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Apple is moving into Google's territory, cheap Chromebooks. The right move for Google is to aggressively move forward with their desktop OS and launch their lin

Apple is moving into Google's territory, cheap Chromebooks. The right move for Google is to aggressively move forward with their desktop OS and launch their line of laptops. The first pixel laptops had the best keyboards and trackpads ever. Google can nail this if they have the right product person. Apple needs some competition and the legacy PC makers won't cut it. Once again, it has to be Apple vs Google, same as Android vs iOS devices.

materielle 8mo ago
What’s actually going to happen is the second they start to lose market share or struggle at all, they will cancel everything Chromebook related and give up. With that said, I think Chromebook’s still hold a competitive advantage for public school contracts. It doesn’t matter that the Neo is pretty cheap and the best value. Contracts are signed based on what’s cheapest, period. Also, a big blind spot for a lot of HN: this is going to be big in developing Markets. This is within budget for middle class Latin Americans in a way that even the Air isn’t.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- thelastgallon 8mo ago
  You are probably right. Just saw the news about Google Fiber being sold. What a shame!
dangus 8mo ago
I think this is somewhat ignorant the wide variety of legitimately very decent Windows PC laptops available in the exact same $500-700 price range as the MacBook Neo. Apple isn’t disrupting the industry here. Don’t buy into early influencer review hype. These reviewers don’t actually look at retail store pricing. Apple is just making a decision to go downmarket and making many of the same compromises as other cheap laptops, and some odd compromises that are unique to Apple’s machine: No haptic trackpad, no keyboard backlight, no Touch ID on the cheap model, lower-end screen, very small battery, tiny slow charger included, minimal and performance compromised I/O, below-par RAM, worse speakers/microphones, an old nothing-special processor. This is the exact same stuff that people have complained about for years with cheap laptops. The fact that the computer is made of aluminum is really a distraction from these facts. This idea that it’s Google versus Apple all over again is just not true. Windows is the dominant OS in the laptop space by far. Over 900 billion people in the world play PC games on windows, for example. If you look at Best Buy street pricing, what Apple has pulled off here is not that impressive. Let’s say you want the top end Neo model at $699. Spend $100 more at Best Buy and you’ll end up with a Yoga 7 machine with double the RAM, double the storage (1TB), 70Whr battery, and a very capable and efficient AMD Ryzen 7 AI 350 chip that has faster multicore and same or faster graphics performance. You’ll gain user-replaceable SSD, backlit keyboard, convertible OLED touch screen, digital pen support, more and faster USB ports, microSD slot, HDMI port, fast charger in the box, better speakers, WiFi 7, bigger screen in a more popular 14” size…it’s a better buy that will last years longer for only a slight price increase (or, spend less on the Ryzen 5 AI 340 variant ($680) if you’re okay with compromising GPU performance, which most people in this category are, and you’ll still end up with double the RAM of the Neo and 512GB storage at $20 less than Apple’s non-education store price) Seriously, give me a good reason to buy a Neo over a machine like this. What is actually better about the Mac objectively? https://www.bestbuy.com/product/lenovo-yoga-7-2-in-1-copilot-pc-14-2k-oled-touchscreen-laptop-amd-ryzen-ai-5-340-2025-16gb-memory-512gb-ssd-seashell/JJGSHC5C4F/sku/6615841 https://www.bestbuy.com/product/lenovo-yoga-7-2-in-1-copilot...
- ewoodrich 8mo ago
  Damn, an OLED screen at my go-to 14" screen size, and I can actually run Fedora on it? Going to have to do some more research on this thing...
  - dangus 8mo ago
    In case you need it, this is the next model up with the 350 processor. If you care about graphics performance it has double the cores, and the bigger SSD as I mentioned: https://www.bestbuy.com/product/lenovo-yoga-7-2-in-1-copilot-pc-14-2k-oled-touchscreen-laptop-amd-ryzen-ai-7-350-2025-16gb-memory-1tb-ssd-seashell/JJGSHC5C4H/sku/6615773 https://www.bestbuy.com/product/lenovo-yoga-7-2-in-1-copilot... Review: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTe5kUYt9k https://youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTe5kUYt9k
- jen20 8mo ago
  > Over 900 billion people in the world play PC games on windows, for example. "As of 2026, the world population is approximately 8.3 billion." [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
  - dangus 8mo ago
    And only 100 million people globally use Macs as of 2024. The PC gaming market alone is 9x larger than the Mac's install base. https://www.spyhunter.com/shm/macos-stats/ https://www.spyhunter.com/shm/macos-stats/ That means a LOT of students who the MacBook Neo appeals to will cross it off their list for the mere fact that they can’t play things like Counter Strike 2/CS:Go on it. If I was a student today and only had $700 budget for all my equipment I’d probably end up with a previous generation Lenovo LOQ with the RTX 4050 or a current generation Acer Nitro with the RTX 5050. These laptops are thicker and heavier but they get decent battery life on integrated graphics for school work, then when I get back to my dorm I could play popular gaming titles without buying a separate game console. I’m sure the Neo will sell well and increase Apple’s market share, but this idea that it’s a market-changing disruptive device is an exaggeration. The #1 laptop manufacturer in the world is Lenovo, who sells nearly 3x as many systems as Apple, who is in 4th place. I think it will actually be quite trivial for manufacturers like Lenovo to respond and make their own similar model.
ewoodrich 8mo ago
$599 is about 4x what I paid for my current Chromebook...
michaelhoney 8mo ago
I think it'd be great if they did that, but Google is pretty willing to cut things that aren't working out, whereas for Apple, they are committed to making and selling laptops

