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.

  • FireWire400@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    For most common users they don’t care. They don’t even know what soldered RAM is.

    They should, because when it’s time to sell the laptop one with soldered RAM is gonna be worth a lot less (at least to me).

    Chromebooks with low RAM are fine for many use cases. I’ve got a chromebook with only 4GB of RAM and its perfectly fine for web browsing or watching streaming which is the only things I use it for.

    Fair, but there’s still the potential of it becoming a paperweight if the RAM chips give out or Google forces AI shit into ChromeOS.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      16 hours ago

      For most common users they don’t care. They don’t even know what soldered RAM is.

      They should, because when it’s time to sell the laptop one with soldered RAM is gonna be worth a lot less (at least to me).

      There’s an irony that the most valuable laptops for resale right now are the ones with soldered RAM. Why? Because the socketed units have their RAM stripped for resale separately from the unit. Even corporate fleets are doing this now and the bulk resale laptops are arriving without SSDs and RAM. Which units still have both? Units where both are soldered and not removable.

      Chromebooks with low RAM are fine for many use cases. I’ve got a chromebook with only 4GB of RAM and its perfectly fine for web browsing or watching streaming which is the only things I use it for.

      Fair, but there’s still the potential of it becoming a paperweight if the RAM chips give out or Google forces AI shit into ChromeOS.

      These sell for $149 USD brand new. A general user would not spend a second of time troubleshooting a failed one. They’d just buy whatever the current model is for $149 which would probably be 4x as fast and with more storage anyway, then pitch the old one in ewaste.