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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#81

Post by fsflover »

pjmlp wrote: post #80
cromka wrote: post #69

Just 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.

Don't need to imagine, it did not take off, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux > Reception was mixed, focusing on the difficult installation process and the significant performance costs of the Mach kernel. Reviewers noted its potential as a "Unix killer", but that it required users to abandon the user-friendly Macintosh experience for a pure Linux environment.

> difficult installation process and the significant performance costs

So it was a failure in implementation.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#82

Post by kasabali »

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…

> 15.6"

eww

Re: The MacBook Neo

#83

Post by kingstnap »

pjmlp wrote: post #80
cromka wrote: post #69

Just 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.

Don't need to imagine, it did not take off, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux > Reception was mixed, focusing on the difficult installation process and the significant performance costs of the Mach kernel. Reviewers noted its potential as a "Unix killer", but that it required users to abandon the user-friendly Macintosh experience for a pure Linux environment.

1996 is not now. This comparision makes little to no sense.

I'm sure if Apple provided support for installing your own OS on their M series laptops it would be incredibly popular. And I don't need to guess at this using weird 1996 research on microkernels because Asahi Linux exists and clearly there is interest in it.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#84

Post by tim333 »

frankacter wrote: post #35
atoav wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would ask the opposite. For years now for most of my family even a Raspberry Pi 3B+ 3ould be enough. 95% of people use their machine to run a web browser, that easily ran on hardware that was old 20 years ago.

Agreed, which is why a $600 price point on a "budget laptop" targeting users running a web browser seems quite over priced.

The thing with laptops in my experience is a) they last ~6 years (macs at any rate) so that's ~$100/year or 27c a day and b) people spend a lot of time on them, hours a day often. Is it really worth cutting back much on that when it's like 1/10th the cost of getting a cup of coffee?

Re: The MacBook Neo

#85

Post by tim333 »

Mawr wrote: post #71
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…

> ...at this price point there are plenty of alternatives for laptops with better performance and specs. Laughable. Seriously, how long has it been since the M1 Air dropped? And we're still this clueless? > For example, you can get a 15.6" Ryzen 7 5700U laptop with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD for less than the “unbeatable” price of the Neo: Awesome spec dump. Now, what's the real life usage battery life of that laptop lik…

The Windows ones sound good for running games. Wouldn't suit me as I don't game on them and want battery life for reading.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#86

Post by fxtentacle »

mastermage wrote: post #55
remuskaos wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only recently gotten a MacBook after using Linux Pretty much exclusively for over twenty years. And I have to say I'm really surprised how much I like it. For gaming it's all right, but not great. Factorio works but not much else. But for that I still have my Bazzite or Steam Deck. I really encourage you to try Linux for gaming. It's incredible what Valve has achieved on that front.

Oh i have a steam deck and am in the process of migrating to linux latest when Win 12 hits. Just some problems with some software like Fusion 360. I do like Linux alot.

It really is a pity that there’s no working business model around open source maintenance for software like wine. I’m the guy who fixed the wine bug that blocked new iTunes versions, because I like to keep my music in iTunes for easy iPhone sync. I also have Fusion 360 working flawlessly in wine, but the setup process required multiple sessions stepping manually with a debugger to avoid crashes and packaging that as scripts and/or just documenting all the little issues and their fixes and keeping that up to date with fusion updates would be serious work. So nobody is doing it.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#87

Post by deaux »

remuskaos wrote: post #47
mastermage wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inarguably one of the great things done by apple is the rather easily overseeable models. And no mattter the processing power in the models you get a rather great experience from the haptics, audio and visual in all of them. And I would be very much in the Apple Camp for personal laptops, if Gaming was in any way shape or reasonable. Thats the only downside of apple. They tried to fix this before but that really did…

I've only recently gotten a MacBook after using Linux Pretty much exclusively for over twenty years. And I have to say I'm really surprised how much I like it. For gaming it's all right, but not great. Factorio works but not much else. But for that I still have my Bazzite or Steam Deck. I really encourage you to try Linux for gaming. It's incredible what Valve has achieved on that front.

> Factorio works but not much else.

Currently looking at the top 20 Steam games [0] for today, excluding non-games like Wallpaper Engine. 8 out of 20 work on Mac natively. Out of the remaining 12, 3 of them work with Crossover, so that makes it 11 out of 20. Almost all of the remaining 9 are competitive FPS games that don't work due to their kernel-level anticheat, almost all of which AFAIK won't work on Linux for the same reason.

[0] https://steamdb.info/charts/

Re: The MacBook Neo

#88

Post by fxtentacle »

vrighter wrote: post #27
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

Fully agree. When I have to use Windows from time to time, I’m always surprised by how laggy the cursor feels even on hardware that can do 8K VR just fine.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#89

Post by fxtentacle »

The legacy PC makers are lucky that Ubuntu doesn’t work on this, or else they’d face even more competition. By now, everyone hates Windows. And I’d wager some people hate it enough to be willing to switch to whatever works and is halfway ad-free.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#90

Post by commandersaki »

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…

Ah the classic NIAKUN, what we expect from brand name quality: awesome keyboard layout (love a number pad that smashes into the arrow keys), great resolution (1920x1080 so good for 2026!). I'm sure the speakers are state of the art for the form factor, gets amazing battery life (love me max 4-5 hrs on moderate usage), and of course can't forget the plastic body.

I'm sure a similar story can be said about the HP.

If you didn't detect the sarcasm, a laptop is much more than cpu, memory, and storage; it'd be short-sighted to only fixate on this trio. PC laptops compromise on pretty much everything and usually do everything poorly, including CPU (since apple silicon Macs are much better performance per watt).

Then there's the whole aspect of Apple support for both hardware AND software, something no PC vendor can provide.

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