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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

#421

Post by a96 »

SXX wrote: post #333
adastra22 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A refurbished M1 16GB RAM 256GB storage MacBook Air sells for $400 right now. https://www.ebay.com/itm/356717541241

What's your point? My M1 Air display just failed on me after 5 and half years of daily 10-16 hours of use. Considered how non repairable some parts in MacBooks are I'd rather recommend people buy more expensive new one. E.g you can find very good offers on new M2 M3 etc.

I wouldn't recommend any hardware, let alone a more expensive version of something, if my experience with it was a catastrophic failure like that in early age.

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

#422

Post by a96 »

alirezaxdehghan wrote: post #249
habosa wrote: post #131

Macbook Neo is amazing, so impressed what Apple can deliver for so little. That said, my sister this morning asked if she should buy a Macbook Neo. I pointed her to a refurb M2 Macbook Air with 16GB of RAM for the same price. I feel like that's the right call? Slower single-core performance but better multi-core and I think for 90% of normal people use cases the RAM is the limit before the CPU. Are others making the…

M2 Air with 16GB is the logical choice, especially if she doesn't have a habit of breaking/dropping laptops because probably she won't get apple care with a user air.

Magsafe is a also massive help in avoiding fragility. I think older ones lacked that for some reason.

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

#423

Post by a96 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #188
kristianp wrote: post #152

I wish the author had toned down the chatgpt style of the writing. e.g. headers that say "What You’re Getting for $599". Another example: "Read those numbers again. The same chip that posts 3,569 single-core when cold delivers 476 after five minutes of sustained load. That is an 87% reduction in single-core performance on the same hardware, running the same benchmark, separated by nothing but heat."

That second phrase did not feel too ChatGPT-like to me. The throttling behavior really does feel quite extreme and unprecedented as described, more typical of a mobile phone than a traditional PC. By analogy, even the crappiest and cheapest mobile PCs will not go as far as throttling the processor from a nominal 3.6 GHz to 480 MHz after five minutes of CPU-intensive load.

Yes. That was the clearest and most sensible part of the article. It literally falls off a (figurative) cliff and that's exactly what a writer would have pointed out 30 years ago.

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

#424

Post by a96 »

wvh wrote: post #270

I've never owned anything from Apple, but this model has me interested in having something that can run commercial software (I'm a long-time Linux user). But I really think 8GB is going to be a major limit for running a DAW or anything related to live music production. I understand these are the limitations of this option, but can you really do more than just run a simple word editor? Even my Firefox session here use…

Essentially anything is lighter than a web browser.

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

#425

Post by a96 »

revengerwizard wrote: post #334
iknowstuff wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just buy a magnetic usb-c cable if it’s very important to you

The USB-C standard doesn't allow for a magnetic attachment. Besides, those are notoriously unsafe and probably even dangerous to use.

Also the port you plug an adapter in will still be just as fragile and just as taken up by a charger.

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

#426

Post by a96 »

nottorp wrote: post #268

Hmm besides the 8 Gb being there mostly for market segmentation... Does this mean the Neo/Air aren't useful for lightweight gaming at all? Lightweight as in indie-ish games, not as in session length.

8 GB (not bits) should be fine for light games. Was on the M1 mini at least. But that thermal cliff might come up surprisingly quick with modern graphics on even something that looks simple on the surface.

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

#427

Post by a96 »

zeroq wrote: post #408
zeroq wrote: post #297

keep in mind that installing thermal pad will void warranty. Source: apple store staff

No idea why is this getting downvoted. I literally went to an Apple Store the other day after every influencer released their video on yt claiming that it's a great computer, you just have to install the pad in less than 3 minutes and it will work like a charm... So I asked the salesperson about that and they told I'm not allowed to tamper with the device and it will void the warranty.

It tastes funny with kool-aid.

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

#428

Post by a96 »

butz wrote: post #337

How locked down macOS is these days? Is it still possible to use OS without account and freely "sideload" software applications? Is homebrew still a thing?

