Marco Arment

You guys don't remember this, but the old style for arrows, arrow keys on Apple keyboards for a time in front, certain models.

Yes, they were all in a line.

I'm like, surely it doesn't have that, but no, it's got the, before Apple made half-size left and right arrow keys, there was a phase where Apple was doing full-size left and right arrow keys.

It's still in a technically a T shape, but the full-size left and right arrow keys made it so you couldn't feel where the left and right were as easily.

Luckily, Apple snapped out of that eventually, like so many other things, but framework has gone with the full-size ones.

I do wonder if there is a...

sort of reliability and quality angle to that angle get it because like the Apple's one of the things that makes Apple's laptops stand out from the competition even the very cheapest Neo is they usually have pretty nice hinges like the whole thing where you can open it with one finger and the whole laptop won't lift but also whatever angle you put it at it will stay there pretty well but it's also not hard to move it's just getting that right balance between it's easy enough to move but it also stays where you put it and you can also do one finger opening and

There's a lot that goes into the hinge.

All right.

Given all of that, maybe part of the mechanism that makes that work also means that it can't open as wide.

I hope that's the case because if they're just deciding that we don't want it to open as wide, I've heard this complaint from a lot of people, even people who've only ever used Mac laptops.

people sitting in, let's say unergonomic positions, they just want to open the screen a little bit wider than it can.

And they just can't like, maybe it just needs another, you know, five or 10 degrees and it just doesn't have it.

So that's a, that's a potential future enhancement.

If Apple can figure out how to make the hinge still good, but give a few more degrees of opening.

Yeah, he was suggesting if you go into the Apple store and like pick up a MacBook Neo and look at the seam, like to look at an edge on and look at the seam between the bottom cover and the rest of the case that especially like in the middle of the seam where they're just clips holding it, that it's like the gap is not as even and as tight as it is on the ones that have CNC milling.

Maybe this is what the rumors were getting at.

They were saying like, oh, Apple's found a new way to make the case that is less expensive, I think.

The main body of the Neo is still machined, but this bottom one is apparently stamped to save money, and that makes it a little bit more wibbly-wobbly.

He was saying that's why they had screws on all the corners and all the edges, but then they didn't.