[unethical_ban]

My dad the other month, in need of a computer with webcam and ideally portable, bought some $400-500 HP 17" laptop. He was so proud of it, proud of buying a piece of hardware without asking me, and rather than tell him the truth, I nodded and said "yeah this is neat".

The monitor is awful. Like, the horrible way it changes color and brightness depending on exact viewing angle is sickening; I am shocked California hasn't declared it illegal. It feels cheap, keyboard is cheap, who knows what the battery life is.

If the Apple Neo were available then, and he had asked what to buy, I would have instantly told him to get one.

[ezst]

I broke that circle by having a sibling ultimately follow my recommendation of getting a ThinkPad T at a discount (prev-gen during a sale) and then letting them advertise it to the rest of the family.

If you ask me, for a comparable price range, the ThinkPad still is a much better pick than the MacBook Neo: that thing has no IO and not even enough RAM for nowadays light web browsing.

[kstrauser]

You're comparing a $1254-minimum laptop[0] with a $599-minimum laptop[1] and asserting that the one that's twice as expensive is nicer.

I'd expect it to be. In fact, I'd demand it.

(I'm ignoring the "old model, found cheaply" bit because that's entirely irrelevant. You can find old Macs on sale around, too, but that doesn't mean you can reasonably compare them to the MSRP of a brand new device.)

[0]https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/c/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/

[1]https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/say-hello-to-macbook-...

[ezst]

> You're comparing a $1254-minimum laptop[0]

No, I'm not: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/th...

And I still stand behind the fact that, for that price, you've got a very competent device that is better specced for light use and friendlier for mom and pop (look, it has a HDMI, you can straight up connect it to the telly! Look, it has USB A ports, so that old camera, hard drive with the family pictures, old weird ergo mouse just works out of the box !).

[kstrauser]

Again, we’re not comparing a brand new Mac price to an old PC price. Yes, old will be cheaper. Old MacBooks are cheaper than new ones, too.

But for giggles, let’s look at the old PC.

Despite being heavier, wider, taller, thicker, slower, dimmer, lower resolution, hotter, older, and having less battery life, it is, indeed, $20 cheaper.

Put another way, there’s no way on earth I’d pick that over a MacBook Neo to save $20 at the cost of having a worse laptop in almost every way.

[Liftyee]

That's a valid opinion to hold. I think both machines are Pareto-optimal though. The ThinkPad will likely have a longer useful life because of its heavy build, extra I/O (each port gets less use), and upgradeable parts. The Neo clearly wins on power efficiency, battery life, resolution...

TBH, if I imagined I was the median casual user, I would also take the $20 marginal cost for the Neo. "Worse in almost every way" just depends on how you weight each individual parameter, which for me, is quite atypical.

[Liftyee]

I don't see why comparing prices between used and new options is unreasonable in this case. If I want a machine to do XYZ (without the stipulation that it be new), then an older model might well be better value. "In $CURRENT_YEAR, how can I get X processing power?"

Of course, old Macs should factor into that too. Also, it's a different story if I do want something brand new.

[kstrauser]

Here it’s because the old PC they picked is worse in every way than the brand new PC, except for RAM, which the Mac largely mitigates by having ludicrously fast flash hanging off the CPU. Of course an older, worse PC is going to be cheaper than a new Mac. (Except in this case, buying the boat anchor saves you a whopping $20. It’s not even better specs for the same price: it’s worse than the Apple gear that costs the same.)

If we want to compare new vs used, then how much would you have to spend to buy a brand new PC laptop as powerful as last year’s MacBook Pro?

[LtWorf]

Except you've only tried the expensive apple computers, not the macbook neo.

[slopinthebag]

> that thing has no IO and not even enough RAM for nowadays light web browsing.

You can literally open up every app (50+) on it and simultaneously edit 4k video without issues. It handles all of the pro apps really well. So it objectively can handle light web browsing just fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-VOt9559Gk

[nirava]

LOL I had the exact same experience. Somehow it was a goddamned HP too (oh how I detest HP everything).

And to think I'd explicitly mentioned to him that Apple would probably be releasing the kind of cheap beautiful laptop he was looking for in a month :(