What's shocking is that this is a shock to the PC Industry.
The MacBook Neo
61–70 of 1001 posts
Re: The MacBook Neo
#62600 is a bargain for a MacBook, but I can't see the public windows users switching en masse. Most people who buy cheap windows laptops do so because 1) they need to replace a broken laptop and want to pay the lowest amount possible 2) they don't want to learn some new thing 600 might seem budget, but it's out of budget for most people. And my guess is PC manufacturers will retaliate against this by cutting prices jus…
> 600 might seem budget, but it's out of budget for most people.
Out of budget for my parents but I'll pay the difference myself. It's just painful to see them use their pile of shit $300 laptop that can barely open a text editor, sounds like a jet engine and has about 45 minutes of battery life.
The only haptic feedback they get if the entire fucking thing creaking as soon as you lightly touch it.
They've been through at least 5 of them since I bought my 2015 mbp, which is still working fine in every aspects
Re: The MacBook Neo
#63I 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 a…
It did/does absolutely kick ass and 16GB is better. They’re not at odds with each other :D
Re: The MacBook Neo
#64It’s really an iPad running MacOS instead of iOS; the question is whether people want that. I’m not the target market since I require Linux compatibility but I realize that is not a necessity in the market.
I don't think it's a useful distinction. I wouldn't describe my car as "really a vacuum cleaner", despite them both having an electric motor.
The form factor is the defining characteristic, because that informs how people use it. The CPU does not.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#65I’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…
> It’s far less capable of running intensive tasks
The latest reviews are showing that's not really the case
Re: The MacBook Neo
#66IMO the consumer PC industry is near an existential crisis. The big players are just awful at marketing; too many SKUs and models - it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ. The exact same specs will be in two different chassis designs. Additionally, you can’t count on the basic being correct. It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awful, keyboard doe…
> It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awful
This, so much this! I run Asahi on M1 Air but wanted to upgrade to something with fuller Linux support. After trying Thinkpad T14s, trackpad quality has rosen to my attention, something I never thought about before. Turns out glass, haptic trackpads are still only available in probably about a dozen laptops on the market and it's not easy to actually know which ones are these!
Re: The MacBook Neo
#67My daughter just ordered one of these. She’s a student (not stem) and her ancient 8Gb MacBook Air with an intel processor was still serving well but the battery has become unuseable and her keyboard is becoming flaky. The Neo is such a perfect replacement and easier than fixing the Air.
The keyboard issue was probably caused by the battery, which can be replaced, and the keyboard would have likely returned to normal after the battery replacement.
In fact, depending on the model, the battery replacement may well have also entailed replacing the whole top cover (including the keyboard).
Re: The MacBook Neo
#68Maybe other manufacturers will actually stop making crappy hardware that feels like its taped together?
More importantly, they need to find an alternative to Windows. A $10,000 computer wouldn't fix that dogshit.
There's really nothing in between. If ChromeOS would have been an alternative, maybe more Chromebooks would have been sold.
It comes down to Microsoft not doubling down on "let's make Windows as annoying as possible" (with ads, with telemetry that can't be turned off).
Re: The MacBook Neo
#69Just imagine what Apple would do to the market if they also offered a full Linux support, but not Windows... They'd probably own some 70% of Linux market outright and also double its overall size overnight.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#70All 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…
PC work just fine with 16 GB, that is coping with Apple limitations.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255765423?sortBy=rank
Why on Earth do I need a 32 GB PC?!?
Turbo C also worked just fine with 640 KB in MS-DOS, but then again MS-DOS wasn't full of Electron crap.