731–740 of 1001 posts
It's as if people forgot about the MacBook One (anagram: Neo) from 2015 (which I daily drove for a year and loved). I suspect the Neo will sell about the same, and be forgotten in as many years.
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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…
I think it’s as simple as: 8GB is what the iPhones using the A18 Pro had. It’s this thing Apple likes to do where to keep costs down, they use some iPhone part or other SoC/SiP they have laying around as close to its standard configuration as possible with minimal changes.
Their new Studio Displays for example have an A19 Pro and 128GB of NAND. For basically just the firmware. Why? Because that’s the least amount of storage Apple ships with an A19 Pro iPhone, because like the previous Studio Display from 2022 which had an A13 Bionic in there, they probably just shoved an iPhone board in there to handle the logic and I/O.
So in theory, if they update the MacBook Neo next year to an A19 Pro, it should have 12GB of RAM.
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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.
And if you have the notch this is very far from a theoretical problem.
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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…
> fixed 8GB of RAM. I think that’s too little for a modern Mac operating on the modern web. The best comparator here is likely the iPhone 16 Pros, released in late 2024. These were the flagship iPhones until late 2025. They are only one generation old. They have the same CPU and the same 8GB of RAM. I have never heard anyone complain that they suffer performance-wise from having too little RAM. Many of the apps non-d…
I have 8GB of RAM in my M2 iPad Pro running iOS (yes, it’s “iOS” despite what Apple’s crack marketing team might call it), and I’ve certainly started to complain. Doing anything with the web, and like one or two other apps is enough to have apps I’m switching between page out like every two or three minutes.
When did $600 become budget?
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To what extent is there still a “consumer PC industry?” You mention Dell; for like a decade I think I’ve only ever seen Dells that were company-issued. My sense is that consumers spend most of their tech money on phones, tablets, headphones, watches, services. People who really want a laptop get a Mac or Chromebook. Gamers buy / build PCs, for gaming. Linux geeks buy Linux machines for Linuxing. I’m not saying no one…
Take a look at a Sam's Club or Costco. The Windows PCs from Dell, HP, Lenovo outnumber the Macs 4:1 or more. I have never seen a shopper testing out the wares.
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…
I want this much RAM. this CPU. this GPU. this touch screen. this size. What options? None? what if I remove touch? ok good there's 3. and so on.
All that Pro Plus Premium nonsense is just too much marketing gibberish.
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Portrait or landscape - if your use is dominated by looking at the screen and/or situations where it can't set it down (to use the KB), then the iPad is better. Assuming the software you need supports iPad, etc.
Am I the only person who manually rotates a laptop screen to portrait, then holds it like a book to use thus?
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>If you just need to do your taxes or answer a Zoom call, why would you get a Macbook Neo? Because it's a Mac. Maybe not to you, but to many people Apple signals luxury. It signals trust. You have an iPhone, an iWatch, and AirPods in your ears, why wouldn't you also buy a Mac? And at that price point, mom and dad don't think twice about buying one for the kids anymore where previously they might have gotten by withou…
Apple's support is top in the industry. And it's not even that great, it's but everyone else's support is just that bad. Easily worth the extra money alone.
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…
> It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awful This, so much this! I run Asahi on M1 Air but wanted to upgrade to something with fuller Linux support. After trying Thinkpad T14s, trackpad quality has rosen to my attention, something I never thought about before. Turns out glass, haptic trackpads are still only available in probably about a dozen laptops on the market and it's not easy to actually…
Didn't see them last year at computex and never found that Lenovo model again, not sure what happened with it, at the booth they said they had a partnership. I was hoping they'd link up with framework and make a module for them.