The Windows Laptop Problem

So, two really crazy Mac laptops have come out in the past month.

The MacBook Neo, which is one of the best deals in tech in a

long time,

600 bucks, and more efficient

and more capable and better built than almost every other laptop in

that price range.

And the new MacBook Pros, at the opposite end of the spectrum.

I've been benchmarking a $6,000 16-in M5 Max MacBook Pro,

and the results are just getting ridiculous.

It has multi-core CPU performance at the top of the charts every Mac ever,

and the GPU is now more powerful than the M2 Ultra in my $10,000

Mac Pro.

And the new SSD's read-write speeds are upgraded,

approaching 20,000 MB per second.

It's just absurd.

It's awesome.

It's a creative professional's dream.

Both of these computers are putting Windows laptops on notice.

And by extension, Microsoft, and Dell, and HP, and Asus, and Lenovo, and Razer,

etc., all on notice.

There was a quote recently from an Asus executive

that described the new MacBook Neo

as a shock to the industry.

And yes, but it also got me thinking,

what is actually happening with the rest of the industry?

What is happening on the Windows side of the fence?

So, I just started digging in.

I started getting my hands on a bunch of these Windows laptops

and and researching and benchmarking.

And it's become pretty clear, the more I think about it,

that Windows versus Mac laptops is basically the same as iPhone versus Android.

Because just like Android,

the advantage of the Windows side is the variety and the choice.

But that's also now both an advantage

and a disadvantage that's getting kind of scary now.

Take this.

This is the new Dell XPS 14.

I used to really like XPS computers back in the day.

So, my oldest computers were XPS's.

Then Dell did this thing where they killed off the XPS, the Latitude,

and the Inspiron names, and rebranded them into Dell, Dell Pro,

and Dell Pro Max for some reason.

Then they came back to their senses and brought back XPS,

and I bought this one,

and this thing is really nice. 14-in 2.8K tandem OLED display,

thin bezels all the way around with a webcam and no notch,

120 Hz variable refresh rate,

and then it's this thin all-metal jacket with soft-touch finish around the palm rests,

which hide a massive force touch trackpad.

There's three Thunderbolt ports, there's a headphone jack,

and then inside is an Intel Panther Lake processor.

This one a Core Ultra 300 series with their new integrated GPUs,

plus 32 gigs of DDR5 RAM and a terabyte SSD.

I liked a lot of the previous XPSs, like I said,

but this one is in a lot of ways better than those.

Uh but it also does have a couple quirks.

Like the ports are all Thunderbolt 4 instead of Thunderbolt 5,

and there's no SD card slot or any other full-size ports,

which on a premium laptop like this is a choice.

There's also no lip to open the lid for some reason.

So, it's always this little awkward pry to like get the laptop open every

single time.

And then the keyboard is probably its weakest point.

It's a bit shallow, the layout is slightly wonky with these top menu buttons,

which gets slightly more misaligned the further from the outside you get.

But otherwise, I mean, yeah, this is really nice.

So, this this is a $2,200 laptop as specced.

So, obviously, pretty premium option, but this is, you know,

just one of many premium options you could pick.

Now, why do I bring up this laptop?

Well, in Windows land,

this laptop being really good actually relies on a bunch of different companies all

executing really well at the exact same time,

right?

So, it relies on Dell putting a lot of effort into actually bringing back

the XPS line and not cheaping out

and doing the metal build quality

and the nice display

and the whole premium design.

It also relies on Intel

and this exact generation of Panther Lake chips being good

and actually having good integrated graphics

because they don't actually offer this laptop with a discrete GPU

and it relies on Microsoft to actually do a good job with Windows

so that the software experience is worthy of a premium price tag

and not riddled with ads

or unnecessary AI features.

And if it all happens,

then together this laptop feels like it's worth the premium price.

But you can probably see where I'm going with this.

That doesn't always happen.

And lately Windows has felt like a weak link

and every single Windows laptop will have to suffer for it.

Now, it's not that the whole OS is like fundamentally bad.

It's not super buggy or anything crazy.

It's still functional, but it's just lacking the super premium feel

that wins everybody over.

Like this XPS, the first time I booted this up to set it up,

it took me like 45 minutes

because of all the forced updates

and then all these mandatory sign-ins

and then it's asking me to use Microsoft 365

and then OneDrive and

then all these other services,

etc., etc.

And then even once I got in, I got ads.

Like I got a pop-up ad for McAfee security on this $2,000 brand new

laptop,

which to be fair is probably a Dell problem,

but then that's not even mentioning all the other AI stuff

that Microsoft is pushing,

the Copilot stuff, the infamous Recall feature that everyone hates.

There's generative AI in Microsoft Paint now for crying out loud.

