Discussion
The MacBook Neo
KingMachiavelli: IMO the consumer PC industry is near an existential crisis. The big players are just awful at marketing; too many SKUs and models - it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ. The exact same specs will be in two different chassis designs.Additionally, you can’t count on the basic being correct. It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awful, keyboard doesn’t suck, and display isn’t a 300nits POS unusable even in a bright room.You want the same performance as a MacBook Air without one of these fatal flaws? You’ll hand to spend $1500+ anyway so you save nothing. Then the OS is full of ads and pre-installed garbage “gaming-optimization-tool” or driver tools taking up 99% of a single core while being riddled with security holes.
softfalcon: This... so much this.> too many SKUs and models - it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ.And yet, I just watched a YouTube video where a "PC guy" was like, "adding the Neo just completely confuses the Apple product line. Are we heading towards having too many Apple options that confuse the buyer here?"I get it, other than price, the Neo and Air are a bit confusing product wise. Have they looked at how Asus, Lenovo, and Dell are doing their products though? It's absolutely wild the disparity between PC and Apple for laptops.I run both PC's and Mac devices in our house, we use what fills the job. Recommending PC laptops for family members feels like a total crapshoot though. Every time, I do all I can to find the right device for their needs and there are just so many trade-offs. Maybe I get all the right specs, ensure it doesn't thermal throttle, keyboard/trackpad are A-OK... but the webcam is trash. Ooof... now Mom is complaining about how no one can see her properly at bridge club call.I brought up how the Neo might do to the PC industry what the Air did to Ultrabooks back in the day. The amount of hate I got on YouTube/Verge with copy-paste, "hahaha, wut, with 8 GB of RAM? lmao, lol, you Apple bot?!" was expected, but also disappointing. There is clearly a market segment happy to continue to put up with the mess that Dell/Lenovo are selling (anything but a Mac).Wild how tribal we are to our corporate computer overlords.The era where something like Framework with its fully customizable, repairable, modular laptops becomes the standard can't come soon enough.For the time being, I'll let Apple/PC continue to duke it out. Hope some competition helps in the long run. :shrug:
everdrive: This is my advice anyone asks me about a laptop. The specs don't matter (at least if you're asking me, it means you don't know computers and will mostly just use a web browser, and therefore nearly any specs on the market will be fine) and the things that do matter are just never on a spec sheet -- keyboard, trackpad, speaker, screen quality. Some stuff won't be discovered until years later: for instance I had an Acer laptop in 2007 which was designed with insufficient cooling, and cooked its thermal paste in about a year or two. Once it was cooked, you couldn't play games or do anything intensive without rebooting the machine. I hadn't thought to research that issue since I figured cooling was a solved problem. But, I'm sure Acer saved a few dollars per unit. (and of course, the screen, trackpad, speaker (yes, singular!) and keyboard were all awful as well.)
pipeline_peak: This feels like the first time Apple’s walled garden approach has paid off in the desktop arena.With a cheaper Windows alternative to the MacBook Neo, your options are inferior battery life with AMD 64, or Windows Arm’s inferior compatibility.I doubt Microsoft is holding developers hands when transitioning to Arm the way that Apple does. Not to mention they’ve been using their own chips.
perfmode: I think what you're describing is vertical integration rather than the walled garden specifically. The walled garden is the App Store restrictions, iMessage lock-in, that kind of thing. What made the Neo possible is that Apple controls the silicon, the OS, the firmware, and the industrial design as a single unit. They could put a phone chip in a laptop form factor and have it feel coherent because there's no seam between the hardware and software teams.The distinction matters because it changes what the lesson is for the rest of the industry. You don't need a walled garden to compete here. You need to own enough of the stack that you can make aggressive tradeoffs (like shipping 8GB and an A18 Pro) without everything falling apart at the integration boundaries. Microsoft can't do that because they don't make the hardware. Dell and Lenovo can't do that because they don't make the OS. Qualcomm can't do that because they don't control the software ecosystem.The one company that could theoretically pull this off is Google with ChromeOS on their own Tensor chips, and the fact that they haven't is probably the more interesting question than why Asus is shocked.
