When the cheap one is the cool one

https://arun.is/blog/cheap-cool/

by ddrmaxgt37 • 3 months ago

172 111 3 months ago

arun.is

prngl2• 3 months ago

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

userbinator2• 3 months ago

Thinkpads were definitely never cheap.

protocolture2• 3 months ago

Eh cheaper than now for sure.

I got my old G1 X1 Carbon for somewhere between 900 and 1100 from memory. Theres a fair discount in there mind, but its not a discount I could possibly hope to replicate these days.

(I think that was 1600 dollars partner pricing - charity discount - volume discount (hopped on an order for 12 already identical already going through) - tax incentives)

The cheapest Gen 13 Carbon currently available is ~ 2600 in the same currency, and that's already discounted by 9%, and has a shittier OS (Ships with Home edition instead of Pro), I doubt that would get below 2200 even with partner/channel pricing.

If you add "Winflation" that is, Windows 7/8 running perfectly smoothly on the Gen 1 with 8 Gig of memory, the replacement thinkpad being one that runs Windows 11 comfortably would be the $3150 in the same money, for its 32GB memory. Again doubtful it would go below 2700 or so even with channel.

Macbook NEO is funnily enough 900 bucks landed for me, with 8 gig of memory. I am betting the user experience of the thing is as good or if not better than my old carbon.

prngl2• 3 months ago

Should have specified old used thinkpads. I’ve never bought one new. My daily driver is 10+yo, bought for $200 and upgraded mem, battery, and ssd with another $100.

torginus• 3 months ago

I just had a company Thinkpad break because its fan started rattiling. It was just out of warranty, like 3.5 years old.

Within a span of a year, out of my dozen coworkers who have the exact same laptop, half of them went down with similar issues.

burnt-resistor• 3 months ago

Yup. My T480 was ~$2500 new on-sale. It has 2 batteries with one removable one, and upgradeable RAM.. features not found on the T490 or T480s.

I subsequently swapped the logic board from the iGPU to the dGPU + max performance CPU model, swapped the top cover for a magnesium one, HDD->SSD, and installed a better WiFi module. Also had to replace the screen once because I suck and broke it.

readthenotes1• 3 months ago

"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...

TacticalCoder• 3 months ago

No it's correct. When the 968 came out it was the absolutely worst years ever for Porsche: they were nearly completely bankrupt and Porsche ceasing to exist was actually on the table. They were selling as little as 15 000 cars in a full year in 1992 or something like that (compared to nearly 60 K, nearly 4x as much, in 1986). Compared that to nearly 300 000 today and an insane lineup.

Sure, the EU pretty much killed its auto car industry, offering the markets to Tesla and Chinese EVs (and there are talks of chinese buying Porsche), but Porsche has a crazy lineup compared to what it used to have: 911, Cayman, Boxster, Panamera, Taycan (the 100% EV), Macan and Cayenne and soooo many different sub-models of those (GT4, GTS, Turbo (S), Targa, GT3 (RS), GT2 (RS), S/T, S/C ...).

They just even announced a 911 GT3 S/C // convertible (heresy for some but I love it). For any Porsche enthusiast, we're pretty much living the golden age of Porsche where you can still buy a normally aspirated, stick shift, driver's car. In 2026: thank you so much Porsche for being sufficiently crazy to still do that in 2026, in an era where people are paying subscription to receive OTA updates for their EVs.

And any Porsche enthusiast knows that the early 1990s were nearly the death of Porsche. It was a close call.

BTW to anyone saying the modern Porsche aren't "real" Porsche cars, I send them love from my 911 Carrera from 1988. You can both love old and new Porsche cars.

parpfish• 3 months ago

Were they worse off in the 90s than they were in the late 70s? Because I’ve heard that the entry model 924 saved them from the brink in that decade.

Funny that each end of the transaxle lineage were saviors

ddmitriev• 3 months ago

where you can still buy a normally aspirated, stick shift, driver's car

The problem is that you can't buy them. All of these "interesting" 911s are limited production in practice even when not limited editions per se and are sold to most favorite clients only, a good chunk of whom then immediately flip them with delivery mileage---i.e. playing Ferrari games without the Ferrari name. I respect and like Porsche the car manufacturer, and I have put a lot of track miles on my 991.2 GT3 RS across the US, but I despise what their sales model has become.

