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Big data on the cheapest MacBook

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Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#231

Post by steve_adams_86 »

dracyr wrote: post #205
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 spent vacation deciding not to bring a laptop, but to use my android phone (a galaxy s22) with a hdmi adapter and Bluetooth travel keyboard. Plugged it in to the TV in our accomodation and had a lot of fun. Running neovim on termux was fine. Developing elixir was no problem, the test suite took 5s on my phone, and takes 1s on my laptop. Rust and cargo compiling was slow enough that I didn't really enjoy it tho…

I don't really enjoy compiling rust on my M2 Pro, so I wouldn't necessarily blame the phone

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#232

Post by tjoff »

mikestew wrote: post #230
tjoff wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't. It is a capable machine but modern software has made it a lemon. And that is the only reason apple sells it. So that whoever buys it needs to buy another one prematurely, generating another sale. Everything from apple to modern software is rotten to its core.

It really isn't. …in reply to someone who just said their experience is fine, and included details. If you just want to rant about Apple, have at it, but you’re going to have to do better than “nuh, uh” if you want to be convincing.

Well I could say that it isn't enough for vscode alone. And I'd be right. It all depends on how and what you use vscode for.

8GB really shouldn't be an option in 2026, it is just shortsighted and an insanely uneven build.

I could rant about Dell too. Or most other manufacturers (surprise, greed isn't apple exclusive). But Apple at least tries to keep the appearance of a higher profile.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#233

Post by steve_adams_86 »

clamlady wrote: post #48

as a broke ecologist, this little computer can do everything I need in R and word and is a phenomenal build for the price. I'm really enjoying it thus far.

I take it you're researching clams? Or you happen to like clams a lot?

Where I live, our government-funded clam research programs are mostly shutting down. Very sad.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#234

Post by mikestew »

tjoff wrote: post #232
mikestew wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't. …in reply to someone who just said their experience is fine, and included details. If you just want to rant about Apple, have at it, but you’re going to have to do better than “nuh, uh” if you want to be convincing.

Well I could say that it isn't enough for vscode alone. And I'd be right. It all depends on how and what you use vscode for. 8GB really shouldn't be an option in 2026, it is just shortsighted and an insanely uneven build. I could rant about Dell too. Or most other manufacturers (surprise, greed isn't apple exclusive). But Apple at least tries to keep the appearance of a higher profile.

Well I could say that it isn't enough for vscode alone. And I'd be right. It all depends on how and what you use vscode for.

Fair enough; though experience says 8Gb will run VScode, it would very much depend on the use case, I agree. OTOH, I would argue that anyone working VScode that hard probably isn’t buying 8Gb machines, but OP did say they’re running it so it’s up for discussion.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#235

Post by bluedino »

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 wrote 99% of a large PHP app on an six year old laptop with a single 17" LCD. Meanwhile, at my desk, I had a Dell workstation with 3 monitors at the time, but it was easier to squirrel away in a corner somewhere, undisturbed.

After all, the actual server ran the code, I just needed text editors, terminal windows, and web browsers.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#236

Post by hermanzegerman »

moduspol wrote: post #144
hermanzegerman wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I never had Issues with Battery Life on my ThinkPad. I've gotten out 10-12 hours with the 96Wh Battery and never felt the need for much more. I think most people who are so wowed by Macs bought just a garbage Windows Machine (e.g. almost everything from Asus and Acer) before and then splurged the money for a nice one, so obviously it's so much better in comparison.

How heavy is that ThinkPad?

1.8kg I know it's a chunker

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#237

Post by bluedino »

alpaca128 wrote: post #99
skybrian wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A couple YouTube tabs are enough if you leave them running for long enough. Just one YT browser process will easily take up 1-4GB sooner or later.

A couple Facebook Marketplace tabs that have videos of the item for sale would absolutely crush my 2017 MacBook Pro.

My M1 Air would slow down a little, but was still usable doing the same thing. And they both had 8GB of memory.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#238

Post by prmph »

chocochunks wrote: post #221
prmph wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course you can. You can do real work on an $80 Amazon Fire. Yes, some things will be potentially impossible or frustrating but that's also true of the MacBook Neo, just a bit higher of a bar. A lot of this also depends on your definition of "real work". $350 USD can get you a decent laptop with a SSD, 16GB RAM and something like an Intel N100 or N95. And they pretty comparable to a decent Intel Skylake CPU which a…

> Yes, the Neo has a faster CPU but it also has less RAM and less storage and costs more and has less ports.

8GB on Apple Silicon is far better than 16 GB on Wintel, and I don't event trust the quality of 16GB of RAM on a bottom of the barrel Windows machine.

Would you prefer a machine that is still good 7 years from now with less ports, or one with more ports that you have to replace in 2 years? Yes it is more expensive now, but over 7 years it is an absolute bargain.

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#239

Post by mkesper »

ajross wrote: post #175
NetMageSCW wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean that machine from 30 years ago that was running 30 year old software that has nothing in common with today’s development? And how well does Linux run on 4GB?

So weird to see this kind of flaming more than a decade after it got stale and silly. I mean, yeah, kinda: a 64MB K6-300 was pretty great! But as to the 4G quip, that's showing some ignorance of where the market is. The value segment is filled with devices like this: https://www.amazon.com/HP-Stream-BrightView-N4120-Graphics/d... That's a 16G windows box which will happily run multiple VMs for whatever your deploymen…

But this has no real SSD. Back to external SSD like on Apple devices?

Re: Big data on the cheapest MacBook

#240

Post by hermanzegerman »

havaloc wrote: post #139
hermanzegerman wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you're powerusing it like in the Article and relying heavily on Swap. Also there are countless reports of bricked M1 8GB MacBook Airs that are bricked because the SSD used up it's write cycles https://youtu.be/0qbrLiGY4Cg?si=mjKn2oLjqAb36hPU

That's not what the video insinuates.

Yes you're right. I meaned a different video, but I can't find it right now. I've looked it up, and back then MacOS had a bug which exacerbated that issue. Here is an article

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/23/m1-mac-users-report-exc...

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