VerifiedReports: Windows is such an offensive, defect-ridden pile of shit now that every PC maker should be blaming Microsoft for their inability to compete with the Neo.I bought my parents Asus laptops years ago, and can't wait to replace them with a Neo.Microsoft has spurned and scorned users. Now it's time for computer makers to push back and reject its shit. I'd love to see a consortium of computer makers come together to refine a Linux distro that's consumer-friendly enough to oust Windows and compete with Mac OS.
nubinetwork: Dell has been pushing Linux for like 20 years? I don't remember which distro, probably fedora or ubuntu...
BoredPositron: It's an option for maybe 2 SKUs... hardly pushing anything.
ZiiS: That you couldn't actual order; at least as a UK SME.
MarkusWandel: "It's a real Mac" - I get that!I remember a whole slew of inexpensive netbooks and the like that were technically Windows XP or Windows 7 machines, but came with a dumbed-down "starter" OS, not enough RAM, only a 32-bit CPU in an era were 64 bits were already becoming standard - the sum of which amounted to a barely usable imitation of a real Windows machine and as a result most of these became garage sale fodder pretty quickly.
tfehring: I thought I was so clever for buying one of those things for like $190 and putting Lubuntu on it to make it usable. It worked - but the joke was still on me when it died a year later.
timcobb: > The big players are just awful at marketing; too many SKUs and modelsand as far as I know, they do this on purpose!
Carstairs: Yeah I got one from work. I was quite excited to get one as macos is supposed to be a paragon of design but after using it I'm so glad I didn't spend my own money on it as it's been a total disappointment. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't want to launch it off the roof.
alistairSH: MacOS was the paragon of design 5-10 years ago. Sadly, Apple is subject to enshittification just like MS and others.
efficax: Calling this a "content consumption" device seems wrong to me. Sure, it's not a professional laptop. You're going to have a bad time trying to run more than one Adobe creative suite app at once, or running the iOS emulator, but the chip in it is very powerful, and you can do real work on this laptop. I was even thinking of snagging one to use as a kind of thin client for dev accessing my big linux box via tailscale. It might be worthwhile to ensure that a web app you're developing will work on a less powerful machine without killing the browser, for example.
nicole_express: I can definitely see why the Asus CEO would want to put it in that box, though.
thewebguyd: > "hahaha, wut, with 8 GB of RAM? lmao, lol, you Apple bot?!"And it would seem they never learn either. I saw the same comments when the M1 Air came out, then they quickly shut up when people were pushing those little base model airs well beyond what anyone thought they were capable of.The same thing is happening with the Neo now. It feels like an M1 moment all over again for the PC OEM industry.If you aren't a gamer, there is zero reason at this point to consider any other laptop besides a macbook. Apple now has one for every price point. This neo is going to destroy the consumer PC space. Dell, HP, Acer are probably sweating right now.
nicoburns: > The Neo charges faster if you plug it into a more powerful power adapter, in either USB-C port.The fact that the "usb 2" port works for (fast) charging is a big win. That means you can charge and use the fast usb port at the same time.
blacksmith_tb: I think that makes it a non-standard implementation though (I agree it's certainly more practical for the user), sounds like it's usb-c pd but with nerfed data, an odd choice that feels like it would actually have cost more to develop than just adding two identical usb-c 3.x ports...
mastermage: Inarguably one of the great things done by apple is the rather easily overseeable models. And no mattter the processing power in the models you get a rather great experience from the haptics, audio and visual in all of them.And I would be very much in the Apple Camp for personal laptops, if Gaming was in any way shape or reasonable. Thats the only downside of apple. They tried to fix this before but that really did not work out.
officeplant: At the same time with effort they can run a surprising amount of games. Heroic Launcher makes it a bit easier to wrangle the game dev toolkit (riding off the back of work from the whisky dev before they quit dev work from all the complaining users).I had Cyberpunk 2077 running on a M1 Macbook Air almost two years before the MacPort came at a very playable 30fps (900p Medium settings). Although I did have to use thermal pads to heatsink it to my metal laptop stand and added a slow spinning fan for good measure.It's not perfect, but I've also spent a lot of time only buying games with no road blocks to running on Mac/Linux.
hutattedonmyarm: I recently helped a friend picking a new laptop. Just going through the options at the websites of manufacturers was a nightmare. Huge amount of choices, shitty filtering, separated into multiple product lines were I often enough had no idea what separated the lines from each other
drcongo: If they're your friend, why didn't you just tell them to get a Mac?
retired: 15 years ago this comment would have been a troll.Nowadays it’s solid advice. The current Mac line-up is a step ahead of the competition. App compatibility is hardly an issue anymore with the exception of some very niche software.
stetrain: It definitely would have competitive issues with 8MB RAM and a 256MB SSD.Knocking it for having a tablet processor means you haven't actually been paying attention to Apple's in-house processor development.
