MacBook Neo
I have not been excited for any consumer hardware for years. We stalled a long time ago. Sure, things get faster. Slightly better. But all of it are small-ish iterations. The last major change was Apple Silicon. And for most people an M1 is still more than they need, 5 years later. The Vision Pro was an honest attempt on a new market segment and failed as tech demo for the - estimated - 12 people who bought it.
But there is something different about the MacBook Neo. It is not new. Specs wise it is not exciting at all. But it has so much potential to disrupt a whole market segment. (This post will not be focused on the specs, but the Internet is full of MacBook Neo reviews - you can find good coverage on MacRumors if you did not keep up with the news.)
First let me get my personal grumbling out of the way. Apple shows that it is perfectly fine to run macOS on old iPhone chips. Let us not talk about the MacBooks without a keyboard and horrible operating systems (aka iPads). Give me a way to connect a screen to my phone and load a desktop, it is obviously not that hard! I know, it is economically more sensible to have people buy two or three devices, which at this point is demonstrated to be the only reason why this is not possible and why we do not have a better Samsung Dex.
To me the biggest potential for the MacBook Neo is taking over the low end laptop market. If you look at the current selection most of the Windows laptops in this price range are cheap, anemic, soon-to-be-e-waste boxes. Anything even cheaper than the $500 price point is basically not e-waste to happen, but e-waste out of the box.
Sure, you can kind of open Google Docs on them. But this also summarizes perfectly what they are capable of during the three hour battery life. And do not get me started on the keyboard or touchpad.
Within the $500 range things are kind of usable for a year to two. But these systems will be used for some light document editing and browsing the web. You will not game on them for example. Which means at the same price point as soon to be e-waste you can now get a premium Apple build quality that will last for years.
I am explicitly not saying that you get a better or more stable operating system. Apples software quality went downhill so much it is sad to look at.
I have seen multiple reviewers claim that the only suggestion for a laptop at this price point they will make from now on will be the Neo. And I think for many use-cases that is fair. I have even seen someone use Davinci to edit a video and it did not lag.
The specs are nothing to write home about. The USB ports are a limitation of the chip as it exists. Touch ID seems to be expensive. And people will scream bloody murder at 8GB memory while running fifteen different apps in a copy of Chrome. There are hardware limitations, no reason to argue about it. But for the merket the Neo is positioned in, they will likely not show as severe as if you would run a "web scale software development stack" on it.
Assuming the Neo really captures the educational and entry level market I think there is only one miss. The absence of a physical camera status light that cannot be controlled by software. This is a privacy feature I would expect to be included. An LED and the circuit to drive it will not break your margin. I do not want this to sound like an "OMG think of the children" argument. But if you are explicitly targeting them as an audience you actually should. Giving them a physical, easy to spot indicator for "you forgot to turn FaceTime off" or "the website you gave camera permissions because you did not read the popup is taking a video" before they change in their dorm sounds pretty neat.
ASUS’ CFO is already getting a bit nervous. My secret hope is more companies will. Get rid of the e-waste out of the box laptop category and sell your soon to be e-waste category sub 300. At this price point the hardware they sell for about $500 today becomes worth the money at 300-ish if you are budget constrained or really do not care. This price point serves a market and is needed to stay around, but companies can do better. And the Neo might just force them to do so.
Some people seem to believe the Neo will compete with the iPad. Which it might for some people who want a cheaper, secondary device with keyboard and touchpad and buy the whole iPad package while never using the iPad as a tablet...? Seriously folks, what are you even doing? I do not think this is a material risk for the iPad category.
Overall I am looking forward to see how the Neo will do and how the market will adapt to it. And if my hope that it will cause change in the low end category will come true.