The unthinkable happened today: Apple dropped a $600 laptop. The MacBook Neo is more or less what was predicted: no frills, A18 processor, only 8 GB RAM, none of your fancy Center Stage camera or MagSafe plugs or the like. It’s basically a drop-in updated replacement for the original M1 MacBook Air, or for a Chromebook that doesn’t suck, or for a mediocre Best Buy Windows laptop.
It certainly feels like a contender for the “blogger’s delight” spot first filled by the 12″ PowerBook G4 over twenty years ago. Small, cool-running, and far more useful with a keyboard and mouse than trying to make an iPad into a laptop. And thanks to a cunning discount, I could score the higher-end model for that same $600, which would give it 512 GB of storage – same as my phone, twice that of my work laptop – and the added convenience of TouchID, which has turned out to be kind of a must-have in a world of passkeys and ApplePay. Blogging, Signal, proper shopping, maybe streaming and Zoom – and more importantly, all of that stuff NOT on my work computer. There’s something to be said for making it possible to just pull out the work laptop, click “Erase All Content and Settings” and leave it on the desk.
In any event, I’ve already thought through it, so now it’s just a question of deciding whether it’s worth my while.