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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

#291

Post by prawn »

remix2000 wrote: post #267
throawayonthe wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Source…? I see this claim thrown around so much without any backing and my experience with mac os (and other darwin variants) is just terrible. My previous portable was a 2015 mac book pro with 16 (!) gigs of ram (mind-blowing for 2026 standards, I know) and the os just became terribly and unbearably sluggish with all the useless updates (that nb mostly removed features, e.g. ClearType was wiped off the face of the E…

Have you used any of the Apple silicon machines? In discussions about modern Apple devices and RAM, I don't know that pre-Apple-silicon experiences are all that relevant?

My first was underspec'ed and I used Resolve, Lightroom and Photoshop on top of the usual other stuff and it was quite impressive. The relationship of performance to RAM for earlier machines felt incomparable.

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

#292

Post by Moldoteck »

Gigachad wrote: post #180
interludead wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 8GB is harder to defend in 2026 than it was in 2020, but maybe Apple's low-end machines may be staying useful long after the spec sheet says they shouldn't...

Ram is massively more expensive in 2026 than it was in 2020. And the tasks the average person does hasn't changed in that time. I think it could be a good thing that Apple is setting a baseline that your apps should run with 8gb, there isn't a good reason you couldn't work with that amount.

apps are less problematic... the browser though...

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

#293

Post by adastra22 »

SXX wrote: post #239
adastra22 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A refurbished M1 16GB RAM 256GB storage MacBook Air sells for $400 right now.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/356717541241

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

#294

Post by prawn »

wqaatwt wrote: post #194
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…

> Apple solved this issue some 20+ years ago All the i7/i9 Macbook pros that I used back in the day were obnoxiously load. Even when not under particularly heavy load.

Even a 2015 MacBook for me ran the fan hard almost constantly. First Apple silicon MacBook was silent. Now using an M1 Max MBP from 2021 and external hard drives are the thing making noise on my desk.

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

#295

Post by jghn »

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 have the same model and have been using it as my personal laptop all along just fine. Doing my day job on it is a bit of a headache but I can do it in a pinch.

People who say it’s impossible to use a 8gb MacBook are being obtuse

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

#296

Post by berbec »

dlcarrier wrote: post #191
jorisw wrote: post #185

> There’s also a silver lining to the tight memory envelope: Apple has to keep macOS running well within 8GB, which is actually a nice forcing function against bloat and inefficiency. We could all use a little more of that. Love this

Eight gigabytes is orders of magnitude more than an OS could ever use, or even the pre-installed software. It's web browsers and the software that uses them that occupy all the RAM, and those are usually made by third parties. Open a few news web pages, and run Discord, Slack, VS Code, etc, and you'll quickly run out of RAM.

Isn't Slack just mIRC with a skin? /s

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

#298

Post by petee »

n_e wrote: post #285
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…

The figure is likely wrong. My Mac is currently using 9GB of RAM including 6.5GB of cached files with Safari and a few other apps opened. They likely forgot to subtract the cache from the used memory.

That's impressive on an 8GB system!

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

#299

Post by Rexxar »

remix2000 wrote: post #283
trvz wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used a Mac mini M1 with 8GB of RAM for a while. It was fine; much better than Intel Macs or any other setup with low RAM.

Two accounts, both lowercase four random letter names respond to me within two minutes time apart, what do I make of it? :P Either way, I find it hard to believe memory management would vary so much between those two CPU architectures on a single-codebase OS.

> four random letter names

So probably very old accounts

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

#300

Post by postalrat »

HDBaseT wrote: post #121
storus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both 10Gb/s and 8GB RAM limit come from iPhone 16 Pro chip limitations used in Neo. Next year's should have 12GB of RAM.

If they can maintain the same price tag for A19 based Macbook Neo with 12GB of RAM, I genuinely do not know how other companies can compete.

They compete by not being a Mac.
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