I’m not the target market for high-end laptops. I don’t care if my laptop is made from plastic or aluminum, has a screen with 500 nits of brightness or 200, and has audiophile quality speakers or sounds kind of terrible.
I mostly want a laptop that can get the job done.
Having said that, I realize many of you do care, which is why the MacBook Neo is important. It’s the MacBook for people who can’t afford a MacBook.
The thing is, this is the wakeup call that the Windows platform has needed, and while it may have taken them years to catch up to the MacBook Air, it’s taking just a couple of months for them to catch up the Neo.
It won’t be long before there are multiple colorful laptops from every manufacturer that match the Neo in not only price, but in features. They’ll have better build quality then we usually see at this price point, as well as top-notch screens, trackpads, and speakers. They’ll soon match or exceed those of the Neo, and Apple and the rest will be locked in a battle of who can build the best sub-$1000 laptop.
In other words, Apple has gifted Windows with the best present it could ever have thought of. Not only did it wake up Asus, Dell, and many others, but Microsoft is now actively improving Windows, desperately trying to prove to the world that it’s still the operating system to beat.
It won’t be long before we see these improvements make a huge difference in how Windows works, how reliable it is, and how easy and pleasant it is to use. We’ll all have access to our own low-cost Windows laptops that provide quality multitasking that I expect will beat anything Apple can do.
This should signal to Apple that they need to up their game, provide a new Neo that beats not only the original, but also all of the quality Windows laptops that came in its wake.
Now we just need to wait.
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