Apple introduces Macbook Neo - cheaper Macbooks starting at $599

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Honestly I’m expecting this to take up most of the mid-range laptop market. 8gb RAM and only 256GB storage is lame, but the rest of it probably makes it really good value (especially with components getting more expensive recently).

Unless you’re buying used or refurbished, most laptops I found at ~$600 or less kinda suck. Either it has terrible specs, or uses cheap plastic, or has a terrible screen, etc.

I don’t like Apple, but hopefully this is a wake-up call for other vendors. Lower end laptops should stop being cheap garbage.

makes it really good value

An iPad Air costs the same but comes with a much better M4 processor. The main difference is a less crap operating system in macOS.

An iPad Air costs the same but comes with a much better M4 processor.

Sure, but a tablet isn’t a laptop.

Sure, but a tablet isn’t a laptop.

So form factor, not hardware internals should be the deciding factor in cost?

To a degree, yeah.

The laptop form factor is engineered with lid and palmrest assemblies, if you’re going to compare the two then you’ll want to add a nice keyboard to that iPad. Apple’s is $270.

Apple’s is $270.

Typical Apple tax, completely unrelated to the few dollars a keyboard costs to make for real.

You’re not entirely wrong, in that the Apple Tax is real.

Nonetheless, the quality of the Magic Keyboard is substantially higher than that of a keyboard you can get for “few dollars”

Ultimately, your assertion was:

An iPad Air costs the same but comes with a much better M4 processor. The main difference is a less crap operating system in macOS.

An iPad Air with a keyboard that matches the form factor and build quality of a MacBook Neo does not actually cost the same, it costs an additional $270.

The MacBook doesn’t have a touchscreen. It cancels the keyboard cost out.

They don’t even put touch ID on the entry model.

you can’t buy an iPad without a touchscreen. your argument feels like arguing that tariffs won’t affect consumers because they’re paid by the importers