The Windows Laptop Problem

0:02 So, two really crazy Mac laptops have come out in the past month.

0:06 The MacBook Neo, which is one of the best deals in tech in a long time,

0:10 600 bucks and more efficient and more capable and better

0:14 built than almost every other laptop in that price range.

0:16 And the new MacBook Pros at the opposite end of the spectrum.

0:20 I've been benchmarking a $6,000 16-in M5 Max MacBook Pro,

0:24 and the results are just getting ridiculous.

0:27 It has multi-core CPU performance at the top of the charts for every Mac ever.

0:32 And the GPU is now more powerful than the M2 Ultra in my $10,000 Mac Pro.

0:37 And the new SSDs read write speeds are upgraded,

0:40 approaching 20,000 megabytes per second.

0:43 It's just absurd.

0:44 It's awesome.

0:45 It's a creative professional's dream.

0:47 Both of these computers are putting Windows laptops on notice.

0:51 and by extension Microsoft and Dell and HP and Asus and Lenovo and Razer, etc.

0:59 all on notice.

0:59 There was a quote recently from an Asus executive that described

1:02 the new MacBook Neo as a shock to the industry and yes,

1:07 but it also got me thinking,

1:08 what is actually happening with the rest of the industry?

1:11 What is happening on the Windows side of the fence?

1:13 So, I just started digging in.

1:15 I started getting my hands on a bunch

1:16 of these Windows laptops and and researching and benchmarking.

1:20 And it's become pretty clear the more I think about it that Windows versus

1:24 Mac laptops is basically the same

1:28 as iPhone versus Android because just like Android,

1:31 the advantage of the Windows side is the variety and the choice.

1:37 But that's also now both an advantage

1:38 and a disadvantage that's getting kind of scary now.

1:41 Take this.

1:42 This is the new Dell XPS14.

1:44 I used to really like XPS computers back in the day.

1:47 Some of my oldest computers were XPS's.

1:48 Then Dell did this thing where they killed off the XPS, the Latitude,

1:52 and Inspiron names and rebranded them into Dell,

1:56 Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max for some reason.

1:59 Then they came back to their senses and brought back XPS,

2:02 and I bought this one, and this thing is really nice.

2:05 14-in 2.8K tandem OLED display,

2:08 thin bezels all the way around with a webcam and no notch,

2:12 120 Hz variable refresh rate.

2:14 And then it's this thin all metal jacket with soft touch

2:16 finish around the palm rests which hide a massive force touch trackpad.

2:21 There's three Thunderbolt ports.

2:22 There's a headphone jack.

2:23 And then inside is an Intel Panther Lake processor.

2:26 This one a Core Ultra 300 series with their new integrated

2:29 GPUs plus 32 gigs of DDR5 RAM and a terabyte SSD.

2:34 I liked a lot of the previous XPS's like I said,

2:36 but this one is in a lot of ways better than those.

2:38 Uh but it also does have a couple quirks.

2:41 like the ports are all Thunderbolt 4 instead of Thunderbolt 5,

2:44 and there's no SD card slot or any other full-size ports,

2:47 which on a premium laptop like this is a choice.

2:50 There's also no lip to open the lid for some reason.

2:54 So, it's always this little awkward pry

2:56 to like get the laptop open every single time.

2:58 And then the keyboard is probably its weakest point.

3:00 It's a bit shallow.

3:01 The layout is slightly wonky with these top menu buttons,

3:05 which get slightly more misaligned the further from the outside you get.

3:08 But otherwise, I mean, yeah, this is really nice.

3:10 So, this this is a $2,200 laptop as spec.

3:15 So, obviously a pretty premium option, but this is,

3:18 you know, just one of many premium options you could pick.

3:22 Now, why do I bring up this laptop?

3:24 Well, in Windows land,

3:26 this laptop being really good actually relies on a bunch of different

3:31 companies all executing really well at the exact same time, right?

3:35 So, it relies on Dell putting a lot

3:36 of effort into actually bringing back the XPS line

3:39 and not cheaping out and doing the metal build

3:41 quality and the nice display and the whole premium design.

3:44 It also relies on Intel and this exact

3:47 generation of Panther Lake chips being good

3:49 and actually having good integrated graphics because they

3:51 don't actually offer this laptop with a discrete GPU.

3:54 And it relies on Microsoft to actually do

3:56 a good job with Windows so that the software

3:59 experience is worthy of a premium price tag

4:02 and not riddled with ads or unnecessary AI features.

4:05 And if it all happens,

4:07 then together this laptop feels like it's worth the premium price.

4:11 But you can probably see where I'm going with this.

4:13 That doesn't always happen.

4:14 And lately, Windows has felt like a weak link

4:17 and every single Windows laptop will have to suffer for it.

4:21 Now, it's not that the whole OS is like fundamentally bad.

4:24 It's not super buggy or anything crazy.

4:26 It's still functional,

4:27 but it's just lacking the super premium feel that wins everybody over.

4:32 Like this XPS, the first time I booted this up to set it up,

4:34 it took me like 45 minutes because of all

4:37 the forced updates and then all these mandatory signins and then

4:41 it's asking me to use Microsoft 365 and then

4:44 one drive and then all these other services, etc., etc.

4:48 And then even once I got in, I got ads.

4:50 Like I got a popup ad for McAfee Security on this $2,000 brand new laptop,

4:56 which to be fair is probably a Dell problem.

4:58 But then that's not even mentioning all

5:00 the other AI stuff that Microsoft is pushing,

5:03 the co-pilot stuff, the infamous recall feature that everyone hates.

5:07 There's generative AI in Microsoft Paint.

5:09 Now, for crying out loud,

5:10 Microsoft actually requires a dedicated co-pilot button on the keyboard of every

5:16 new Windows 11 laptop now to be classified as an AI PC, whatever that means.