My view so far:

I haven't done a brand new install in a few years, but it's possible to run macos (not ios) without an account. You can't use the store, but it doesn't try to sell you things all the time either. Siri can be disabled. I don't think you can know how much it leaks and where.

You can install real software pretty much freely, but some of it may pop up with a dialog saying it was downloaded from the internet (OMG!) or that it doesn't pass a signature check. First one is a warning, the second disables the program. There's a workaround. That'll work as long as it works.

Brew still exists and is still terrible, but seems to still be the most common way and has a ton of things and updates pretty frequently. I think there's also Nix and some other things but I don't know how common "mac" software is on those.

And you can run VM's with pretty full real environments if you like. Also the OS itself has come a long way since the first os X releases. Nearly usable apart from the GUI stuff. Installing a real OS instead only works on M1/M2 and there's no sign of things getting better.

M chips and Retina screens (apart from the old 5k weirdo) are pretty damn nice.

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

#429

Post by freehorse »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #269
freehorse wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> 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. 5W Phone CPUs of today are faster than 105W workstation CPUs of ten or fifteen years ago. It's not a matter of whether it can do real work, of course it can. The question is, in the instances when you still h…

> 5W Phone CPUs of today

Yeah tbf I would probably consider just using my phone with my mobile usb-c monitor and bluetooth keyboard, if iOS was not so hostile to be used for actual work (and it does not seem simple in android either, though maybe I would be eventually able to make it work there). It would be very useful to have such a light setup on the go, as I do not necessarily need strong multicore performance all the time.

> AMD chips with TDP configurable down to ~15W

I don't trust the TDP values companies publish because there is no standard way to define what TDP is or how it is measured. At best they are consistent in how they measure them within each brand, so you can at least compare different generations.

And in any case, the question is how competitive such a configuration is vs an ARM-based laptop, with much longer tradition in the low-power space. Could be my searching skills, but looking to get a laptop recently I did not find anything in a better spot in the efficiency/performance/price axes than an air. In particular I was unable to find AMD fanless laptops anyway.

Just as an example, during light work with my m5 mac (eg editting a text file, or writing this comment while a youtube video plays in the background and a bunch of light stuff run in the background too, screen low lit) I see 3-4W total system consumption reported by the OS, while a wattmeter shows 7-9W consumed. Part of it may be hardware, part of it software, but figuring out idle consumption is actually very important for making fanless work. A lot of work a cpu does in a normal day of mine is in bursts. Much of the time it is not necessarily doing much, and you need the thermal headroom for when it is actually needed. Last time I tried tinkering with a thinkpad and linux I did not get remotely as far. I would be happy if there get to be more options.

> The question is, in the instances when you still have to wait for the machine, would you rather wait noticeably longer or pay significantly more money in order to avoid white noise

If I encountered these instances often enough, then definitely a fanless laptop would not be appropriate for my use-cases. But I don't encounter them for what I want to use it for, and the next option with a fan is a larger, heavier and more expensive laptop, which I don't need. When I needed one for my work, I got one. I also have a 16" one that stays mostly at home because I cannot carry this weight around daily and I do stuff I cannot do with an air there.

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

#430

Post by alsetmusic »

a96 wrote: post #420
alsetmusic wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While factually true, it has no bearing on my ability to install Asahi on my M1 Air, which I did a year or so ago just to kick the tires. It was straightforward and easy and worked. Impressive work by that team.

But only on M1, maybe M2. There's sadly no sign of any future after that.

> But only on M1, maybe M2. There's sadly no sign of any future after that.

That's because a Linux kernel maintainer was a jerk to the project's lead, causing him to quit. It was a Rust argument, as I recall. Also, their genius graphics dev got hired into a large company, though I don't recall who.

I don't have a lot of insight into who is working on what. I only know of these two people because they were noteworthy enough for articles or HN links to make me aware. That said, a lack of developers isn't the same thing as constraints from Apple. If you get people who are motivated to continue building Asahi, it absolutely could continue to expand to newer chips.

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