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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#631

Post by ezst »

kstrauser wrote: post #539
ezst wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.lenov…

> You're comparing a $1254-minimum laptop[0]

No, I'm not: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/th...

And I still stand behind the fact that, for that price, you've got a very competent device that is better specced for light use and friendlier for mom and pop (look, it has a HDMI, you can straight up connect it to the telly! Look, it has USB A ports, so that old camera, hard drive with the family pictures, old weird ergo mouse just works out of the box !).

Re: The MacBook Neo

#632

Post by Groxx »

cuuupid wrote: post #567
drnick1 wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but both Mac and Linux are too far behind Windows or consoles to be considered as gaming machines. That's absolutely not true, the vast majority of Windows games now run flawlessly on Linux via Proton. This is especially true for the kind of games you can expect to run on such modest hardware, i.e. not AAA games with kernel-level anticheat.

I, a developer, have never heard of Proton. Googling Proton, I only find Protonmail, and googling "Linux Proton," Valve's Proton is not even the first result. If you are not terminally online keeping up with Linux distro discourse, it's also difficult to even recognize any of the newer names and players. Linux is not even remotely considerable as an option for the average consumer, which is fine and fully intentional…

You've probably heard of the state of Mac gaming, if you've played video games much at all.

Linux has twice the number of active Steam users as Mac, with probably very nearly all of them using Proton to some degree: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

Personally, I've actually had noticeably better compatibility on Linux with older games, compared to Windows. And every single one I've been interested in for the past several years works flawlessly on it. (I don't enjoy most AAA games, so my sample is definitely skewed, but it's a fairly common result)

Re: The MacBook Neo

#633

Post by TacticalCoder »

NoPicklez wrote: post #23

As someone who buys Asus motherboards when he builds PC's, it hasn't been a shock for me as an owner of a Macbook for the last 18 years. I've been of the firm opinion for a very long time that Macbook's are the best productivity laptops and now even more so once Apple moved from Intel to their own M chips. Their entry level Macbook before the Neo you could buy and it would be a laptop that would see you for many many…

> Their entry level Macbook before the Neo you could buy and it would be a laptop that would see you for many many years.

I hope they fixed the ultra brittle screens of their Macbook lineup. I bought a MacBook Air M1 a few years ago and I've been royally pissed off when, after 13 months (one month out of warrant in my case/country) the "bendgate" hit me: the screen died overnight, without any reason (was fine the day before, woke up: screen dead. MacBook Air didn't move). Many people had the same happen to them and they called this the "bendgate" (except there was no "bend").

This prevented me from buying a MacBook M2, M3, M4 and now M5.

Well... Unless I can be convinced that this time the screen isn't going to die overnight.

Saddest thing of them all: I'm the kind of person to only ever use the laptop at home on my lap and never ever put it in a backpack (I don't even own a backpack).

Re: The MacBook Neo

#634

Post by written-beyond »

You greatly underestimate the utility used, serviceable laptops have provided to broke students.

My first laptop was a decommissioned pos office dell ultrabook. By every metrics it would've been the worst option to choose, but since it had replaceable memory I was able to push it to 16 gigs and get through my computer science degree and many side projects. Computational speed was adequate for me, I ran Linux on it. It had an Intel U series 6th gen (12th gen was latest then) i5, an NVMe ssd and was always responsive.

If I were a student in this day, and all I could find were these laptops this is what I would think. 1 they're out of budget for most students in developing countries. 2 I will most likely out grow 8 GB ram faster than my laptops CPU performance. 3 I am limited to learning with what can run on apple silicon(most Linux distros excluding asahi). Finally I end up paying basically 50-60% of the cost of a decent machine and replaced it with a disposable one.

Maybe this machine is perfect for a specific set of users, students with higher income households or degrees which need better a better quality display.

I still advise every computing student I meet to get a under $200 old used laptop that has expandable memory and atleast an NVMe ssd. That way they can maximise their time learning and experimenting. Anything that needs more complex hardware can always be offloaded into your institutes machines. Once you're settled a bit and have a decent amount of cash to burn go ahead and buy whatever maxed out MacBook your heart desires.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#635

Post by nine_k »

herdymerzbow wrote: post #562
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…

Every time I've considered an alternative to my Mac laptop I'm confronted by this much choice (and that of other manufacturers) and I also have to deal with unknown and varying performance of keyboard, display and trackpad. One thing PC manufacturers seem to prioritise and focus on is tech specs + performance and interface is tacked on (or at least the interface designers departments in their companies aren't leading…

The choice is really simple: it's a Thinkpad series T, with an AMD APU, the most powerful configuration you can afford :)

Re: The MacBook Neo

#636

Post by SllX »

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 have an M1 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM. It’s a great computer, but even on days where I’m doing fuck all but using the web I can pressure that memory easily. I also have a tendency to never reboot until that becomes the fastest way to fix whatever performance bottlenecks I’m running into.

I’m not saying you can’t get away with 8GB of RAM. You can, but I won’t recommend a Mac with only 8GB of RAM to anybody for a few reasons: 1) even normal users just using the web will find RAM to be the bottleneck and that will degrade their user experience over time. 2) they’ll spend $600 and even if RAM isn’t as much of a bottleneck for them today, with modern web developers and modern web browsers, it will be much sooner rather than later. And everything is a web app now.

For $600 in 2026, your computer shouldn’t be a bad experience in any way nor should it last less than 7 years and still be a kickass experience. Ideally it should last longer. The Neo is great for what it is, but the RAM is the deal killer for me.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#637

Post by jonhohle »

jrockway wrote: post #444
dhosek wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

The M1 Air would have blown people’s minds in 2000. 128MB of RAM was luxurious at the time for a laptop. In 2003 I borrowed and bought several sticks for a presentation (senior thesis on 3D presentation software), and got to 1GB in my desktop and felt like I’d broken some law of physics.

Shortly after I had a TiBook (PowerBook G4) that was _only_ 1-inch thick! Compared to 1.75” Dells my coworkers had, it seemed like the future. DVD drive, modem, Ethernet, full sized DVI port, FireWire, WiFi, Bluetooth, optical audio in and out, gigantic display with a bezel that was unrivaled for years, even among Macs. What a beast!

(I know you meant 2020, but it’s fun to think about the air in 2000).

Re: The MacBook Neo

#638

Post by throwaway27448 »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #541
laffOr wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why they didn't use the Apple "UI". Where Apple presents fewer models (say N models), and when you select one, each is configurable for screen size/RAM/CPU/whatever (say K picks), yielding N*K possibilities, many Windows laptop sellers present a list of N*K SKUs where you need to triple check what the difference between SKU A and B.

They do. That's just the different base models. You can customize each one.

Personally I would not cluster 2/3rds of my product line under the single moniker of "dell pro"

Re: The MacBook Neo

#639

Post by WorldPeas »

retired wrote: post #346
ryandvm wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cute, and while I will agree that Apple hardware is generally superior or at least an excellent value, and OS X is miles beyond Windows in usability, I can't in good conscience recommend a Mac on principle. They impose obsessive control over their walled garden, constant pressure to use Apple ecosystem products, and they are staunchly opposed to interoperability regardless of it being an obviously anti-consumer tacti…

A Mac isn’t really a walled garden though. You don’t even need an Apple account to use one. Unlike Windows.

but to make a binary for it? You do. Even if it's not-for-profit. Why do you think web interfaces are so popular for OSS, a lot easier for the code to be JIT'd and run in a browser than pay a $99 vig for something you did in 10 days to speed up a process for yourself etc.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#640

Post by SanjayMehta »

jrockway wrote: post #444
dhosek wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

You mean 2020, not 2000
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