When the cheap one is the cool one

I bought a Neo to "replace" an M3 MacBook Air "travel/out of the house/outside" laptop. Are there drawbacks? Most certainly, but it feels like something special, and I enjoy the slightly smaller form factor. The main drawback is perhaps the most surprising, the screen, which is really good at 500 nits, draws a disproportionate amount of energy compared to the rest of the system, so you get about 3.5 hours in bright sunlight / maximum brightness.

As the only IT person in an 80 person unit, I can say the Neo trounces Dell Latitudes in a lot of ways, those have awful 250 nit screens out of the box, and they are nearly $1,200!

Apple will price bump this machine within 2 years and/or retire it later. At this point all the poor souls who have entered the Apple ecosystem will be due to an upgrade, forced to buy a more expensive entry model.

The first Mac Mini was $500, in 2018 the same Mac started at $800.

in my car circles the 968 was seen as a total pos that was really just sort of trying to compete with the RX-7 and Fairlady, do a worse job at being a good sports car than them, and push the brand into further cheapened territory towards the every-person for the sake of financial incentive while inflating the cost of their premium offering, the 911.

1:1 example, but i'm not sure those were the points being made here.

Apple has been doing this for ages. The base tier one always gets the fun colors while the pro models get silver, grey, and maybe some muted blue.

Not sure why they make the cheaper models cooler than the top tier ones. Maybe it's just too expensive to stock multiple colors of every product. The Neo has minimal customization options for specs so making it colorful is cheaper.

Resonates. Reminds me of old Thinkpads. Cheap sometimes means accessible, simple, minimal, functional.

I am so tired of everything electronic only coming in black and maybe gray.

I like colors!

So it's nice to see apple finally bringing a bit of color back.

"Back then, Porsche was not in the fantastic position it is in today. Its model lineup was aging. "

Kinda hard to take this article seriously...

https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2026/company/porsche-deliver...