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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#441

Post by cromka »

layer8 wrote: post #203
cromka wrote: post #69

Just imagine what Apple would do to the market if they also offered a full Linux support, but not Windows... They'd probably own some 70% of Linux market outright and also double its overall size overnight.

Apple wants to make money with services, however, and buying more devices in their ecosystem. Full Linux support would counteract the lock-in.

I thought about it , but cloud is getting way more expensive since they don't own the infrastructure, while they themselves have long term components contracts that actually help to increase their margin on their hardware. So they're most likely gonna make more money off of hardware going forward. And nothing stops them from offering integration with other devices, effectively all they lose is potential income from AppStore on macOS, which doesn't sell much anyway. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me!

Re: The MacBook Neo

#442

Post by n6242 »

andoando wrote: post #387
cannolicannon wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big players are just awful at marketing; too many SKUs and models - it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ. Just hired a new colleague who prefers Windows. Dell seemed like a reasonable option for a good laptop. Here is Dell's current lineup: - Dell Laptop (with 14, 15, 16 inch variants) - Dell Plus (with 14, 15, and 16 inch variants) - Dell XPS (with 13, 14, and 1…

And thats just this year's model.

It's last year's. I read a few weeks ago that they ditched the "Pro Premium" madness naming scheme and they're back to just XPS .

Re: The MacBook Neo

#443

Post by zimpenfish »

bigyabai wrote: post #223
mikestew wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the OS is full of ads and pre-installed garbage “gaming-optimization-tool” or driver tools taking up 99% of a single core while being riddled with security holes. But inevitably, some chucklehead comes along "wut? I can get for half that! Have fun paying the apple tax, lol." Someone posted that on Ars yesterday, with a random Amazon link from Naikan, your name for quality computing. Or rather, "Naikan, your name…

> It's amazing someone can post that without the slightest hint of self-awareness. It's amazing that people attribute it to lacking self-awareness. You can spend $400 on a laptop and have a perfectly fine experience. There are damn good Chromebooks in the $200-300 territory that I can genuinely recommend to people. If you just need to do your taxes or answer a Zoom call, why would you get a Macbook Neo? macOS itself…

> people don't rave about [macOS] anymore

I don't rave about macOS any more because I've been here for decades and, barring the occasional fight with Windows when I want to play something, I've largely forgotten how awful all the other options are[1].

I've gone "OS blind", I guess, and now macOS, for me, is the "bare minimum of competence" - hence I won't rave about it (but I absolutely will moan about the stupid things it does[2].)

[1] I spent decades using various Unix GUIs (on Suns, SGIs, Linux, OpenBSD for a while); I have absolutely zero desire to explore them again.

[2] My current favourite is being able to notice when it's about to flip into "red battery, plug me in" mode because, for whatever godforsaken reason, the load average will rocket up into the 400s and everything turns to sludge for a couple of minutes. Oh how I laugh every time.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#444

Post by jrockway »

dhosek wrote: post #403
SllX wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPad line makes a lot more sense when you’re just shopping and realize you’re just on a price ladder. Start from the bottom and climb up picking up features along the way until you reach the point where you’ve got what you want or you’re not willing to spend more money. The Neo is either easy to recommend or rather easy to not recommend. It has a fixed 8GB of RAM. I think that’s too little for a modern Mac operat…

From all the reviews, those of us who are skeptical of 8GB of RAM are very much wrong (I’m guessing it’s lingering PTSD from being stuck on underperforming systems with too little RAM that makes us buy much more RAM than we actually need). I’m inches away from buying a couple of these for my kids.

Back in 2000 I got the M1 Air with 8G of RAM (needed the cheapest Mac to test some arm64 stuff) and that laptop served me very well. I never felt RAM-limited. I was always expecting to run out of memory during a big Bazel build or something, but never did.

It isn't the most powerful computer in the world but I never ran into any problems... so it's probably an OK compromise for most people, especially in the world where RAM is scarce because of AI datacenter buildouts.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#445

Post by bigfishrunning »

p_ing wrote: post #307
starkparker wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The memory that XNU and Darwin are technically open-source projects is a curse that brings one only suffering.

I would call them open access. Apple doesn't accept contributions.

Does not accepting contributions make you not open source? I would assume if the license allows you to fork it, that makes it open source (as opposed to "shared source" licenses that basically say "look don't touch")

Re: The MacBook Neo

#446

Post by cromka »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #228
cromka wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awful This, so much this! I run Asahi on M1 Air but wanted to upgrade to something with fuller Linux support. After trying Thinkpad T14s, trackpad quality has rosen to my attention, something I never thought about before. Turns out glass, haptic trackpads are still only available in probably about a dozen laptops on the market and it's not easy to actually…

I exclusively use the trackpoint on thinkpads, to the point that I disable the trackpads in the BIOS or disconnect them from the motherboard entirely.