/rant

serf• 3 months ago

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.

majormajor• 3 months ago

The 968 is such a weird choice for this when the Boxster exists, did basically everything better, was a major commercial success, and has spawned a line of cars that many argue are better than the 911 except for the name and traditionalist-fandom over exact engine position that prevents Porsche from giving them all the biggest engines and fanciest tech.

But the Boxster didn't try to replace the 911 on day one. Or even go after the other 300ZX/Supra/whatever 2+2s on day one. It was instead nearly a whole-cloth "what if pure 2-seater convertible driver's car, but the best possible version" upscale-Miata initially, which wasn't an existing segment at all, and being roadster-first was a key separator from the also-2-seater Corvette.

(The iPhone or iPad were arguable Apple's Boxster "entry-level that ends up dominating sales and growing into full blown new product lines" anyway, except that the comparison eventually falls down because the form factor difference with the Mac is much more of a fundamental separation. So maybe Apple's Boxster is instead the laptop in the first place, which wiped out most of their desktop workstation business by the early-2010s at latest.)

71bw2• 3 months ago

I presume the 968 was chosen because it all seems like the Neo is only the first hurrah into this whole entry-level field for Apple.

keyle• 3 months ago

Yeah this is looking at the 968 with rose tinted glasses. But a lot of the comparison does check out and the Neo is a fine on-ramp for first time macOS users just like the 968.

alamortsubite4• 3 months ago

Porsche killed the 944S Turbo because it was accidentally faster than the Carrera and 930, and that was taboo. Its successor, the 968, was the awkward compromise.

havaloc• 3 months ago

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!

chillfox2• 3 months ago

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.

TomWhitwell• 3 months ago

https://www.alexandercowan.com/yellow-walkman-data-art-of-cu...

chillfox2• 3 months ago

ok, so focus groups suck...

I have actually picked the colored version almost every time I have bought electronics. I have got red and blue usb drives. I have got a purple phone. I have a blue mouse, the previous one was pink, and my keyboard is green.

socalgal2• 3 months ago

I'm fine with a case. I can change the color to match my outfit

https://www.amazon.com/Se7enline-Compatible-MacBook-Protecti...

Gigachad3• 3 months ago

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.

brailsafe4• 3 months ago

I'm definitely getting sick of the dull colours in the higher end laptops. Give me a yellow, give me a red, forest green, whatever, anything but silver and darker silver

margalabargala• 3 months ago

$10 in enamel paints and a free half hour and you can have as cool looking of a laptop as you like!

hypercube33• 3 months ago

It's cars too - you'll get muted blue, 5 greys a black, white and better enjoy being boring.

Near 2000 everything came in wild colors. I fondly miss bright red motherboards even, or orange ones.

FerretFred2• 3 months ago

I got the citrus version because it made such a change from the usual. However, I'd love it if Apple could make some truly vibrant non-pastel colours like tangerine and lime devices they did in the early days.

red_admiral2• 3 months ago

Ah, fond memories of the original CRT iMacs. I think you could take off the color covering and replace it with a different one?

More color choices that there are Pokemon games.

kergonath• 3 months ago

Blue Dalmatian!

red_admiral2• 3 months ago

Market segmentation? High-end ones have to look "professional", I presume the thinking is you wouldn't give a serious boardroom presentation on a lime-colored laptop.

On the other hand, for students and schoolkids once you've solved "cheap", it's a plus to also tweak for "fun".

Speaking of market segmentation - this may vary by country but on https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ (US site accessed from EU VPN) if I scroll down a bit, what gender do you think the "blush" color is most associated with? Is it coincidence that the laptop is being held in a hand with painted nails? (And a wedding ring.)

Gigachad3• 3 months ago

I agree businesses would probably want dull laptops. But plenty of non corporate users would like color.

I’d still pick the MacBook Pro because it has an SD card slot which any photographer is going to want. I don’t need something that blends in at a board room.

ErroneousBosh2• 3 months ago

In the very olden days of 1999-ish when I worked for a very expensive AV shop in Glasgow, we used to be an agent for Loewe. You could order your expensive (like four times as much as an equivalent top-spec Sony, three times as much as Grundig) TV in any colour you liked - they'd spray it anything you wanted.

