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Big data on the cheapest MacBook

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Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#101

Post by [deleted] »

ladberg wrote: post #91
__mharrison__ wrote: post #73

When I teach, I use "big data" for data that won't fit in a single machine. "Small data" fits on a single machine in memory and medium data on disk. Having said that duckDB is awesome. I recently ported a 20 year old Python app to modern Python. I made the backend swappable, polars or duckdb. Got a 40-80x speed improvement. Took 2 days.

I'm curious - what were you doing that polars was leaving a 40-80x speedup on the table? I've been happy with it's speed when held correctly, but it's certainly easy to hold it incorrectly and kill your perf if you're not careful

[deleted]

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#102

Post by yohannparis »

skybrian wrote: post #84
tjoff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will do real work fine. But slack and a browser will bring it to its knees.

Maybe if you have 100 browser tabs or something silly like that?

While I agree with your statement, I don't think judging one's way of working and using their computer was necessary.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#103

Post by icedchai »

api wrote: post #33
montroser wrote: post #26

This is as much an indictment of AWS compute as it is anything else.

Yeah, this is really about how ludicrously overpriced big cloud is. I’ve got a first gen M1 Max and it destroys all but the largest cloud instances (that cost its entire current market value per month!), at least in compute. It’s a laptop! A decent bare metal server in a rack will destroy any laptop. It’s staggering. Jaw dropping. Bandwidth is even worse, like 10000X markup. Yet cloud is how we do things. There’s a g…

With cloud, what you're really paying for is flexibility and scalability. You might not need either for your applications. At some startups, we needed it. We sized clusters wrong, needed to scale up in hours. This is something we wouldn't ever be able to do with our own hardware without tons of lead time.

If your application won't ever require more resources than a single server or two, then you are better off looking at other alternatives.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#104

Post by eru »

rob wrote: post #62
Robdel12 wrote: post #37

I’ve been tempted to buy one and do “real dev work” on it just to show people it’s not this handicapped little machine. I built multiple iOS apps and went through two start up acquisitions with my M1 MBA as my primary computer, as a developer. And the neo is better than the M1 MBA. I edited my 30-45 min long 4k race videos in FCP on that air just fine.

It's starting to show its age, but I've been using a 2019 MacBook Pro with the Intel chip and 16GB of memory. Still handles multiple terminal sessions with Claude Code and Codex simultaneously, building in Xcode, running Docker in the background, etc. (Maybe the fans sometimes sound like they're a jet engine taking off…) Finally just put an order in for a new 16" MBP M5 Max with 48GB memory only because it looks like…

Well, Claude Cod and Codex should be doing most of their heavy lifting in the cloud?

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#106

Post by wincy »

ramgine wrote: post #49
Robdel12 wrote: post #37

I’ve been tempted to buy one and do “real dev work” on it just to show people it’s not this handicapped little machine. I built multiple iOS apps and went through two start up acquisitions with my M1 MBA as my primary computer, as a developer. And the neo is better than the M1 MBA. I edited my 30-45 min long 4k race videos in FCP on that air just fine.

I just retired my m1 air to being a server this month. They’re very capable laptops. If the neo is even comparable in spec it’s excellent for the price

My m1 air with 1TB ssd and 16GB of ram is a little champion, I use it during travel to play indie games like Hades II or Slay the Spire, and it works really well, better than my Steam Deck which broke. The only issue it really has is when I try to plug it into my docking station it struggles mightily with 2 2K screens and a 4K screen, so I just use my desktop in that case.

I am jealous of my wife’s 13” M5 iPad Pro though, that oled screen is gorgeous, a wonder of modern engineering.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#107

Post by eru »

skybrian wrote: post #84
tjoff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will do real work fine. But slack and a browser will bring it to its knees.

Maybe if you have 100 browser tabs or something silly like that?

I could have two browser windows open in the late 1990s. I have about a thousand times as much RAM now. So even with 10x more bloat in the pages, I should be able to open 200 tabs just fine.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#108

Post by hermanzegerman »

sam345 wrote: post #58
lachlan_gray wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about the ssd in particular but the neo is apparently pretty modular https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k7Lv7f-5CQ

Fantastic tear down. Thank you. Amazing for Apple. I hope this is the trend going forward but probably not. But still a gazillion screws? I just replaced the keyboard for my old hp elitebook with two screws.

I don't care about a gazillion screws, if it's serviceable in the End.

If Apple would build their laptops serviceable like ThinkPads I would buy one today.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#109

Post by cosmic_cheese »

prmph wrote: post #94
ajross wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve been tempted to buy one and do “real dev work” on it just to show people it’s not this handicapped little machine. But... you can do the same exercise with a $350 windows thing. Everyone knows you can do "real dev work" on it, because "real dev work" isn't a performance case anymore, hasn't been for like a decade now, and anyone who says otherwise is just a snob wanting an excuse to expense a $4k designer fash…

No, you can't do real work on a $350 windows machine. No way such a setup is suitable for anything beyond browsing a tab or two and connecting to servers using SSH. And, the whole shittiness of the experience will even distract you attempting real work: the horrible touchpad, the bad screen, the forced windows updates when you trying to start the machine to do something urgent, ads in Windows, the lack of proper prog…

A lot of $350-ish Windows machines also don’t have SSDs but instead eMMC storage, which is dog slow and will make modern SSD-mandatory Windows feel even more awful to use.

If Windows/Linux/x86 is non-negotiable and that’s your budget, I would never in a million years recommend anything brand new. This is when you go pick up a $350 used midrange ThinkPad on eBay. It won’t outperform a Neo in terms of CPU and battery life but I guarantee it’ll be a better experience than the garbage routinely sold at this price point.

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