The review is nicely written for the Ars audience, but the Ars audience has only the scantest overlap with the Neo’s intended market.
I predict that Apple will sell boatloads of the Neo, mostly to users who don’t need to know or care about external 4K monitors or editing RAW images.
That’s what I thought. What the reviewer called “normal use” is…. Not normal for people who buy these cheap laptops.
As soon as he mentioned editing RAW photos or using Audacity, he moved outside the target market.
I suspect the use cases listed are beyond what most MacBook Air users do, let alone the target market for the Neo.
I was personally hoping to see more performance from the A18 pro, I assumed it wouldn’t be throttled like it is in a phone. But when I think of my Mom (on an M2 Air 8GB) who actually has standard use cases for the Neo target market, I doubt she would notice a difference (performance wise… she uses a lot of I/O so would notice the port downgrade).
ETA: I have a Mac Studio 32GB for any heavy work, so I think what I do on my M1 Air 8GB is more in-line with a standard Neo targeted user. I’ve never felt limited on the Air, despite having dozens of tabs open between Chrome and Safari.