One of the last jobs I did for them before moving onto a very early streaming video company in 2000 was opening up this pristine "Oxford Blue Metallic" (stock Landrover colour from the time, mine is that colour) 32" TV and fitting a VGA adaptor board to it so the customer could play videos and games from his PC on his new telly directly. It had a scan line doubler in to reduce flicker, which I guess was the precursor of "Mexican Soap Opera Mode" in modern TVs, and that allowed it to display 1280x720x50p smoothly.

It looked fantastic but I don't know that it was £3700-in-early-2000s-money fantastic - or about seven grand today.

Imagine paying three and a half grand for a telly, even if it was sprayed the same colour as your 80 grand Range Rover.

wink• 3 months ago

I still have an ATX Midi case sitting here in my office, bought in 1998, spray painted with the same Ford Metallic blue colour that my Fiesta had, a couple years later, because I only needed the can to fix a couple small scratches and had so much paint left.

I don't see anything wrong here except the price ;)

philistine4• 3 months ago

With their phones and other stuff, sure. But colours in laptops haven't been seen since the toilet seat iBooks.

Gigachad3• 3 months ago

The MacBook Air has had colors for a while. Not particularly bold ones but they did blue and rose gold.

alamortsubite4• 3 months ago

Dell took a stab at colors with the Mini netbooks circa 2008.

conception• 3 months ago

This sadly is true in so many segments. The worst is cars. “I’d like the highest trim… oh it’s only available in three boring colors?”

rldjbpin2• 3 months ago

The base tier one always gets the fun colors

not universally true for all of their products. the new iphone pro max to the apple watch ultra got the bright orange going for them compared the typical muted colours for the base one. the "red" edition, while for charity, used to be the exclusive (maybe more expensive?) version when there was fewer segmentation between the products.

ehnto• 3 months ago

It's a shame most companies don't do weird and interesting variants anymore. I suppose it's hard to do when you need mass market appeal.

Especially in regards to cars, often getting a bargain is about finding the cars with faults you personally don't care about but most people do, or versions not many are interested in.

Unfortunately the way speculators have inflated the used market means the rare (because no-one wanted it) versions are priced on their rarity not their utility.

paulmooreparks• 3 months ago

I'm thinking about buying a Neo for two reasons: my laptop is only ever used to RDP into my home Windows workstation, which is where I do all my serious work; and because I need to have a Mac to test some software I'm writing (Tela, find it on my GitHub) that has to be multi-platform. The battery life is also a plus for remote work, but that's about it. I don't want to spend four digits where three will do.

kleiba2• 3 months ago

Cut back to Porsche in 1992, and you’ll see a similar story playing out in a very different industry. Back then, Porsche was not in the fantastic position it is in today. Its model lineup was aging.

Perhaps picking Porsche for this analogy wasn't necessarily the best choice: https://investorrelations.porsche.com/en/financial-informati...

So much for "fantastic position it is in today"...

la_oveja• 3 months ago

i might be mistaken but you are looking at Porsche AG; the actual car company was made into a holding in 2007 and now called Porsche SE, then founded Porsche AG to make the cars.

Porsche AG is part of the Volkswagen Group that is owned by Porsche SE.

either way car manufacture is not a big profit game

gradstudent2• 3 months ago

Weighing up a Neo vs Framework 12 for my kids. The Neo is nicer, but I'll probably get the Framework even though it's more expensive. Apple products seem to have a fixed shelf life; a certain number of years of support and then the machine is slowly incompatible with apps that have since moved on to newer versions of macOS. Meanwhile Framework supports Linux and is still providing hardware/software upgrade paths for their old machines.

mjamesaustin• 3 months ago

Just my personal perspective, every Apple laptop I've ever owned has lasted 10+ years. Their phones may have some planned obsolescence, but I don't find that to be the case at all with their computers.

fainpul• 3 months ago

My personal perspective: 2 out of 3 MacBook Pro, I worked with, had expanding batteries after about 5 years. Replacement was a big hassle and the new no-name batteries are nowhere near as good as the original ones.

I sure wish it was as easy as a battery replacement on a Framework laptop (with an original part).

I know the Neo has easier battery replacement (not glued in), but still it has an iFixit rating of 6/10 whereas the Framework 12 has a 10/10.

gradstudent2• 3 months ago

I think this is less true than it used to be? I ran my MBP2013 into the ground after 10+ years, but my circa 2018 imac retina is stuck on pre-Catalina, installing which requires opencore patcher anyway. Hardware is fine, but it's increasingly less useful as a daily driver on account of software.

