[written-beyond]

You greatly underestimate the utility used, serviceable laptops have provided to broke students.

My first laptop was a decommissioned pos office dell ultrabook. By every metrics it would've been the worst option to choose, but since it had replaceable memory I was able to push it to 16 gigs and get through my computer science degree and many side projects. Computational speed was adequate for me, I ran Linux on it. It had an Intel U series 6th gen (12th gen was latest then) i5, an NVMe ssd and was always responsive.

If I were a student in this day, and all I could find were these laptops this is what I would think. 1 they're out of budget for most students in developing countries. 2 I will most likely out grow 8 GB ram faster than my laptops CPU performance. 3 I am limited to learning with what can run on apple silicon(most Linux distros excluding asahi). Finally I end up paying basically 50-60% of the cost of a decent machine and replaced it with a disposable one.

Maybe this machine is perfect for a specific set of users, students with higher income households or degrees which need better a better quality display.

I still advise every computing student I meet to get a under $200 old used laptop that has expandable memory and atleast an NVMe ssd. That way they can maximise their time learning and experimenting. Anything that needs more complex hardware can always be offloaded into your institutes machines. Once you're settled a bit and have a decent amount of cash to burn go ahead and buy whatever maxed out MacBook your heart desires.

[stetrain]

I think assuming that this is a disposable, non-serviceable machine is a bit premature. Yes the RAM and SSD are soldered to the mainboard, but otherwise it looks like this might be Apple's most serviceable computer in a long time.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/12/macbook-neo-six-minute-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k7Lv7f-5CQ

Non-expandable is a fair criticism. I think 8GB would be a bit constraining for a CS student but will be fine for many others.

[written-beyond]

TBF my friends who were getting business degrees struggled with their 8 gigs pc. When they need to run something like SPSS next to a chrome instance, their ram got tight pretty fast.

[andyferris]

It's definitely a product for the middle class, not the poor ("broke students" vs "mom bought me this laptop").

The distinction is a lot of (most?) Apple products are _expensive_ for middle class buyers, while this represents good value.

If it's well designed and robust, it might be a great machine to buy second hand in 3-5 years.

[aziaziazi]

Second hand apple products are fantastic deals! Just bought a second 2016 iPhone for 50€. Apple still push security updates 10 years after release! I wonder what's their business rationale, while being delighted buy the cheap, light, small and perfectly usable device compatible with my bank and all communication apps. Only downside are the unsolicited disapproving comments IRL.

I'm very keen to buy a 50€ macbook Neo in 10 years.

[solatic]

> laptop for a computer science student ... most likely outgrow 8 GB RAM faster than laptop CPU

A couple years ago I would have agreed with you. Today I'm not sure how reasonable it is to try to future-proof via expandable RAM. Imagine a hypothetical point a few years in the future where RAM factories have ramped up production and manufacturers are pumping out laptops with 512 GB RAM to enable running local LLM. You couldn't expand a current laptop to have enough RAM if you wanted to, so I'm not sure how reasonable it is to try to prepare for that future.