Someone: > IMO the consumer PC industry is near an existential crisis. The big players are just awful at marketing; too many SKUs and models -I see your point, but as a counterexample, look at the TV industry, at PC monitors, at washing machines, etc. There manufacturers have, for decades, created SKUs left and right, sometimes only so that a large dealer can offer to match lowest prices because no other dealer has access to the same SKU.> it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ. The exact same specs will be in two different chassis designs.I don’t know how they do things nowadays, but it used to be the case that the same SKU didn’t even guarantee you the same hardware. Two machines of the same order could even be slightly different, requiring different drivers.
pxeboot: > I don’t know how they do things nowadays, but it used to be the case that the same SKU didn’t even guarantee you the same hardware. Two machines of the same order could even be slightly different, requiring different drivers.Apple is guilty of this too. For example, two iPhone's purchased at the same time can have displays from different manufactures, with noticeable quality differences between them.
mikestew: And unless you looked it up, you'd never noticed the difference (save comparing the two side-by-side). Whereas the cheap laptop requires one to know the difference so you can get the right driver, or other jackery because your WiFi card was a mid-year change. It reminds of me of mid-year production changes on cars, where VINs XXX-YYY need part number ZZZ, but VINs AAA-BBB need part number CCC.
FeloniousHam: I use it everyday, I love it. Native unix, great apps and ecosystem.
drcongo: It's amazing how often people who post on here about hating macOS have only just got a Mac for the first time and simply can't be bothered to learn, or hate that the keyboard shortcuts are different, or desperately want their OS level adverts back or something. It's lazy.
throw-the-towel: Conversely, it's amusing how often do Apple people assume everyone else is Holding It Wtong (tm).
Someone: > That means you can charge and use the fast usb port at the same time.For some use cases, you can do that with a single USB port, too. For example, a single USB cable connected to a monitor can both send video and charge the laptop.
nicoburns: Sure, but it's certainly convenient to have two ports
cromka: Just imagine what Apple would do to the market if they also offered a full Linux support, but not Windows... They'd probably own some 70% of Linux market outright and also double its overall size overnight.
eloisant: They already cannibalized a lot of Linux users, developers mainly when they released MacOS X around year 2000.Suddenly you could have a Unix, with pretty much the same CLI as Linux but without all the supported hardware/driver issues. Laptop sleep in particular was pretty finicky.If MacOS didn't pick a Unix/BSD base, I'm pretty sure all the tech companies running Mac would be on Linux.
nottorp: They seem to be trying hard to annoy developers lately though.<cough> xattr...
whilenot-dev: I bought my last Acer around 2010 (Aspire 4820TG I think, good machine). Their notebooks were always on the cheaper side, where its price just sat right with the offered value. Cooling issues were always present and weren't a big problem as long as the machine was maintainable. Unfortunately maintainability in notebooks (and electronics in general) all changed around 2015-ish and from there on it was used ThinkPads only for me.
mixmastamyk: Recently after another round of 30-40% inflation.
giancarlostoro: Yeah, for a while my favorite laptop was the Surface Book 2. Decent specs, does what I want it to. Then Microsoft started going through "Marketing Driven Development" for Windows and its just been downhill for my experience with that laptop. It's not just the marketing trash, the OS has gotten noticeably slow despite me keeping it pretty vanilla. It's downright insulting. As for my desktops, I just smoosh over Windows and install Linux over now, I don't care about anything on Windows enough to keep it. I can play all my games on Linux just fine. I can do all my dev stuff on Linux too.
brewdad: I put Linux on an old Surface tablet. Works better than Windows on the same device. The only thing that isn't working under Linux is the camera. Built in extra privacy as a bonus!