DanielHB3• 3 months ago

Old intel macbook pros definitely didn't last 10+ years, the overheating problems really reduced their lifetime.

71bw2• 3 months ago

My 2015 MacBook Air, purchased new in 2017, was already practically dead by 2021.

deaux• 3 months ago

Tahoe (in particular Liquid Glass) is the harbinger of bringing the iOS planned obsolescence to Mac. It has begun.

ymolodtsov• 3 months ago

In my experience their phones last far longer than Androids. Only in the last few years Samsung and Pixel have switched to at least 7 years (now it's the question of whether the hardware will suffice).

Until it broke, I was still using my 2018 iPad just last year.

nottorp2• 3 months ago

every Apple laptop I've ever owned has lasted 10+ years

.. as long as you avoided the emoji keyboard era, or never used an emoji keyboard laptop outdoors or even with your windo open :)

I have laptops much older than the ~2018 that work perfectly. But not only the 2018's keyboard broke, but to add insult to the injury they used a display cable that was too short in that generation and that broke too.

That is Cook's legacy :)

ChrisMarshallNY5• 3 months ago

I still use a 2012 MacBook Air 11” for running Zoom calls.

It’s stuck in Catalina, but I still get updates.

Most apps run fine on it.

Apple kit lasts a long time.

eeixlk• 3 months ago

As someone who keeps apple laptops for 7 or so years but also has encountered numerous macbook pro meltdowns both applecare covered and not, 10+ is a crazy number and you'll probably need to provide some proof for that to be reasonable.

izacus• 3 months ago

The question is not as much shelf life, as whether you want your kids to be builders or consumers.

vermilingua• 3 months ago

You can put Linux on Macbooks, you can build on macOS.

carlosjobim3• 3 months ago

Do you want your kids to play the piano or repair the piano?

Should they learn to drive a car or repair a car.

Etc.

shrubby• 3 months ago

Linux on Mac Pro 5.1 from 2009 and 2017 MacBook Air, both working perfectly.

I prefer actually both to my corporate issue M4 one with MacOS.

I'm not a fan of the Mac UX, but the hardware seems pretty damn good and the lifespan extends with it.

If I'd have no limitations though I'd prefer the Framework, but not very clearly.

philistine4• 3 months ago

Framework as a company is not old enough to even hit the limits of Apple's macOS support: around seven years.

zarzavat• 3 months ago

There are ways to patch around arbitrary "unsupported" status. What tends to reduce the real support time is the hardware itself (e.g. non-Metal supporting GPUs). However, M series SoC are likely to have support for a very long time. It's not like the Intel days when the underlying hardware was changing drastically from generation to generation with a multitude of CPUs and GPUs that all had to be supported in the OS. Apple has a dozen SoCs to support in Mac OS and that's it.

As such, if you buy a M5 MacBook Air today you are very likely to get software support that lasts until the laptop is physically falling apart.

charcircuit• 3 months ago

All laptops have a limited shelf life if you want competitive performance and security.

chias• 3 months ago

I excitedly bought a Framework 12 when it first came out, since I figured it'd be a nice thing to travel with (my typical laptop is the 11th-gen 13). However the 12 has just sat under my bed since it arrived. It's actually the same size and weight as the 13 so there's no real reason to use it when traveling, and everything about the 13 feels better in general. Overall I'm fairly disappointed by the 12.

I haven't held a Neo myself, but it seems like a solid device. Personally I would probably go for the Neo.

0xmagic0• 3 months ago

Interesting! I was not aware of the framework laptops. I was more familiar with System76 and and Tuxedo laptops, but I wouldn't call those kids laptops.

KaiserPro2• 3 months ago

The thing that keeps me questioning is the "its using binned parts" dialogue. I'm sure _some_ parts might be discards from the iphone 16, but the volume they had at launch to me suggests that not the story. I've read somewhere that they made/budgeted for 5 million laptops shipped this quarter/half. but if they are made from binned CPUs, that suggests at least 4-7% yeild loss for the original iphone CPU.

Bear in mind thats this 4-7% loss only counts dies that have just one broken CPU unit. There are many other failure modes as well. That just seems very very high.

