incredibly useful in this regard. Omarchy even releases some skills, so anything you want to configure is just a matter of asking the agent to do it. Of course, it would've been better not to need it in the first place. However the experience is much better now (and Omarchy is great!)
I shouldn’t need an agent to configure it.
Is this the new “just compile it from source”?
Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
I figured this out around 2005. Get your entire company on Mac, get your entire family on Mac. Your life will have zero support calls, maybe outside of the intial "How do I install an app" which seems to confuse some people.
Some older relatives asked for a computer recommendation. I told them a thousand reasons why a MacBook Air (at that moment) would be perfect for them. They went to Best Buy and came home with the Dellpaq thing that the guy there told them had better specs. Honestly, it kinda let me off the hook. "Sorry, I don't know the first thing about Windows[0]. But if you have questions, I'm sure the Best Buy fella will be happy…
The worst thing about those cheaper "Best Buy" Windows machines is that they're heavily laden with all kinds of software making the PC extremely slow from the start. I just don't understand who they can get away with it.
Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
#400I ended up getting two (one for each of my daughters). The thing about Apple is that as the "IT" guy for my family, its ecosystem is the one which needs the least attention from me. It really just works. They have used Windows and Linux before (my kids and wife, that is), but something is always not quite right and needs my involvement. These days gone 100% Mac, my interventions are usually initial setup and whenever…
> The thing about Apple is that as the "IT" guy for my family, its ecosystem is the one which needs the least attention from me. This is true in business/enterprise IT also. Any big company that's done a switch, or at least offered an employee choice, almost immediately saw a huge drop in help desk workload from mac users. Legacy win32 apps aside, it's baffling to me that Windows is still the dominant share of comput…
A company CTO told me once that he was a linux user at home but windows was the only option from a soc2 auditing point of view as MacOs faired barely better than linux in the fleet device management area.