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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#201

Post by whycome »

efficax wrote: post #164

Calling this a "content consumption" device seems wrong to me. Sure, it's not a professional laptop. You're going to have a bad time trying to run more than one Adobe creative suite app at once, or running the iOS emulator, but the chip in it is very powerful, and you can do real work on this laptop. I was even thinking of snagging one to use as a kind of thin client for dev accessing my big linux box via tailscale.…

I have a macbook pro m1 with 8gb ram and it has been surprisingly good for all kinds of work. And I've had it since about 2020.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#202

Post by wlesieutre »

lostmsu wrote: post #99
akagr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go beyond the specs, though. Which windows laptops have similar combination of all metal build with tight tolerances, a display hinge that doesn’t wobble, a nice keyboard and even close to similar feeling trackpad at this 600 dollar price point? Most non haptic trackpads are dive board designs where you can only press the lower part of it because they hinge from the top, whereas as Neo’s trackpad is completely floati…

As I said in another thread $650 HP OmniBook 5 on Ryzen is faster, more RAM, feels great to use, and I don't have to deal with MacOS!

To save anyone else trying to figure out what computer lostmsu is talking about, at least going by the current prices on HP's website (not MSRP):

HP OmniBook 5 Laptop Next Gen AI 16-fb0037nr

If I were shopping for a cheap laptop I would have given up and bought a Macbook Neo before I found that one.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#203

Post by layer8 »

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.

Apple wants to make money with services, however, and buying more devices in their ecosystem. Full Linux support would counteract the lock-in.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#204

Post by zparky »

kccqzy wrote: post #184
efficax wrote: post #164

Calling this a "content consumption" device seems wrong to me. Sure, it's not a professional laptop. You're going to have a bad time trying to run more than one Adobe creative suite app at once, or running the iOS emulator, but the chip in it is very powerful, and you can do real work on this laptop. I was even thinking of snagging one to use as a kind of thin client for dev accessing my big linux box via tailscale.…

> It might be worthwhile to ensure that a web app you're developing will work on a less powerful machine If that’s your goal this machine is still too powerful. Web apps generally care about single thread performance. The machine has a single thread performance that exceeds any and all Intel/AMD processors, according to Geekbench (A18 Pro: 3445; Ryzen 9 9950X: 3385). My own test for ensuring my web app performs well…

> The machine has a single thread performance that exceeds any and all Intel/AMD processors

Not true at all: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/single-thread/

Re: The MacBook Neo

#205

Post by whalesalad »

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…

It gets worse when you look at Intel/AMD's CPU naming schemes. Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, Intel Core Ultra 9 285H. Clown show all around.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#206

Post by pier25 »

whycome wrote: post #185
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…

I had a Microsoft surface book 2. The provided charger could not provide enough power to the device when it was under heavy load and there was no higher charger option either. That shit should be illegal. And if the battery for the base/GPU died? You can't use the computer w the gpu even with a charger attached. The device itself could have been a dream and something i could have seen Apple doing : a touchscreen moni…

For a couple of days I had a Surface Book 1 before returning it. The keyboard was really good but otherwise just a terrible device and experience.

The touch screen was completely useless. Super laggy and sometimes the pen would still believe it was touching the screen even at like 1cm away. Windows 10 had almost no features for touch based interaction. It was just regular Windows with the same microscopic buttons for mouse.

Plus a ton of display ghosting, GPU glitches, etc.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#207

Post by brewdad »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #137
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…

Yeah, for a while my favorite laptop was the Surface Book 2. Decent specs, does what I want it to. Then Microsoft started going through "Marketing Driven Development" for Windows and its just been downhill for my experience with that laptop. It's not just the marketing trash, the OS has gotten noticeably slow despite me keeping it pretty vanilla. It's downright insulting. As for my desktops, I just smoosh over Window…

I put Linux on an old Surface tablet. Works better than Windows on the same device. The only thing that isn't working under Linux is the camera. Built in extra privacy as a bonus!

Re: The MacBook Neo

#209

Post by whilenot-dev »

everdrive wrote: post #155
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 Ace…

I bought my last Acer around 2010 (Aspire 4820TG I think, good machine). Their notebooks were always on the cheaper side, where its price just sat right with the offered value. Cooling issues were always present and weren't a big problem as long as the machine was maintainable. Unfortunately maintainability in notebooks (and electronics in general) all changed around 2015-ish and from there on it was used ThinkPads only for me.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#210

Post by nottorp »

eloisant wrote: post #139
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.

They already cannibalized a lot of Linux users, developers mainly when they released MacOS X around year 2000. Suddenly you could have a Unix, with pretty much the same CLI as Linux but without all the supported hardware/driver issues. Laptop sleep in particular was pretty finicky. If MacOS didn't pick a Unix/BSD base, I'm pretty sure all the tech companies running Mac would be on Linux.

They seem to be trying hard to annoy developers lately though.

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