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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#21

Post by happymellon »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #14

This feels like the first time Apple’s walled garden approach has paid off in the desktop arena. With a cheaper Windows alternative to the MacBook Neo, your options are inferior battery life with AMD 64, or Windows Arm’s inferior compatibility. I doubt Microsoft is holding developers hands when transitioning to Arm the way that Apple does. Not to mention they’ve been using their own chips.

> I doubt Microsoft is holding developers hands when transitioning to Arm the way that Apple does.

While this is key it has nothing to do with the walled garden approach, and everything to do with Microsoft's contempt for users of its platforms.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#23

Post by NoPicklez »

As someone who buys Asus motherboards when he builds PC's, it hasn't been a shock for me as an owner of a Macbook for the last 18 years.

I've been of the firm opinion for a very long time that Macbook's are the best productivity laptops and now even more so once Apple moved from Intel to their own M chips. Their entry level Macbook before the Neo you could buy and it would be a laptop that would see you for many many years.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#24

Post by rf15 »

Except for the bit that immediately killed it for us in the office: only one external display. Even if you close the lid.

I dream of the day I can kick windows into the next bin, but this is the one thing that the Neo fails hard on, all other compromises would've made this a great remote dev machine.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#25

Post by operatingthetan »

happymellon wrote: post #21
pipeline_peak wrote: post #14

This feels like the first time Apple’s walled garden approach has paid off in the desktop arena. With a cheaper Windows alternative to the MacBook Neo, your options are inferior battery life with AMD 64, or Windows Arm’s inferior compatibility. I doubt Microsoft is holding developers hands when transitioning to Arm the way that Apple does. Not to mention they’ve been using their own chips.

> I doubt Microsoft is holding developers hands when transitioning to Arm the way that Apple does. While this is key it has nothing to do with the walled garden approach, and everything to do with Microsoft's contempt for users of its platforms.

People may not be very happy with recent UI changes in Tahoe but it's still another universe compared to some the clunky Windows 2000-ish stuff still in Windows 11.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#26

Post by hulitu »

apimade wrote: post #19
frankacter wrote: post #7

I’m a bit confused about who this article is really for. The MacBook Neo starts at $600 so when I read: “MacBook Neo is built on an iPhone chip—the A18 Pro. It’s far less capable of running intensive tasks than any of Apple’s M‑series chips or any moderately powered Intel or AMD processor.” and that: “It’s merely the right kind of performance for anybody who wants to browse the internet or stream video.” ...at this p…

Total cost of ownership. I’d give my entire family these ahead of Windows laptops any day.

> Total cost of ownership.

Mister Gates, is that you ?

Re: The MacBook Neo

#27

Post by vrighter »

NoPicklez wrote: post #23

As someone who buys Asus motherboards when he builds PC's, it hasn't been a shock for me as an owner of a Macbook for the last 18 years. I've been of the firm opinion for a very long time that Macbook's are the best productivity laptops and now even more so once Apple moved from Intel to their own M chips. Their entry level Macbook before the Neo you could buy and it would be a laptop that would see you for many many…

all of my normal pcs served me well for many many years. They don't get slower naturally, it was windows getting ever more bloated. I put linux on an 8 year old computer and it just flies again

Re: The MacBook Neo

#29

Post by justsomehnguy »

dagmx wrote: post #5

I was watching this video and it’s pretty impressive what can be done on this spec machine. https://youtu.be/d-VOt9559Gk?si=tYlDstnaxtQWoJ88 He opens 50+ apps at once while working in Final Cut and Lightroom. Obviously anyone doing those full time would benefit from more resources but I think this is going to be enough for a big chunk of the population, and will be more appealing than the windows alternatives.

I still remember how Apple fans run around singing praises what their 8GB M1 absolutely kicked ass of Intel Macs with 16GB (and even more). Only to quietly replace them with a model with more RAM next year or some even way earlier than that.

I can open even 500 apps on any laptop. This is what swap for. But with only 8GB you are getting into the swap territory very fast because you need almost half of it for the OS and video memory.

Eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272996

Re: The MacBook Neo

#30

Post by keyle »

pjmlp wrote: post #15

All these PC can't compete reviews are based on US prices, outside it is ridiculous expensive for a 8 GB laptop.

Note that 8GB of ram on a Mac plays out a lot more different than 8GB on a PC.

I work professionally on a Macbook Air 16GB now and I have quite a few docker images and services running bare metal, + browser, vscode etc. on top. Not a problem until I start loading up some LLMs.

The paging works wonderfully well; an advantage of everything being fused.

If anything, I'm much more bound by the CPU limitations and the eco-cores than the memory.

On a PC, I wouldn't think about less than 32GB for a dev pc.

If I had a fulltime gig programming C, I'd even say I could work on this A14 8GB device. Why not? It's as powerful as a 10 year old powerful machine; probably. Or in that ballpark.

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