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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#641

Post by SllX »

crooked-v wrote: post #511
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…

At this point the RAM only matters if you've got something that actually needs all that RAM continuously, likes games, virtual machines, or heavyweight user workflows like 4K video editing. For everything else, swap usage on Apple machines works so well that RAM might as well not exist.

> For everything else, swap usage on Apple machines works so well that RAM might as well not exist.

You and I disagree on this part so strenuously I don’t foresee a middle ground. Swap still absolutely sucks no matter how fast the SSD is, and the SSDs or probably the SSD controller are much slower than what’s in other Apple Silicon Macs.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#642

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #536
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..…

Minus an intentionally bad hardware design, I struggle to imagine how a software version of the idea could ever be more secure than a power line hard-wired to an LED.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#643

Post by dmitrygr »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #605
dmitrygr wrote: post #138

> Because the Neo’s only camera-in-use indicator is in the menu bar, that seems obviously possible to circumvent via software. Not as obvious as the author implies. Apple has some docs out, IIRC, explaining how it is implemented. Worth a read...

I can’t find where Apple really explains how it works.

https://randomaugustine.medium.com/on-apple-exclaves-d683a2c...

https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/03/m4-ipad-pro-security-feature-...

Re: The MacBook Neo

#644

Post by andrepd »

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…

Takes 1 hour to open notebookcheck?

Re: The MacBook Neo

#645

Post by sys_64738 »

blemblemblam wrote: post #414
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 secret is to buy a used ThinkPad on eBay. I have two of them. I think the ridiculous MSRP for them combined is $7000 and I paid $1600 in total for a p series and an x1 carbon (3 years old, but essentially new). These neos are for college and high school students.

Who is going to do that except a nerd looking for a specific type of laptop? Buying two of them for the price of 3+ Neos at EDU discount. You are so off in the weeds with your comment that I had to point it out.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#646

Post by elboru »

Aperocky wrote: post #523
madeofpalk wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What improvements has Windows made in the last decade? I think what you're describing is a symptom of modern software development as a whole.

You get AI EMBEDDED EXPLORER! Just wait 2 seconds for LLM to open up your folder. Oh and don't forget to watch the ads.

Or their constant use of dark patterns to push you into using Bing and Edge. I was actually an Edge user myself. I liked a few of its built-in features, and it felt pretty fast. But then they started tricking me into changing my default search engine to Bing. I fell for it a couple of times, and then I quit.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#647

Post by sys_64738 »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #385
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 consumer laptop industry has been dying for a while now IMO. The average person doesn't need a computer. They have a smartphone, and if they need a bit more screen then they have a tablet. If you're a power user or gamer a desktop is preferable.

The Neo is targeting the cheap laptop market for those people that DO need it. Again, another totally pointless comment by somebody who sounds clueless.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#648

Post by hbbio »

mmcnl wrote: post #269
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…

Agreed, macOS has hardly improved in the past decade. The only improvements are about ecosystem integration, which I don't really care about. Everything else is stuck in the 2010s. UI has regressed if you ask me.

I wouldn't say it hasn't improved. Security has improved considerably, and it's one of the main reasons to use a Mac.

However, there's too many bundled apps. Just wrote about this last week: https://medium.com/@hbbio/let-me-uninstall-spotlight-1fe64a3...

Re: The MacBook Neo

#649

Post by sys_64738 »

izacus wrote: post #291
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…

After growing up in eastern Europe it's still wild to see young Americans stupidly demand less choice and more monopolies in their market. Like seriously, having laptop choice is causing you crippling issues? Is other people having a laptop to choose based on preference causing you distress when you go to Apple store?

The more choice then the more procrastination occurs for buyers so they don't actually buy. Apple has made the Neo a two minute decision and you are not playing Russian Roulette with the specs as you know you'll get a uniform quality product, just one has double the storage than the other. Simple. Straightforward. Decisive.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#650

Post by LtWorf »

Aperocky wrote: post #527
magic_hamster wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Those extremely efficient and beautifully implemented software runs in macOS, probably from the same source code. The only GUI I use on Mac is browser, so I never felt anything - maybe the only thing that I don't deal with on linux is the weird requirement of xcode, which is mostly a chore that you do once. Still can't beat the hardware.

They might or might run. osx has no namespaces, no cgroups, no compiler extension for thread local storage, no wayland, no dbus.

Modern linux software won't run for sure, unless it is written with osx in mind and comes with plenty of workarounds.

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