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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

#341

Post by alsetmusic »

Jaepa wrote: post #322
whynotminot wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This model might trigger planned obsolescence legislation in some jurisdictions. As opposed to years of garbage Windows laptops at the $600 price point, which you seem to expect will remain viable longer than the Neo ... ? If any legislation comes out of this, it will simply be because of Apple's high profile. They were content to let e-rot fill the shelves for years before the Neo.

There could be an arguments that you can install a lighter OS on these machines. That's not as easy with MacOS.

No. Nothing about MacOS prevents users from installing alternative OSes. Even with Apple's custom chips, that remains true. It's only that it's a smaller target that limits options as fewer people are writing software for that hardware than for x86.

See Asahi to verify[0]. I've been a donor since the week they opened a Patreon account.

0. https://asahilinux.org/fedora/

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

#342

Post by criddell »

havaloc wrote: post #2

I bought a Neo as an out of the house computer and it really is a triumph. If the Air is good enough for 99% of the population, the Neo as is approaches good enough for 90% of the population at half the cost.

The article says the CPU costs Apple less than $50. Why aren't these types of chips for laptops more popular in the Windows and Linux world? Where are the Dell and Framework laptops that can compete with this thing on price, quality, and performance?

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

#343

Post by Keyframe »

palata wrote: post #236
Keyframe wrote: post #187

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.

Depends what you're browsing and what's in your sheets? You can't play games on this computer then? How about a phone then? My 3 year old phone has 50% more RAM.

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

#344

Post by hirako2000 »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #336
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…

HN is completely out of touch with this laptop. No one cares about any of this analysis they just want a cheap Mac. This has sold so much that the A19 processor is having problems to being sourced . Also 8gb is good enough for the target market.

M4 24gb screen broke after just 6 months.

Back to m1, just 8gb*. It sometimes hang for a second or two, but you know what. I'm happy with it.

That's when I have 38 tabs, two IDEs and try to grep some text on VS code.

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

#345

Post by hirvi74 »

I bought an Indigo Neo last week. I am utterly in love with machine. It's honestly exceeded all my expectations.

I have a more powerful Mac for "serious" development work, so I figured the Neo would practical to buy for travel purposes. Honestly, there is something really reassuring about traveling/running around town with a $499.99 + tax laptop. I do not treat it poorly, but if something spills on it, I drop it, etc. stomaching the damage is much easier than a $2.5k MBP.

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

#346

Post by hirvi74 »

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.

My Neo is currently sitting at 5.79 GB Used, 2.15 GB cached, thus 3.64 GB while Safari is open in the background and Activity Monitor is open in the foreground.

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

#347

Post by red369 »

wlesieutre wrote: post #37

> The I/O is also a genuine limitation: one USB 2.0 port is functionally useless for data transfer, no Thunderbolt means no fast external storage, and charging occupies your only USB 3 port. You're supposed to use the USB-2 port for charging and save the USB-3 port for external accessories, not the other way around It only supports 10Gb/s compared to 40 that USB-4 is theoretically capable of, but that's more than eno…

This feels like a dumb question, but is there nothing to distinguish the USB 2 port from the USB 3 port? I think there is an alert to tell people if they are using a fast device in the slow port, but I wonder whether their target market will read the manual and know which is which. I feel they will be surprised when that pop-up appears.

The Apple Take a tour of [the] MacBook Neo page describes the ports by location only:

"The left port can support one external display and transfers data at USB 3 speeds (up to 10 GB/s). The right port transfers data at USB 2 speeds (up to 480 MB/s). You can charge your MacBook Neo and connect accessories using either port."

...and...

"Tip: As a best practice, charge your MacBook Neo using the right port (USB 2), which leaves the left port (USB 3) available for a display or for connecting accessories that can take advantage of the higher speeds."

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

#348

Post by thechao »

petee wrote: post #298
n_e wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

90 would've been impressive. 9 out of 8 is rookie numbers.

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

#349

Post by hirvi74 »

frabonacci wrote: post #313

i bought this for my girlfriend as an entrypoint laptop considering she is coming from Windows - and overall satisfied. the battery though could be improved especially considering for a couple of hundred bucks more we could have gotten a used macBook air

Battery issues perhaps? I haven't charged my Neo since I bought it 8 days ago. It came with a 78% battery charge and is now at 53%.

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

#350

Post by kstrauser »

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…

With a 2015, is that a HDD or SSD?
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