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MacBook Neo Pre-Orders at Best Buy Include Free $25 Gift Card
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dugbug
macrumors 68010
The target market are school kids and grandparents. I think personally they nailed it. Heck its better and cheaper than the walmart M1 air which is (was?) an enormous seller.
MacRolf
macrumors newbie
This is an awesome entry, if the trackpad and keyboard is not with reduced quality, the 8GB or ram might be a slight inconvenience, needing to memory swap often. But for casual users, it's absolutely fantastic, Windows laptops are toast, they always were, but not for casual users looking to spend up to 800 $/€/£ for a 512GB SSD good quality laptop.
$499 education is a total Chromebook killer, great kids laptop, great everything, M5 is so powerful. Two USB-C ports so it can do anything, be docked. Shockingly cheap. But this is basically an iPad in a hinged configuration with a keyboard.
jlc1978
macrumors 604
The discussions on MacRumors remind me of audiophiles arguing over reproducing frequency beyond most peoples hearing and judging equipment based on that; while the rest of us simply bought something and enjoy the music...
Should be such a simple thing for people to understand yet...
So, I realize this is one simple anecdotal example, but the specs on this seem to be in the absolute sweet spot for a lot of day to day Macbook users that aren't coders, gamers, designers or videophiles. My (adult) kid is in the theatre business. She's constantly recording audition tapes, downloading and reading scripts, emailing, and browsing. And that's pretty much it. and you might ask...what about the audition tapes? Well, those are done entirely on her iPhone or iPad. She doesn't need a ton of storage because all of her files are in the cloud. She barely would even use it to browse through photos.
It actually comes at an absolutely perfect time for her, too. Her very old and underutilized MBPro screen crapped the bed, and it would cost more to fix that than it would to buy a new Neo. And, she can get it in pink.
And as for comparing it to PC specs...the last time she used a PC was in elementary school.
It actually comes at an absolutely perfect time for her, too. Her very old and underutilized MBPro screen crapped the bed, and it would cost more to fix that than it would to buy a new Neo. And, she can get it in pink.
And as for comparing it to PC specs...the last time she used a PC was in elementary school.
Sounds perfect for her and also the majority of the market. MacRumors users forget they are in the minority. Most Apple customers are not like us here. Hope she enjoys it!
The benefit of a phone chip is phone upgrade pricing. When have you ever been able to upgrade an M# from 256 to 512 for $100.
Yet Apple has sold Macbooks in the past with only a single port. USB 2 will be mainly for charging. The one mistake they made is the USB 2 port should have been the back one.
People discount the place these could be used and be popular. Data entry in small businesses. Things like Quickbooks. Homework computers. Vacation or travel computers. I think this would be a great little laptop to toss in a bag for writers or journalists and not have to worry about destroying them. Probably going to keep a copy of your work externally anyways.
Churches. I have seen a ton of churches buy volunteers or low level staff Macbooks way more powerful then they need or an iPad with a keyboard. The Neo could replace devices in both of those circumstances. Even attach a dongle and now you have a low power media server that can attach via ethernet via a dongle with some external storage.
All on a new Laptop with a warranty that should have fairly extended OS Support.
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abowlby
macrumors 6502a
Probably more about the chip design and controller. This is a phone chip that normally only has a single USB port. Believe the a18 non Pro Phones only supported USB 2. So could be That the USB 2 support from the Base a18 still exists in the Pro version in addition to the USB 3 port support. Adding more would of probably taken a new design.
abowlby
macrumors 6502a
$200 more on a $600 laptop is spending 33% more. That is a big chunk for the price bracket this is in. Also the M4 won't be around forever and the M5 Air got a $100 price increase.
lazyrighteye
Contributor
Maybe. And perfectly illustrates just how serious Apple was about starting price point.
Not everyone has the need nor the extra 300 over the education discounted Neo.
jlc1978
macrumors 604
Rxatly. It’s a great machine for the target audience. A kid in high school or college easily could use it throughout their education.
BeatsByTim
macrumors 6502
artifex
macrumors 6502a
I expect a lot of people will want to add mice. At least budding artists and gamers. Most legacy/hand-me-down USB mice aren't USB-C, however.
When MacRumors makes the post of things to buy for someone with a Neo, they should include a couple decent USB-C models, as well as a portable USB dock with power passthrough, etc.
