Which apps are launched from their website?

Relevant because Neo has it built in.

The difference in manufacturing cost compared to the iPad Air is pocket change, way less than a M4 CPU would cost. It’s just Apple ripping off its customers as usual.

How about a travel bag to hold all this extra equipment?

Completely irrelevant to the topic that Apple the cost of the Neo is not reasonable.

Did you read the post?

You replied to my post and I compared Apple hardware to Apple hardware.

How much for a 13" display to match the real estate of the Neo display?

Look up the costs of 11" and 13" HiDPI displays and subtract the costs yourself. I’m sure you can do it. I bought an excellent 14" external HiDPI USB C monitor for 40 Euro recently.

A18 Pro? Intel? Neither CPU is used in the MacBook Neo nor the 599 iPad.

indeed does seem to be false.

That’s from 5 years ago. Let’s look what Apple themselves say about that topic:

Personal Data Apple Collects from You

Usage Data. Data about your activity on and use of our offerings, such as app launches within our services, including browsing history; search history; product interaction; crash data, performance and other diagnostic data; and other usage data

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/

you have to spend $270 on a keyboard/trackpad regardless

That’s Apple tax, not manufacturing cost. MacBook replacement keyboards sell for 10 dollars on Aliexpress.

iOS/iPadOS puts OS-level limits on how much you can even take advantage of that hardware even if there is an iOS app for the thing you want to do

I’m comparing hardware to hardware, not artificial Apple software restrictions.

How about a keyboard that is similar to the Neo keyboard?

10 dollars and that’s retail, not manufacturing cost.

How much does each USB port cost per device?

A 5-pack of USB C ports costs about one dollar on Aliexpress.

Isn’t it about 40% cheaper than the M4 CPU macbook ?

It’s 100% the same price as another portable M4 computer sold by Apple

How soon until Asahi will run on it

Years. Asahi fully relies on reverse engineering by the community and those community members tend to get hired by the competition. Get a device where the platform designer supports Linux development upstream if your priority is Linux.

Please enlighten me then, if you don’t mind. Are there some good benchmarks out there that show the Inadequacies of the A18 chip?

I found several after only 30 seconds of googling, including Apple fans’ favorite benchmark: Geekbench multicore where the A18 is about 40% slower.

The MacBook doesn’t have a touchscreen. It cancels the keyboard cost out.

They don’t even put touch ID on the entry model.

Similar iPads also come with a lot less ports, no physical keyboard, no aluminum clamshell protection, and a shittier OS.

If you honestly think these justify the crap CPU, you’re absolutely out of touch with reality.

Apple’s is $270.

Typical Apple tax, completely unrelated to the few dollars a keyboard costs to make for real.

Yeah 8gb of ram is unusable for most things.

Most notably web browsing which one would think this thing is mostly for.

Except for them to be directly comparable you’d also have to get a keyboard cover for the iPad, making it more expensive than the MacBook

One has a keyboard (cheap components), the other has a touchscreen. The cost cancel each other out.

Sure, but a tablet isn’t a laptop.

So form factor, not hardware internals should be the deciding factor in cost?

Reasonably priced Mac.

Phone CPU. Similar priced iPads come with a much better CPU.