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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#451

Post by kwanbix »

lordgroff wrote: post #322
kwanbix wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I like the performance and the power consumption of the current apple lineaup, the problems is I can not install Linux on the Neo. I can beraly install it on the M1, M2, and M3. And not everything works. If I could install Linux and have everything working, I will buy a Macbook (not a Neo) right away.

Linux will always be a second class citizen on Apple hardware. I have the M1 and have tried Linux a few times at different stages of maturity. As it is right now, it's still a far cry from the experience of a Linux on x86 hardware, and specifically Thinkpads. Bottom line is, even though I really like my laptop, I do NOT like Mac OS (and with every update I like it _less_) and will probably go back to a thinkpad for m…

I hope that at least this wakes up AMD/Intel/PC Manufacturers. I don't expect a 600 usd x64 laptop, but I could surelly use an 800~1000 one.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#452

Post by spiderice »

drnick1 wrote: post #174

> You cannot buy an x86 PC laptop in the $600–700 price range that competes with the MacBook Neo on any metric — performance, display quality, audio quality, or build quality. And certainly not software quality. I would argue the opposite: while Apple hardware is generally excellent, it is the software that leaves to be desired. Apple has also been consistently pushing the industry in a dangerous direction (walled ga…

Sorry but if "Switch to Linux" is a valid suggestion, then you most likely aren't talking to someone the Neo is marketed to. As good as Linux is, non technical people still should not switch to it. It needs to be MacOS or Windows.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#453

Post by blacksmith_tb »

nicoburns wrote: post #179
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that makes it a non-standard implementation though (I agree it's certainly more practical for the user), sounds like it's usb-c pd but with nerfed data, an odd choice that feels like it would actually have cost more to develop than just adding two identical usb-c 3.x ports...

I suspect the limitation is that the SOC doesn't have the IO bandwidth to support two ports at usb 3 speeds (remembering that the SOC was designed for iphones which physically only have one port).

Ah, that's a good point, it would make sense (and be a small but real gotcha of using a phone CPU in a laptop).

Re: The MacBook Neo

#454

Post by bigyabai »

Aurornis wrote: post #312
drnick1 wrote: post #174

> You cannot buy an x86 PC laptop in the $600–700 price range that competes with the MacBook Neo on any metric — performance, display quality, audio quality, or build quality. And certainly not software quality. I would argue the opposite: while Apple hardware is generally excellent, it is the software that leaves to be desired. Apple has also been consistently pushing the industry in a dangerous direction (walled ga…

> MacOS is also very behind Linux these days in terms of app compatibility (especially games). For the average consumer looking for a $599 MacBook Neo, Mac is the better choice for apps they actually use. Linux can be used for gaming with a lot of titles, but both Mac and Linux are too far behind Windows or consoles to be considered as gaming machines.

The Linux gaming runtime is free, much like Windows redistributables. macOS gets singled-out for not having DXVK/Proton, and rightfully so.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#455

Post by lostmsu »

iknowstuff wrote: post #214
lostmsu wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said in another thread $650 HP OmniBook 5 on Ryzen is faster, more RAM, feels great to use, and I don't have to deal with MacOS!

lol $150 more for a crappy low res display etc. So bad.

Apple appears to know better by asking whole $200 more for upgrading from 13 to 15 inch screen in their Air line.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#456

Post by brailsafe »

cannolicannon wrote: post #254
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #31

IMO the consumer PC industry is near an existential crisis. 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. The exact same specs will be in two different chassis designs. Additionally, you can’t count on the basic being correct. It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awful, keyboard doe…

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…

That Dell Pro Max Plus (that I legit thought might be a joke) is a big horkin laptop for ~$6k+. 3cm thick, nearly 3kg, and you can do wireframes on it, wow! A full HD screen with 500 nits brightness. What a piece of shit product comparatively speaking. I imagine someone would buy it for a niche specific engineering purpose that can only be practical on Intel Windows, but damn.

