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MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

macrumors.com

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Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#411

Post by Version467 »

juancn wrote: post #24

I ended up getting two (one for each of my daughters). The thing about Apple is that as the "IT" guy for my family, its ecosystem is the one which needs the least attention from me. It really just works. They have used Windows and Linux before (my kids and wife, that is), but something is always not quite right and needs my involvement. These days gone 100% Mac, my interventions are usually initial setup and whenever…

Yup. Basically the same story here.

There’s lots of stuff not to like about macOS, but there’s something about it that makes it click much more for average people.

For my partner in particular I noticed that they use way more features than they ever did with windows. Boring stuff like spotlight search to find files, space bar to preview documents, airdrop to send stuff to an iPhone, etc.

With windows I got called over constantly for questions like “how do I find x, I forgot where I put it”, “can you help me get this on my phone, I want to send it to ”.

It’s not like good solutions for this don’t exist elsewhere, but something about MacBooks make people better at discovering those features.

I have secret pet theory that part of it is actually just that people know about Apple stuff that it’s supposed to be intuitive and so they have more confidence in trying to figure it out, which makes them have more success at it and that turns into a positive cycle.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#412

Post by baq »

F7F7F7 wrote: post #404
baq wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed there aren’t many of us, but macOS is easily the worst part of the Mac experience, and worryingly it’s getting comparatively worse vs kde or even gnome each year. ‘It’s POSIX’ doesn’t cut it when I deploy to Linux and I work in containers all day anyway (and wsl is better than macOS at this, too, but the rest of windows went downhill real bad recently). The problem is even before the rampocalypse it just wasn’…

My home runs on Linux and my life/career runs on Mac OS. I look forward to tinkering and tweaking my home lab but I barely remember my interactions with Mac OS. I like it that way. It surely beats tinkering with my life.

I’m not saying I want tinkering. I’m saying the macOS desktop environment is worse than kde or gnome for work. I definitely don’t include the setting up the box part in that, macOS on Mac is hard to beat here.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#413

Post by prmoustache »

Kirby64 wrote: post #115
elorant wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s nothing baffling to it. Windows PCs are upgradable. Apple won’t even give you a PCie slot on its $10k mac studio ultra to install a better network card or whatever.

What company upgrades their windows PCs? They give them exactly as shipped. IT department is not wasting time swapping out RAM or SSDs. And they certainly are not upgrading them over time. You just replace the entire PC if you go to 'swap' it.

I have had an upgrade maxing out the memory of my works thinkpad. It was a number of years ago, 2020 or 2021. Might be less common these days for obvious technical reasons (solderd ram on many models) but if the hardware allows it why not?

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#414

Post by prmoustache »

Kirby64 wrote: post #377
msisk6 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a little company called Boeing and all our PCs (desktops and laptops) are Dell and our IT center will upgrade SSD, memory, and even do repairs like swapping out motherboards. Probably helps the IT center folks are actually employees of Dell and this service is part of the deal Boeing has with Dell. Lots of big companies have similar deals with their hardware vendors.

Interesting. I’ve worked for company’s that were all Dell shops as well and were similarly large and they had no such deal. You got whatever PC was available (like two options, one large and one small) and no choice beyond that. If you were special and could adequately plead your case, you maybe got a desktop for the extra RAM which was special order. Why would you even want a SSD or memory upgrade? By the time you’r…

> Why would you even want a SSD or memory upgrade? By the time you’re out of memory, the cpu upgrade is typically worth it.

Not necessarily. Sometimes the default laptop sizing comes with a standard usage in mind but more space and ram is justified for other roles. Sure you could have different laptop models but if you are fine with just more ram and disk space why not?

