Even if apple is losing money on these devices, they shouldn't care. Low cost laptops are the main reason why people buy Windows laptops instead of Macs. They need to get people into the Mac ecosystem.
MacBook Neo
641–650 of 1001 posts
Re: MacBook Neo
#642Everyone seems so focussed on the price and the RAM that noone is talking about the fact that macOS is now running on the A system chips which makes me wonder how far away from an iPad that can swap between iOS and macOS when you dock it in the keyboard are we...
It's been able to run on A series chips for a while. I don't think that's what's preventing MacOS on iPad. It's that the OS is not optimized for touch in any way. Too many small things to click. It's just not the kind of half-baked experience Apple would put their name behind. Likely the same reason why you haven't seen a touchscreen on a Mac.
Re: MacBook Neo
#643Ugh. Why is is so much more expensive in Denmark? Here it's DKK5499 for the 256 GB version. That's USD857.
Vote for politicians who'll lower VAT from 25% (!!!) to the same about as we pay in sales tax (5-9% depending on locale, 0% in some states) -- see lower prices :)
Re: MacBook Neo
#644Anyone think you'll actually be able to do anything on a Mac with only 8gb of RAM? I had a Macbook Pro before with 16gb of RAM and it was constantly running out of RAM and showing me the Force Quit Applications dialog. Constantly...
I'm typing this on a 2012 MBP with 8Gb of RAM. That seemed like plenty when I bought it, and I did dev work in Xcode on the thing. Granted, it can only run Catalina, but it still gets the job done for what I use it for now. "Now" being web browser and running the Numbers/Pages/Keynote apps, which is about what anyone buying the Neo is going to do with it.
After 14 years of service, though, he'll get to retire soon, probably taking it easy running some version of Linux in his old age. Just as soon as that new M5 MBP (with 32Gb this time) shows up tomorrow.
Re: MacBook Neo
#645I'm a little skeptical about the Apple Intelligence capabilities, as others have mentioned. I can assume that it doesn't run on-device and sends it to Apple's servers for processing.
I just noticed that according to https://support.apple.com/121115, devices purchased in China don't support Apple Intelligence but it's odd that they explicitly mention a workaround where devices purchased outside of China support Apple Intelligence if the region isn't set to China.
Personally, I might not get this device because of the hard limit of 8GB unified memory. This is unacceptable in 2026 because there were iPhones with 8GB of RAM in 2023. The current generation of iPhones have 12GB of RAM available.
Re: MacBook Neo
#646"Education customers can purchase it for $499." That is insane pricing for a brand new apple product. They will sell so many of these!
Would be great deal in 5 years to buy those post-lease if Asahi/others Linux catch up.
Re: MacBook Neo
#647Crazy good market segmentation by Apple here - it's pretty easy for college students to justify this plus an iPad, and still have to upgrade to a "real" laptop post-grad. Personally this looks really compelling for students - I did something similar, dinky 4GB ram 2 core laptop with crazy good battery life - because I don't care about specs at all, LMS's and note-taking apps in school are not heavy. I just NEED to be…
I still find it funny that for my personal setup I have a $700 Macbook Air but a $1500 iPhone Pro and it feels like it makes sense.
Re: MacBook Neo
#648This is a major challenge to Microsoft. A 13-inch Surface Laptop costs $899 [1], that's 50% more than an equivalent MacBook! And even at that higher price the Surface Laptop doesn't have a good screen: it uses 150% scaling (as opposed to the ideal 200%) which means you have subtle display artifacts. Other than Microsoft nobody even makes decent laptops in the Windows world. I am typing this on an Lenovo Yoga, it has…
> This is a major challenge to Microsoft. > Other than Microsoft nobody even makes decent laptops in the Windows world. I get the impression that microsoft and the pc world have given up on consumer hardware and instead are completely focused on enterprise and ai. That's why windows 11 is saturated with bugs and is basically unusable, but enterprise is forced to buy it.
>That's why windows 11 is saturated with bugs and is basically unusable
That's far, far from my experience. What bugs are you talking about that make it "unusable"? I've been on Win11 for years and it's been no problem at all. No bugs that I can think of.
Re: MacBook Neo
#649Even if apple is losing money on these devices, they shouldn't care. Low cost laptops are the main reason why people buy Windows laptops instead of Macs. They need to get people into the Mac ecosystem.
If they wanted people in the Mac ecosystem, they could dominate the market tomorrow by enabling a DeX like experience for iPhone. This new laptop running on an out-of-date A series chip proves that it can be done.
iPhone’s are more expensive than this laptop anyways and Apple could upsell all the docks and accessories with sky high margins. It’s a mystery why they haven’t done this already.
Re: MacBook Neo
#650Crazy good market segmentation by Apple here - it's pretty easy for college students to justify this plus an iPad, and still have to upgrade to a "real" laptop post-grad. Personally this looks really compelling for students - I did something similar, dinky 4GB ram 2 core laptop with crazy good battery life - because I don't care about specs at all, LMS's and note-taking apps in school are not heavy. I just NEED to be…
I managed to get through 3 years of college (in a humanities degree, granted) with a dinky used thinkpad running the latest ubuntu distro. Only needed it for note taking, pdf reading, and essay writing, and it got the job done for $50. There were only a few times I was screwed when it came to needing special software...