The target user doesn't read hacker news. The target user is typing up papers for their history class. This absolutely kills the lower end of the market. I do not know why anyone who needs Safari and MS Office would buy anything else.

I think they very intentionally assume folks are not running VMs or doing much more than "every day" tasks. Given the pre-packaged E-Waste sold at most retailers for a similar price (or more) I think this is a really fantastic market move by Apple. This is doubly true as I read weirder and weirder things that Microsoft is doing with respect to Windows 12 and, well, in general.

It’s $599. The target audience for this won’t need more. Anyone who knows what a VM is is not the target audience.

I used an M1 Air with 8GB as my main software development machine for a year during Covid. It was fine.

Are the instructions missing, or does iOS just not run the hypervisor?

I suppose we'll find out pretty soon, supporting virtualization would be important if they wanted to sell these to CS students that need eg. Docker.

Can the Macbook Neo run Rosetta 2?