MacBook Neo

I'd hate to jinx it, but I reckon this thing will dominate the market.

Good job Apple.

Anecdotal, but whenever my friends/family are looking for a basic laptop I almost always suggest a Lenovo for the price/performance/quality they're looking for in the $400-600 range, even though I myself would never get anything besides a MBP.

I would recommend this to them instead every single time. The build quality of macs are unmatched and now in everyone's price range.

* If we're talking "child's first laptop", this gives them a full-fat desktop OS with ample power to get into various mischief (experimenting with audio in Garageband, making videos in iMovie, writing stories in whatever text editor they fancy, presentations and spreadsheets for school, and the ability to install whatever they like with a quick reformat/refresh if things get borked). $599 isn't quite "disposable", but it is "accessible".

* For "parental computer", this also fits the bill. The extra $100 doubles storage and adds TouchID, enabling Apple Pay on-device. It's affordable, resilient, and manageable by remote support (i.e., us kids). 8GB of RAM is more than enough for common tasks for most folks, provided they work intentionally and not just stack tabs infinitely.

* As a Chromebook alternative, the results are a bit more mixed. Sure, durability seems higher at first blush, and the user experience is better, but as @runjake points out Chromebooks play a "numbers game" Apple won't compete on: rock-bottom pricing, disposability, replaceability, and integration with Google's (mostly free or heavily discounted) educational tooling. For schools that have the CapEx to move back to Apple's ecosystem (or are in it, but want to expand it), the Neo is compelling; for public school systems lacking disposable funds, it's a harder sell - though maybe moot, given the studies linking negative outcomes to early and forced technology adoption in schools.

* For businesses, meet your new "loaner laptop". Keeping a few of these on-hand with corporate profiles preloaded and MDM/DEP managing provisioning makes these the ideal daily replacement while a laptop is being serviced or forgotten at home. Keeping a half-dozen of these ready to go is half the cost of Macbook Airs or Pros waiting in the wings, and perfect for 90% of SaaS-reliant business use cases.

* Speaking of business, say hello to your new "contractor special". Cheap enough to not fret if they're lost or destroyed, but still managed by the same impeccable MDM/DEP tooling, and with enough headroom for most contractor work.

For every niche where you don't mind paying the premium for a better UX in hardware (software is a bit...questionable, at the moment) and don't need a monster of power, this thing fits the bill almost perfectly. That said, I do have some annoyances with the Gen1 that I'd like to see addressed in the next revision:

* Don't make MagSafe a premium feature. It saves cables, it saves ports, and it saves computers. It should be standard.

* I get that the USB ports are limited by the A18 Pro's onboard controllers, but stop silently making different USB ports. Either label them, make them identical, or drop the lower-spec ones entirely. USB-C at USB2 speeds and missing DP video is dumb, and it makes the user experience worse since the ports aren't labelled somehow.

* I know I'll never get it, but either hardware mute toggles to keep speakers from going off during class/meetings, or profiles that let IT mute/disable speakers entirely to force headphones.

I'm mostly at a desk so I'd love to be able to switch to Mac Mini only when M5-M6 drops on the mini. The problem is I need a laptop for travel, weekend trips, events, etc.

The Neo is so cheap that I can buy a new Mac Mini AND the Neo for roughly the price of the macbook pro and get the best of both worlds.