If you already have an iPhone, there are lovely little integration things that sound like small beans but are really valuable over time, eg.:
- copy-paste text between devices
- get verification codes from text messages to auto-fill in Safari on Mac
I don't know if Yoga 7 is good in this regard, but when you open the lid on a Macbook, it's awake and interactive before you've finished swinging it open. And battery life is outstanding. I'd miss things like that.
So the Apple advantage is, essentially, the evasion of antitrust rules. Nice. In any event, I use KDE Connect to send my clipboard around between iOS, Windows, Android, and Linux.
The whole "instant on when you open the lid" thing is not impressive in 2026. Even with Linux my laptop is instant-on from sleep in a very similar fashion.
And, again, here I am as a broken record repeating this since nobody is listening because they've been indoctrinated by Apple marketing:
The MacBook Neo does not have as good battery life as the more expensive models! In comparison testing with other similar PC laptops the battery life is very middle of the road!
> A much larger laptop with less than half the number of display pixels is not really the same market. And how's that battery life?
Yes, the display isn't as good but the Neo with 512 GB of storage is already $700 and has half the storage of the other laptop. The Neo also has 8 GB of RAM vs 32 GB. Big differences IMO.
Battery life is "good enough" but not great. It really depends on what you're using it for. If you're doing CPU bound tasks a lot, it's not going to last as long. I guess a takeaway is I was never in a situation where I had to change my behaviors because of the battery life. Unless you're planning to be out in the middle of no where without a power bank for an extended period time doing workload intensive tasks it's fine.
Likewise, the display being only 1080p isn't as bad as you would think. I'd be surprised if anyone is running their 13" Neo at 2408 x 1506 at native scaling. That would be 219 PPI. For reference I run a 4k 32" monitor at native 1:1 scaling and that's 138 PPI. It would be bonkers to consider using 219 PPI from a normal viewing distance. Most scaled resolutions with the Neo would be effectively 1080p resolution but with sharper text.
You're not in the market for a netbook-type machine if this is the case.
> but with sharper text.
Text huh? Sounds important.
> Battery life is "good enough" but not great.
So, do you want a lightweight client / light productivity machine with tons of battery life, great text, and a kickass trackpad? Or an affordable workstation replacement? Different markets.
What you’re missing is that the target market for this devices — the casual laptop user — DGAF about memory or storage if it is at the expense of the directly observable user experience.
Few people want or need 32gb of RAM, nor give a shit about what it even means. Most people just want to run MS Word and Google Chrome and maybe TurboTax.
Sure but if people want a device for only casual browsing and are ok with 256 GB of storage and 8 GB of memory they can get a Chromebook for half the price of the Neo. Not all of them are bad, there's tons in the $300 range with good enough specs for casual usage.
If you want to spend ~$600-700, the laptop I mentioned fits the bill for casual use, a development workstation, media editing and casual gaming at a directly comparable price to the Neo. I replied initially because you wrote nothing good exists in the $600-700 range.
Again, this device isn’t someone who’s buying based on specs. Nor is it for somebody who’s buying based on price.
It’s for somebody who goes to the store, puts their hands on the keyboard, uses the touchpad, looks at the screen, and feels the chassis, and then makes their decision. This is how regular people purchase these commodity items. Most people have no clue what the difference between storage and memory is. They just want to know: will it run [software]? That’s all the specs they need to know. Maybe the battery life as well
If you haven’t already go put your hands on one of these at the store. There’s no $600 laptop that feels like it.
> It’s for somebody who goes to the store, puts their hands on the keyboard, uses the touchpad, looks at the screen, and feels the chassis, and then makes their decision.
We might live in different areas of the world. Every person I know who isn't into tech has never walked into a store by themselves and bought a laptop based on feel or a hunch.
They always get a recommendation from someone who is into tech, either for a specific model to buy online or someone to go with in real life at a store to help them make a purchase.
I don't blame them either, I wouldn't make a big purchase with no information and trust the sales floor to give high quality personalized advice.
Of course it's possible to find a giant ship. The interesting parts are that this vector is crazy cheap using public APIs, and the irony of the location source being the voluntary-or-ignorant active telemetry from a US service person.
It's possible to go to the moon, launch ICBMs, and make fusion bombs. It's news when something possible gets cheap and easy. It's also newsworthy when one of the most powerful and expensive weapon platforms in history doesn't have its infosec buttoned down.
Interesting point. On one hand they probably don't care if everyone knows where the carrier is (actually I'm pretty sure every military power knows where the other powers' military is), on the other hand from a "good practices" perspective, it doesn't look good.
Would it just be virtue signaling, or is there more to it?
>It's also newsworthy when one of the most powerful and expensive weapon platforms in history doesn't have its infosec buttoned down.
Well, peace makes you sloppy. No one is at war with France right now, and no one is realistically going to attack this ship.
If we were fighting WW3, you can bet sailors wouldn't be allowed to carry personal cellphones at all. Back in WW2, even soldier's letters back home had to be approved by the censors.
The readers' natural question is 'does this look reasonable on multiple platforms?'. A two-second glance at two or three screenshots goes a long way to answering that.
In hindsight, this sounds more reasonable in 2026 where graphical documentation is taken for granted. In those days I think anyone would have spooled the .ps to their nearest laser printer and begin building something quickly with it just to check the looks.
I remember following a "build your own text windowing system" tutorial printed in a hcontinous paper back then
The document looks to be nicely rendered, likely from Postscript. Maybe generated by roff, since it doesn't look like TeX. Screen cap bitmaps could be converted to EPS and inserted into the Postscript.
If it was a PS document, you would have to spool it to a printer or screen renderer to read it anyway. The X Window System debuted in 1984, so on-screen renders would have been not too hard to find in a CS department in 1989.
CS is not a degree in web programming framework or DNN modeling framework du jour. Algorithms, data structures, linear algebra, and programming fundamentals do evolve, but gradually.
None of the languages I use at work existed when I was an undergraduate. Very nearly all the data structures and algorithms I use at work did.
Powerful enough laser and accurate enough targeting system is easy to say, but not easypeasy to do. Dumping thousands of Joules on a tiny moving target is much easier to do with explosives.
The salaries are good in SCV, but the local economy is calibrated to absorb the money in proportion.
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