I've also not really seen any official channels that support this assertion, even apple insider seems sceptical that this is true: https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/04/07/incredible-macboo...

With my logic hat on, Apple contracts chip manufacturing, so I would have assumed that rejects and failed parts would be recycled at source. I would imagine that apple only pay for parts that pass QC. So I suspect that actually these chips are either leftovers (at best) or specifically manufactured using the old tooling.

DanielHB3• 3 months ago

Bear in mind thats this 4-7% loss only counts dies that have just one broken CPU unit. There are many other failure modes as well. That just seems very very high.

Is it? I thought the average for lastest-architecture chips was around 5%.

KaiserPro2• 3 months ago

Sorry I was unclear about what "very high" meant.

From what I can see, one can expect about 80-90% yield per wafer, the bit that that doesn't make sense is that the "binned" narrative implies that of those broken parts of the wafer, 25-50% are usable with just one GPU disabled.

To me that sounds wrong, and far too high.

ErroneousBosh2• 3 months ago

The thing that keeps me questioning is the "its using binned parts" dialogue.

How is this different from any other computer product?

digikata• 3 months ago

I had thoughts along similar lines, but there are other possibilities - it could be the older CPU models are built either on older lines and/or with more mature, higher yield processes, and this offering could in part take demand pressure off of top-of-the-line process M5/M4 parts.

voidUpdate3• 3 months ago

I'm surprised "mobile phone specs with laptop form factor" isn't a larger product base. Modern smartphones seem capable enough to run a lot of "normal" software, obviously not super heavy ones like after effects or something, but for lighter tasks (web browsing etc), it seems like a good market

sandos• 3 months ago

Isnt chromebooks to a large extent just this?

voidUpdate3• 3 months ago

Wikipedia suggests chromebooks generally use normal x86 hardware, they just run chromeOS

dude250711• 3 months ago

They had defective chips to get rid of.

gib444• 3 months ago

Excellent move by Apple to distract people from the declining software with shiny colours and low price.

timpera2• 3 months ago

While I am back to my Surface Laptop 7 after a few weeks with the Neo because the latter wasn't good enough for my usage, I agree it's the coolest Mac right now, the colors are great! I don't really understand why Apple keeps its "more serious" devices mostly color-less, it's a shame.

DANmode4• 3 months ago

the latter wasn't good enough for my usage

Please say more. Specs?

timpera2• 3 months ago

Yes, the battery life was way worse than the Surface, I missed the 120 hz screen more than I thought I would, and the 1 external monitor limit was too annoying. It's still a great device for the price.

amadeuspagel• 3 months ago

When I think of companies that make cheapness cool I think of IKEA, Primark, Ryanair and Fiat, not Apple and Porsche. The Macbook Neo and the Porsche 968 are cheap only compared to other products by the same brand and they are designed not to cannibalize those other products.

goobatrooba• 3 months ago

Not sure how a company like Primark that is known for using slave labour is "cool" or who would see it that way. Everyone I've ever heard talk about Primark went there solely for the price.

Zara might be a better example (though not much better in practices).

binarysolo• 3 months ago

I see a buncha folks complaining about how the high end macbook laptops don't have color -- for what it's worth there's plenty of fun colors to be had from buying case covers and skins, but yeah they add bulk or interfere with heat dissipation...

(Have a MBP with fun case covers that I take off when I do a work presentation.)

rldjbpin2• 3 months ago

quite interesting comparison and well designed.

but while we are speaking about a decent device, sometimes it feels like we are giving its maker too much credit. tim's apple has been about the supply chain, with many past "parts bin" offerings, some arguably more appropriate than the neo.

for instance, the "se" edition devices. while for the neo, they had to create a new chasis and trackpad from scratch, the se phones were literally a mash up of the older parts.

to me, they had several other approaches to hit the price point unlike the carmaker, also with lower capex required. while they show some courage with the liquid glass and the change in ux, combined with the same core architecture powering all their devices, just empowering the ipad would have been good enough.

in car terms, they have showed a capable sports car internals inside a tricycle and pat themselves in the back. for me, neo resembles more like a mass-market brand overbuilding the car chassis while using an old powertrain from a capable platform. the same brand use the same capable vtec engine across hatchbacks, sedans and a crossover.

When the cheap one is the cool one

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