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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

#351

Post by philistine »

vlovich123 wrote: post #324
Jaepa wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you sure that’s not based on stale information? The M series of laptops by all accounts from the ASAHI developers were written specifically to make it easier to install alternative OSes and ASAHI is no more difficult to install than Linux on a Windows machine.

Asahi Linux is only able to be installed on an M2. They basically take 2 years per new chip, when Apple releases one yearly. At this point, they'll never catch up.

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

#352

Post by seabrookmx »

I bought one just to have Mac around (I haven't daily driven MacOS since the PowerPC days) and to help debug MacOS specific dev environment issues my team has.

While I lean on VSCode remote SSH pretty heavily so you could argue I'm using it as more of a thin client, I've ended up using the Neo more than any of my other machines.

My Windows and Fedora machines have 2-4x the RAM but the Neo is just as responsive when juggling 20 Firefox tabs and a few other apps (mostly electron eg. Slack).

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

#353

Post by philistine »

alsetmusic wrote: post #341
Jaepa wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

At Asahi's pace, the A18 Pro will be able to install Linux in about 8 years.

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

#354

Post by jonhohle »

close04 wrote: post #328
znpy wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this reasoning is just disconnected from reality. Reality is, the iphone 16 sharing the same chipset is perfectly functional for many more years to come, running similar workloads (for the same target audience): mainly web browsing. If the iphone 16 can have the usual 3-6 years of useful life, then the macbook neo has the same -- FOR ITS INTENDED PURPOSE. And I wrote this because I did actually get the macboo…

The Neo not only exposes functionality that would prove limiting on the iPhone too, but it’s mostly used that way. First thing that comes to mind is true multi-window multitasking. The apps are standard Mac apps that don’t assume a RAM limited system, not dedicated “made for Neo” apps like the iPhone has. Overall this limitation has the potential to be much more visible on the Neo and Apple must make real sure that t…

[dead]

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

#355

Post by thenthenthen »

hirako2000 wrote: post #344
zitterbewegung wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

M1 air, 16gb, second hand, 200 bucks, 200+ tabs in brave, photoshop, illustrator and premiere and kicad and sublime and chrome with one tab watching a youtube live stream. Plus text edit, notes and prolly some more apps. Works fine, zero hitch.. maybe too good for my own good.

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

#356

Post by [deleted] »

adastra22 wrote: post #293
SXX wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

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

#358

Post by kube-system »

red369 wrote: post #347
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 o…

The target market rarely connects anything to their laptop besides the charger. The most commonly connected would be crappy flash drives or a mouse. A few might connect to present on a TV/projector but those are already frustrating to connect to.

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

#359

Post by xhkkffbf »

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…

Now that RAM is getting more expensive, I hope the OS builders will rethink how they use so much memory. An OS that's lighter weight lets us save money on RAM.

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

#360

Post by kube-system »

chocochunks wrote: post #75
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…

Yeah, but that USB 3 port has to do a lot of heavy lifting. It 's also the only video out port making decent dongles a necessity. On a $600 PC it's not uncommon to have USB A (at 3.0 speeds), HDMI in addition to USB C and maybe even Ethernet.

The 2020 MBP wasn't much better in terms of IO and it was wildly successful as a $1200+ laptop.

I suspect the majority of $600 laptops live their entire functional life without anyone plugging anything other than a charger into them.

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