When the cheap one is the cool one (opens in new tab)

Just my personal perspective, every Apple laptop I've ever owned has lasted 10+ years. Their phones may have some planned obsolescence, but I don't find that to be the case at all with their computers.

Linux on Mac Pro 5.1 from 2009 and 2017 MacBook Air, both working perfectly.

I prefer actually both to my corporate issue M4 one with MacOS.

I'm not a fan of the Mac UX, but the hardware seems pretty damn good and the lifespan extends with it.

If I'd have no limitations though I'd prefer the Framework, but not very clearly.

Framework as a company is not old enough to even hit the limits of Apple's macOS support: around seven years.

There are ways to patch around arbitrary "unsupported" status. What tends to reduce the real support time is the hardware itself (e.g. non-Metal supporting GPUs). However, M series SoC are likely to have support for a very long time. It's not like the Intel days when the underlying hardware was changing drastically from generation to generation with a multitude of CPUs and GPUs that all had to be supported in the OS. Apple has a dozen SoCs to support in Mac OS and that's it.

As such, if you buy a M5 MacBook Air today you are very likely to get software support that lasts until the laptop is physically falling apart.

I excitedly bought a Framework 12 when it first came out, since I figured it'd be a nice thing to travel with (my typical laptop is the 11th-gen 13). However the 12 has just sat under my bed since it arrived. It's actually the same size and weight as the 13 so there's no real reason to use it when traveling, and everything about the 13 feels better in general. Overall I'm fairly disappointed by the 12.

I haven't held a Neo myself, but it seems like a solid device. Personally I would probably go for the Neo.

Interesting! I was not aware of the framework laptops. I was more familiar with System76 and and Tuxedo laptops, but I wouldn't call those kids laptops.

The question is not as much shelf life, as whether you want your kids to be builders or consumers.

All laptops have a limited shelf life if you want competitive performance and security.

In the very olden days of 1999-ish when I worked for a very expensive AV shop in Glasgow, we used to be an agent for Loewe. You could order your expensive (like four times as much as an equivalent top-spec Sony, three times as much as Grundig) TV in any colour you liked - they'd spray it anything you wanted.

One of the last jobs I did for them before moving onto a very early streaming video company in 2000 was opening up this pristine "Oxford Blue Metallic" (stock Landrover colour from the time, mine is that colour) 32" TV and fitting a VGA adaptor board to it so the customer could play videos and games from his PC on his new telly directly. It had a scan line doubler in to reduce flicker, which I guess was the precursor of "Mexican Soap Opera Mode" in modern TVs, and that allowed it to display 1280x720x50p smoothly.

It looked fantastic but I don't know that it was £3700-in-early-2000s-money fantastic - or about seven grand today.

Imagine paying three and a half grand for a telly, even if it was sprayed the same colour as your 80 grand Range Rover.

Market segmentation? High-end ones have to look "professional", I presume the thinking is you wouldn't give a serious boardroom presentation on a lime-colored laptop.

On the other hand, for students and schoolkids once you've solved "cheap", it's a plus to also tweak for "fun".

Speaking of market segmentation - this may vary by country but on https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ (US site accessed from EU VPN) if I scroll down a bit, what gender do you think the "blush" color is most associated with? Is it coincidence that the laptop is being held in a hand with painted nails? (And a wedding ring.)

This sadly is true in so many segments. The worst is cars. “I’d like the highest trim… oh it’s only available in three boring colors?”

I got the citrus version because it made such a change from the usual. However, I'd love it if Apple could make some truly vibrant non-pastel colours like tangerine and lime devices they did in the early days.

> The base tier one always gets the fun colors

not universally true for all of their products. the new iphone pro max to the apple watch ultra got the bright orange going for them compared the typical muted colours for the base one. the "red" edition, while for charity, used to be the exclusive (maybe more expensive?) version when there was fewer segmentation between the products.

