Christina WarrenThere are obvious deficits to the MacBook Neo — connectivity is a huge one, but I’m just stoked there is a $500 MacBook (assuming you use the student discount, which of course you obviously should) and in fun colors!
Jason Snell@film_girl I just wonder how much connectivity the buyers of a $599 laptop need....
@jsnell I think having only a single USB 3 port sucks, full stop. It’s offensive to me, tbh. The DTK from 6 years ago had better than this. The bandwidth problem here makes even getting a dock a very, very difficult trade-off. Especially when full MacBook Airs with 16GB of RAM have been available (granted not widely for $600, but certainly for $700 more commonly). We can quibble on if the buyer cares, but my point is they shouldn’t have to worry.
Dan Moren@film_girl @jsnell I agree that I don't think most people buying this will know or care BUT I do think there's a usability problem, when you plug in to the wrong port and don't know why everything is slower. That seems like a bad experience.
@dmoren @jsnell I think that they will care when it bites them in the ass. Which it will if they try to use this as more than a Chromebook. And maybe the average buyer won’t do that. But I also feel like it’s sort of shitty for us to assume that buyers of $600 or $700 computers don’t know or care about stuff like this. This is a good price for a Mac but come on.
@film_girl @jsnell I get your point, and I'm not trying to be shitty about it. I think the vast majority of users—*all* users—mainly plug stuff into their laptops to charge, and data transfer rates don't even end up figuring into it. And, like I said, I think the worse sin is that they're not the same, so how do you even know which port is the "good" one?
It will be interesting to see if they do rev this next year and add the A19 Pro whether it will have two USB-3 ports.
bbech@dmoren @film_girl @jsnell I think how I have so many peripherals on my computer and then I got to friends and family homes and they at most have a monitor and a keyboard/mouse wireless dongle. Most just rawdawg a laptop.
In college I just rawdawged a laptop and I’m sure most high school and college students will too.
Jonathan Gulbrandsen@dmoren @film_girl @jsnell they thought of that part: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/04/macbook-neo-usb-c-port-limitation/
Leonick@dmoren @film_girl @jsnell
If they couldn’t manage two proper USB 3.x ports it would have been better of with the two essentially being a hub, sharing the bandwidth of the one internal port.
If they couldn’t manage two proper USB 3.x ports it would have been better of with the two essentially being a hub, sharing the bandwidth of the one internal port.
Steven Op de beeck@film_girl @jsnell this MacBook isn’t for you, it’s for people that will use the ports on this laptop a few times per month, mostly for a usb stick or some headphones, and charging.
@stevenodb @jsnell $150 Chromebooks have better connectivity options is my point. No one — especially not people who spend $600 or $700 on a laptop — should have to worry that they plugged their thumb drive into the wrong port and were transported back to 2004 when speeds are so slow they are genuinely unusable. Apple hasn’t sold a laptop with USB 2 since 2013. (1/2)
No, this laptop isn’t for me, but I’m not going to be classist enough to pretend that these buyers don’t deserve the same basic features every laptop sold for over a decade has had. (2/2)
Paul Chernoff@film_girl @jsnell The USB port issue is my biggest nit because I can't imagine it saving Apple much money and it is an annoyance to have 2 different USB-C ports. I'm not sure I would remember to use a specific port for charging and attach a monitor to the other. I hope that this decision wasn't made just to differentiate this model from the MBA.
After that I would make the RAM 16GB but I am going to guess economics are really against that these days.
@film_girl @jsnell Would the use of the A18 chip prevent having 2 full USB-C ports? I don't know. But as you say, it is Apple's choice because they designed and selected the processor.
@film_girl @jsnell I agree that the monitor limitation to 4K took me by surprise. I think Apple is leaving money on the table by not offering more monitors, but there is a wide selection of 4K monitors on the market. And don't get me started on a monitor rant.
Oddly the Neo limitations mean that I won't have to argue with the C-Ring about not buying these for my office. And we are still happily using many MBA M1s (16GB RAM, 512GB SSD).
@film_girl @jsnell Definitely not. I’m moving my office slowlly to M4s and M5s.
I am wondering if the 2 deaths of M1 MBAs in my office were truly accidents.
davd@film_girl @jsnell I‘m rather worried about 256GB SSD, given how bad macOS manages disk space…
Penguin@film_girl @jsnell Agree, but only to the point of not differentiating the ports with, say, a charge symbol that says this port is for charging & not data. The A19 will take care of the 12GB RAM when it arrives next year, maybe it can manage 2 USB 3 ports too.
@PenguinToot @jsnell this assumes we get annual updates to the Neo, which I hope we do but I don’t think we can count on.
David Cohen@film_girl @jsnell @gruber said it was a technical challenge for Apple to even *get* a second USB port to work with the A18, so it may not be a “sucks for you, cheapskate” flex