Apple's MacBook Neo makes repairs easier and cheaper than other MacBooks
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k7Lv7f-5CQ
On a rational level it isn't surprising that the "compute" part is so small, given its origins, but for some reason it still caught me by surprised seeing something barely larger than a Raspberry Pi.
But, yeah, this thing is crazy modular. I particularly want to call out how trivial it is to replace the ports, given how common of a failure point they are. With the keyboard/monitor being more involved, but absolutely still approachable.
I believe he finds just a single piece of light adhesive keeping a cable in place, everything else (inc. the battery) is screws only.
I really wish Apple would resurrect that form factor, as every other MacBook since has seemed bulky in comparison. Thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher[2], I still haven't gotten a newer mac. With a modern M series chip, it wouldn't have such rough tradeoffs in battery life and performance. I'd definitely buy it.
1. See step 11 on https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+MacBook+2015+Teardown...
If you're using OpenCore Patcher, it's important to install the root patches to enable graphics acceleration. Otherwise it'll be ridiculously slow.
I sometimes travel with backpack only (cheap European airlines) and that is a big difference.
The Neo is getting a lot of praise because it's all modular and screwed together. That should make it very easy to repair and also for Apple to do iterative upgrades, but that makes it bigger and heavier and size/weight does matter to people. Hence this thread.
her review: “this thing is HUGE :( :P ”
Kind of hard to see that as "HUGE" in comparison. Bigger? Yes, but not really huge.
The M1 Max I replaced it with was the opposite. I don't think I heard the fans for the first month. But it was much larger.
Based on the fanless Air, I strongly suspect an M1 Max in the old chassis would have been totally fine for non synthetic workloads and an M1 Pro would probably have been fine in all scenarios.
But I think they over corrected on the chassis design when they were shipping borderline faulty products and haven't walked it back yet.
I'm a dev and the MBP line is definitely overkill for me. The 15" MBA handles everything I can throw at it.
Doesn't need to be super fast or fancy, just extend the life of device a little more.
Soldered internal storage and ram is fine if I can store my non-essentials in a cheap drive. Or my essentials in a way that is recoverable if device fails. iCloud helps for photos and families, but it's still far too slow if you don't live near it.
There's been talk of the education market going to Chromebooks?
Did we just fall into a wormhole to 2014?
We are failing our next generation, massively — it's already washing out in Gen Alpha's testscores/employability.
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background: attended college on a teaching scholarship, twenty years ago; immediately left heartbreak of education, breaking repayment contract, to attend grad school; still jaded from that uncredentialed five-figure expense
Across the age spectrum I've challenged many to just not use their phone for one day [0] — and this often provokes intense defensiveness/anxiety. I'm personally back exploring new working jurisdictions, and the criteria of "Right to Disconnect" is a major influencer (i.e. cannot contact me during non-work hours).
[0] as a cellphone-less fortysomething
My 8GB M1 Air is my daily driver for over 5 years now and so far it has worked out well. Sometimes, I have to replace badly optimised software for good alternatives. I hope that by the time that MacOS becomes unusable, Asahi Linux is mature enough to replace the OS rather than the hardware. I'm still on Sequoia and from what I've heard going to Tahoe would be terrible for the usability of my Air. So, no idea how much longer I will be able to hold out and if Asahi is ready now. It looks ok on first glance.
Edit: On second glance it seems not ready at all https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m1/ "Video Decoder: WIP"
I suspect they’ll do that on laptops too. I hope they do.
Including that omission it's very reminiscent of the surface laptop go. I'm surprised other reviews haven't made that connection. Similar price, features, the works. Even missing the fingerprint on the base model, just like the surface laptop go. The funky colours. People are acting like apple invented this class of midrange laptop but they didn't.
The repairability seems to be interesting especially if it leads to framework style upgradability (logic boards, not the ports).
Veronica is an ultra-light MacBook based on Neo, lighter than the MacBook Air. It becomes way more powerful once you connect your iPhone directly.
Reference: Veronica is the Iron Man Armor that snaps onto Iron Man to handle Hulk.
Judging by the sorry state of most second hand Macbook it really feel that they have made their hardware disposable (despite using relatively premium hardware like aluminum compared to plastic stuff on some brands) to force people to subscribe to it. Not that they are the only one to make shitty unreliable stuff (looking at you Asus, Acer and most brand's "family" lines).
It’s about making it easier and faster for Apple to fix the machines.
It benefits us all. But I suspect the cost of their super tight integration into large non-replaceable components with lots of glue started to show up in repair work costs.
It's not about "having to" replace parts. It's for just-in-case. It's essentially insurance.
The battery in my M1 MacBook Pro went bad recently. But I have AppleCare, so I was able to walk into an Apple Store and hand it to someone, and the next day I picked it up all repaired. (New keyboard, too, since the keyboard and battery are considered one part.)
Total cost without AppleCare: $250 + tax.
Total cost with AppleCare: $0.
Total I've spent on AppleCare: $150.
The value in AppleCare is the same value you have in fire insurance. Maybe you want to save a few bucks and take your chances that everything you own won't burn to ashes and you have to start over with nothing. I'm not in college anymore.
The tech comes out and does the repair at your home or place of business. Because the tech is often a contractor, in my experience there’s not likely to be an inquest for the purpose of denying the claim.
But now you're back to the parent's definition of "extortion."
