Category: Technology

The last several years the news has all been about AI and how it’s going to completely transform the world. And over the last couple of years I have had a really hard to pin down feeling of foreboding about all these advancements that have come out using these new tools.

Recently I came across a book that kind of put some of my feelings into words. And I think that anybody interested in the subject of AI should be looking at this book. It’s definitely not the sunshine and roses that some people paint AI to be so be prepared a bit when you dive in.

The thing that I think is interesting about the state of AI right now isn’t so much what it’s able to do but what some of the people who work with it have done in the last little while. A big one that you might have seen was Mrinank Sharma who was the head of AI Safety at Anthropic. He posted a note on X with the contents of his resignation letter.

https://x.com/MrinankSharma/status/2020881722003583421?s=20

In reading through that it kind of sounds like the folks at Anthropic were being presented with a bit of a moral quandary about the use of their AI agents. And I wonder if that might have had something to do with the recent news regarding the concerns about the use of Anthropic’s tech by the US Department of War?

There’s a pretty good write up on this here;

https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/5739/anthropic-and-us-government-conflict-larger-you-think

That points out a lot of interesting things. The one that bothers me the most is that a lot of the companies have been rolling back commitments that prevented the use of their technologies in weapons and surveillance applications. Using a AI tool to generate stupid memes of cats is one thing, using an AI tool to automate the surveillance of an entire populace, or using that tool to decide where a bomb should be dropped?

As much as I am not a fan of people getting killed, I’m even less of a fan of people being killed because a machine pointed at them and said “this one”.

I think that the authors of the book I linked above kind of have it right. We are playing with things that we don’t really understand and that we don’t have the tools to handle safely. For the most part people are using it for things that aren’t going to end the world, but how long before somebody hooks one of these things up to something that is life safety critical and causes things to go really off the rails?

So, now that the MacBook Neo is starting to get into peoples hands and they are starting to tear into the thing there are a coupe of interesting things about this device that are starting to make me think that it might be something that I would be interested in putting my hands on.

The biggest surprise to me was the repairability scores it was given by iFixit during their teardown, notably;

• The battery is screwed in and can be replaced.
• The keyboard is screwed in and can be replaced without replacing the entire top cover.
• The ports are all on separate daughterboards that can be replaced if a port goes bad.

Granted the use of a Phone CPU and the limitation on the amount of system memory that the device can address is still a concern but having a device that doesn’t require major rework on the motherboard when a port on the side of the device breaks is definitely a win.

Reparability is one of the reasons that I’ve been a fan of Thinkpads for as long as I have. Parts for those are relatively easy to get hold of and unless you have really mangled the device they are generally worth repair. Apple’s stuff has been a little more difficult because they have generally glued batteries in and in many devices the keyboard can’t be repaired without replacing the entire top shell of the laptop because the keyboard is riveted into the case.

I’m sure that some of this is coming up because of regulations in the EU that are going to require user replaceable batteries in devices by a specific date, just like the move to using USB C charging over all the bespoke connectors was driven by legislation in that market. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come as Apple refreshes their devices in the coming years, since I really don’t want to have to pry old batteries out of a device if the only thing that I gain is a 1mm reduction in the size of the device.

So Apple has announced some new laptops and I’ve seen a couple of reviews about the MacBook Neo that’s coming out and I have some thoughts about it.

Some folks seem to be really critical about the device having a CPU that was previously used in the iPhone or about the amount of memory and storage space on the device. Some seem to be thinking that this device is going to be the ChromeBook killer given the relatively low (for Apple) price. 

Honestly for me the device isn’t something that is that interesting, not because it’s not a good device. More because it’s simply not targeted at me. 

This type of device is the laptop that someone who just wants a “laptop for school” but doesn’t care about the specification will pick up. They will wind up grabbing it from the Apple store withe AppleCare and will probably walk out the door just around 1000$ out of pocket with a device that should last them through the next couple of years of school or basic email and social media. 

As far as it killing Chromebooks, I don’t know about that. Chrome OS devices have a whole ecosystem that they live within and the macOS devices are not going to live in that same ecosystem in the same way I can’t see them completely displacing Chrome OS in an organization that has already heavily invested in them. If the organization is one that’s currently sitting on a bunch of late model Intel MacBook Air’s or first generation M1 devices this device gives those customers a price point to move over to newer hardware that’s hopefully going to be faster. 

The storage options and memory options do irk me a bit, but again I’m not the target for this thing. What is interesting is that Apple has a pretty good track record of providing reasonably long support windows for their devices. If they are still releasing a device in 2026 with only 8gb of system memory that kind of indicates that they intend to support that as a viable configuration for some time to come. For the rest of us out there that bodes well since they will probably have to avoid adding in bloat and garbage into the OS while these devices are still in production. 

The lack of a backlight on the keyboard, the difference in the speaker setup, the difference in the camera setup, are all things that a lot of people who just need a laptop to work on probably won’t care about. And frankly those limitations make sense since it’s going to prevent Apple from driving the people who would have normally bought a MacBook Air into the MacBook Neo. The people picking this up would be the people who are price sensitive rather than the people that care about the specification of the device. 

I honestly can’t recall the last time that Apple had a laptop at this price point. From what I can recall the entry point for any Apple laptop has always been around the 1000$ mark. Seeing them getting into the mix at a 600$ entry point is interesting and I would love to see what happens to the higher end iPads during this time period. I know more than a few people who picked up iPad Pro’s and keyboards for them instead of doing a laptop to save a few dollars.

Unfortunately for Microsoft I think this is going to eat more of their lunch than anybody else. Unless you wanted or had to use a ChromeOS device Windows was the option at this price. Given all the crap they are bundling now with Copilot, and that Recall feature in Windows 11 some folks may just elect to move over now that there is a cheaper option to get into the ecosystem with. 

Would I buy one? 

Nope. 

But I’m not the person this device is aimed at. You could be, and if that’s the case it’s definitely worth a look.