4 ms·

Plastic shitboxes are a very lucrative segment of the laptop market. I don't think the $600 Macbook will be displacing $200-$300 Chromebooks anytime soon.

kube-system 8mo ago
No, but the $600 MacBooks are coming straight for the $600 plastic shitbox windows laptops. The competition at this price point is weak.
- bigyabai 8mo ago
  Which was formerly challenged by the $700 Macbook Air, to little avail.
  - wat10000 8mo ago
    What $700 MacBook Air?
    - bigyabai 8mo ago
      Costco and other in-person retailers marked down the M1 MBA to $799 and then $699 while reducing their stock.
      - wat10000 8mo ago
        It doesn’t make sense to compare MSRP of one product to sale prices of another. I’m sure the Neo will see similar discounts in those situations too.
    - s0rce 8mo ago
      My M4 Air was $750 on black friday 2025. I bought it after I cracked the screen on my M1 and the cost to repair was half the cost of the much newer computer.
    - Marsymars 8mo ago
      Walmart has been selling the M1 MacBook Air for $700 for the past couple years. (And $650 for the latter part of that time frame.) Those weren't leftover stock or sale prices - Apple was producing the M1 MBA specifically for the $700 price point at third-party retailers.
  - kube-system 8mo ago
    At $950 it has historically been pegged at the #1 spot on Amazons best sellers in the laptop category. It has been recently unseated by the Neo. Wait until retailers start discounting the Neo.
  - ceejayoz 8mo ago
    One of my kids had a college visit recently. Everyone had Macbooks.
- nickjj 8mo ago
  > The competition at this price point is weak. Is it though? 6 months ago for $575, I picked up a 15" 1080p IPS display laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H (8 cores / 16 threads), 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, Radeon 680M iGPU that can use up to 8 GB VRAM and a 1 TB NVME SSD with a backlight keyboard, a bunch of USB ports and HDMI port. It weighs the same as a MBP and comes with a 2 year manufacturer warranty. It's upgradable to 64 GB of RAM and 2 TB SSD. It has Windows 11 but all of the parts are compatible with Linux if you want to go down that route. It's from a brand I never heard of, Nimo N155 but I took a gamble and so far I couldn't be happier. The only problem now is there's major shortages and prices are jacked because of the RAM situation. The same model is $700 today and much harder to find, even their official site is out of stock on this model.
  - kube-system 8mo ago
    All of those specs are orthogonal to the gripes people are referring to when they call a laptop a "plastic shitbox"
    - bigyabai 8mo ago
      Apple sold high-quality plastic laptops for a very long time, so evidently there's something there.
      - addaon 8mo ago
        High quality for their time. The toilet bowl was very heavy for its screen size, and had minimal volume for battery. The G3 iBook lacked rigidity, and had a tendency to damage the mainboard if picked up from a corner. The G4 iBook had grounding issues, and would occasionally get spicy with two-prong outlets. All three of these issues were directly related to the plastic chassis. All three were great laptops for their day; none would be acceptable in this decade.
      - kube-system 8mo ago
        There’s nothing wrong with plastic as a material, but there’s a lot wrong with many of the designs of mid-tier laptops that happen to use plastic. The plastic isn’t as much a cause of their problems as it is a signature feature of all hastily assembled corner-cut devices.
- simonh 8mo ago
  Also Apple are masters of the up-sell. Someone who knows $600 windows laptops are crap might just buy a cheaper Chromebook because crap is crap, but they might spring for another few hundred bucks for something they have confidence is actually pretty nice and has brand Caché.
itsmanjeet 8mo ago
maybe, but performance wise they seem far ahead of typical Chromebooks in same , and with a real OS!
computomatic 8mo ago
I have a company-issued plastic shitbox. It’s $1100 and made by dell.
- bigyabai 8mo ago
  Case in point, your company could have afforded a Mac but chose otherwise.
  - bombcar 8mo ago
    The problem has always been no direct "I want a Mac but Windows" laptop - before the switch to the M1 the best way to get a "Mac quality laptop" that ran windows was to put windows on a Mac. Go to Best Buy or walmart and fondle the Neo and then do the same with the other Windows laptops. Even though they may perform better (nay, even be better), they certainly do not feel like a premium product. Phones got this right; there are shitty Android phones, but the premium models feel like an iPhone.
    - nicoburns 8mo ago
      Microsoft could probably put Windows on the M series macs if they wanted to. Windows for ARM exists, and Apple very specifically made the bootloader unlockable on the Apple Silicon laptops. I guess they might have to write a lot of the device drivers (including the GPU driver) themselves though, and there probably isn't much incentive for them to do that.
      - bombcar 8mo ago
        Microsoft Surface laptops are the closest you can get to a "Mac with Windows" in quality/thought (that I've found) and the ARM CPU not being able to use x86 printer drivers is infuriating. Otherwise, decent.
      - OJFord 8mo ago
        Microsoft doing that would be wild. You used to be able to put it on Macs yourself, i.e. just install it the way you would on any computer, or equivalently put Linux on it. Now, see (all the work that has to be done by the team of) Asahi, except there's no Windows equivalent. If MS did 'Asahi-Windows'... I don't know whether I'd expect Apple to sue or to make ads making fun of it, but it would be a wild time.