hackyhacky: > I get it, other than price, the Neo and Air are a bit confusing product wise. Have they looked at how Asus, Lenovo, and Dell are doing their products though? It's absolutely wild the disparity between PC and Apple for laptops.Yep.I'm a long-time ThinkPad user, but I have no idea how Lenovo's ThinkPad T series differs from the ThinkPad E series or ThinkPad L series or ThinkPad X series, and their website certainly isn't going to tell me. I keep on buying T series because I'm honestly afraid of trying anything else.To say nothing of Lenovo's non-ThinkPad laptop brands, including Ideapad, Legion, Yoga, ThinkBook (!), and LOQ.I really don't know what laptop to recommend to a friend. One friend showed me specs for an Asus they found at Best Buy, and it looked okay, so I said "It's probably fine." Turns out it was shoddily made and overpriced: they had to sent it back not once but twice because the wifi and then the camera didn't work out of the box, then a few months later the hinge broke.I am not a Mac fan, but it's easy to recommend them because you at least know they are universally well-built machines.
officeplant: > I have no idea how Lenovo's ThinkPad T series differs from ...My personal rundown and how they get assigned:E - Educational / Lower office personnel specL - Office personnel you hate spec, but don't offer the E because they might complain.T - Give this to all the technicians because they can't take care of anything and it will survive typically.P - Give this to the engineers who believe having an RTX gpu will actually help them so that they are happy, and to the CAD operators who actually need it.X - Smaller/Ultrabooks before the term got started, now somewhat a blurry line because T series have gotten lighter/thinner. But the X1 Carbon sure is a great way to spend a ton of money for a light laptop when a T-series would suffice.Personally I stick to older used X series (currently x250) because I just enjoy a small laptop and they are dirt cheap now.
saagarjha: > The Neo doesn’t have a hardware indicator light for the camera. The indication for “camera in use” is only in the menu bar. There’s a privacy/security implication for this omission. According to Apple, the hardware indicator light for camera-in-use on MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads cannot be circumvented by software. If the camera is on, that light comes on, and no software can disable it. Because the Neo’s only camera-in-use indicator is in the menu bar, that seems obviously possible to circumvent via software.iPhone and iPad does not have a hardware indicator light
mikestew: Then the OS is full of ads and pre-installed garbage “gaming-optimization-tool” or driver tools taking up 99% of a single core while being riddled with security holes.But inevitably, some chucklehead comes along "wut? I can get <proceeds to type spec sheet> for half that! Have fun paying the apple tax, lol." Someone posted that on Ars yesterday, with a random Amazon link from Naikan, your name for quality computing. Or rather, "Naikan, your name for a quality trackpad, screen, and high-quality ABS case! Be sure to check out the $12,000 of 'bonus' software add-ons, no extra charge!". It's amazing someone can post that without the slightest hint of self-awareness.
bigyabai: > It's amazing someone can post that without the slightest hint of self-awareness.It's amazing that people attribute it to lacking self-awareness. You can spend $400 on a laptop and have a perfectly fine experience. There are damn good Chromebooks in the $200-300 territory that I can genuinely recommend to people. If you just need to do your taxes or answer a Zoom call, why would you get a Macbook Neo?macOS itself has been declining in quality since at least Mojave; people don't rave about it anymore. The Macbook Neo will 100% continue the trend of people showing up at Best Buy and comparing the Lenovo machine to the Mac that costs 3x as much. This will not sway the average Joe any more than the Macbook Air did. It's not even seriously competing with the iPad price bracket.
Kostic: For now. These will be pretty cool Linux machines if Asahi starts supporting them at some point.
hu3: It's going to take 3 years+ and it will be a 8GB RAM linux machine.
orbital-decay: What's the purpose?
pjmlp: Don't need to imagine, it did not take off, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux> Reception was mixed, focusing on the difficult installation process and the significant performance costs of the Mach kernel. Reviewers noted its potential as a "Unix killer", but that it required users to abandon the user-friendly Macintosh experience for a pure Linux environment.
kingstnap: 1996 is not now. This comparision makes little to no sense.I'm sure if Apple provided support for installing your own OS on their M series laptops it would be incredibly popular. And I don't need to guess at this using weird 1996 research on microkernels because Asahi Linux exists and clearly there is interest in it.
pjmlp: Indeed, Apple from 1996 would not released Tahoe, most likely.We don't need research because QNX, L4 and many others on embedded space do exist as well.
