So I’ve had the better part of a week with a MacBook Neo, testing it out for work. At one point I was running a stream of an episode of Agents of SHIELD (first season, obvs) on Disney+, an audio stream of Vaporwaves on SomaFM, a family Zoom session, an online Crashplan backup, an install of Microsoft Teams, reading a Slack channel…and it was just fine. It did balk for a moment when it finished the Teams install, but I wouldn’t grade any product by how it handles Microsoft products. All in all, it was an impressive performance. And that was running under the restrictions of CIS Level 1 security settings and accompanying device control and DLP software, not to mention Crowdstrike.
And all of this, as Rands pointed out on his blog, with a machine that is basically recycled leftovers. A 100% recycled aluminum shell around a binned iPhone 16 Pro SoC – arguably inferior to the processor set in my phone, one less GPU core – Apple is selling their e-waste for $600 a pop. And their e-waste runs rings around every other computer you can buy at that price point. And it’s not close.
This is the 50th Anniversary Macintosh. This is the Apple vision, fifty years later. The least expensive complete Macintosh system of all time, for fewer dollars than the original Apple I. And it does everything I need, frankly – the Apple application suite, plus MarsEdit and Signal, is enough to cover me and still leave more than half of the 256 GB model free (and almost 400 GB free on the higher end model).
The only topics of real concern are 1) I don’t know how long it will run Kentucky Route Zero, given the forthcoming end to Intel emulation support, although there’s supposed to be a game layer coming to keep those viable so who knows. 2) I don’t know how long it will run. Single-core performance is on a par with the M3, but multicore is closer to the M1, and that suggests it kind of comes pre-aged two years. Is it going to stay viable long enough to make the cost per year less than a 13” MacBook Air equivalent? Jury’s out.
And most of all, 3) the Great Mentioner says that it will be updated to binned iPhone 17 Pro SoCs next year, but the wild demand may be even higher than Apple anticipated and they may soon have a choice between either running out or changing early to the newer, more efficient, cooler-running, 50%-more-RAM-having A19 Pro. And if I can hold out and wait for that, I absolutely would, the cost of everything notwithstanding. Hopefully using binned A19 Pros would not be any more expensive – kind of a sunk cost, honestly – and I would love an identical form factor and cost (and there’s no reason to think it would be anything but a SoC replacement). Farming out the authentication to the Apple Watch on the low end model, or the fancy camera to the iPhone you probably already own via the use of Continuity Camera, makes it easier to build a cheap and cheerful laptop that’s everything you need and nothing you don’t.
I officially want it. But I’m going to wait. And wipe it and set it up for a few days of personal use just to prove it.