5:23 Uh, so just between that and the ads,

5:26 it's just not really feeling like a totally premium experience.

5:29 And at that high-end, when you're spending a lot,

5:32 users will start to get deservedly really picky.

5:35 You're spending a lot of money, you deserve to.

5:37 And that's where Apple has pretty much

5:39 exclusively been playing for like the last decade.

5:42 The cheapest new MacBook was always $1,000 and then it went way up from there.

5:47 And they are so vertically integrated with their Apple silicon.

5:49 And so the hardware is designed for the software

5:52 and the software is designed for the hardware

5:53 and it's always felt so efficient and clean

5:55 and performant and people just love their expensive MacBook Pros.

6:00 Now there's obviously still reasons why people buy high-end Windows laptops.

6:04 It's still a lot of the choice and the variety.

6:06 And there are certain things you still can't get in Mac land.

6:09 Like if you want a high-end gaming laptop,

6:12 you know, that's one of those common things.

6:14 You can go get a Razer Blade with a 5070 and a 240hz display.

6:20 That's an option.

6:21 So, there are still those things, but every one of those relies on all the parts

6:26 from all those different companies again being good at the same time,

6:31 and that is a tough challenge.

6:32 So now flip it to the low end.

6:34 And this is where it gets really

6:35 interesting because it turns out as we're learning,

6:38 a lot of these efficiencies that Apple's been using to dominate

6:41 the high-end are also very effective in the low end.

6:46 Because to be clear, people are absolutely willing to accept

6:49 some more shortcomings in lowerric laptops.

6:52 Like that's a trade-off.

6:53 That's a part of the game.

6:54 You know, if you shop around, hey,

6:55 maybe you'll be able to find a laptop with just the right set of trade-offs

6:58 that you don't mind while still being decent at the stuff you care about.

7:01 Like this is the Acer Aspire 16.

7:04 Super popular laptop in this segment.

7:06 It's actually discounted recently, so I got it for 550 from Amazon.

7:10 And there's a few more stickers on it.

7:12 Yes.

7:13 And there's a little more plastic and the keyboard deck

7:16 flex is just a little bit lacking in build quality.

7:19 Yes.

7:19 And the Snapdragon chip that powers it, you know,

7:21 it's not going to have the highest end performance,

7:23 but it's efficient, so it has good battery.

7:25 And then there's a nice big 16-in screen and a bunch of fullsize ports here.

7:29 So, if I'm just going to be writing

7:30 or web browsing or watching videos on this thing,

7:33 feels like a pretty good value.

7:34 So, look, laptops like this have been just fine.

7:37 They've been thriving at these price points.

7:38 But here's the problem.

7:39 Here's the brand new Gatorade colored MacBook Neoaped problem.

7:45 The starting price for a MacBook has been $1,000

7:49 for a new machine for the past couple years.

7:51 Now, it just dropped to 600 and actually 500 if you have a student discount.

7:55 And if you've seen the reviews,

7:56 you already know it turns out that they did a great job

7:59 with the Neo to making it feel just like the more premium Macs.

8:04 Same clean software, same metal build, same keyboard, and more importantly,

8:09 the same tight vertical integration where the hardware and the software

8:12 are designed for each other and work super efficiently with each other.

8:16 So, it's like unless you have a a Windows specific need or like a certain

8:20 app you need to use software-wise or a certain game you want to play,

8:24 most people crave the premium experience that's been associated

8:29 with the Macs that are more expensive for all these years.

8:31 And so, the Neo coming along for 600 bucks represented that premium,

8:35 well-integrated, efficient experience that is going

8:38 to be incredibly hard to compete with.

8:41 In Windows Land, you're not only relying on all these different companies

8:44 making the parts to all make them well at the same time,

8:49 you're also paying them all who need their own profits to survive.

8:54 And so that makes it really hard to make

8:56 good cheap laptops and actually profit from that.

9:00 So then the cherry on top is not

9:01 only does Apple basically print A18 Pros for cheap,

9:06 but also Apple's not even necessarily concerned with making

9:10 a huge hardware profit on selling Neos because this is

9:14 more of a Trojan horse to create a bunch

9:17 of new firsttime Mac buyers who then become Apple services subscribers.

9:23 So, Apple can make this computer even cheaper

9:25 than they ordinarily would to effectively acquire new Mac

9:30 users who will then go subscribe to TV Plus

9:34 or Apple Care or iCloud or whatever other services.

9:38 And that's worth more than the hardware margin would be.

9:41 And it already seems to be working.

9:43 There was just a Tim Cook tweet this week about how

9:46 Mac just had its best launch ever for firsttime Mac customers.

9:50 So yeah, I'm guilty of talking about Apple a lot in this video,

9:53 but it turns out the shock to the industry is very real,

9:56 and it's going to be so fascinating to see what sort

9:58 of responses we actually get from Windows laptop makers in the next

10:03 couple months and years and what sort of strings they try

10:06 to pull because if they aren't able to do anything about it,

10:09 then Neo is just going to keep eating their lunch and they

10:12 could have a bit of a market share crisis on their hands.

10:15 Also, one more quick thing.

10:16 Uh, we just came out with these stickers that we're adding to our merch store.

10:20 I love the way these turns out.

10:22 The team cooked on these.

10:23 This one is a color picker sticker, which is so fun.

10:26 So, it's kind of an if you know, you know design,

10:28 but you can put them on anything colorful for fun.

10:31 At least that's what I've been doing.

10:32 You get a bunch of stickers in a pack.

10:34 So, go get some for yourself and send me pictures of what you stick them on.

10:37 Tag me on Twitter and threads and stuff.

10:39 All right, thanks for watching.

10:41 Catch you guys in the next one.

10:43 Peace.