Microsoft actually requires a dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard of every new Windows

11 laptop now to be classified

as a AI PC.

Whatever that means.

Uh so, it's just between that and the ads,

it's just not really feeling like a totally premium experience.

And at that high end, when you're spending a lot,

users will start to get deservedly really picky.

You're spending a lot of money, you deserve to.

And that's where Apple has pretty much exclusively been playing for like the last

decade.

The cheapest new MacBook was always $1,000

and then it went way up from there.

And they're so vertically integrated with their Apple silicon

and so the hardware is designed for the software

and the software is designed for the hardware

and it's always felt

so efficient and clean

and performant.

And people just love their expensive MacBook Pros.

Now there's obviously still reasons why people buy high-end Windows laptops.

It's still out of the choice

and the variety and there are certain things you still can't get in Mac

land.

Like if you want a high-end gaming laptop, you know,

that's one of those common things you can go get a Razer Blade with

a 5070 and a 240 hertz display.

That's an option.

So there are still those things.

But every one of those relies on all of the parts from all those

different companies again being good at the same time.

And that is a tough challenge.

So now flip it to the low end.

And this is where it gets really interesting because it turns out,

as we're learning, a lot of these efficiencies

that Apple's been using to dominate the high end are also very effective in

the low end.

Because to be clear,

people are absolutely willing to accept some more shortcomings in lower price laptops.

Like that's a trade-off, that's a part of the game.

You know, if you shop around, hey,

maybe you'll be able to find a laptop with just the right set of

trade-offs that you don't mind

while still being decent at the stuff you care about.

Like this is the Acer Aspire 16.

Super popular laptop in this segment.

It's actually discounted recently

so I got it for 550 from Amazon

and there's a few more stickers on it.

Yes.

And there's a little more plastic in the keyboard deck flex just a little

bit lacking in build quality.

Yes.

And the Snapdragon chip that powers it, you know,

it's not going to have the highest end performance,

but it's efficient so it has good battery.

And then there's a nice big 16-inch screen

and a bunch of full-size ports here.

So if I'm just going to be writing

or web browsing or watching videos on this thing,

feels like a pretty good value.

So look, laptops like this have been just fine.

They've been thriving at these price points, but here's the problem.

Here's the brand new Gatorade colored MacBook Neo shaped problem.

The starting price for a MacBook has been a thousand dollars for a new

machine for the past couple years.

Now it just dropped to 600.

And actually 500 if you have a student discount.

And if you've seen the reviews,

you already know it turns out

that they did a great job with the Neo to making it feel just

like the more premium Macs.

Same clean software, same metal build, same keyboard, and more importantly,

the same tight vertical integration where the hardware

and the software are designed for each other

and work super efficiently with each other.

So it's like unless you have a Windows specific need

or like a certain app you need to use software wise

or a certain game you want to play,

most people crave the premium experience that's been associated with the Macs

that are more expensive for all these years.

And so the Neo coming along for 600 bucks represented

that premium well integrated efficient experience

that is going to be incredibly hard to compete with.

In Windows land, you're not only relying on all these different companies making the

parts to all make them well at the same time,

you're also paying them all who need their own profits to survive.

And so that makes it really hard to make good cheap laptops

and actually profit from

that.

So then the cherry on top is not only does Apple basically print 18

pros for cheap,

but also Apple's not even necessarily concerned with making a huge hardware profit on

selling Neos because this is more of a Trojan horse to create a bunch

of new first time Mac buyers who

then become Apple services subscribers.

So Apple can make this computer even cheaper than they ordinarily would to effectively

acquire new Mac users who will

then go subscribe to TV plus

or Apple care or iCloud

or or whatever other services.

And that's worth more than the hardware margin would be.

And it already seems to be working.

There was just a Tim Cook tweet this week about how Mac just had

its best launch ever for first-time Mac customers.

So, yeah.

Guilty of talking about Apple a lot in this video,

but it turns out the shock to the industry is very real.

And it's going to be

so fascinating to see what sort of responses we actually get from Windows laptop

makers in the next couple months

and years.

And what sort of strings they try to pull?

Because if they aren't able to do anything about it,

then Neo's just going to keep eating their lunch,

and they could have a bit of a market share crisis on their hands.

Also, one more quick thing.

We just came out with these stickers that we're adding to our merch store.

I love the way these turned out.

The team cooked on these.

This one is a color picker sticker, which is so fun.

So, it's kind of a if you know, you know design,

but you can put them on anything colorful for fun.

At least that's what I've been doing.

You get a bunch of stickers in a pack.

So, go get some for yourself

and send me pictures of what you stick them on.

Tag me on Twitter and Threads and stuff.

All right.

Thanks for watching.

Catch you guys in the next one.

Peace.