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

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

#251

Post by freehorse »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #213
refactor_master wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A fanless CPU needs more, lower-clocked cores to have the same multi-thread performance as an actively cooled CPU with fewer cores, and higher core count CPUs cost more. So you only get a fanless CPU if you either a) get a low multi-thread performance CPU or b) pay for a high-performance CPU and then get only medium performance out of it by running it fanless. Notice that even Apple's highest performance laptops have…

This is oversimplified. It is sustained multithreaded performance that brings throttling with fanless cpu. Anything for a short enough amount of time is fine, and sustained single threaded stuff is also fine. Bursts are also fine. A lot of work that people do on a computer is fine. Fanless doesn't really hurt unless you process large amounts of data in parallel for some time. Performance in a cpu does not only show in this kind of tasks.

I have used both airs and the max versions of macbooks, and the airs are embarrassingly on par for too many things. I understand it may be hard to believe, but one can do actual, serious work on a macbook air.

Of course one could say that ~having~ using the fan is always optional anyway (like the older 13" macbook pro was mostly an air with a fan) and in these types of tasks you may barely hear it. But still I prefer the peace of not ever hearing a fan for my to-go laptop.

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

#253

Post by Aerolfos »

xelaboi wrote: post #252

The author clearly had some involvement in the article, I wish they could have written it themselves. It reads like they gave Claude some benchmark data and got it to write the rest of the article.

AI or not, it's such a bad article that constantly repeats itself and spends more time (and words) promising the upcoming sections and "deep insights" than it does on actually writing any of those facts.

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

#254

Post by beloch »

>"~1.5-2GB of available application memory (after macOS overhead)."

Having an OS eat up >75% of your memory on a fresh boot is not ideal. You're gambling on macOS experiencing zero bloat for the lifetime of this product. If the OS memory footprint grows even just a few percent, users of this model will lose a significant portion of available memory for applications.

This model might trigger planned obsolescence legislation in some jurisdictions.

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

#255

Post by KronisLV »

epistasis wrote: post #48
darkteflon wrote: post #38

I bought an 8gb M1 Air in 2020 (for what now feels like an absurdly small sum of money) as an experiment in how-cheap-is-too-cheap / chuckable travel laptop. I ended up using it as my main laptop for 2 years without regret, then handed it to my son for school. It remains in perfect condition and as delightful to use as the day I bought it (Apple software snafus notwithstanding). I fully expect to get at least 10 year…

I've been on my M1 Air, 16GB, since a few weeks after launch, more than six years now. I still use it daily with lots of Docker containers, VS Code, tons of Electron apps, a small macOS arm VM, and lots of browser tabs simultaneously. Recently, Claude's VM environment is getting exercised simultaneously. Usually the memory pressure is into yellow, but responsiveness is still far higher than any Mac from the Intel day…

I got the 8 GB version of the M1 Mac Book air for a freelance stuff where I had to ship stuff for iOS as well. Really wish I had gone for the 16 GB version, since I had no idea just how bad the memory situation would eventually get. That said, it’s at least a good little computer for me being on the move!

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

#256

Post by sysguest »

hbs18 wrote: post #205
tcoff91 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quiet isn’t even the best part of passive cooling. It’s that the cooling will never stop working due to dust clogging fans.

Surely the thermal paste will degrade at some point, right?

well it's really difficult to get internal temperature even to 70 celsius...

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

#257

Post by throawayonthe »

beloch wrote: post #254

>"~1.5-2GB of available application memory (after macOS overhead)." Having an OS eat up >75% of your memory on a fresh boot is not ideal. You're gambling on macOS experiencing zero bloat for the lifetime of this product. If the OS memory footprint grows even just a few percent, users of this model will lose a significant portion of available memory for applications. This model might trigger planned obsolescence legis…

i think it's a fair concern, but quite frankly right now macos has best-in-class (desktop) memory/swap management

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

#258

Post by wishfish »

Havoc wrote: post #85

Recently dived into mac world (air) too after decades of win/linux. Pleasant experience and very impressed by hardware and polish except wow the keyboard/shortcut situation is absolutely cursed. Not different...actually cursed. Who decided that sometimes its cmd+Q to close a window while other times its cmd+W and some apps support both but with different behaviours and knowing which of the three it is depends on know…

One thing that helped me make the transition to nearly full time with the Mac was remapping Command. I remapped Command to Control, and put Control on the Meta / Windows key (I mostly use an external kb).

This kept my decades of muscle memory almost intact since I'm so used to Control being the primary modifier in Linux and Windows. And, weirdly enough, it helped me learn the new MacOS shortcuts since the patterns were now centered on Control instead of the Command key.

You can make the switch without having to use 3rd party software. The Keyboard section of Settings will let you adjust the modifier keys on a per keyboard basis. With different settings for internal, external, etc. if you wish. And it will let you remap Caps Lock if you prefer that to be something else.

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

#259

Post by __patchbit__ »

wiseowise wrote: post #244
overfeed wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If I wanted maximum performance I would use a desktop.

When the M5 Mac Mini Pro 64GB RAM and more release, I'd like to seamlessly mesh the Neo to the Mini the way Plan 9 imagined. And, a payment would be all that you need to expand on the cloud.

Happy to see Gerbil Scheme occupies 4GB RAM use on the Neo while building.

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

#260

Post by zozbot234 »

throawayonthe wrote: post #257
beloch wrote: post #254

>"~1.5-2GB of available application memory (after macOS overhead)." Having an OS eat up >75% of your memory on a fresh boot is not ideal. You're gambling on macOS experiencing zero bloat for the lifetime of this product. If the OS memory footprint grows even just a few percent, users of this model will lose a significant portion of available memory for applications. This model might trigger planned obsolescence legis…

i think it's a fair concern, but quite frankly right now macos has best-in-class (desktop) memory/swap management

Compared to Windows or Android, sure. Hopefully the Asahi folks will get around to supporting this device so we can run a proper lightweight OS on it.
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