Windows PC makers typically haven't had to compete with Apple on the low end, but that changes with the Neo, says S.Y. Hsu. The memory shortage might complicate things, though.

The Apple MacBook Neo’s $599 starting price is a “shock” to the Windows PC industry, according to an Asus executive.

Hsu said he believes all the PC players—including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD—take the MacBook Neo threat seriously. “In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product,” he added, given that rumors about the MacBook Neo have been making the rounds for at least a year.

Despite the competitive threat, Hsu argued that the MacBook Neo could have limited appeal. He pointed to the laptop’s 8GB of “unified memory,” or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can’t upgrade it.

  • Attacker94@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    18 hours ago

    Iirc the general assumption in tech spaces was that ios and macos are going to merge in two or three major versions, so I would imagine that apple is aware of this want in their consumer base as well.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      17 hours ago

      Eh, but will they? There’s a whole lot of OSX legacy Apple would have to throw away.

      I mean, I guess they could; they’ve done it before with architecture transitions. But this is different in that stuff on existing devices would stop working, whereas Intel or PPC Macs keep chugging along as-is.

      • djdarren@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        53 minutes ago

        Of all the PC manufacturers, Apple are the ones who are most likely to sweep away legacy standards.

        Remember when they ditched DVD drives altogether, and the tech world threw a shit fit. When was the last time you saw a new laptop with a disc drive?

        They did the same with the 30 pin connector. USB-A as well.

        Of course, they can get away with it because they can also dictate which machines get which OS updates, so can entirely block devices that don’t have hardware they no longer want to support.

      • Attacker94@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        16 hours ago

        I always thought of it going the other way, leave osx relatively untouched and make phones run on it, rather than taking ios as the standard.

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          16 hours ago

          I don’t buy that. No way they “open up” iOS to be more OSX-like, as that would spoil their cash cow (the App Store).

          I hate to sound so cynical, but I just don’t see any incentive for Apple to do that.