kube-system 8mo ago

No, but the $600 MacBooks are coming straight for the $600 plastic shitbox windows laptops. The competition at this price point is weak.

bigyabai 8mo ago
Which was formerly challenged by the $700 Macbook Air, to little avail.
- wat10000 8mo ago
  What $700 MacBook Air?
  - bigyabai 8mo ago
    Costco and other in-person retailers marked down the M1 MBA to $799 and then $699 while reducing their stock.
    - wat10000 8mo ago
      It doesn’t make sense to compare MSRP of one product to sale prices of another. I’m sure the Neo will see similar discounts in those situations too.
  - s0rce 8mo ago
    My M4 Air was $750 on black friday 2025. I bought it after I cracked the screen on my M1 and the cost to repair was half the cost of the much newer computer.
  - Marsymars 8mo ago
    Walmart has been selling the M1 MacBook Air for $700 for the past couple years. (And $650 for the latter part of that time frame.) Those weren't leftover stock or sale prices - Apple was producing the M1 MBA specifically for the $700 price point at third-party retailers.
- kube-system 8mo ago
  At $950 it has historically been pegged at the #1 spot on Amazons best sellers in the laptop category. It has been recently unseated by the Neo. Wait until retailers start discounting the Neo.
- ceejayoz 8mo ago
  One of my kids had a college visit recently. Everyone had Macbooks.
nickjj 8mo ago
> The competition at this price point is weak. Is it though? 6 months ago for $575, I picked up a 15" 1080p IPS display laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H (8 cores / 16 threads), 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, Radeon 680M iGPU that can use up to 8 GB VRAM and a 1 TB NVME SSD with a backlight keyboard, a bunch of USB ports and HDMI port. It weighs the same as a MBP and comes with a 2 year manufacturer warranty. It's upgradable to 64 GB of RAM and 2 TB SSD. It has Windows 11 but all of the parts are compatible with Linux if you want to go down that route. It's from a brand I never heard of, Nimo N155 but I took a gamble and so far I couldn't be happier. The only problem now is there's major shortages and prices are jacked because of the RAM situation. The same model is $700 today and much harder to find, even their official site is out of stock on this model.
- kube-system 8mo ago
  All of those specs are orthogonal to the gripes people are referring to when they call a laptop a "plastic shitbox"
  - bigyabai 8mo ago
    Apple sold high-quality plastic laptops for a very long time, so evidently there's something there.
    - addaon 8mo ago
      High quality for their time. The toilet bowl was very heavy for its screen size, and had minimal volume for battery. The G3 iBook lacked rigidity, and had a tendency to damage the mainboard if picked up from a corner. The G4 iBook had grounding issues, and would occasionally get spicy with two-prong outlets. All three of these issues were directly related to the plastic chassis. All three were great laptops for their day; none would be acceptable in this decade.
    - kube-system 8mo ago
      There’s nothing wrong with plastic as a material, but there’s a lot wrong with many of the designs of mid-tier laptops that happen to use plastic. The plastic isn’t as much a cause of their problems as it is a signature feature of all hastily assembled corner-cut devices.
simonh 8mo ago
Also Apple are masters of the up-sell. Someone who knows $600 windows laptops are crap might just buy a cheaper Chromebook because crap is crap, but they might spring for another few hundred bucks for something they have confidence is actually pretty nice and has brand Caché.

itsmanjeet 8mo ago

maybe, but performance wise they seem far ahead of typical Chromebooks in same , and with a real OS!

computomatic 8mo ago

I have a company-issued plastic shitbox. It’s $1100 and made by dell.

bigyabai 8mo ago
Case in point, your company could have afforded a Mac but chose otherwise.
- bombcar 8mo ago
  The problem has always been no direct "I want a Mac but Windows" laptop - before the switch to the M1 the best way to get a "Mac quality laptop" that ran windows was to put windows on a Mac. Go to Best Buy or walmart and fondle the Neo and then do the same with the other Windows laptops. Even though they may perform better (nay, even be better), they certainly do not feel like a premium product. Phones got this right; there are shitty Android phones, but the premium models feel like an iPhone.
  - nicoburns 8mo ago
    Microsoft could probably put Windows on the M series macs if they wanted to. Windows for ARM exists, and Apple very specifically made the bootloader unlockable on the Apple Silicon laptops. I guess they might have to write a lot of the device drivers (including the GPU driver) themselves though, and there probably isn't much incentive for them to do that.
    - bombcar 8mo ago
      Microsoft Surface laptops are the closest you can get to a "Mac with Windows" in quality/thought (that I've found) and the ARM CPU not being able to use x86 printer drivers is infuriating. Otherwise, decent.
    - OJFord 8mo ago
      Microsoft doing that would be wild. You used to be able to put it on Macs yourself, i.e. just install it the way you would on any computer, or equivalently put Linux on it. Now, see (all the work that has to be done by the team of) Asahi, except there's no Windows equivalent. If MS did 'Asahi-Windows'... I don't know whether I'd expect Apple to sue or to make ads making fun of it, but it would be a wild time.