>we’re lucky it comes with a charger at all

Yup

It's remarkable to me that this shows what an iPhone chip has been capable of, and a reminder about how strongly Apple works to keep phone, tablet, and laptop in separate segments. Even though they share the same chips.

Going to be signficiantly harder for Qualcomm X2 Elite to make a splash, given the price here. I have high hopes for the X2 Elite Extreme (even if it is going to be cursed with incredible difficulty trying to get each of these non-ACPI / DeviceTree systems running Linux). But this raises the bar signficiantly.

Very obvious next step is to release 15" or 16" variant. It would put nail in coffin on cheap PC market. But would also cannibalize their own air/pro sales.

When did $600 become budget?

I swear to god every time I go to Gruber's website he's narrowed the text another ten pixels.

Was my first thought also when I saw it. I honestly planned to ditch Macbooks before they released M1, but this hardware is just so much better than anything Intel or AMD can offer at least for laptops. For people that are not too demanding I've recommended Airs for a while, but this basically has the potential to destroy the entire midrange PC market. Some people will be reluctant to switch, but I don't think the OS is as important today as it was before. So much happens on the web anyway.

edit: also on a tangent, Apple's pricing has become weird. It actually feels like it's a really good bang got the buck. Regular iPads are under 400 now, and they're just better than the competition. MacBook Pro is about the same price as it ever was, but it's just so much better than it was etc.

It's good but it's no Asus eee901

If the Neo had been the next 12" macbook (2.0 lb), it would be the first apple product I would have lined up for.

The article sums up why quite well:

"The biggest shortcoming of the decade-ago MacBook “One”, aside from the baffling decision to include just one USB-C port that was also its only means of charging, was the shitty performance of Intel’s Core M chips. Those chips were small enough and low-power enough to fit in the MacBook’s thin and fan-less enclosure, but they were slow as balls. It was a huge compromise for a laptop that carried a somewhat premium price. Today, performance, performance-per-watt, and physical chip size are all solved problems with Apple Silicon. I’d consider paying double the price of the Neo for a MacBook with similar specs (but more RAM and better I/O) that weighed 2.0 pounds or less. I’d buy such a MacBook not to replace my 14-inch MacBook Pro, but to replace my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro as my “carry around the house” secondary computer.5"

It’s really an iPad running MacOS instead of iOS; the question is whether people want that.

I’m not the target market since I require Linux compatibility but I realize that is not a necessity in the market.

My kids (ages 10, 14) have never used a Windows computer. They were introduced to computing with iPhone and iPad, and they use Chromebooks at school. At home I have Win, Linux and MacOS computers, but they've only used the MacOS ones (not interested in the others). I am trying to get them to use Linux, but unless they want to do hacking-type stuff (that's not them), then it's hard to sell them on it.

When we buy them personal laptops (not there yet), it'll be a MacBook Neo (or its successor). I expect that unless they're forced to at work, they'll never touch a Windows computer in their life.