I used to use track points before moving on to Mac. After I tried moving back to Thinkpad I couldn't stomach the track point anymore , it's just too imprecise and I think it's because we use way higher resolutions nowadays with many more densely packed UI elements to click on.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#447

Post by mschuster91 »

dhosek wrote: post #403
SllX wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPad line makes a lot more sense when you’re just shopping and realize you’re just on a price ladder. Start from the bottom and climb up picking up features along the way until you reach the point where you’ve got what you want or you’re not willing to spend more money. The Neo is either easy to recommend or rather easy to not recommend. It has a fixed 8GB of RAM. I think that’s too little for a modern Mac operat…

From all the reviews, those of us who are skeptical of 8GB of RAM are very much wrong (I’m guessing it’s lingering PTSD from being stuck on underperforming systems with too little RAM that makes us buy much more RAM than we actually need). I’m inches away from buying a couple of these for my kids.

> I’m guessing it’s lingering PTSD from being stuck on underperforming systems with too little RAM that makes us buy much more RAM than we actually need

Mac devices have been able to get away with less RAM (and higher priced upgrades) for well over a decade. During the Intel era, they were the first ones to adopt SSDs as the default option while everyone else still installed spinning rust. That alone provides for way faster swap storage to conceal a relative "lack" of RAM.

And when they went for their own fully integrated stacks of soldered RAM and SSD? Then everything went off the rails - close proximity and no sockets means very low latency for both RAM and persistent storage on one side and on the other side it also allows for much higher bandwidth because of much cleaner signals - remember, even at "measly" hundreds of megahertz you're already in the territory requiring precise PCB design.

On top of that, macOS's scheduler seems to be much, much more efficient and outright better in constrained RAM (and CPU) settings to provide the feeling of "the system is still responding" than either Windows or Linux. The only setting where macOS goes into molasses is when you not just run out of RAM but of free disk space as well.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#448

Post by poulsbohemian »

Aurornis wrote: post #302
poulsbohemian wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you just need to do your taxes or answer a Zoom call, why would you get a Macbook Neo? Because it's a Mac. Maybe not to you, but to many people Apple signals luxury. It signals trust. You have an iPhone, an iWatch, and AirPods in your ears, why wouldn't you also buy a Mac? And at that price point, mom and dad don't think twice about buying one for the kids anymore where previously they might have gotten by withou…

> Maybe not to you, but to many people Apple signals luxury. It signals trust. In some countries Apple is (or was) a status symbol of luxury, but I haven't observed that much in the United States. Macs and iPhones are both mainstream and affordable. AirPods can be bought for $100 on sale. These are commodity items now, not symbols of luxury. Now, most people go to Apple because they see it as a premium option, not a…

>These are commodity items now, not symbols of luxury.

Maybe I should have used the word "premium" rather than luxury.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#449

Post by cromka »

bigyabai wrote: post #394
mikestew wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy a Magic Trackpad and pair it with your Thinkpad no problem. Yeah, that works great on the bus. It's one more thing to tote around to meetings, but hey, at least I didn't have to buy a MacBook! Or I could just buy a Mac and not have to resort to hacks to get a decent trackpad.

If I use one of my Macs then I have to resort to hacks to get a decent OS. A crappy trackpad is ~10-20x less annoying than a hostile OEM, at least for my non-bus-based work. In any case, my response was to cromka's comment and our shared dissatisfaction with Asahi.

I never said I am dissatisfied! To the contrary, it's way better than my Thinkpad even with Linux. I just miss the fingerprint scanner..

Re: The MacBook Neo

#450

Post by zarzavat »

fsh wrote: post #338
zarzavat wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The manufacturers don't care about display quality, because displays are hard and expensive. Apple has enough volume that they can get a custom panel. Users on the other hand, they definitely care about display quality more than they care about RAM. The display is the part you look at! If you're in store and there's a Neo with a crisp 200 PPI screen and a Windows laptop with a cheap screen but more RAM, the vast majo…

On the contrary, displays are commodity components. So much so that motivated enthusiasts have managed to swap better panels into their ThinkPads for a long time. Manufacturers don't prioritize display quality in cheap devices because it doesn't show up on the spec sheet and most customers don't care that much.

Consumers don't read spec sheets. My mother doesn't even know the difference between RAM and SSD - it's all just "memory" right? But she knows that when she goes to the Apple Store the computers are built to an impressive standard.

Quality speaks for itself, and the way that people buy computers is through their eyes and fingertips, not their heads.

Go to the Apple Store and just observe how people make their buying decisions. They don't just look at the spec sheet, they lift, type on, caress the computers. They want to know how it will feel to own one.

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