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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

#181

Post by ivraatiems »

I'm writing this from a Macbook Neo. It's goddam fantastic. The best product Apple has put out in years. There simply is not a Windows laptop out there that can compete on speed, price, and build quality all at the same time. The low amount of RAM is simply not noticeable for everyday tasks. The display is fantastic. It feels really solid and great to hold and use.

macOS is far and away the worst thing about it. It's never exactly been a customizable or flexible OS, but Tahoe is also loaded with bugs, has tons of unconfigurable settings (or buries useful things in "accessibility" layers), and is still missing basic features (still no NTFS write support out of the box? really?) for anybody who is not an entry-level user.

But that said, for about $500, I truly don't think anything better exists. One of the best bang-for-buck new electronics I've ever bought.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#182

Post by fragmede »

skrtskrt wrote: post #22

I would like to know how these are on XCode - would love to have the cheapest/most lightweight possible way to build iOS apps (derived from some cross-platform builder like Expo/Lynx/Dioxus) since I have no other use for MacOS. Looking at tech specs, it seems like the one with 512GB drive might be serviceable. I have a very old 256GB Air and I struggle to keep enough drive space open to have XCode installed on it.

It'll throttle itself when it gets hot during compiles and slow down. You can mod it to cool it down so it will run (compile) faster.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#184

Post by fragmede »

snowwrestler wrote: post #91
ryandvm wrote: post #51

I don't doubt the Neo is a quality product, but I'm curious whether cheap MacBooks are going to sabotage Apple's cachet as a luxury brand. It's my personal experience that iOS users tend to look down on "green bubbles" in a way that can only be explained as some sort of brand superiority complex. I'm sure millionaires wouldn't appreciate it if Lamborghini sold a $25K model...

Apple has never been a luxury brand. It’s a label lobbed at them by critics and fans of competing products. But it’s never been supported by their price points, volumes, marketing, or operations. The few times they have tried to play in the luxury market, like their gold $10k Apple Watch, it went pretty much nowhere and they quickly stopped. They make not-crappy productivity tools at not-cheap price points, and aim f…

Acura and Audi then. They're still expensive vs the competition.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#185

Post by mountain_peak »

bdamm wrote: post #159
infecto wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of that reason is Microsoft office is a third class citizen on macOS. Edit: Not sure why this would get downvoted. Weird. It absolutely lags behind windows version of the products by years. Excel did not get ribbon key shortcuts until 6 months ago. It’s a pretty terrible experience for most power users.

How? My experience with Excel, Word, Powerpoint, event Teams, is that they generally work fine. This is unlike the situation from e.g. 20 years ago, when you could barely get work done due to all the crashes, but that is a very distant memory now. There was a brief time during 2019 when Teams on Mac was kind of awful, but that's long ago in the past as well. My biggest complaint these days is that Teams uses far too…

People might not remember, but Word, Excel, and PowerPoint were all released for the Macintosh before Windows. Back then, the Macintosh versions were 1st-class citizens and (and you mention), Windows versions were a buggy mess.

Having used versions on both for years, I'd say there was a "dark" time around 2011 when the macOS versions were lagging badly feature-wise, but they're pretty much on-par today.

My biggest complaint is that you can't turn off the ridiculous animations in macOS versions (e.g. moving between cells in Excel). That makes the entire suite "feel" slower when in reality, the macOS version could easily be just as responsive as the Windows suite.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#186

Post by drnick1 »

ioblomov wrote: post #183
drnick1 wrote: post #144

I am more interested in the XPS13 at a similar price point mentioned in the article. My intention is to run Linux, and that probably won't happen for a long time on modern Apple hardware.

Have you considered Asahi Linux?

Does not run on the Neo, unfortunately.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#188

Post by kstrauser »

sgt wrote: post #36
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…

I figured this out around 2005. Get your entire company on Mac, get your entire family on Mac. Your life will have zero support calls, maybe outside of the intial "How do I install an app" which seems to confuse some people.

Some older relatives asked for a computer recommendation. I told them a thousand reasons why a MacBook Air (at that moment) would be perfect for them. They went to Best Buy and came home with the Dellpaq thing that the guy there told them had better specs.

Honestly, it kinda let me off the hook. "Sorry, I don't know the first thing about Windows[0]. But if you have questions, I'm sure the Best Buy fella will be happy to walk you through it." They never have liked the dumb thing since they got it, but hey, I did my best to lead that horse to water.

[0]I do, but they don't know that, and anyone who tells them's getting throatpunched.

Re: MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production

#189

Post by hbn »

Aunche wrote: post #173
hackerbeat wrote: post #129

Can someone explain to me why the standard iPad ($349) is so much cheaper than the iPhone 17e ($599)?

I'm sure that they have a fatter margin on the the iPhone, but the iPhone does cost quite a bit more to manufacture. Cellular itself is probably $50 or so. The iPad has more material, so you may perceive you're getting more "device per the money" but the cost of those materials is dwarfed by the cost of manufacturing the additional components. This is incidentally why consumers don't buy small phones even though they…

> This is incidentally why consumers don't buy small phones even though they say they want them. They feel cheaper even though they cost about the same to manufacture.

Actually from what I understood, making a small display with modern specs like Apple did on the iPhone mini was MORE expensive because all of modern high-end smartphone display manufacturing is designed for larger, 6+ inch screens.

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