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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#531

Post by Arainach »

Certhas wrote: post #333
carabiner wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 2026 the year of the linux desktop? Can I update video drivers in Linux without seeing a console? OS X updates them automatically where it's a non-issue.

Updating video drivers in Ubuntu is so so so much easier than under Windows it's ridiculous. Windows has more drivers for more things, but if Linux has drivers (e.g. you buy a Laptop with Linux support) then driver management is massively easier. I spent god knows how many hours getting the windows drivers for my last self built gaming PC working. Linux I just installed and was done. In reality the Windows experience…

Unless you have very specialized needs, the driver experience on Windows is "turn the machine on". The driver update experience is "connect to the internet" and occasionally "reboot". That's it.

Linux is significantly easier than it was 20 years ago but still not as easy in general.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#532

Post by wlesieutre »

lostmsu wrote: post #438
wlesieutre wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To save anyone else trying to figure out what computer lostmsu is talking about, at least going by the current prices on HP's website (not MSRP): HP OmniBook 5 Laptop Next Gen AI 16-fb0037nr If I were shopping for a cheap laptop I would have given up and bought a Macbook Neo before I found that one.

Sorry about that, here's a link where you can buy one: https://www.staples.com/hp-omnibook-5-16-2k-laptop-copilot-p... I have no affiliation with them of any kind

Oh, the 16-ag1067st not the 16-fb0037nr, of course!

It's out of stock for me, and the couple of other locations that I checked via VPN.

The "st" at the end appears to be a Staples specific part number, so I found the less specific "16-ag1067" on Amazon for $1051. https://www.amazon.ca/HP-OmniBook-1920x1200-Graphics-Keyboar...

On HP's own online store though, this model number doesn't exist.

Took another look at the 16-fb0037nr that I found earlier when browsing HP's store by price, that one's a Snapdragon instead of Ryzen, so very different computer. Don't know what the state of Window's ARM compatibility layer is.

Anyway, this is the typical experience of looking at non-Apple laptops and it sucks.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#533

Post by esseph »

Aperocky wrote: post #521
bigyabai wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I guess the market will speak for itself. I absolutely see the macOS percentage shoot to the sky, it's already almost 50% in the United States, with this, it will gravitate to 75%+ with significant penetration in Europe. Microsoft is also helping by making Windows an absolute dump of an OS.

30% in the US.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#534

Post by cosmic_cheese »

grumpyprole wrote: post #512
brailsafe wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bette…

Yes, it will also have 5 mins of battery life when unplugged and have a power adapter the size of a shoe box. I tried a similar machine from Lenovo at work and quickly returned it.

The thing is, I think there's probably a niche for a workstation laptop like that, but this doesn't really check the right boxes.

For all that extra bulk it ought to be extremely robust and repairable, have the best specs possible, and be equipped with the kind of killer cooling system that a thin chassis can't deliver. Then the tradeoffs might make sense.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#535

Post by NetMageSCW »

thewebguyd wrote: post #339
enraged_camel wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The number of overlapping iPad models and variants, for example, is getting kind of crazy these days. One of the first things Steve Jobs immediately did after returning to Apple in 1997 was to kill most of Apple's product line-up, which had exploded in his absence. Too bad he's not around to save them from the same over-segmentation anymore.

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…

You keep saying $200 extra - I don’t think you know what that means.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#536

Post by matthewfcarlson »

saagarjha wrote: post #224

> The Neo doesn’t have a hardware indicator light for the camera. The indication for “camera in use” is only in the menu bar. There’s a privacy/security implication for this omission. According to Apple, the hardware indicator light for camera-in-use on MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads cannot be circumvented by software. If the camera is on, that light comes on, and no software can disable it. Because the Neo’s only came…

There is a ton of fascinating work to make the "software" camera in use indicator just as secure if not more secure than an LED attached to the power lines of the camera. Apple hasn't publicly talked about it much but here are two sources that aren't terrible.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09272 https://randomaugustine.medium.com/on-apple-exclaves-d683a2c... https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/19/on-apple-exclav...

We've seen a few examples on HN lately (Coruna iOS Exploit Kit) of nation state level exploits in the hands of financially motivated organizations. I'm not free of bias here but the industry is quickly headed towards a reckoning in terms of security over the next few years.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#537

Post by hodgehog11 »

thepryz wrote: post #301
drcongo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how often people who post on here about hating macOS have only just got a Mac for the first time and simply can't be bothered to learn, or hate that the keyboard shortcuts are different, or desperately want their OS level adverts back or something. It's lazy.

As a lifetime Mac user, I will say that the last few updates to MacOS have made me start looking towards linux. Ignoring the many sins of liquid glass, Disk utility is almost nonfunctional, as are many of the built-in utilities. Sure I can use the command line tools but to me it's a concerning trend that highlights poor attention to detail that the Mac was always known for.

As someone who has done this very thing, and is a lifelong Linux fanboy (I run Linux on literally everything else), I would strongly suggest you don't do this if you're using a Macbook. The losses on battery life are far too high to accept, and if you have lower specs on the Mac laptop, you will really feel them on most Linux flavours.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#538

Post by NetMageSCW »

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…

>There are damn good Chromebooks in the $200-300 territory that I can genuinely recommend to people.

Can you list one?

Re: The MacBook Neo

#539

Post by kstrauser »

ezst wrote: post #273
unethical_ban wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I broke that circle by having a sibling ultimately follow my recommendation of getting a ThinkPad T at a discount (prev-gen during a sale) and then letting them advertise it to the rest of the family. If you ask me, for a comparable price range, the ThinkPad still is a much better pick than the MacBook Neo: that thing has no IO and not even enough RAM for nowadays light web browsing.

You're comparing a $1254-minimum laptop[0] with a $599-minimum laptop[1] and asserting that the one that's twice as expensive is nicer.

I'd expect it to be. In fact, I'd demand it.

(I'm ignoring the "old model, found cheaply" bit because that's entirely irrelevant. You can find old Macs on sale around, too, but that doesn't mean you can reasonably compare them to the MSRP of a brand new device.)

[0]https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/c/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/

[1]https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/say-hello-to-macbook-...

Re: The MacBook Neo

#540

Post by nicoburns »

eldaisfish wrote: post #477
nicoburns wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Does this mean it is now possible to run OS X on an ipad? Those also tend to use phone processors.

Technically possible yes. It will have been for years at this point. But Apple hasn't released a build for ipad.
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