When the first M1 Apple Silicon systems sprouted at the end of 2020, we loved the tech but not the walled garden it grew in. Apple had complete control over all its platforms and could set its own rules, but only to become more Apple-y. There was a whole world outside that area where Apple Silicon would never tread, even if Cupertino could iterate fast enough to keep up. Plus, Apple’s appliance sensibility limited its expansion options, especially with performance dependent on its own silicon.
More than five years on, that remains true. Yes, the architecture can iterate at least as fast as anything else in its class. It turns out that gigabit Wi-Fi, 10 Gb Ethernet, and high speed expansion is not such a problem anymore. Otherwise, if you ignore embedded niche cases that nobody cares about, Apple is still where it started, in desktops and laptops. It has even lost one form factor. And ironically, the most exciting new machine for years, the Macbook Neo, doesn’t even have an M-type SoC in it.
And yet, that Macbook Neo has given the Windows world the fear, precisely because of the Apple Silicon walled garden strategy. A simple equation has reached a critical point, and it may be irreversible. Every year of Apple Silicon, the experience of using a Mac has gotten better. Every year of Windows 11, the experience of using a PC has gotten worse.
Honey, the proprietary operating systems are quarreling again!
*sips coffee in exclusive Linux user land.
I somehow fancied you a tea drinker.
You’re actually 100% right, I despise coffee.
'Twas the Bard that gave it away.
I don’t get the hype from tech bros for the ‘neo’. It’s a laptop powered by a phone chip sold for the price of a laptop with a decent dGPU.
Apple selling a ‘repairable’ and low-end device just looks like a recession indicator to me.
For roughly the price of a single 9800x3d*, you can buy a complete laptop with a long lasting battery and decent enough specs for web browsing, video playback, and basic office work. It’s unfortunately one of the better devices on the market at that price, especially accounting for the battery life.
*Edit: okay the processors came down in price. Fine, the cost of a kit of decent DDR5 memory, then.
Apple selling a ‘repairable’ and low-end device just looks like a recession indicator to me.
One of the few, I take it?
The 9800X3D is a desktop chip, so I don’t think it’s relevant here. We are talking about a complete mobile device after all, not parts.
In my country, for around 800$ equivalent, you can buy a used business laptop with long battery life and enoguh performance for web browsing, video playback, and office work. The cheapest macbook neo I found in my country is also around that price (820$), and the better configuration is about 900$.
For the lower price, I could get:
- a thinkpad t480 with multiple batteries (hot swappable) and 32GB SO-DIMM RAM
- a latitude 7420 with 11th gen intel with 32GB soldered RAM, a ultraportable like the neo
- a thinkpad t14 gen 2 with 11th gen intel or ryzen 5000 and 48GB RAM (one SO-DIMM slot, and one soldered module)
- or if the size format didn’t matter a thinkpad p52 with 64GB RAM and a 90Wh swappable battery If I went with the higher-spec price, I could get a thinkpad p53 with a quadro RTX 4000 and 32 GB RAM, 512 GB ssd, and a Pantone-calibrated display.
All of them have more ports the the neo, use standard SSDs, and don’t come from a company that is one of the most hostile to consumer rights and right to repair .
One of the few, I take it?
One of many. What I meant (and should have said, instead of being vague) is that I don’t expect this to be a real shift in policy, but rather a way to maintain profits when people have less disposable income, and I fully expect Apple to keep lobbing against right to repair, even when releasing ‘repairable’ devices.
Wait … this is your first recession indicator?
No? Where did you get that from? There’s an ‘a’ there not ‘the’
MacOS is not a walled garden any more than Windows is. That’s just iOS/iPadOS.
You can run any software you want on macOS. It doesn’t need to be from the App Store, and it doesn’t need to be notarized by Apple or even signed.
How long that will remain true is an open question. I don’t think they can realistically enforce signing or notarization in the near future. Too much would break.
Can you freely choose what OS you run on all their hardware? If not, it’s a walled-garden.
You can run Linux on Mac hardware if that’s what you mean.
But I was talking about the software side, in comparison to Windows.
Hence the “all” in “all their hardware”.
I thought that installing macOS on a PC not manufactured by Apple has always been difficult by design (even before the shift to ARM), how is this not a walled garden strategy?
Every year of Windows 11, the experience of using a PC has gotten worse.
Ain’t that the damned truth!
Edit. Overzealous copy.
(You can say “fucking” here.)
About to completely disagree with the article then realized I bought a macbook because I don’t want to go to windows 11.
Even a “cheap” macbook neo is way out of my league in regards to price. 7299 BRL, which is over 1400 USD, for the cheapest option (256gb drive. The 512gb version is 8499BRL, 1635 USD). With that much money, I can buy a laptop with a GTX 3060 and still have some money left.
same, I personally went a Dell Inspirion 15 3520 made in made brazil for about 3800 BRL a year ago, it had 8 GB DRR4 memory expandable, an empty slot for a SATA 2.5’ SSD and a 256 GB nvme M.2 drive and an IPS 120hz VRR capable 1080p screen, I upgraded it to a 1TB nvme and 16x2 GB DRR4 right in august before the ram for about 580 BRL (includes both nvme and RAM upgrade) price rise, runs linux without issue and even had some fwupd supported firmware updates, Dell’s guides on their website had a 3d model on how.to take apart and change componenets, was very easy to do the upgrade myself
