> This model might trigger planned obsolescence legislation in some jurisdictions.
As opposed to years of garbage Windows laptops at the $600 price point, which you seem to expect will remain viable longer than the Neo ... ?
If any legislation comes out of this, it will simply be because of Apple's high profile. They were content to let e-rot fill the shelves for years before the Neo.
There could be an arguments that you can install a lighter OS on these machines. That's not as easy with MacOS.
That would be a wild argument to make for a consumer protection regulation. Consumer protections almost exclusively judge a product as-delivered in the way laypeople would use it.
Are you sure that’s not based on stale information? The M series of laptops by all accounts from the ASAHI developers were written specifically to make it easier to install alternative OSes and ASAHI is no more difficult to install than Linux on a Windows machine.
Asahi Linux is only able to be installed on an M2. They basically take 2 years per new chip, when Apple releases one yearly. At this point, they'll never catch up.
M3 is taking longer than 2 years now. That came out late 2023.
No. Nothing about MacOS prevents users from installing alternative OSes. Even with Apple's custom chips, that remains true. It's only that it's a smaller target that limits options as fewer people are writing software for that hardware than for x86.
See Asahi to verify[0]. I've been a donor since the week they opened a Patreon account.
0. https://asahilinux.org/fedora/
At Asahi's pace, the A18 Pro will be able to install Linux in about 8 years.
> Nothing about MacOS prevents users from installing alternative OSes. Even with Apple's custom chips, that remains true.
Reminder that the possibility of installing a third-party operating system on Apple hardware is not a given. The same silicon is used in iPhones and iPads where you absolutely cannot install another operating system.