mhurron: Do you forget what Apple in '96 was? Or are you saying that Tahoe is too polished for the Apple of '96?Apple was not a bastion of quality in the 90's. They couldn't modernize the Mac OS, and that continued with little more than window dressing over what was released in the 80's. The Mac line up was a horrible mess of barely different models that needed a Ph.D to figure out what was different. The company was bleeding money and seriously close to bankruptcy.The Apple of the mid 90's wishes it could release something like Tahoe.
scottyah: Not liking interacting with an OS is a fair choice to make, but don't be fooled by the bolted-on specs like "more RAM" when less of it is available to the user due to the built-in software and driver compatability issues. It's almost always slower, older, and less quality. They do Product Binning and give the worst quality leftovers to the built-in machines where people are less likely to notice and because it won't change the brand's reputation. The difference between i9, i7, etc are just how many defects there are- they're printed identically on the same wafers.Even IF the processor and RAM combined with Windows and bloatware is faster, you know they're going to have to cut corners on things like keyboard, trackpad, monitor, battery, webcams, heatsinks, etc.
schaefer: >I'd love to see a consortium of computer makers come together to refine a Linux distro that's consumer-friendly enough to oust Windows and compete with Mac OS.System 76 already has Pop!_OS. Lenovo.com/linux will redirect you to a list of linux compatible lenovo laptops that's a mile long.
dagmx: I was watching this video and it’s pretty impressive what can be done on this spec machine.https://youtu.be/d-VOt9559Gk?si=tYlDstnaxtQWoJ88He opens 50+ apps at once while working in Final Cut and Lightroom. Obviously anyone doing those full time would benefit from more resources but I think this is going to be enough for a big chunk of the population, and will be more appealing than the windows alternatives.
justsomehnguy: I still remember how Apple fans run around singing praises what their 8GB M1 absolutely kicked ass of Intel Macs with 16GB (and even more). Only to quietly replace them with a model with more RAM next year or some even way earlier than that.I can open even 500 apps on any laptop. This is what swap for. But with only 8GB you are getting into the swap territory very fast because you need almost half of it for the OS and video memory.Eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272996
dagmx: More RAM is better. But doesn’t negate that it’s still very usable. Did you even bother to watch the video for responsiveness before commenting? Also it was a couple years after the transition to arm that Apple bumped the minimum RAM they shipped their laptops with.
justsomehnguy: > But doesn’t negate that it’s still very usable.As a glorified terminal? Sure.> Did you even bother to watch the video for responsiveness before commenting?I did, now what?> Also it was a couple years after the transition to arm tHello, we are talking about Neo with the same 8GB.
ryandvm: Cute, and while I will agree that Apple hardware is generally superior or at least an excellent value, and OS X is miles beyond Windows in usability, I can't in good conscience recommend a Mac on principle.They impose obsessive control over their walled garden, constant pressure to use Apple ecosystem products, and they are staunchly opposed to interoperability regardless of it being an obviously anti-consumer tactical moat.Buying a Mac in spite of such anti-consumer behavior reminds me of voting for a bad person because you like their policies.
whycome: I had a Microsoft surface book 2. The provided charger could not provide enough power to the device when it was under heavy load and there was no higher charger option either. That shit should be illegal. And if the battery for the base/GPU died? You can't use the computer w the gpu even with a charger attached. The device itself could have been a dream and something i could have seen Apple doing : a touchscreen monitor that was also a computer and could be detached from the keyboard/gpu.
pier25: For a couple of days I had a Surface Book 1 before returning it. The keyboard was really good but otherwise just a terrible device and experience.The touch screen was completely useless. Super laggy and sometimes the pen would still believe it was touching the screen even at like 1cm away. Windows 10 had almost no features for touch based interaction. It was just regular Windows with the same microscopic buttons for mouse.Plus a ton of display ghosting, GPU glitches, etc.
keeda: I still have a Surface Book 1 that I occasionaly use and I never encountered any of those issues. I even used it for some sketching and there was no lag or spurious touching from the pen. In fact, sketching was why I was "drawn" to it (heheh), largely influenced by this review: https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2015/11/16/surface-bo...My big problem with it is that the battery got swollen a few years ago, pushing out the bottom panel, and the device is way our of warranty to get it replaced. I'm waiting to find time to get that replaced.
cromka: > It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awfulThis, so much this! I run Asahi on M1 Air but wanted to upgrade to something with fuller Linux support. After trying Thinkpad T14s, trackpad quality has rosen to my attention, something I never thought about before. Turns out glass, haptic trackpads are still only available in probably about a dozen laptops on the market and it's not easy to actually know which ones are these!
bigyabai: You can buy a Magic Trackpad and pair it with your Thinkpad no problem. It's much more comfortable to use it side-by-side with your keyboard, most of the time I'm reaching for the Trackpoint if my hands are on home row.
mikestew: You can buy a Magic Trackpad and pair it with your Thinkpad no problem.Yeah, that works great on the bus. Or I could buy a Mac and not have to resort to hacks to get a decent trackpad.
