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MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

jdhodges.com

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Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#181

Post by Gigachad »

chocochunks wrote: post #75
wlesieutre wrote: post #37

> The I/O is also a genuine limitation: one USB 2.0 port is functionally useless for data transfer, no Thunderbolt means no fast external storage, and charging occupies your only USB 3 port. You're supposed to use the USB-2 port for charging and save the USB-3 port for external accessories, not the other way around It only supports 10Gb/s compared to 40 that USB-4 is theoretically capable of, but that's more than eno…

Yeah, but that USB 3 port has to do a lot of heavy lifting. It 's also the only video out port making decent dongles a necessity. On a $600 PC it's not uncommon to have USB A (at 3.0 speeds), HDMI in addition to USB C and maybe even Ethernet.

>making decent dongles a necessity

I used a macbook air all throughout school, I never once owned a dongle or even plugged the thing in to an external monitor. My requirements were something that could run photoshop/illustrator and chrome. If I ever transfered something over USB it was a 300kb docx file or something else that would have copied instantly at 2.0 speeds.

I think there's a huge problem of tech enthusiasts projecting their own requirements on to a device that is designed for a very different person, and then declaring it unfit for use. Apple prioritized things that actually matter to students like battery life, lightness, price, and hinges that don't snap after the first year. Rather than tons of super fast IO and 32gb ram.

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#183

Post by quietthrow »

Apple makes unbelievably good hardware and software that just lasts and just works. Until it’s 7 years old. After that you essentially have to chuck it as you don’t get any updates from Apple and slowly you descend into incompatibility unless you world exists in browser.

I wish once you bought an Apple computer it was truly yours for as long as you wanted it instead of it being dictated by Apple.

Still Great computers though.

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#184

Post by jorisw »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #84
wlesieutre wrote: post #37

> The I/O is also a genuine limitation: one USB 2.0 port is functionally useless for data transfer, no Thunderbolt means no fast external storage, and charging occupies your only USB 3 port. You're supposed to use the USB-2 port for charging and save the USB-3 port for external accessories, not the other way around It only supports 10Gb/s compared to 40 that USB-4 is theoretically capable of, but that's more than eno…

Sometimes on HN while this is technically correct I wonder if Mac users will truly notice. This is probably a limitation of the A19 chip. Many people just see the price tag and buy.

Yep. For me it was a perfect gift to replace moms 10+ year old Intel based MacBook Air.

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#188

Post by zozbot234 »

kristianp wrote: post #152

I wish the author had toned down the chatgpt style of the writing. e.g. headers that say "What You’re Getting for $599". Another example: "Read those numbers again. The same chip that posts 3,569 single-core when cold delivers 476 after five minutes of sustained load. That is an 87% reduction in single-core performance on the same hardware, running the same benchmark, separated by nothing but heat."

That second phrase did not feel too ChatGPT-like to me. The throttling behavior really does feel quite extreme and unprecedented as described, more typical of a mobile phone than a traditional PC. By analogy, even the crappiest and cheapest mobile PCs will not go as far as throttling the processor from a nominal 3.6 GHz to 480 MHz after five minutes of CPU-intensive load.

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#189

Post by d1sxeyes »

quietthrow wrote: post #183

Apple makes unbelievably good hardware and software that just lasts and just works. Until it’s 7 years old. After that you essentially have to chuck it as you don’t get any updates from Apple and slowly you descend into incompatibility unless you world exists in browser. I wish once you bought an Apple computer it was truly yours for as long as you wanted it instead of it being dictated by Apple. Still Great computer…

It is yours for as long as you want it, and it (mostly) runs all the software it was compatible with when you first bought it (there are some quirks around software you had access to but didn't install, like Garageband, where you may no longer be able to access the original version). Stuff doesn't just 'stop working', as a rule, but the rest of the world does move on. I'm not sure what you think should be done about that? All software should always be backwards compatible with older versions forever?

As a reasonable alternative, you can stick Linux on it and it'll run nicely, although with a different set of software to what you got the laptop with. 2026 is the year of the Linux Desktop!1! (in all seriousness though, it is actually quite good by now).

Re: MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

#190

Post by keiferski »

quietthrow wrote: post #183

Apple makes unbelievably good hardware and software that just lasts and just works. Until it’s 7 years old. After that you essentially have to chuck it as you don’t get any updates from Apple and slowly you descend into incompatibility unless you world exists in browser. I wish once you bought an Apple computer it was truly yours for as long as you wanted it instead of it being dictated by Apple. Still Great computer…

I bought a 2015 iMac last year for 100 euros at a thrift store. It’s a bit slow but works fine for YouTube etc. And the computer itself basically looks good as new - the screen is really beautiful.

Thinking I’ll try and install Linux on it at some point.

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