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.
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.