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Big data on the cheapest MacBook

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Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#181

Post by __mharrison__ »

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

20 year old BI app. Columnar DBs weren't really a thing. (MonetDB was brand new but not super stable. I committed the SQLAlchemy interface to it.)

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#182

Post by dartharva »

f6v wrote: post #127
butILoveLife wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I never met someone using Apple laptops professionally who thought it was a status symbol. I only keep hearing this from non-Apple users.

This brand's perception varies wildly between different income groups, but is still one or the other flavor of positive in the end.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#183

Post by MBCook »

hirako2000 wrote: post #174

Would it not also work on a raspberry. With I/O streaming and efficient transformation I do big data on my consumer PC and good old cheap HDDs just fine.

I suspect the Neo’s A-series chip wipes the floor with a Pi.

I’m really surprised just how competitive it was in their benchmark. I was expecting “sure it doesn’t compete but it works and you can use it”, not “it beat an Amazon instance, though not a really powerful one”.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#184

Post by __mharrison__ »

devnotes77 wrote: post #100
ladberg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

App is now lazy!

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#185

Post by fckgw »

butILoveLife wrote: post #105

[flagged]

People want a laptop that has

- Great battery life

- Solid build quality

- A familiar interface (iPhone is the most popular OS in the US)

- Good enough speed and snappiness for the tasks they can't do on their phone

- Can walk into Costco or buy online at Amazon without having to hunt for deals or refurbs

- Is from a brand they are familiar with and has an association with quality.

- Is somewhere around $500-$800, the most common price range for laptops today

The MacBook Neo ticks all those boxes, and it comes in fun colors. It's the one you can walk into a store, buy, not really sweat the speeds and feeds and know you will have a pretty great experience with. I'm not sure why so many people are having a hard time understanding this.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#186

Post by dartharva »

ramgale wrote: post #41

Seems completely unnecessary, there is probably 0 overlap between people who buy a cheap MacBook and people running DuckDB locally

You'd be surprised. There are many of us analysts in the third world who are paid pennies and expected to build large-scale exec dashboards from nontrivial data - with no cloud support whatsoever. ETL has to be local from hundreds of GBs of csv dumps.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#187

Post by throwawaytea »

embedding-shape wrote: post #138
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 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. Before I was a professional software developer, I used a scrawny second-hand laptop with a Norwegian keyboard (I'm not Norwegian) because that was what I could afford: https://i.imgur…

I still manage and develop my php/jquery saas product on a 2011 27" iMac running Linux Mint, with an SSD being the only upgrade. Runs better than most new windows machines. No complaints.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#188

Post by mikey_p »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #120
butILoveLife wrote: post #105

[flagged]

> And I have a hard time believing people who tell me stories about low power consumption, because no one had cared about that until Apple pretended people cared about it. That’s because battery life was pretty mediocre across the board, with Apple occasionally squeaking out a bit of an upper hand on the Air. Most laptops were in the same boat, aside from gaming and workstation laptops but battery life has never been…

I don't think anyone that dismisses this really understands this. I've never had a laptop that could for more than about 3-4 hours doing dev work, but in 2014 I could get 8 hours of dev time out of an Air, and I can do that now on my M1 Macbook Pro.

For someone who is actually out and about all the time, this is life changing.

If you just sit with your laptop tethered at your desk all day, they why would you ever care?

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#189

Post by devmor »

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.

The argument is misrepresented - I think it's about frustration and convenience, not achievability.

I developed some work that keeps tens of thousands of people alive every day on a $100 Acer netbook almost 15 years ago. The tools are always there, I don't think anyone thinks the work is actually impossible to do on a limited machine.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#190

Post by MBCook »

f6v wrote: post #122
butILoveLife wrote: post #105

[flagged]

Yeah, but then MacBook is going to run smoother and faster than the Windows one (and I don’t want to spend even one extra minute on dealing with drivers on Linux). There’re just objective benchmarks for that. And MacBooks also have a better display and build quality. Like, touchpad is still hit or miss on any non-Apple device.

My work laptop is a common HP model from just a few years ago.

The screen is seriously ‘meh’, a massive upgrade from the previous HP model’s “you paid how much for this?”

Both have plastic cases that are fine but don’t feel tight/solid.

The keyboards are 80% and off center so there’s a numpad, which makes things hard to type for me.

The trackpads are fine. Which is way better than I was expecting.

Neither held a candle in speed or quality to my 16 GB M1 Air, and they are developer laptops, not $600 models.

I’m pretty sure I’d want a Neo over a $600 PC for non-developer work.

And the noise. Spin the fan up. Now down. Now up. Now down. Random spinning HD noises too (2nd disk I don’t use). Just to sit on the desktop.

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