I really don't think it would fair better than a less costly M4/M5 Pro, and would probably be just an awful experience to use daily.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#457

Post by mschuster91 »

snuxoll wrote: post #427
thewebguyd wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal is different. Jobs wanted to make the product spread simple to understand. Apple's current method is a pricing ladder, make it simple to spend $200+ more than you planned. MacBook Neo, $599. Great but maybe I want Touch ID & more storage, ok $699. Well at this point now it's "only" $300 to get the air which is much better. Well, now that you're already spending $1000, might as well just do the extra $500 and…

> Now that everything is using the same silicon, it costs Apple very little to maintain all these variants (that are mostly binning), so there's little reason not to. Don't underestimate how much of a bitch it is to maintain all the separate SKUs. This isn't the old CTO days where you had: 1 chassis, N mainboards for different CPU/GPU combinations, a bunch of SODIMM's of varying capacities, and a couple of different…

> But...even then, Tim Cook is CEO still, and he is a supply chain guy, so you better believe this is top of his list when it comes to their product lineup. You don't increase operational complexity for no reason, because that is where the cost for every product lies for them, it's not just dealing with silicon binning.

Sure... but when looking at sales numbers, HP and Apple are tied by monthly sales volume on Amazon [1], with everyone else being widely behind them. But HP has almost 300 models, Apple much, much less - and Apple can react much, much faster because they almost directly run the production sites and mostly sell themselves, so they can produce an initial run of products and whenever a store or a region runs out of one specific variant, they just tell Foxconn to, say, instead of making a run with black casings they now make a day worth of gray casings, ship that onto a plane and that's it. HP, Dell et al? Their inventory gets distributed by an intricate web of middlemen who all need buffer.

[1] https://laptopmedia.com/highlights/august-2025-best-selling-...

Re: The MacBook Neo

#458

Post by nirava »

unethical_ban wrote: post #148
bdbdbdb wrote: post #48

600 is a bargain for a MacBook, but I can't see the public windows users switching en masse. Most people who buy cheap windows laptops do so because 1) they need to replace a broken laptop and want to pay the lowest amount possible 2) they don't want to learn some new thing 600 might seem budget, but it's out of budget for most people. And my guess is PC manufacturers will retaliate against this by cutting prices jus…

My dad the other month, in need of a computer with webcam and ideally portable, bought some $400-500 HP 17" laptop. He was so proud of it, proud of buying a piece of hardware without asking me, and rather than tell him the truth, I nodded and said "yeah this is neat". The monitor is awful . Like, the horrible way it changes color and brightness depending on exact viewing angle is sickening; I am shocked California ha…

LOL I had the exact same experience. Somehow it was a goddamned HP too (oh how I detest HP everything).

And to think I'd explicitly mentioned to him that Apple would probably be releasing the kind of cheap beautiful laptop he was looking for in a month :(

Re: The MacBook Neo

#460

Post by dutchCourage »

magic_hamster wrote: post #371
drnick1 wrote: post #174

> You cannot buy an x86 PC laptop in the $600–700 price range that competes with the MacBook Neo on any metric — performance, display quality, audio quality, or build quality. And certainly not software quality. I would argue the opposite: while Apple hardware is generally excellent, it is the software that leaves to be desired. Apple has also been consistently pushing the industry in a dangerous direction (walled ga…

I fully agree. My use case sees a fairly intensive use of MacOS, Linux and Windows, and out of all these, MacOS is the worst experience for me, and that's saying a lot when I prefer to use Windows 11 over MacOS. Macs have very strong advantages but the software, the OS is absolutely infuriating. There's so many annoyances over regular use. You can remedy some of them with third party software (which should have been…

This depends heavily on your use case. I'd get rid of Windows entirely if I could. For most people I'd say MacOS is the most sane and plug and play experience. The email/browser/note taking experience is better than on Windows, and easier than on Linux.

This gets less and less true when you start pluging peripherals and wanting to change the default behavior or use certain apps. But then they're not the target of the Neo.

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