Summary created by Smart Answers AI
In summary:
- Macworld reports that Microsoft released a new video promoting the $699 Dell XPS 13 as an alternative to the popular MacBook Neo.
- The video highlights the XPS 13’s design and construction quality, but Macworld notes that 8GB RAM remains insufficient for Windows users compared to macOS performance.
- Microsoft’s ongoing marketing efforts to counter the MacBook Neo suggest the Apple laptop continues posing a significant competitive challenge in the market.
Sure, the MacBook Neo is pricier than it was a few months ago, but it’s still a great deal. It’s also still a threat to the Windows PC makers, so Microsoft, which makes the operating system at the core of those cheap, flimsy laptops that compete with the Neo, has gone on the offensive. It first published a white paper that made apples-to-oranges hardware comparisons and touted the virtues of Windows (hahahahahaha).
In its newest move, the Microsoft Windows X account posted a video of the new $699 Dell XPS 13 laptop, which is supposed to highlight the laptop’s design and construction. However, while there’s no direct comparison to the MacBook Neo in the video, and it’s basically a re-creation a user-made video that compares an older Dell laptop to the Neo.
I’m not sure why Microsoft thinks its video is effective. If anything, it further proves Apple’s point with the MacBook Neo, that customers shouldn’t have to sacrifice quality for price. The new XPS 13 is definitely several steps up in quality compared to the HP PC laptop in the older video. If anything, the new video shows how much better the Dell laptop is than HP’s. You might even say it offers Neo-like quality for the same price.
The XPS 13 got a lot of attention during its reveal in early June. Dell went out of its way to compare it to the MacBook Neo, but one of its most glaring drawbacks is its 8GB of RAM. But that’s what the Neo has, you say, so what’s the problem? Well, macOS is much better with 8GB of RAM than Windows is, and people who use Windows a lot more than we here at Macworld say that 8GB for Windows is not enough.
In any case, this isn’t the last we’ll hear from Microsoft, Dell, or any of Apple’s other competitors with MacBook Neo comparisons because the MacBook Neo is a hot seller. What will be interesting to see is if Microsoft finally realizes that the major problem isn’t PC hardware, but Windows. Until its problems are addressed, the Neo will be an issue for Microsoft at any price.
