Depends on whether using someone else’s windows machine leaves you crazy annoyed.
My windows machine is also “fine” for the most part because i turned off whatever I could and tried to mod whatever I could not. Even so, every once in a while, typing “code” and being taken to an edge bing search makes me want to rip it to shreds.
And I delay every update as far as possible and am filled with dread when it finally wont let me postpone it.
Yeah, it's kind of annoying. But middle click scroll is something I use literally every single second of every single day on my web browser. It's a deal-breaker.
Ok that's fair ig. I used to be a fairly heavy user of the middle click scroll feature on windows like a decade ago. Made the switch to Debian w/ Awesome, and that habit just casually fell away. The switch is probably a 3 day annoyance at most. IMO arrow keys and scroll are fine. On laptop trackpads two finger scrolling and momentum scrolling are far more accurate IMO. Also if you have the mx master mouse, it has a crazy good scroll wheel that you can "throw".
Also you can turn on Firefox specific middle click scroll feature "autoscroll" which is the same thing. They may have similar stuff for other browsers. Long story short, in less clicks than it takes you to turn off stupid notifications and ads on Windows, you can get a semi decent middle-click-scroll feature where you need it the most.
Outside corporate setting, it is also the fact that most windows systems you encounter are installed on cheap machines by people who just care that their word processor works a few times a month. And you were probably forced to fix it.
At the same time, as someone with a well maintained Windows gaming rig, I don't like spending time in the OS these days. Something about transparently doing stuff that puts money in their pocket while inconveniencing me gives me the ick.
And Windows laptops are such a commodity business that prices are incredibly low. So PC makers load ‘em up with junk because they get paid for those deals.
They are more incentivized by that than the few lost sales from people who know better to look for low crud machines.
And on more expensive machines they’d just be leaving money on the table. So they still often ship bundled crud.
Similar to spyware on TVs. Margins are razor thin. They’re going to make them up somewhere.
thats a fair point. I think my reaction was more about the company not trying, not really about the AI itself. but yeah if you are meeting your potential employer for the first time a real person just sets a different tone. hard to argue with that.
While that's true, I also think these things tend to happen as a gradual build up to the tipping-point effect where the zeitgeist shifts so suddenly that a massive player is suddenly irrelevant.
Microsoft is structurally incapable of making Windows better. Intel is intrinsically incapable of making x86 better (enough to matter). x86 hardware manufacturers are in a price race to the bottom, and there's no way around that.
Apple doesn't have any of those problems. Instead, more and more young people can afford and aspire to get a Mac. They want to buy software that works on the mac, and they'll want to write software for the Mac. The network effect compounds.
I swear that I read this comment in 2019, and it's still wrong today. Young people want iPhones, go look at Apple's revenue breakdown. iPhones and iPhone accessories dwarf Mac sales, the only comparable product in terms of revenue is the iPad. There is no evidence that Apple Silicon has changed that B2C story.
In the broader B2B sense, Apple lost pole-position to Nvidia. They're not the ecosystem kingmaker they once were, and their ARM architecture is failing to subsume demand for their competitors. The "Private Compute" Mac-based servers are going terribly according to reports, and their contribution to the chip shortage has even driven them to collaborate with Intel Foundry Services: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/28/intel-rumored-to-supply...
The zeitgeist exists on forums like this. Outside where people touch grass now and then, they largely don't care.
x86 OEMs are a race to the bottom because that's how the PC market has been for eons as PCs are a tool, not a status symbol, but how has x86 not 'gotten better'? It's significantly more battery friendly than it has ever been by a long margin, matching the M-series.
LOL I had the exact same experience. Somehow it was a goddamned HP too (oh how I detest HP everything).
And to think I'd explicitly mentioned to him that Apple would probably be releasing the kind of cheap beautiful laptop he was looking for in a month :(
> Even non-technical web browsing users will notice the sluggishness coming from that spec.
I'm sorry but this line invalidates most of your comment, to the point of looking like satire.
We have reviews and videos of people editing 4k videos with glee, launching and switching between all apps at once, and stuff like that.
I used the base M1 as a power user/developer for years when it came out, and the only reason I had to switch was the storage. Sluggishness wasn't on the top 10 issues I had with that device.
Be careful of the MacBook Neo reviews that have hit so early. Many of these reviewers are happy to sing praises of Apple for views, clicks, and early access to review units, etc. It is not a device that anyone has had on their desk able to test extensively, write review scripts, record and edit video, etc, yet without having special access.
Dave2D had his MacBook Neo on his desk with an edited video completed on the day the computer was announced. That's the special access I'm talking about. And you'll be lucky if you watched an early video like that from someone like him who is willing to be reasonably critical and risk losing that special level of access.
This segment of the Just Josh Tech podcast talks a lot about the caution you need to take with Apple reviewers who are just rushing review content out there: https://youtu.be/kSwXyxAA9XY?t=2406
I think it's very interesting how they note that someone they know who is very non-technical noticed the sluggishness of web browsing with an 8GB M1 MacBook Air. I noticed that when I owned mine as well. I bought into the hype surrounding the faster RAM and was happy to save some money at the time. I wouldn't say I regret it but I would say it made the system last much less time.
Yes, you can edit 4K videos, but not all 4K video editing workflows are created equally. You can't just jump into Final Cut Pro with complex timelines and lots of plugins and expect a good time. But of course if you're editing 4K videos in CapCut, that's no problem.