I'm definitely getting sick of the dull colours in the higher end laptops. Give me a yellow, give me a red, forest green, whatever, anything but silver and darker silver

With their phones and other stuff, sure. But colours in laptops haven't been seen since the toilet seat iBooks.

The 968 is such a weird choice for this when the Boxster exists, did basically everything better, was a major commercial success, and has spawned a line of cars that many argue are better than the 911 except for the name and traditionalist-fandom over exact engine position that prevents Porsche from giving them all the biggest engines and fanciest tech.

But the Boxster didn't try to replace the 911 on day one. Or even go after the other 300ZX/Supra/whatever 2+2s on day one. It was instead nearly a whole-cloth "what if pure 2-seater convertible driver's car, but the best possible version" upscale-Miata initially, which wasn't an existing segment at all, and being roadster-first was a key separator from the also-2-seater Corvette.

(The iPhone or iPad were arguable Apple's Boxster "entry-level that ends up dominating sales and growing into full blown new product lines" anyway, except that the comparison eventually falls down because the form factor difference with the Mac is much more of a fundamental separation. So maybe Apple's Boxster is instead the laptop in the first place, which wiped out most of their desktop workstation business by the early-2010s at latest.)

Yeah this is looking at the 968 with rose tinted glasses. But a lot of the comparison does check out and the Neo is a fine on-ramp for first time macOS users just like the 968.

Porsche killed the 944S Turbo because it was accidentally faster than the Carrera and 930, and that was taboo. Its successor, the 968, was the awkward compromise.

> Bear in mind thats this 4-7% loss only counts dies that have just one broken CPU unit. There are many other failure modes as well. That just seems very very high.

Is it? I thought the average for lastest-architecture chips was around 5%.

I had thoughts along similar lines, but there are other possibilities - it could be the older CPU models are built either on older lines and/or with more mature, higher yield processes, and this offering could in part take demand pressure off of top-of-the-line process M5/M4 parts.

> The thing that keeps me questioning is the "its using binned parts" dialogue.

How is this different from any other computer product?

Isnt chromebooks to a large extent just this?

i might be mistaken but you are looking at Porsche AG; the actual car company was made into a holding in 2007 and now called Porsche SE, then founded Porsche AG to make the cars.

Porsche AG is part of the Volkswagen Group that is owned by Porsche SE.

either way car manufacture is not a big profit game

Thinkpads were definitely never cheap.

I'm fine with a case. I can change the color to match my outfit

https://www.amazon.com/Se7enline-Compatible-MacBook-Protecti...

No it's correct. When the 968 came out it was the absolutely worst years ever for Porsche: they were nearly completely bankrupt and Porsche ceasing to exist was actually on the table. They were selling as little as 15 000 cars in a full year in 1992 or something like that (compared to nearly 60 K, nearly 4x as much, in 1986). Compared that to nearly 300 000 today and an insane lineup.

Sure, the EU pretty much killed its auto car industry, offering the markets to Tesla and Chinese EVs (and there are talks of chinese buying Porsche), but Porsche has a crazy lineup compared to what it used to have: 911, Cayman, Boxster, Panamera, Taycan (the 100% EV), Macan and Cayenne and soooo many different sub-models of those (GT4, GTS, Turbo (S), Targa, GT3 (RS), GT2 (RS), S/T, S/C ...).

They just even announced a 911 GT3 S/C // convertible (heresy for some but I love it). For any Porsche enthusiast, we're pretty much living the golden age of Porsche where you can still buy a normally aspirated, stick shift, driver's car. In 2026: thank you so much Porsche for being sufficiently crazy to still do that in 2026, in an era where people are paying subscription to receive OTA updates for their EVs.

And any Porsche enthusiast knows that the early 1990s were nearly the death of Porsche. It was a close call.

BTW to anyone saying the modern Porsche aren't "real" Porsche cars, I send them love from my 911 Carrera from 1988. You can both love old and new Porsche cars.