Ask Paul: March 20 ⭐️

Happy Friday! We're on the cusp of spring; well, you are. It's always spring here in Mexico City. But let's kick off the weekend a bit early with an Ask Paul for the ages, a massive missive of messaging. Or something.
"Despite hardware limits, Parallels supports running Windows on MacBook Neo"

Yes. But can it make phone calls?
? Is Neo is The One ... and Done?
michaelmdiv asks:

Given the low amount of RAM and the small screen, do you think the Macbook Neo will be a one and done? Maybe Apple just had some phone SoCs lying around they wanted to use up.

Back in November, when rumors of what became the MacBook Neo were first making the rounds, I defended this product because it could revitalize the Mac by being truly competitive with the sweet spot of the PC market. What Apple released was a little disappointing--to me--not because there isn't enough RAM or whatever but because you can't get out of that hole. There's only one MacBook Neo configuration upgrade, which gives you 512 GB of storage and TouchID. But what Neo really needs is a 16 GB of RAM option and keyboard backlight as a standard feature across the board; that's a $5 part, probably less for Apple, and not even offering it is a crime against humanity.

This morning, Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted a heavily caveated claim that the MacBook Neo just had the best launch week of any Mac, at least with new Mac users. This shouldn't surprise anyone, event those who are critical of this device. I've long wondered why the Mac has never cracked the 10 percent usage share or market share milestones despite the iPhone as a halo product and all the obvious benefits of the broader ecosystem there. But now we kind of know why: It was the price. The lowest cost Mac for as long as I can remember has been a $999 MacBook Air--$899 in education--and I suspect that letting Walmart sell the old M1 MacBook Air for less than that was an experiment/proof point that lowering the price would really make a difference.

It's baffling to me that I had to defend the MacBook Neo before it was released and then had to criticize it for its obvious limitations once it was announced, as it feels like I'm confronting the same people in both cases. But the irrational exuberance around this little laptop is interesting. And tied to my remarks about the missing configuration options above, and ignoring the RAM crisis briefly because this will either be an anomaly or the new normal, whatever, there is a big hole, dollar-wise, between the most expensive MacBook Neo ($699) and the least expensive MacBook Air ($1099). And I feel like the MacBook Neo 2 will happen. And it will fill that hole, as it does everywhere else in its product lineup.

A MacBook Neo 2 should have RAM tiers (8 and 16, maybe 24); that's $100 right there (maybe more). It could have another storage tier, another $100. It could have a bigger screen option, as do all Macs and all iPads, another $100. And someone who purchased a Neo 2 with 16 GB...