materielle 8mo ago

What’s actually going to happen is the second they start to lose market share or struggle at all, they will cancel everything Chromebook related and give up. With that said, I think Chromebook’s still hold a competitive advantage for public school contracts. It doesn’t matter that the Neo is pretty cheap and the best value. Contracts are signed based on what’s cheapest, period. Also, a big blind spot for a lot of HN: this is going to be big in developing Markets. This is within budget for middle class Latin Americans in a way that even the Air isn’t.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
thelastgallon 8mo ago
You are probably right. Just saw the news about Google Fiber being sold. What a shame!

dangus 8mo ago

I think this is somewhat ignorant the wide variety of legitimately very decent Windows PC laptops available in the exact same $500-700 price range as the MacBook Neo. Apple isn’t disrupting the industry here. Don’t buy into early influencer review hype. These reviewers don’t actually look at retail store pricing. Apple is just making a decision to go downmarket and making many of the same compromises as other cheap laptops, and some odd compromises that are unique to Apple’s machine: No haptic trackpad, no keyboard backlight, no Touch ID on the cheap model, lower-end screen, very small battery, tiny slow charger included, minimal and performance compromised I/O, below-par RAM, worse speakers/microphones, an old nothing-special processor. This is the exact same stuff that people have complained about for years with cheap laptops. The fact that the computer is made of aluminum is really a distraction from these facts. This idea that it’s Google versus Apple all over again is just not true. Windows is the dominant OS in the laptop space by far. Over 900 billion people in the world play PC games on windows, for example. If you look at Best Buy street pricing, what Apple has pulled off here is not that impressive. Let’s say you want the top end Neo model at $699. Spend $100 more at Best Buy and you’ll end up with a Yoga 7 machine with double the RAM, double the storage (1TB), 70Whr battery, and a very capable and efficient AMD Ryzen 7 AI 350 chip that has faster multicore and same or faster graphics performance. You’ll gain user-replaceable SSD, backlit keyboard, convertible OLED touch screen, digital pen support, more and faster USB ports, microSD slot, HDMI port, fast charger in the box, better speakers, WiFi 7, bigger screen in a more popular 14” size…it’s a better buy that will last years longer for only a slight price increase (or, spend less on the Ryzen 5 AI 340 variant ($680) if you’re okay with compromising GPU performance, which most people in this category are, and you’ll still end up with double the RAM of the Neo and 512GB storage at $20 less than Apple’s non-education store price) Seriously, give me a good reason to buy a Neo over a machine like this. What is actually better about the Mac objectively? https://www.bestbuy.com/product/lenovo-yoga-7-2-in-1-copilot-pc-14-2k-oled-touchscreen-laptop-amd-ryzen-ai-5-340-2025-16gb-memory-512gb-ssd-seashell/JJGSHC5C4F/sku/6615841 https://www.bestbuy.com/product/lenovo-yoga-7-2-in-1-copilot...

ewoodrich 8mo ago
Damn, an OLED screen at my go-to 14" screen size, and I can actually run Fedora on it? Going to have to do some more research on this thing...
- dangus 8mo ago
  In case you need it, this is the next model up with the 350 processor. If you care about graphics performance it has double the cores, and the bigger SSD as I mentioned: https://www.bestbuy.com/product/lenovo-yoga-7-2-in-1-copilot-pc-14-2k-oled-touchscreen-laptop-amd-ryzen-ai-7-350-2025-16gb-memory-1tb-ssd-seashell/JJGSHC5C4H/sku/6615773 https://www.bestbuy.com/product/lenovo-yoga-7-2-in-1-copilot... Review: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTe5kUYt9k https://youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTe5kUYt9k
jen20 8mo ago
> Over 900 billion people in the world play PC games on windows, for example. "As of 2026, the world population is approximately 8.3 billion." [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
- dangus 8mo ago
  And only 100 million people globally use Macs as of 2024. The PC gaming market alone is 9x larger than the Mac's install base. https://www.spyhunter.com/shm/macos-stats/ https://www.spyhunter.com/shm/macos-stats/ That means a LOT of students who the MacBook Neo appeals to will cross it off their list for the mere fact that they can’t play things like Counter Strike 2/CS:Go on it. If I was a student today and only had $700 budget for all my equipment I’d probably end up with a previous generation Lenovo LOQ with the RTX 4050 or a current generation Acer Nitro with the RTX 5050. These laptops are thicker and heavier but they get decent battery life on integrated graphics for school work, then when I get back to my dorm I could play popular gaming titles without buying a separate game console. I’m sure the Neo will sell well and increase Apple’s market share, but this idea that it’s a market-changing disruptive device is an exaggeration. The #1 laptop manufacturer in the world is Lenovo, who sells nearly 3x as many systems as Apple, who is in 4th place. I think it will actually be quite trivial for manufacturers like Lenovo to respond and make their own similar model.

ewoodrich 8mo ago

$599 is about 4x what I paid for my current Chromebook...

michaelhoney 8mo ago

I think it'd be great if they did that, but Google is pretty willing to cut things that aren't working out, whereas for Apple, they are committed to making and selling laptops