this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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You’re not entirely wrong, in that the Apple Tax is real.
Nonetheless, the quality of the Magic Keyboard is substantially higher than that of a keyboard you can get for “few dollars”
Ultimately, your assertion was:
An iPad Air with a keyboard that matches the form factor and build quality of a MacBook Neo does not actually cost the same, it costs an additional $270.
The MacBook doesn't have a touchscreen. It cancels the keyboard cost out.
They don't even put touch ID on the entry model.
you can't buy an iPad without a touchscreen. your argument feels like arguing that tariffs won't affect consumers because they're paid by the importers
Ok but if you want to do actual work on it then these things absolutely do not cancel each other out because you have to spend $270 on a keyboard/trackpad regardless, and now have to use a clunky touchscreen on your 13 inch tablet half the time.
Yes, the M4 is much faster and it is probably only stupid product segmentation keeping it on the iPad. But the reality is, iOS/iPadOS puts OS-level limits on how much you can even take advantage of that hardware even if there is an iOS app for the thing you want to do
TLDR: If you really want a MacBook just get a refurbished M1/M2 MacBook and call it a day, bonus points for putting Asahi on it
That's Apple tax, not manufacturing cost. MacBook replacement keyboards sell for 10 dollars on Aliexpress.
I'm comparing hardware to hardware, not artificial Apple software restrictions.
That's great but hardware doesn't exist in a vacuum. With an ecosystem as locked-down as an iPad's you can't just ignore the software. It's not like you'll ever be able to uninstall it because it's intentionally locked down, unlike a macbook which allows installing apps and even modifying the bootloader to boot into a different OS.
Edit: Forgot to mention the fact even for people that might not care about that, iOS will automatically kill any app that uses more than a certain amount of RAM (I think it was 4GB? I don't remember the exact number) so in a lot of scenarios you can't even take advantage of the hardware in an iPad because of the locked down software