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#415

Post by hulitu »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #85
2001zhaozhao wrote: post #74

I think Apple's cost efficiency advantages are really compounding now and it'll get increasingly hard for competitors to catch up. Everything they put in the product is either in-house or benefit from their scale and negotiating power. In the MacBook Neo's case, everything from the in-house chipset and scale (for stuff like aluminum body) and the more RAM-efficient software is working in its favor. I'd bet that a dif…

I think the clear demonstration of this is how small Apple's motherboard is for the neo (and other M series) compared to everyone else). It really seems like the PC makers don't understand the benefits of low power chips sufficiently. If you cap your chips TDP such that it can be cooled passively, you save money on heatsink, fan, vents, power circuitry (e.g. fewer capacitors), battery size, etc.

> It really seems like the PC makers don't understand the benefits of low power chips sufficiently

We do. But we have to do work also. There is a difference between running a simulation in 10 minutes instead of 1 hour.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#416

Post by hulitu »

bombcar wrote: post #362
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the clear demonstration of this is how small Apple's motherboard is for the neo (and other M series) compared to everyone else). It really seems like the PC makers don't understand the benefits of low power chips sufficiently. If you cap your chips TDP such that it can be cooled passively, you save money on heatsink, fan, vents, power circuitry (e.g. fewer capacitors), battery size, etc.

The phone makers aren’t making phones that are laptops. Apple is. Part of this is the windows ARM not being where it needs to be, but part of it is lack of imagination.

> The phone makers aren’t making phones that are laptops. Apple is.

Yet we need computers, not phones.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#417

Post by [deleted] »

brandon272 wrote: post #321

I have always had this notion that buying a Mac is the "premium" option, not just in quality, but maybe in price too. I am in the process of trying to find a business notebook for my spouse who is a Windows user. The goal is to have something that is as close to a Macbook Air as possible in terms of price, weight, performance and durability. What I am learning is that nothing that like that exists in the PC world. It…

[deleted]

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#418

Post by fundad »

stodor89 wrote: post #394
fundad wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be key. People must want Windows or Linux so badly they will pay 25-30% for a thinkpad with a track pad that is almost as good. Don't these manufacturers sell more machines than Apple and could benefit from better economies of scale. Maybe the scale is just at the low end and the iPhone subsidizes premium Mac hardware. I have yet to read about someone who priced out something "as good" as the MacBook Ai…

> People must want Windows or Linux so badly they will pay 25-30% for a thinkpad Yup, I got Thinkpad X9, the idea being "Air 15 but with Windows". It does the job. I still think Air 15 is better (and cheaper), but the software compatibility and not needing to switch platforms outweighs that.

I love my 15 Air (M2). I’m curious how the Air 15 is better in a way that may or may not be available as an upgrade in the X9 or some other option.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#419

Post by sgt »

raspasov wrote: post #264
commandersaki wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple's era of unreliable laptops were the ones with Butterfly keyboards. So many issues back then, but they did a complete 180 once they reintroduced the magic keyboard and then Apple Silicon.

Apple Intel laptop + a butterfly keyboard was the absolute gutter tier experience. Not only it was slow and ran hot, but after a few months a random key would get stuck and stop working.

I agree that sucked, and I fixed a few of them myself instead of sending to Apple. Got quite good at it.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#420

Post by prmoustache »

brandon272 wrote: post #321

I have always had this notion that buying a Mac is the "premium" option, not just in quality, but maybe in price too. I am in the process of trying to find a business notebook for my spouse who is a Windows user. The goal is to have something that is as close to a Macbook Air as possible in terms of price, weight, performance and durability. What I am learning is that nothing that like that exists in the PC world. It…

> appears to come with a pretty poor trackpad in comparison.

What is this trackpad obsession with macbooks? Granted I use mostly a mouse when on my desk but I am mostly a thinkpad user (but I've used dell and hp professionally in the past too) and to me trackpads have been a solved problem for around 2 decades. They work fine. I slide my finger and the pointer move. I use 2 of them and it scrolls, etc.

What is so different on apple trackpads and what do you do with them? whenever I had my hands on a macbook I didn't really felt any significative difference.

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