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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#151

Post by timcobb »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #31

IMO 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…

> The big players are just awful at marketing; too many SKUs and models

and as far as I know, they do this on purpose!

Re: The MacBook Neo

#152

Post by tfehring »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #134

"It's a real Mac" - I get that! I remember a whole slew of inexpensive netbooks and the like that were technically Windows XP or Windows 7 machines, but came with a dumbed-down "starter" OS, not enough RAM, only a 32-bit CPU in an era were 64 bits were already becoming standard - the sum of which amounted to a barely usable imitation of a real Windows machine and as a result most of these became garage sale fodder pr…

I thought I was so clever for buying one of those things for like $190 and putting Lubuntu on it to make it usable. It worked - but the joke was still on me when it died a year later.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#153

Post by ZiiS »

BoredPositron wrote: post #58
nubinetwork wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell has been pushing Linux for like 20 years? I don't remember which distro, probably fedora or ubuntu...

It's an option for maybe 2 SKUs... hardly pushing anything.

That you couldn't actual order; at least as a UK SME.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#154

Post by perfmode »

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 think what you're describing is vertical integration rather than the walled garden specifically. The walled garden is the App Store restrictions, iMessage lock-in, that kind of thing. What made the Neo possible is that Apple controls the silicon, the OS, the firmware, and the industrial design as a single unit. They could put a phone chip in a laptop form factor and have it feel coherent because there's no seam between the hardware and software teams.

The distinction matters because it changes what the lesson is for the rest of the industry. You don't need a walled garden to compete here. You need to own enough of the stack that you can make aggressive tradeoffs (like shipping 8GB and an A18 Pro) without everything falling apart at the integration boundaries. Microsoft can't do that because they don't make the hardware. Dell and Lenovo can't do that because they don't make the OS. Qualcomm can't do that because they don't control the software ecosystem.

The one company that could theoretically pull this off is Google with ChromeOS on their own Tensor chips, and the fact that they haven't is probably the more interesting question than why Asus is shocked.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#155

Post by everdrive »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #31

IMO 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…

This is my advice anyone asks me about a laptop. The specs don't matter (at least if you're asking me, it means you don't know computers and will mostly just use a web browser, and therefore nearly any specs on the market will be fine) and the things that do matter are just never on a spec sheet -- keyboard, trackpad, speaker, screen quality. Some stuff won't be discovered until years later: for instance I had an Acer laptop in 2007 which was designed with insufficient cooling, and cooked its thermal paste in about a year or two. Once it was cooked, you couldn't play games or do anything intensive without rebooting the machine. I hadn't thought to research that issue since I figured cooling was a solved problem. But, I'm sure Acer saved a few dollars per unit. (and of course, the screen, trackpad, speaker (yes, singular!) and keyboard were all awful as well.)

Re: The MacBook Neo

#157

Post by Someone »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #31

IMO 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…

> IMO the consumer PC industry is near an existential crisis. The big players are just awful at marketing; too many SKUs and models -

I see your point, but as a counterexample, look at the TV industry, at PC monitors, at washing machines, etc. There manufacturers have, for decades, created SKUs left and right, sometimes only so that a large dealer can offer to match lowest prices because no other dealer has access to the same SKU.

> 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.

I don’t know how they do things nowadays, but it used to be the case that the same SKU didn’t even guarantee you the same hardware. Two machines of the same order could even be slightly different, requiring different drivers.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#158

Post by starkparker »

beAbU wrote: post #73
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.

If apple came out with their own linux distro, with open drivers and a mainline kernel... A girl can dream!

The memory that XNU and Darwin are technically open-source projects is a curse that brings one only suffering.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#159

Post by kylec »

beAbU wrote: post #73
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.

If apple came out with their own linux distro, with open drivers and a mainline kernel... A girl can dream!

I feel like Apple wouldn't want to make full Linux work on their hardware, but they could enable their Darwin kernel to emulate Linux syscalls and provide a way to boot into a mode that basically loads the kernel and whatever Linux shell you want

Re: The MacBook Neo

#160

Post by drcongo »

FeloniousHam wrote: post #128
Carstairs wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I got one from work. I was quite excited to get one as macos is supposed to be a paragon of design but after using it I'm so glad I didn't spend my own money on it as it's been a total disappointment. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't want to launch it off the roof.

I use it everyday, I love it. Native unix, great apps and ecosystem.

It's amazing how often people who post on here about hating macOS have only just got a Mac for the first time and simply can't be bothered to learn, or hate that the keyboard shortcuts are different, or desperately want their OS level adverts back or something. It's lazy.
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