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

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231–240 of 433 posts

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

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Recently bought myself a M2 Air as a birthday gift for myself. 8GB, chucked OpenBSD on it and couldn't be happier. It does what I need, battery lasts long and easy to chuck around.

TIL you can run OpenBSD on apple silicon. With how much effort has gone into Asahi Linux, I'm surprised.

Running anything on Apple Silicon is result of Asahi Linux effort.

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

#232

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…

As a data point: Chromebooks get 10 years of updates.

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you forgot the best part: it is completely silent.

I appreciate a light whoosh from a laptop.

No fan = leaving performance on the table due to lacking thermal headroom.

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

#234
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had many MacBook Pros but never thought about that. I guess mine has too. How do I use it? I just tap lightly to click.

pretty much the only time I use it is to lookup the definition of a word by highlighting it and force clicking. Can't do that with the magic mouse.

Interesting. I find it easier just to CTRL-click it and pressing down on a flat surface.

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

#235
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Recently bought myself a M2 Air as a birthday gift for myself. 8GB, chucked OpenBSD on it and couldn't be happier. It does what I need, battery lasts long and easy to chuck around.

It has no graphics acceleration, right? Doesn’t windowing feel sluggish?

99% of the time I run dwm + emacs, most of the browsing in eww. The occasional 1% that I run a browser is negligible. The scrolling lag doesn't bother me too much. I basically run it as a distraction free machine with long battery life.

No temptation to open Youtube or other distractions.

Just an emacs session with code and notes. Forcing myself to read the man-pages first before googling anything.

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

#236

I understand the premise and it might be cool, but it does feel weird when your 6 year old playstation has more RAM than your laptop. Heck, even Nintendo Switch 2 has more RAM.

Does it? If you browse the web and run Excel, it makes sense to me that you wouldn't need the same specs as when running video games?

IMO developers should be forced to run on such computers, such that they would care a little bit about optimisation.

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

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Recently bought myself a M2 Air as a birthday gift for myself. 8GB, chucked OpenBSD on it and couldn't be happier. It does what I need, battery lasts long and easy to chuck around.

TIL you can run OpenBSD on apple silicon. With how much effort has gone into Asahi Linux, I'm surprised.

Only M1 and M2 machines though. M3 and up is still missing.

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

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you forgot the best part: it is completely silent.

Still baffles the mind that Apple solved this issue some 20+ years ago, and others _still_ haven't. I remember being basically surrounded by jet engines running Word in school. A few years ago in an old job I got a monster-specced Dell laptop, and it would still roar if I opened anything. I had to pull all the nerf tricks through the BIOS to at least keep it somewhat tolerable in low-load scenarios (i.e. most of the…

I wish I lived in the reality. My 2014 MBP and 2019 MBP’s fans come on quick and loud

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After years of incremental upgrades to the Airs, a new entry level M5 Air gives you double the RAM, double the storage, and double the CPU and GPU performance of an M1 Air. Hopefully used Airs will come up for sale more frequently, as they remain a step up from the Neo.

At double the price.

I'm in no way Apple fan, but M5 air with 512GB SSD and 32GB RAM costs $1500. Compared to M1 and 256GB and 16GB at $1200.

Adjusted for inflation it pretty much the same.

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

#240

My wife bought a Neo and has been very happy with it. I was wary of the 8gb memory limit but she is running claude code doing web development with a reasonable number of tabs open and no noticeable lag, so I'd say its definitely getting a lot of mileage out of it. It honestly seems good enough that it might cannibalize Macbook Air sales.

How on Earth did you find a wife who codes? Asking for a friend.

GP expressly said the wife does not code: she uses claude.
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