Lenovo’s on-site service has changed into a massive security risk. They changed the terms within the last year or two. You have to give one of their contractors full remote admin access to your computer to “run diagnostics” before they’ll dispatch the onsite repairman.
This used to be a service worth every penny. But now: read the fine print carefully.
They flew a tech next day to where I lived with spare parts.
Replaced mobo/cpu (which burned due my overclock shenanigans) without asking questions.
That was really impressive especially when compared to butterfly keyboard problems with Apple which was problematic to say the least.
No gripes from this decade?
If you have to dig back 11 years for something to complain about, that's pretty good for Apple.
Hence my comment about extortion scheme, even $150 would be way too high a price for a keyboard + battery but they kind of forces you subscribe to it by having absurdly high parts replacement prices. It is like a mafia asking you to pay for your protection yet you still think you made a good deal.
Some people use computers with utter disregard for their integrity.
Macs, specially Apple silicon ones are extremely reliable.
I bought a late-2013 13" MacBook Pro when I started university and I used that thing up until the end of 2021 when I got a 14" M1 Pro MBP. And it wasn't even because it was performing that terribly, I just wanted the new Apple silicon machine. Now it's ~4.5 years later and that machine runs like it did on day 1 and I have no desire to upgrade anytime soon.
And anyway, it's an outlier. Exception proves the rule.
Apple's held to such a high standard that people still joke about antenna gate from a decade and a half ago, or the iPhone 6 bending 12 years ago. Every other OEM is nonstop putting out worse devices with worse QC but no one hears about it because no one is shipping units for any individual high-end device in anywhere near the numbers Apple is. They've got a massive magnifying glass on them that no one else does.
I could tell you a swathe of issues I've had with every Android I've owned, all worse than any iPhone I've owned. But most people probably have never heard of those issues and/or don't remember them because it's not notable unless it's Apple. For instance, the Nexus 6P failed so reliably after the first year, it got to a point where you could just call Google, say you're having issues, and they'd fastlane you to sending you a Pixel XL as a replacement. The Nexus 5P from the same year had even worse issues where they practically all started boot looping at some point. If Apple had a dud year to that level, it would have been MAJOR news.
I paid $50 for that Apple Care through an eBay listing and got send a code that I could use to register. This was back when Apple Care was sold in physical boxes and people would resell them from foreign countries. So great deal all round.
But for the rest I never had Apple Care on anything.
This whole post is a [citation needed] on multiple fronts.
Or perhaps you believe that this year all manufacturers, Apple especially, decided out of the goodness of their hearts that their devices need to be repairable?
Nice Apple. That's good :)
Not bad, not terrible?
modular USB ports; battery sans glue; trackpad
Twenty years ago, I worked part-time in a laptop repair facility for a large educational institution; this computer would have been a godsend (e.g. the first MacBooks had hundreds of screws, plastic everywhere).
That probably bit them HARD during the butterfly days.
I skipped that entire generation, but the modern silicon keyboards are slick. My workshop computer is a 2012 MacBook "Pro" (disabled GPU), which also has fantastic keys. Best Apple keyboard ever has to be the 12" PowerBook G4, but that may just be nostalgic...
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My major critique of the Neo is: for its intended market (younger), it should be more durable, not less — why is there no MagSafe power connector?
From a computer repair technician's POV, there will be lot$ of U$B port replacement$, due to power supply abusers (have you seen some students' charging cables?!). From manufacturer's POV: if they had MagSafe, they probably wouldn't need separate USB ports (IMHO).
It's almost guaranteed that the second revision of this product line will use MagSafe (you own the patent already!).
The USB-C port that’s already there anyway is free, thus way cheaper. No special port. No special cable in the box.
I don’t think it will come in the next revision.
There were several generations of Apple laptops that mysteriously didn't have MagSafe — I never bought one — very glad to see its return on my own M3MBAir15".
For nightmares, the screwbin either tips over repeatedly, or a dropped screw poofs indefinitely. Sometimes I wake up sweated, snackycaked crumb constellations jambed up'gainst bedsheets and fattie.
Screws, everywhere. Me.
Article: https://www.ifixit.com/News/100352/we-hot-wired-the-iphone-1...
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623251
Over 11 years, they exceeded $3 trillion in revenue, actually. I knew it was a lot, hadn't actually looked at the totals before. 2015-2025 sums to $3.429 trillion.
Compare to a thinkpad keyboard FRU. They have fluid drains and still cost $99 for a top-end laptop. My daughter's chromebook keyboard replacement at school was $16.
So what I'm hearing is you don't want Apple to make their computers more repairable? Think of this like training a dog. My dog can open the cabinet in the kitchen on their own, pull out a specific requested item, close the door again and bring the item to me from anywhere in my house. Opening a door is just tugging on something, bringing something to me is just fetch, closing a door is just pushing with its nose. If I went into the training of this with the attitude of "oh wow, you pulled the door open" or "oh wow, you fetched the thing" and didn't reward my dog for doing those simple pieces because "any good dog can tug on a rope or fetch a ball", then my dog would never have gotten to the point of doing all of those things in a repeatable complex sequence that serves a useful purpose. Instead every part of it that my dog got right, they got all sorts of praise and rewards. And so once I started asking more, my dog eagerly tried to do those things because they knew if they did what I wanted, they could get the things they wanted.
Train your companies the same way. Give them the positive PR and praise they're looking for when they do the things you want them to do. You'll get them to do what you want a lot faster if they have an actual incentive to do it.