ZiiS: To me clear the Neo dose not have a glass, haptic trackpad.
selectodude: It’s glass but not haptic. Honestly the fact that they figured out how to make the entire pad clickable without haptics is pretty impressive.
philistine: Their trackpads were that way since the move to aluminium for the chassis until the release of the 2017 Macbook.Apple had solved the issue around 2012 and still PC manufacturer refuse to spend on trackpad quality.
Kirby64: Not really, not exactly. The older “clicky” MacBook trackpads couldn’t quite be “clicked” anywhere. They were levered at the top of the trackpad, so if you tried to click on the very top edge then they wouldn’t really click. Anywhere else, it felt fine, but maybe the top inch didn’t feel good. Not really a problem in normal use cause most people don’t try to click on the very top edge, but perhaps this new trackpad fixes that (I haven’t tested one myself). The current gen haptic ones have the same exact click feeling no matter where you press, of course.
varispeed: In my opinion PC industry is also cooked because of fans. I simply cannot use any recent PC laptop, because the moment you do something it engages fans in the most obnoxious way.Every time someone turns on their PC laptop next to me, my ears feel assaulted.My Mac does engage fans from time to time, but I never notice the noise.
cosmic_cheese: How little attention cooling gets in the laptop industry outside of expensive gaming laptops is crazy. I have a ThinkPad that gets huffy when I plug it into a 2560x1440 external display while otherwise idle (yes, under Linux too) which shouldn’t even be possible.
pipeline_peak: >The one company that could theoretically pull this off is Google with ChromeOS on their own Tensor chips, and the fact that they haven't is probably the more interesting question than why Asus is shocked.Successful Chromebook’s have always been the throwaway $200 models. Higher end ones like the Pixelbook served more as flagship devices to prove they could do more but were never really marketed.I don’t think Google’s gonna make a souped up Chromebook because they know their place. They’re entirely internet dependent devices with little brand recognition and no serious software. The Neo serves somewhere in between that. They have the brand recognition and MacOS.
randusername: > The big players are just awful at marketingApple is great at marketing to consumers. The other big players, I have to assume, are more focused on B2B where the threshold for UX acceptability is lower.The only ads I ever hear from them are on economics podcasts ostensibly aimed at business owners. For "Copilot+ AI PCs" no less, whatever that means. They're chasing a target audience of approximately 3 people in the world that are improbably held back from achieving their wildest AI dreams by not having a commodity laptop with an NPU.
mikestew: You can spend $400 on a laptop and have a perfectly fine experience.Again, the trackpad will suck and the screen will be a dim, binned display panel, etc. If that works for you, fine, but that's not the conversation. The conversation everyone else is having is that your plastic $400 laptop with the bargain-bin components isn't the equivalent of $MACBOOK, no matter what the spec sheet says.
nottorp: So the force touch stuff has also been available on Apple laptop trackpads?Damned if i ever noticed, and all my laptops since like 2013 have been Apple.I knew I had it on one of my previous iPhones but there it was an annoyance because I never knew what was going to happen on a touch.
nerdjon: It is also a critical part of watchOS.I am still sad that they stopped putting it into iPhone, I think the tech is great and the watch really proves what can be done with it when it is a fundamental part of the hardware and the OS can be built around it. But we never had a situation that every compatible iPhone had force touch so everything that could be done with it had to work in other ways.I think the iPad made that even more complicated since I doubt we would have ever gotten it on a screen that large, if it would have even worked.As far as it being on the trackpad, it is honestly pretty wild when you realize it. It does an incredible job of faking feeling like it is actually moving. Was similar with the fake home button that some iPhone’s had for a little while.
faitswulff: There are multiple videos out there of reviewers running multiple “Pro” apps at the same time on the Neo. It’s an impressive machine.
