The Apple MacBook Neo’s $599 starting price is a “shock” to the Windows PC industry, according to an Asus executive.
Hsu said he believes all the PC players—including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD—take the MacBook Neo threat seriously. “In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product,” he added, given that rumors about the MacBook Neo have been making the rounds for at least a year.
Despite the competitive threat, Hsu argued that the MacBook Neo could have limited appeal. He pointed to the laptop’s 8GB of “unified memory,” or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can’t upgrade it.
The failure rates of these will be the determining factor. The components inside are cheap, all soldered on, and will not be repairable at all (waiting on the iFixIt score).
Its pretty much just their phone platform with a big screen and keyboard, so maybe it’ll be okay. It’s not built like a phone though, so I’m expecting some interesting testing outcomes. It’s either going to be cheap enough that they have a new planned obsolescence hit on their hands, or people are going to be pissed at it sucking so hard.
According to an early reviewer, the Neo is surprisingly good in terms of hardware quality, and it actually handles typical usage just fine, possibly because of the Silicon ecosystem that Apple spent so long refining. That looks promising, but I share much of your skepticism for the reasons you give.
I’m also waiting for the full iFixit review, but teardowns from other channels are now being shared and so far it looks like it’s very solidly built and repair-friendly. None of the typical ‘cover everything in excessive glue and tape’ anti-repair shenanigans we’ve come to expect from Apple.
Repair friendly means CHEAP components repair, which Apple just does not do.
As an example, in a machine like this if your WiFi module tanks…that’s a full logic board replacement. Might as well buy a new one.
According to this, Apple is basically making an insurance vertical as part of their business, and they are pricing repairs to be exactly 1/3 the retail cost of the machine for pretty much everything except screens.
This is pretty scam my when you consider their past of quoting customers for repairs that are above and beyond the scope of the actual hardware failures, and what maximizes profits for their AppleCare and RMA process. There are dozens of breakdowns in this, so I won’t write a novel, but it’s very obvious they’ve baked in the costs to make it more cost-effective to just keep buying new units as a replacement in the face of simple hardware failures.
Wow. Modern laptop “repairability” is pretty rough in general, but that does actually seem better than I expected.
I mean modern smartphone SOC compute power is insane. That wont be a bottleneck for a long time. If i had to make a guess they dont even have to go the hardware failure route for planned obsolescence. That measily 8GB of shared ram for both CPU and GPU will take care of that. Just add a bit more shiny UI bloat with every update and this thing will get slow af at some point in the future. Takes care of all the entry level M1 Airs too…
Mobile chip power is insane AT THAT SCALE though. That’s the key differentiation here. So if you’re running a larger format display with a higher resolution, cut that by quite a bit. Also cut it if you’re running desktop apps that aren’t optimized for mobile, and if this is intended to run MacOS instead of iOS, the mobile optimistic memory scheduling is out the window. I’ll have to see it to say for sure, but I’m guessing the performance for average desktop apps is going to be pretty, but that’s kind of the price point.
This is Apple’s scoop up of the ChromeOS segment.
Funny thing is that the Macbook Neo needs to drive less pixels:
Iphone 16 Pro: 2868 x 1320
Macbook Neo: 2408 x 1506
Also only at 60hz and not 120hz. While having magnitudes more thermal mass to cool with the prolonged high performance bursts. I dont have any worries about its performance in its intented market segment. And yes, its running MacOS which still runs pretty well with a Macbook Air M1-M3 with 8GB of RAM.
Resolution alone isn’t the only factor. It’s a larger display, requiring more power, which is either a PC/PD issue, or a battery issue. The point is that the power draw has to come from somewhere, and nothing this is the same platform as an iPhone (essentially), there’s going to be a trade-off somewhere.
As you noted they’ve reduced the refresh rate, which makes a big impact, but I don’t think it stops there.
The original platform has apps that are optimized for that platform, and now you’re throwing a different OS at it which has more expansive use of resources: CPU, memory, GPU, and power.
We’ll have to see how they have made paths through MacOS to account the platform specifically, but I’m betting there are several drawbacks. This was the main complaint of how they dealt with those insanely expensive Mac Pro with M-class chips when they first came out, but in the inverse. High power draw, heat issues…etc.
My guy,
i said mobile compute power is insane. You had a somewhat sensible take why it may not transfer to a laptop. I gave you hard facts why your concerns arent applicable. Instead of just admitting you misjudged the resolution differences you mansplain to me some irrelevant things. Yeah, the power draw is going to be different. Its a laptop, no shit. It also has tons of more space for a battery.
You are just talking out of your ass. Instead of looking up the wikipedia page for 2 minutes.
/Its also a released product. Reviews and benchmarks are readily available… Like what. Just look it up.
Every failure I’ve gotten from an Apple product is the inevitable demise of the battery either through degradation to the point of uselessness or expanding and causing something else to come undone. So the components just need to keep outlasting those events.
Always the keyboard for me, for some reason. Almost never battery problems.
Your experience is not singular. Looks like we’ve got some haters here.