The MacBook Neo is off to a good start, according to this one guy on the internet.
According to this “Tim Cook” fellow:
Mac just had its best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers. We love seeing the enthusiasm!
Whoever this guy is posted this on X, which you will know as your go-to platform for generating non-consensual pornographic images, even of minors. Look for it on the Apple App Store, the safest place on Earth, where it is still available because billionaires get different rules than the rest of us.
It is tempting to make an app that makes exactly the kind of reprehensible material Grok and X do and submit it to the App Store to see how fast it would get rejected but, in order to do that, you’d have to be the kind of monster that makes that kind of material, so that’s not happening.
Some science you just can’t do.
Anyway, back to the MacBook Neo! It’s apparently selling pretty well! As of this writing, online orders of the cheapest MacBook evah are out to April 7 to 14.
And why not? It’s cheap, darn repairable, comes in one fun color and several other near-colors, and while it might not have the overall performance of even older M-series MacBook Airs, it does very well in single-core performance and, most importantly, is supported by Apple. Who’s going to support that used M2 you bought off Craigslist? Cousin Lars? With his drinking problem? Good luck. The last time you asked him for help he spent an hour trying to “reboot” the latest issue of Costco Connection because “its screen was frozen”.
As you might imagine, the MacBook Neo is causing some consternation in the PC industry. How are you gonna keep them down in Plastictown when they’ve seen the bright lights of Aluminum City?
PCWorld’s Michael Crider says: “The $600 MacBook Neo is Microsoft’s nightmare”
Over on Microsoft’s official hardware store, you can get a Surface “Pro” starting at $800. … But what you don’t get is a keyboard cover…
That seems like a bit of an omission when trying to use a device as a laptop.
Windows Central’s Zac Bowden agrees: “MacBook Neo makes Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 13-inch seem like a bad deal”
The Surface Laptop 13 starts at $899 and has a worse screen than the MacBook Neo.
For a Windows laptop to be more desirable than a Mac laptop, it needs to be better than the Mac while being the same price. That’s a tall order that I don’t expect most OEMs will be able to meet.
As a long-time Apple watcher, it is a little bizarre to live in a time when Macs are undercutting a PC category on price, but here we are. All of a sudden, the PC hardware makers have a real problem explaining what the MBAs like to call “their value proposition”.
It’s not like you can claim it’s worth paying more to get Windows. Even if you’re Microsoft.
The company said it will reduce Copilot AI integrations in some apps, starting with Photos, Widgets, Notepad, and its Snipping Tool.
Why, oh, why would the company be doing this when everyone loves-
It’s clear that user feedback is influencing Microsoft’s moves around AI on Windows.
Wild that Dell got this before Microsoft did.
The company said it’s also introducing the ability to move the taskbar to the top or sides of the screen…
The Macalope has a Windows machine in his woodland office that he uses for, well, never finishing playing “Starfield”, apparently, and God as his witness he had no idea you could not move the freaking taskbar. He could just never be bothered to try because to him Windows is a thing you get through as fast as possible in order to get to the place you really want to be. Sort of like driving through Delaware.
This is not to say that the latest edition of macOS is his all-time favorite by any stretch of the imagination. The Macalope has one machine upgraded to Tahoe and one is enough. His daily use M4 MacBook Air will stay on Sequoia until the whole corner situation is resolved.
Macs were always worth what Apple charged for them. Well, okay, the Mac Pro is not currently worth what Apple is charging for it, but almost always. It was just that Apple had never competed at the low end of the portable market. Now that it does, Windows OEMs are going to need to scramble.