hitekker: I beg to differ on "damn good chromebooks for the $200-$300 territory."I had a phase 2 years ago where I tried many cheap Chromebooks. I initially liked the stripped down experience and "value for dollar" hardware.But ChromeOS UX gaps, bad keyboards, and a litany of other issues wore me down and I gave up on the "second computer" quest.I look back now and see many of those Chromebooks don't even exist anymore.
recursive: Really an iPad running MacOS instead of iOS, with a built-in keyboard and touchpad, without a touch screen, multiple ports.In other words, indistinguishable from a laptop by virtually everyone. I don't even know what difference you might be referring to.
rramadass: > The big players are just awful at marketing; too many SKUs and models - it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ. The exact same specs will be in two different chassis designs.> Additionally, you can’t count on the basic being correct. It takes a hour of research to know if ...Truer words were never spoken!I gave up on PCs years ago because of this very reason. The irony is that it is well known from psychology that giving consumers too many choices is actually counter-productive. Most people do not have the time nor the knowledge to research and configure their "perfect" PC. They just know their usecase and want the best for their money.I had hoped Microsoft Surface series would become the standard in the Windows world (i still have a 1st gen model) but they don't seem to read the market.
mmcnl: I had high hopes for Surface as well, but the pricing is ridiculous. The Surface Laptop 7 is more expensive than a MacBook Air, with the added benefit of having worse battery life and performance. Pricing hasn't come down in almost 2 years either. Availability is almost 0, I've never seen one in real life.
remuskaos: I've only recently gotten a MacBook after using Linux Pretty much exclusively for over twenty years. And I have to say I'm really surprised how much I like it. For gaming it's all right, but not great. Factorio works but not much else.But for that I still have my Bazzite or Steam Deck. I really encourage you to try Linux for gaming. It's incredible what Valve has achieved on that front.
mastermage: Oh i have a steam deck and am in the process of migrating to linux latest when Win 12 hits. Just some problems with some software like Fusion 360. I do like Linux alot.
fxtentacle: It really is a pity that there’s no working business model around open source maintenance for software like wine. I’m the guy who fixed the wine bug that blocked new iTunes versions, because I like to keep my music in iTunes for easy iPhone sync. I also have Fusion 360 working flawlessly in wine, but the setup process required multiple sessions stepping manually with a debugger to avoid crashes and packaging that as scripts and/or just documenting all the little issues and their fixes and keeping that up to date with fusion updates would be serious work. So nobody is doing it.
jitl: CrossOver sells WINE and WINE consulting; I've been a happy customer on and off for about 20 years. If you're bothered by open source WINE i'd say give them a shot. In my experience it's worth the $70 or whatever to get a well-paved GUI path and support.
syntheticnature: The Macbook Neo is $599. Looking at my local Best Buy and dividing by 3, the laptops below $200 are all HP Chromebooks:Chromebook/N4500 (2021!)/4GB RAM/64GB eMMC, $149 white $179 in grey Windows/N150/4GB RAM/128GB, $219 (first Windows machine)The first Lenovo is a Chromebook that's $299, and it's got a MediaTek processor from 2022 and is supposedly on a $100 sale.
jclardy: Neo and Air are quite simple when looking at it from the bottom up. Air is the "nice" Neo for basically $500 more. Backlit keyboard, MagSafe, Thunderbolt 4, M5, way faster SSD speeds, double the RAM, larger display, Force Touch trackpad.
xp84: > You cannot buy an x86 PC laptop in the $600–700 price range that competes with the MacBook Neo on any metric — performance, display quality, audio quality, or build quality.Interesting metrics, though I'd add that if you count storage and memory as metrics, it'd be hard to find a worse PC laptop. And I don't see why we should artificially exclude ARM PC laptops from the comparison.https://www.bestbuy.com/product/asus-vivobook-14-wuxga-lapto...2x the RAM and 2x the storage isn't meaningless to a lot of people.The PC has a single-core geekbench around 2100 single / 10,000 multicore. The Neo is apparently in the range of 3600 / 9,000 multicore.No arguments on the Mac's screen being way nicer though. However, the low-end computer market - unlike most of us on HN - has never cared about pixel density, color accuracy, or really any screen specs other than size (Looks like the Asus has the Mac by an inch on that spec).Bottom line, for a high-end Chromebook replacement (literally everything is done in the cloud, so storage doesn't matter, and only running a browser, so RAM isn't a big deal), as long as it's for someone who will take care of such a delicate device, the Neo is pretty great. For everyone else, it's debatable.> And certainly not software quality.This is most definitely only a little true in that Windows has jumped the shark lately with ads and various enshittification, and thus ties with Mac OS. Tahoe is without a doubt the worst Mac OS ever released. It's both poor quality and poorly designed.