For more casual users, this same concept applies: a Safari user who has 3 tabs open is having a much different experience than a Chrome user with 40 tabs open and a simultaneous big file download competing for swap disk writes, even though both of those users are "casual" and "non-technical" computer users.
And here's the other thing, which Dave2D also mentioned: If you're locked in at the level where you just cannot spend more than $499 on a laptop, the Neo is a good deal. But if you actually have some willingness to spend just a little bit more, you'll almost certainly find some kind of M2/M3 MacBook Air, often brand new discounted at a retailer like Walmart or Best Buy where you end up 16GB of RAM and a ton of additional niceties over the Neo (Haptic trackpad, backlit keyboard, larger battery, better screen, speakers, microphones, etc). That system is a system that will ultimately last you longer than a Neo and only a small additional cost gets you there.
Even 50hz is fine. I'd go so far as to say, barring any medical or sensitivity issue, if any person prioritizes a 120hz screen they are a victim to habit or marketing.
It adds zero value to the experience, and you're just looking for things to be annoyed by / brag about.
Modern displays are already cutting edge. They have improved in every way that's meaningful in the last 35 years. Refresh rate is just not meaningful enough. "35 year old performance" it most certainly is not. You just seem hellbent on using this arbitrary (to most people) benchmark as a filter.
FYI, I run my 17 pro almost exclusively on power saving mode to cap frame rates because the battery life extending by 30 mins is more infinitely more valuable than frame rate over 50. I've capped my fancy monitor's frame rate to 60 so it matches my macbook air. And it's all fine in this world, nothing here is "one notch above unusable".
"Even 4gb of memory is fine", "even 720p is fine", "even 2ghz CPU is fine", "even a membrane keyboard is fine", "even USB 2.0 is fine", "even 2 hours battery life is fine"...
Yeah it's all "fine". If these were the specs of the only laptop available to me then yeah it would be "fine". I could get things done. One or more of those things are deal-breakers for an awful lot of people.
For me, a rubbish display is a deal-breaker. I can't accept that they would compromise in this aspect, presumably to save a few bucks.
It's likely as difficult for me to understand how you could possibly prefer battery life over refresh rates as it is for you to do the opposite. And I'm not even talking crazy refresh rates here, 120hz or even 90hz at a minimum.
Would you buy a high-end laptop with 15 minute battery life? I'm not buying a new laptop with a 60hz display.
You're entitled to your preferences. In my opinion:
Functional:
- battery life
- screen resolution (binary, <2k and >2k for laptops), brightness (binary: works in the sun or not), viewing angles (binary: good enough vs not), color (binary, good enough vs not) etc
- connectivity options
- ram
- build quality
etc etc
Aesthetic:
- color
- finish
- refresh rate
- OS theming, animations and all that
- material
When you say "why won't they do 120hz?" I hear "Why won't they release a magenta colored device". That's fundamentally different than "why won't they add usb c"
I don't think there's any value in 120hz. Nearly all content I consume is in 30-60 fps anyway. I don't need to see marginally smoother os animatations lol and thats nearly all 120hz is good for.
PS Gamers might actually functionally need high refresh rates. I'm not in that space, but I recognise that for some specializations it might be absolutely deal-breaker.
I understand it not being a priority for a lot of people but it's odd to me that there appears to be resistance to it. It is very easy for you to reduce the refresh rate if you need to maximise battery life, but I have no option to increase it beyond what the hardware supports.
I wonder how much reduction we could see in eye strain, nausea, fatigue and headaches if higher refresh rates were normalised.
I remember one time showing a non-techy person the difference between a "Pro Motion" iPad Pro vs a lower spec iPad. They probably had no idea what refresh rates were before I took a moment to scroll up and down in the web browser for about 5 seconds side-by-side. They had their "ohhhhh" moment and bought the much more expensive Pro on that basis alone.
These are business class laptops, there's no dedicated GPU. Where are you're going to utilize this high refresh rate? I'm pretty sure 99% of the time the integrated graphics would be working hard to churn out 120 frames of static views.
I bet the vast majority of people would be perfectly happy to have 60hz display, longer battery life, and save a few bucks at the same time.
Funny bonus anecdote: I reinstall my OS in december, only a few weeks ago did I realize it wasn't set to 144hz but 60hz, since I was busy with work since and didn't play any games I did not even realize.
> "Even 4gb of memory is fine", "even 720p is fine", "even 2ghz CPU is fine", "even a membrane keyboard is fine", "even USB 2.0 is fine", "even 2 hours battery life is fine"...
No these things aren't. 60 hz is fine though. What does it matter that it's "old"? It matters whether it's functional.
I for one prefer battery life over refresh frequency and will always choose 60 hz when available.
I agree. Coming from a neighboring country with similarly strict rules on outgoing dollars, I've had many situations where sending money outside of the country, even for business purposes required an insane amount of paperwork, bureaucracy and sometimes bribery.
Bribes aside, the US is one of those nation. I had to provide decades of account records when I wanted to move a sum of money from US -> EU a few years back, due to triggering the "might be funding terrorism" KYC threshold
My windows machine is also “fine” for the most part because i turned off whatever I could and tried to mod whatever I could not. Even so, every once in a while, typing “code” and being taken to an edge bing search makes me want to rip it to shreds.
And I delay every update as far as possible and am filled with dread when it finally wont let me postpone it.
It isn’t that fine now that I think about it.
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