MacBook Neo Sales

Also, the privacy first company keeping tabs on who's a first time buyer and everyone be like "Yeah, Apple are such champions of privacy"

@Kristoffer Isn’t that just from self-reported surveys, so no privacy violation?

@Michael Tsai: They could track what hardware is used to sign up for new iCloud accounts and that figure should be even more accurate than surveys, I think.

@Adrian They certainly could, but is there any reason to think they’re not collecting and reporting this stat the same way as in the past?

When Neo hits 16 Gb a couple of years down the road, it will obliterate the cheap windows/chromebook in most educational institutions.

Not the point of the point but I continue to find it so weird that Tim Cook’s Apple is allergic to the word “the.”

12" iBook G3-G4 2001-06 $999

$999 in 2001 dollars is equivalent to $1,845 in 2026 dollars.

That makes the $599 Neo’s price even more impressive.

That’s the equivalent of $324 in 2001 dollars. Roughly the price of a Windows netbook back then.

This seems like a great product, and really makes me sad for iPad. I need Apple Pencil for a few applications, but otherwise am real disappointed for all the acrobatics I need to do for making it work for things. All I want is a lightweight computing device that I can easily bring with me. Neo is now closer to that than the iPad, which is bananas.

8 gigs of RAM will be a hindrance for both users and Apple for years. Have they updated their RAMDoubler equivalent memory compression in the OS since it first came out over a decade ago?

I bought a computer when I started a business 13 years ago, an Intel MacBook Air with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. I only replaced it a few months ago. I don’t work in tech, but I’ve sold about 2 million individually made products in that time, and the Air was just fine. The shortcoming in its later days was slow wireless, not RAM or storage or processor.

Had the Neo been available when I got a new Mac a few months ago I only would have avoided it because of Tahoe, not because of the hardware specs. All the software I need for work comes pre-installed (same was true of the Air).

There are millions of people like me, with a job not driven by tech or focused on it. There are students. There are people who often enough want something more convenient than a smartphone or tablet, if not much more capable (e.g., for easier typing or to have a bigger screen).

And users who replace their Neo as often (or more often) than they would have previously updated, they’ll probably spend less money or negligibly more on two Neos over a number of years than if they bought one Air to last a comparable amount of time. Two of the upgraded Neos over, say, 8 years is pre-tax $1,400 while one base Air over that time is $1,100. Not much difference even if they keep the Air for the same 8 years.

There’s ample market for the Neo.

> "$999 in 2001 dollars is equivalent to $1,845 in 2026 dollars."

I think this is a poor comparison. Not exactly the definition of a straw man argument, but it's close. What did a PC laptop cost in 2001 compared to 2026? How does Moore's law fit into this? Maybe I'm just saying this: How did *any* laptop - Mac or PC - from 2001 compare to *any* laptop in 2026? It doesn't.

Quick show of hands, who here still uses their laptop (or desktop for that matter) from 2001 as their primary machine? I'm guessing the answer will be 0.01%.

>"Quick show of hands, who here still uses their laptop (or desktop for that matter) from 2001 as their primary machine? I'm guessing the answer will be 0.01%."

The Mac I used in 2001 was bought in January of that year on the day it was cancelled. With its replacement available and an education discount, I saved a lot of money, either $1,000 or $1,500. I still have that Mac. It still works. Good luck trying to do anything online with it.

It's a G3 Pismo PowerBook.

I'm confident it's a lot less than 0.01% of 2001 computers are still in use as an individual's primary machine.

Apple describes the Macbook Neo as capable of displaying "billions" of colours on its display, while also stating the display colour gamut is sRGB, which maxes at 16.7 million.

I'll be interested to see how badly thrashed the SSDs end up with only 8gb of ram - my M2 iPad Pro has twice that.

@Tsai I thought they were checking me Apple IDs, but I could be wrong. Wasn't aware that they had explained their method in the past

"Not the point of the point but I continue to find it so weird that Tim Cook’s Apple is allergic to the word “the.”"

That's not a Cook thing. Apple's style guide has mandated omitting "the" before product names like iPhone and MacBook for as long as I can remember. You can look at the wayback machine for confirmation. Here's an example from the iMac introduction:

> Designed around a simple premise—that the internet
> should be as easy to use as a Macintosh—iMac is the
> internet-age “computer for the rest of us.”

Looking at Mr Macintosh's quote… The Neo might be the 'perfect price' Mac, but the 2020 M1 MacBook Air is, in my opinion, the perfect value. A friend of mine got it new at the time, and six years later it's still their primary machine. Performance is still good, battery is still decent. Sure, they spent a little bit more to have a 16GB RAM / 512GB SSD setup, but it turned out to be enough future-proofing to still have a viable Mac six years after. I'm not sure the MacBook Neo has this kind of longevity in it.

@Kristoffer @Adrian I thought they had said in the past that it was surveys, but I can’t seem to find that statement now. Maybe I’m thinking of the days before Macs were always signed into iCloud. If they are using account activations instead of or in addition to surveys, I don’t really see a privacy issue there.

It's not a huge one, but it means Apple are enriching data, and using AppleID for their own purposes, not just as a way to nudge people into iCloud and Apple+.

A privacy first company shouldn't add information to user accounts, and then add their own data to people's accounts, and THEN use that for marketing.

A truly privacy first company should know as little as possible, and only the absolute bare minimum.

"A privacy first company shouldn't add information to user accounts, and then add their own data to people's accounts, and THEN use that for marketing."

When you're registering an Apple Account, then your device is attached to the account. So this is just a matter of determining how many accounts attached to Neos only have a Neo attached to them, and nothing else. Apple isn't collecting any new data, or doing anything that harms user privacy here.

@Plume Yeah, I assume they could just query whether there are a non-zero number of Macs attached to the account.

I can't remember if it was there when I got surveyed a few months ago after buying a new Mac, but Apple has in the past asked a question about what other Apple products the respondent owns. Choices included categories—Mac, iPhone, iPad, etc.—and were not specific, like which Mac, phone, etc.

> Apple describes the Macbook Neo as capable of displaying "billions" of colours on its display, while also stating the display colour gamut is sRGB, which maxes at 16.7 million.

Not my area of expertise, but I don’t think that’s right. sRGB basically describes a triangle portion within the CIE 1931 horseshoe. It doesn’t — I could be wrong — mandate a level of precision there; how _many_ colors you can resolve within that triangle isn’t defined, just what their respective maximum coordinates are.

@Soren

>I don’t think that’s right. sRGB basically describes a triangle portion within the CIE 1931 horseshoe.

I guess it'll be for testing to determine whether it's showing sRGB, but 10 bits of colour... which seems like an odd choice.