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.

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

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.

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

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?”

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

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.)

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.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

Ridiculous. First Mac mini was a 1.25GHz G4 with 256MB RAM in 2005 for $499. There have many models since there, ranging from $499 to $799 for the base model. 2018 was indeed the highest at $799, but that was mainly Intel's fault, and Apple's poor refresh timing. Current M4 mini starts at $599, which is over $1000 in 2005 dollars, so the value has largely increased through the model's entire history, especially once we hit the Apple Silicon era.

And in 2026 it starts at $599.

I dont know hey. I think they want a bigger bite of the wintel market before they raise the drawbridge. This device seems perfectly crafted to grab every non gamer, who needs a daily driver but doesnt want bloated Win11 AI nonsense. These days the Apple ecosystem is basically at parity for Microsoft cloud services, so its even good for WFH/BYOD. I dont think its getting cheaper but I bet the entry model will double its memory allocation without shifting too far north in price.

it's 2026, apple's computers do justify their price.