The MacBook Neo is a $500 Wake-Up Call for the Entire PC Industry

Let's get the obvious out of the way first: if you're reading TechSpot, you're probably not the target audience for a laptop with a locked-down 8GB of RAM, no Thunderbolt, and a maximum of 512GB of storage. You built your rig. You know what PCIe Gen 5 means. You've got strong opinions about thermal paste. The MacBook Neo is not for you.

But here's the thing about disruptive mainstream products – they rarely are for us. And the MacBook Neo might be the most consequential laptop announcement in years, possibly since the original MacBook Air almost 20 years ago. Not because of what it does for power users, but because of what it does to the market that has existed almost entirely below the notice of enthusiasts: the budget Windows laptop space.

That market, ranging from roughly $500 to $800, has been the Windows ecosystem's ...