The cooling will be terrible so that every 30 seconds the fans kick in at full speed, thermal throttling takes hold, and then it decides all is fine 30 seconds after that so you're working on a machine that's constantly cycling fan noise. The trackpad will suck, meaning you need to have a mouse precariously balanced somewhere anytime you're using it. It'll have some irritating BIOS feature you can't work out how to turn off that flashes a giant icon on the screen whenever you hit the caps-lock button. The casing will be plastic and snap where the screen hinges are screwed in after a year of light use. It may even be a Chromebook, making it a glorified tablet with an attached keyboard and (terrible) trackpad.
The thing Apple have done here isn't to release a $599 laptop, its to release a $599 laptop where the compromises are ones the average user buying a $599 laptop isn't going to notice everyday, while not compromising on the things they do notice. Its made of metal, the trackpad feels good to use, the keyboard is pleasant, and the battery is large enough that you're not carrying around a charger that weighs as much as the laptop itself.
Not entirely sure about that. With the coupons/ deals HP does, I landed a brand new HP 17" (17t-cn500) laptop with a intel core ultra 5 225u, 16gb ram and the 1920x1080 fhd screen upgrade for $588 tax included. Obviously not the same form factor as the Neo, but this is also a laptop for my kitchen that will spend most of its life streaming media and displaying recipes. I'm sure you can find something closer to the size of the neo with better specs for a similar price.
The only thing in Win11 user experience wise that absolutely drives me up a wall is the new right click menu forcing me to hold shift to get the usable menu instead of the "Win 11 is smart and this new menu UI is easier to use" menu.
Other than that, it feels like win 10 (and 7 for the most part) for anything else that matters (for a normal user).
All of that being said, yes, the experience of a naive consumer buying a windows laptop is awful, but not due to the OS itself, rather the amount of bloated useless shit vendors ship with the installed OS.