ecshafer: Niche software, and almost all video games.
drnick1: > You cannot buy an x86 PC laptop in the $600–700 price range that competes with the MacBook Neo on any metric — performance, display quality, audio quality, or build quality. And certainly not software quality.I would argue the opposite: while Apple hardware is generally excellent, it is the software that leaves to be desired. Apple has also been consistently pushing the industry in a dangerous direction (walled gardens with app stores, excessive power over developers and users). MacOS is also very behind Linux these days in terms of app compatibility (especially games).I won't be buying a Neo before a compatible Linux distro is confirmed. If the stock OS can't be replaced for one reason or another, it's dead on arrival as far as I am concerned.
carabiner: Is 2026 the year of the linux desktop?Can I update video drivers in Linux without seeing a console? OS X updates them automatically where it's a non-issue.
kwanbix: [delayed]
mmcnl: This still doesn't tell me how they differ. What are the factual objective measurable differences between E/L/T/P?
hackyhacky: Spoiler: they are all identical hardware, but marketed differently.
ryandrake: > it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ.Don't forget, one is going to be the "Business" version and the other identical one is going to be the "Consumer" version. God help whoever buys a "business" category laptop for personal use. The world will come to an end!
syntheticnature: Or, in actuality, the Dell business model will be designed for repairability. I tend to always advise friends who want Windows/Linux laptops to buy from the business lines, especially if a 1- or 2- year refurb will work.
oompydoompy74: I have a relatively recent expensive gaming laptop from Asus for the occasional LAN party with friends. I hate it and it’s a huge piece of shit. Windows 11 is necessary for anti-cheat shenanigans. Apple could change the Mac OS wallpaper to a permanent photo of a turd and it would still be better than Windows 11. Also the trackpad and keyboard suck.
izacus: Your comment is equally generalizing and being facetious like the ones you're criticizing.These brand fanboy wars you're all playing are just pathetic.
ribosometronome: Apple circa 1996 would be charging for its updates and licensing out the software to Power Computing and UMAX. They were making a lot of "interesting" decisions.
p_ing: Been using macOS for years, even main it for both personal and work. It has a LOT of UX issues and requires many 3rd party tools to "fix" it.macOS has plenty of it's own OS adverts.
AnishLaddha: an underrated reason for the decline in windows is that it went from a core product focus to being crowded out. I wouldn't be surprised if azure, sharepoint, office 365, devices, GH/Linkedin, bing/copilot, etc are all more important to msft leadership than windows.
mmcnl: Agreed, macOS has hardly improved in the past decade. The only improvements are about ecosystem integration, which I don't really care about. Everything else is stuck in the 2010s. UI has regressed if you ask me.
jeremycarter: The tab key doesn't even work consistently across apps and screens.
cryptos: Windows reputation is declining, so the operating system might be the actual crisis. Linux with modern desktops (e.g. Gnome 3) might fill the gap, but the market is far from broad adoption. Promoting and improving Linux desktop and apps would be a long endeavour, but betting only on Windows which degrades to a cloud and AI advertising surface might be fatal.
p_ing: Windows 11 has 1 Billion+ installs. That's not a decline and hardly a crisis. That's a huge install base.
hadlock: I generally run chrome/firefox and vscode full screen, and then alt-tab between those and my email (outlook at current company) and messaging (slack). Plus terminal window/s. That workflow is mostly reproducible across win/mac/linux. What features are you using that MacOS is getting in the way?
mmcnl: Decent package manager, brew is awful compared to apt. Window snapping can only be done on Apple keyboards not on external keyboards. No Alt+Tab, Cmd+Tab is not the same. No window previews when hovering over dock, ridiculous animation speed when switching workspaces that can't be changed (and somehow Ctrl+1/2/3 is 2x faster than Ctrl+Left/Right? What is that all about). Needing third-party apps for basic things like: setting a custom resolution (BetterDisplay), setting scroll direction for mouse wheel independent of touchpad scroll direction. And the Settings app is super slow.
