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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#711

Post by chongli »

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.

No, macOS has improved a ton in a lot of ways under-the-hood. Battery life, memory compression, paging behaviour. The MacBook Neo wouldn't be possible at 8GB without all this stuff.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#712

Post by throwaway85825 »

jll29 wrote: post #709
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…

The original article doesn't dwell too much on the RAM limitation, but I agee with you that 8 GB is too little for the near future or even today. I agree with most of the post's arguments, and most of the specs and limitations of the Neo would be okay with me, except there should be 16 GB RAM in 2026. Apple could perhaps mitigate this somewhat by releasing a "slim" MacOS Neo version that is less bloated by pruning so…

8GB would be fine if not for a decade of terrible development practices creating bloated software.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#713

Post by klausa »

zparky wrote: post #204
kccqzy wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It might be worthwhile to ensure that a web app you're developing will work on a less powerful machine If that’s your goal this machine is still too powerful. Web apps generally care about single thread performance. The machine has a single thread performance that exceeds any and all Intel/AMD processors, according to Geekbench (A18 Pro: 3445; Ryzen 9 9950X: 3385). My own test for ensuring my web app performs well…

> The machine has a single thread performance that exceeds any and all Intel/AMD processors Not true at all: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/single-thread/

Those chart seem _very_ suspect when it comes to Apple CPUs, to the point I don't think they're worth considering much.

M3 Ultra being fastest in single core than M4 or A19 Pro doesn't make any sense.

Those chart also suggest that M3->M4 was a _regression_ in performance, which, is... an interesting conclusion.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#714

Post by carlosjobim »

jll29 wrote: post #709
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…

The original article doesn't dwell too much on the RAM limitation, but I agee with you that 8 GB is too little for the near future or even today. I agree with most of the post's arguments, and most of the specs and limitations of the Neo would be okay with me, except there should be 16 GB RAM in 2026. Apple could perhaps mitigate this somewhat by releasing a "slim" MacOS Neo version that is less bloated by pruning so…

That's nothing compared to my car! It fires on all cylinders, instead of saving 3 out of 4 cylinders for a day when I will really need the power.

The reality is that nobody outside of HN cares about 8GB vs 16GB of RAM. You can do anything you want or need to do with an 8GB Macbook, including running a million dollar business, or working with anything creative on the highest level. If you are actually doing something which requires 16GB of RAM on a Mac, then you are doing state of the art tech stuff and should be rolling in money already and have no problem spending thousands and thousands on your computer.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#715

Post by chongli »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #642
matthewfcarlson wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You build it directly into the GPU firmware and don't give the operating system any access to it.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#716

Post by sxg »

369548684892826 wrote: post #574
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.

I wouldn't say as a whole. KDE is way ahead of where it was 10 years ago!

KDE was far less mature than macOS and Windows 10 years ago. Of course it’s come a long way.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#717

Post by lostlogin »

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…

Pro, Plus, Max - that's a nice blend of Apple names too.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#718

Post by jnaina »

Fraterkes wrote: post #426

I feel corny being so positive about a megacompany, but I bought my first Macbook air half a year ago after a life of PC's, and it has been genuinly surprising to use something made by a huge company that is constantly better than I expected.

Same. Equally comfortable on Windows, Mac and Linux. But almost almost all new hardware choices for the last 25 plus years have been mostly from Apple. The old Macs don't really die, even as I replace them with faster models, so my house is slowly becoming an Apple/Mac museum, starting with a Mac 512k, Mac CI and Mac LC, and so on, right down to a trash can Mac in the mix, and then to M series Macs. All CPU generations from Apple: 6502 (Apple ][), 68000, 68040 (NeXT) PPC, ARM (Newton, iDevices), Intel and M series. Can't get myself to throw/give/sell them away.

Coming to terms with two uncomfortable truths: I'm a hoarder, and an unapologetically incorrigible Apple fanboi.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#719

Post by kevhito »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #712
jll29 wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original article doesn't dwell too much on the RAM limitation, but I agee with you that 8 GB is too little for the near future or even today. I agree with most of the post's arguments, and most of the specs and limitations of the Neo would be okay with me, except there should be 16 GB RAM in 2026. Apple could perhaps mitigate this somewhat by releasing a "slim" MacOS Neo version that is less bloated by pruning so…

8GB would be fine if not for a decade of terrible development practices creating bloated software.

Like freeways, it's not clear that increasing the baseline ram for basic laptops is an effective way to mitigate software bloat. Rather it likely creates bloat.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#720

Post by chongli »

p_ing wrote: post #283
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.

Been using macOS for years, even main it for both personal and work. It has a LOT of UX issues and requires many 3rd party tools to "fix" it. macOS has plenty of it's own OS adverts.

What 3rd party tools would those be? I've been using Macs since ~1994 and my 3rd party tool use has fluctuated wildly over that time. I have a lot of 3rd party software installed but I can't think of anything that I'd call a "requirement" to "fix" the OS.
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