[dangus]

I keep shouting from the rooftops the fact that the Neo is really not that disruptive or even necessarily that good of a deal.

Like, have any of you actually looked at street prices at Micro Center or Best Buy recently? In the price range of the higher model Neo you can get a Yoga 7 with an OLED convertible touch screen, 1TB storage, 16GB of RAM, along with a processor with better multicore and iGPU performance (Ryzen 7 AI 350) in a 2-in-1 convertible package that has better battery life doing office tasks.

Yes, the Neo is a cheap machine, with a lot of the exact same cheap machine compromises that are all over the $500-800 laptop market. Not really the best CPU, extremely cut-down battery, missing features, etc.

It even loses keyboard backlighting which is such a standard feature that it might be the only laptop on sale without it.

Losing the haptic trackpad means that the Acer you can buy at Micro Center for $530 with double the RAM and way better I/O (USB4, USB-A 3.0, microSD, and HDMI) has a pretty similar quality of trackpad experience. Yes, I tried both in store, the MacBook Neo's trackpad is really at the same level of all the PC competition.

MacBook Pro/Air Trackpad: 10/10

Best PC haptic trackpads available: 8/10

MacBook Neo trackpad: 7/10

Typical PC mechanical trackpads: 6 or 7/10

Hell, the older generation HP EliteBook 840 G10 that Micro Center sells as a business laptop makes a bunch more sense in a lot of ways. It's also an all-aluminum build thin and light system, comes with more RAM, which is upgradable, has a fingerprint reader, backlit keyboard, etc.

[selectively]

The trackpad on the Neo is at the level of a Surface trackpad, which is to say it is worlds better than the typical budget junk you can pick up from Acer.

[dangus]

I disagree strongly. Again, I tried it in store at the exact same time as trying other laptops.

Yes, it's a little bit better than the alternatives, but, critically, not by much. Not by enough to sway a purchase decision.

It's not better than diving board mechanical trackpads by enough of a margin for most consumers to notice.

Also, macOS over-relies on trackpad gestures. You don't really need them anywhere near as much in Windows or Linux. This is Apple's intention: to try and sell more proprietary trackpads, because they know if their OS was optimized for normal mice consumers would just buy the cheap $20 mice that are better than their $100+ accessories.

The PC industry barely has to adapt to compete with the Neo. I think we'll start seeing that in late 2026 and 2027 when competitors arrive on Apple's doorstep.

[givinguflac]

I will be absolutely shocked if any current pc company can even approach the neos build quality/performance/price combo. See you next year, happy to wait .

[dangus]

I think we’ll actually see some serious responses from PC manufacturers. They basically have to.

They really aren’t that far off as it is. I’ve brought up a number of similarly priced models in my other comments on this thread.

Even on the premium end, the surface laptop really isn’t that far off on pricing. It was priced and specced to essentially match the Air. I think there’s no reason a cut down model couldn’t match the Neo.

I think the most important thing is for Microsoft to crack down more on OEMs’ use of third party junkware like McAfee. They need to just disallow it as a hard policy. Hopefully the Neo is also a wake up call to Microsoft.

I also think that an x86 processor that performs 20-40% slower really isn’t a big deal in the context of the Neo’s competitors. They mostly need to match the pricing and build quality. Nobody cares that the hybrid Toyota Corolla is slower than the hybrid Honda Civic when they go buy the car. They care that it has the attributes they’re looking for (packaging, reliability, quality, price). And I think the Neo’s great chip is hampered by RAM anyway. The SoC package was designed for a mobile system that only has partial multitasking.

[selectively]

One of the things is an Acer. The other is a Mac. That sways purchase decisoons - one is a nice thing, the other one is a low end PC.

I have used countless modern PC devices, including some from Acer. Few PCs have a trackpad of the level of the Neo and none from Acer.

Your logic with "Apple's intentions" reveals a person who is incapable of decent analysis; macOS relies on gestures a lot because the vast majority of macOS devices are laptops. The desktop market is an after thought because the people keep buying laptops. That's it. There's no conspiracy, just a focus on the devices that the users choose to buy.

