Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

jdhodges.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 433 posts

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

#41

Post by nicoburns »

briandw wrote: post #3

We just bought the Neo for our daughter to use at school. My biggest concern was the trackpad. This is the first MacBook to not use a force touch trackpad since they were introduced. I must say that the new trackpad is really good. It's not quite as good as the force touch one in my MacBook Pro, but it's close. We will see how well the Neo holds up over time, but it's off to a good start.

The trackpads on the old (pre-force-touch MacBooks) were really good. The force-touch is (IMO) slightly better, but it's a slight difference.

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

#44

Post by stirlo »

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…

It’s a bizarre take.

It’s not functionally useless, it supports a mouse, keyboard, printer or even an iPhone (non pro) perfectly fine at full speed. It also probably has enough speed for the average cheap terrible quality USB drive that the buyer of a $600 PC might have.

This is a Silicon Valley tech geek take not a real world one.

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

#45

Post by GeekyBear »

crazygringo wrote: post #15
headcanon wrote: post #6

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.

It might be more likely that it cannibalizes used Macbook Air sales.

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.

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

#46

Post by adastra22 »

baal80spam wrote: post #9
nicoburns wrote: post #4

The Neo is pretty great, and the compromises are totally reasonable at the price point. But if they do a second generation with A19 Pro (and thus 12GB RAM) and a slightly better cooling system then it would really be fantastic.

> if they do a second generation with A19 Pro I'm pretty sure it's a "when", not "if".

Idk, I think they are regretting the unit economics of the Neo, and it is likely cannibalizing the Air sales.

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

#47

Post by adastra22 »

GeekyBear wrote: post #45
crazygringo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be more likely that it cannibalizes used Macbook Air sales.

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.

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

#48

Post by epistasis »

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 days, and far more usable than any Windows laptop that I have the misfortune to experience when borrowing somebody else's computer. And despite all that memory pressure, my SSD isn't getting worn out by swapping, I'm at only "3%" of SSD wear, if those stats on the CLI are to be trusted.

I'm not sure I'll need another computer anytime soon. Even though the kids jumped on it once when I left it on the couch for a few minutes, bending the case on one side of the keyboard. It bent back mostly flat. Gives it a bit of personality.

Never before has $1099 (or whatever) of hardware gone so far for me.

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

#49

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

adastra22 wrote: post #46
baal80spam wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if they do a second generation with A19 Pro I'm pretty sure it's a "when", not "if".

Idk, I think they are regretting the unit economics of the Neo, and it is likely cannibalizing the Air sales.

intentionally cannibalizing their own sales is iirc the official apple policy: iphone destroyed ipod and was one of the best business mives of all time

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

#50

Post by washingupliquid »

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…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN