The 9800X3D is a desktop chip, so I don’t think it’s relevant here. We are talking about a complete mobile device after all, not parts.

In my country, for around 800$ equivalent, you can buy a used business laptop with long battery life and enoguh performance for web browsing, video playback, and office work. The cheapest macbook neo I found in my country is also around that price (820$), and the better configuration is about 900$.

For the lower price, I could get:

• a thinkpad t480 with multiple batteries (hot swappable) and 32GB SO-DIMM RAM
• a latitude 7420 with 11th gen intel with 32GB soldered RAM, a ultraportable like the neo
• a thinkpad t14 gen 2 with 11th gen intel or ryzen 5000 and 48GB RAM (one SO-DIMM slot, and one soldered module)
• or if the size format didn’t matter a thinkpad p52 with 64GB RAM and a 90Wh swappable battery If I went with the higher-spec price, I could get a thinkpad p53 with a quadro RTX 4000 and 32 GB RAM, 512 GB ssd, and a Pantone-calibrated display.

All of them have more ports the the neo, use standard SSDs, and don’t come from a companie that is one of the most hostile to consumer rights and right to repair .

One of the few, I take it?

One of many. What I meant (and should have said, instead of being vague) is that I don’t expect this to be a real shift in policy, but rather a way to maintain profits when people have less disposable income, and I fully expect Apple to keep lobbing against right to repair, even when releasing ‘repairable’ devices.