The PC industry has almost no shot of competing with the Neo. You have to spend much more than $1000 to get a nice object that looks and feels nice. Right now, the PC industry is selling Old Navy products when Hermès is the same price. That is a real problem.

Microsoft is going to be fine. Companies that rely on selling low end devices to consumers are going to suffer.

[dangus]

My point is that Apple is in many ways joining Acer, not bringing their luxury product down to the masses.

Yes, in many ways they’re bringing a very polished product to the space. But in many other ways, look closely and you’ll see the cut corners.

Again, I’ve felt the Neo in person. The chassis feels nice, sure. It’s not built to the same level as Apple’s other products, though.

The bottom plate is not CNCed, it’s a stamped aluminum plate. That means there is variation in the gap along the bottom of the laptop between the man case and the bottom plate that doesn’t exist on the Air or Pro.

Again, the trackpad is good but is worse than many haptic trackpads offered by PC manufacturers like Lenovo.

Again, if you think the PC industry has no chance of competing, go to your retailer website and look at street prices. Look at laptop reviews from places like Just Josh Tech on YouTube. PC manufacturers aren’t making trash.

Acer is actually a great example of a really solid PC. I felt the $530 model Micro Center is selling and it seemed to do the job: thin and light enough, felt sturdy, similar trackpad to the Neo, better specs and I/O. I’d say I only wanted the display to be a little better, though on the plus side it was bigger than the Neo’s cramped 13”.

This isn’t 2005. There is a misguided assumption to assume that PCs are still trash like they were 10 years ago. They just aren’t.

One little random bit to point out: there are 100 million Mac users globally as of 2024. There are more than 900 million PC gamers globally.

So, if I’m a high school student or college student who has money for one computer and I am a member of that group of 900 million PC gamers, I might just go get a last gen Lenovo LOQ with the RTX 4050 or something similar in the current gen from someone like MSI with an RTX 5050.

I would deal with a chunkier plastickier laptop but it would get similar battery life to the Neo for office tasks and I could actually play games. 16GB RAM. Modular storage. Price is around $700.

And I’ll be honest, that trackpad ain’t gonna be much worse than the Neo. And I’ll get to keep my backlit keyboard and have some I/O.

[givinguflac]

>Look at laptop reviews from places like Just Josh Tech on YouTube

I stopped reading here.

[dangus]

Okay? So you don’t look at reviews or something? What’s the problem that made you stop reading?

[selectively]

You are deeply confused (you do not understand public perception/you do not understand how choosing a ''good pc'' is hard for most people/you don't grasp that a luxury brand versus Acer for the same price is a no brainer for most people, regardless of I/O or whatever) and - frankly - you are not worth discussing anything with. Have a good rest of your day.

[999900000999]

And it comes with Windows.

Back in the normal world people don't use Linux. If you have the funds you can get an M4 Air with 16GB for 800$.

I still have a 8GB M1 air, it's fine for filling out paper work and watching YouTube, which is the extent of what most people do

[drnick1]

> Hell, the older generation HP EliteBook 840 G10 that Micro Center sells as a business laptop makes a bunch more sense in a lot of ways.

And the best thing is that you can format the drive, install Linux, and be completely free of Microsoft and Apple.

[qmr]

... the Yoga doesn't run MacOS though.

[dangus]

Okay? Windows and macOS are basically the same.

Only biased fanboy people say otherwise.

[qmr]

Windows has far more spyware, and somewhat worse usability.

It also doesn't run iTerm.

I'm neither biased nor a fanboy.

I used desktop Linux for a decade or more, moved to MacOS for better usability, but it's kind of gone to shit.

Did up a home windows install for some "modern gaming", but disgusted with Microsoft's rapeware tactics.

Might be time to move to Linux again. Already have it on the kids PCs. Seems to run plenty of stuff from Steam just fine.