> Given Apple's historically very premium pricing, launching such an affordable product is certainly a shock to the entire market

No? Apple has been delivering way cheaper laptops ever since M1, this one is just even cheaper. I thought PC execs were asleep at the wheel but not this bad.

Looks like the PC laptop market is going to have to stop being bad on purpose. I hope this causes significant pain for vendors like Dell, Microsoft and Asus.

I don't see any way they can get out of this situation without seriously improving the UX of their products. Windows itself is likely implicated here too.

I was watching this video and it’s pretty impressive what can be done on this spec machine.

https://youtu.be/d-VOt9559Gk?si=tYlDstnaxtQWoJ88

He opens 50+ apps at once while working in Final Cut and Lightroom. Obviously anyone doing those full time would benefit from more resources but I think this is going to be enough for a big chunk of the population, and will be more appealing than the windows alternatives.

I've used an MacAir with 8GB ram starting at 700€ for years, writing and testing compilers. This was until the macOS and butterfly keyboard desasters, which made me go back to 450€ ThinkPad Ryzen laptops with Fedora, upgraded to 64GB RAM.

My wife is using a fancy new air for 2500€, which is way better. But I still think of the good old MacAir times, they'll try to bring up again.

"Of course, it's not that it cannot do all the work, but considering user experience and those hardware limitations, the experience, I think, differs significantly from mainstream products..."

I worked in retail for a decade, a lot of that was selling computers. The vast majority of what people buy computers for could be done a toaster. You don't exactly need top end specs to browse the internet, reply to emails, and write the occasional document.

Except for the bit that immediately killed it for us in the office: only one external display. Even if you close the lid.

I dream of the day I can kick windows into the next bin, but this is the one thing that the Neo fails hard on, all other compromises would've made this a great remote dev machine.

This feels like the first time Apple’s walled garden approach has paid off in the desktop arena.

With a cheaper Windows alternative to the MacBook Neo, your options are inferior battery life with AMD 64, or Windows Arm’s inferior compatibility.

I doubt Microsoft is holding developers hands when transitioning to Arm the way that Apple does. Not to mention they’ve been using their own chips.