The Neo is a love letter to personal computing
I never thought we would be in the situation where Apple of all companies is both making an affordable laptop, and a damn good affordable laptop to boot.
I have been using the Neo for a few months now, since day 1. I replaced my 2020 M1 MacBook Air with it, though I was very apprehensive to do so because I absolutely adored that machine. Nevertheless, I have been using this machine every day, and I can say that it is without a doubt the best low-cost laptop ever made.
I have used at least 2 different laptops a year for the last 15 years of my life. I work in the IT field, and probably touch more computers in a year than most people in a lifetime. I consider myself somewhat of a hardware enthusiast, and traditionally, pre m-series Macs, I considered myself a PC person.
The thing is though, the PC is dying. There are super compelling PC offerings out there still, such as the Framework Laptops, but in general, the PC has been dying for some time now. I used to swear by the early Microsoft Surface devices (at the time, I worked for Microsoft), and before that, I would have said Thinkpad is the best hardware that money could buy.
Today, however, it's Mac. for two really good reasons. One, the Mac is now affordable, in part thanks to the Neo, but overall the prices for Mac have remained pretty consistent over the last 10 years, which means they appear much lower today than they did back then.
The second reason is that Apple has carefully cultivated their product differentiation over the last decade, being resistant to merging their iPad and Mac product offerings, and it has paid off in a huge way. The iPad feels like a very curated, controlled experience in comparison to the Mac, which, while still very curated, allows you to pretty much do whatever you want to the machine.
This dichotomy is super refreshing in a world where everyone else is trying to make their PC's more like iPads.
The irony is, the Mac feels much more Personal than Personal Computers. Kudos to Apple for having the vision to maintain the ethos of this product. It has certainly converted me.