Comment by dangus
15 hours ago
I grow tired of the MacBook Neo gloating and almost like a light version of bragging in articles like this. It's coded as a critique of the iPad but it feels a lot more like "I'm typing this on a MacBook Neo and it's oh soo amazing!"
Apple is essentially selling the modern version of the eMac, and I would say the Neo is almost as bad of a purchase as that product. The real selling point of the device is that it's newly in box with a warranty. If you actually go to the used market, it's easy to find a gently used machine that is much better. Any MacBook Air with an M2 and 16GB of RAM is a better purchase.
The Neo situation is the equivalent of buying a brand new $500 Acer machine versus buying a $500 eBay ThinkPad T14 or something like that. You'll get a much better laptop by buying a used laptop versus buying that brand new Acer.
The same story goes for the MacBook Neo. It'll be successful in sales, and it's a nice machine in a lot of ways, but it's one of the most overhyped devices of our present times.
It will go down in history as a device like the iPhone 5C. Save a few bucks now, but pay for it in the near future with the kind of performance you're actually getting from it. Even basic casual tasks will chug in the very near future.
Apple is selling a device that is approximately equivalent to the $1000 laptop they were selling 5 years ago and we are acting like this is a revolutionary product. And, by the way, it's not a $500 product unless you can use the education store. It's actually $600, or $700 if you are buying a configuration that actually makes some level of sense and has enough storage. $700 will buy you a 16GB/512GB MacBook Air M2, a much better machine (better screen, battery, speakers, processor, keyboard, trackpad, I/O, etc).
> If you actually go to the used market, it's easy to find a gently used machine that is much better.
A huge percentage of the population (at least in the US) is completely unwilling to buy any used consumer products. For some it is the ick factor, for others it is fear of being scammed.
> Any MacBook Air with an M2 and 16GB of RAM is a better purchase.
Is this really a better alternative if it stops getting macOS updates several years sooner? I wouldn’t buy an 8gb laptop, but they are fine for many use cases.
It seems like macOS updates have a lot more to do with underlying hardware and specs than year of release alone.
Going back to the iPhone 5C example, that phone lost updates much earlier than the 5S released the same year because it didn’t support 64-bit processors.
There are also a number of Intel and PowerPC systems that weren’t supported long due to architecture transitions.
I could very easily imagine a future version of macOS only being available on systems that shipped with 16GB of RAM.
Although on the other hand, I think Apple decides on support based on userbase as well. I imagine if they find a device is barely used or don’t sell well in the first place they would perhaps be more likely to drop support.
The Mac Neo is a great product for a large percentage of people out there who wanted to get a Mac that is well made and affordable it is very usable for the overwhelming majority of non tech people that want to use a personal computer today. Most of the tech sites were skeptical still are but thank goodness Apple didn’t listen to them.
The same applies to the iPad. It is fine the way it is if I personally wanted a laptop, I would’ve bought one but my preference is a desktop computer.
I don’t sit around wishing every laptop computer was a desktop computer nor do I want an iPad to be a laptop or even a desktop computer it is what it is had purchase, if you don’t like it just buy what you want, the Neo appears to be a hit, so it appears that Apple knows what they’re doing again.