This might be affordable for US and western world, but for us indians it's still a high end laptop at 70k. And considering that repair cost almost half of the price after warranty it actually in premier segment.
The MacBook Neo
741–750 of 1001 posts
Re: The MacBook Neo
#742Earlier 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…
I don't see why comparing prices between used and new options is unreasonable in this case. If I want a machine to do XYZ (without the stipulation that it be new), then an older model might well be better value. "In $CURRENT_YEAR, how can I get X processing power?"
Of course, old Macs should factor into that too. Also, it's a different story if I do want something brand new.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#743While the impact of the MacBook Neo is huge, this type of review is really screaming of an inexperienced reviewer who can't actually make good purchase recommendations to average people. It's really cool that this device is cheap but 8GB of RAM is the elephant in the room. Even non-technical web browsing users will notice the sluggishness coming from that spec. The moment they upgrade it to the next iPhone processor,…
> Even non-technical web browsing users will notice the sluggishness coming from that spec. I'm sorry but this line invalidates most of your comment, to the point of looking like satire. We have reviews and videos of people editing 4k videos with glee, launching and switching between all apps at once, and stuff like that. I used the base M1 as a power user/developer for years when it came out, and the only reason I h…
Be careful of the MacBook Neo reviews that have hit so early. Many of these reviewers are happy to sing praises of Apple for views, clicks, and early access to review units, etc. It is not a device that anyone has had on their desk able to test extensively, write review scripts, record and edit video, etc, yet without having special access.
Dave2D had his MacBook Neo on his desk with an edited video completed on the day the computer was announced. That's the special access I'm talking about. And you'll be lucky if you watched an early video like that from someone like him who is willing to be reasonably critical and risk losing that special level of access.
This segment of the Just Josh Tech podcast talks a lot about the caution you need to take with Apple reviewers who are just rushing review content out there: https://youtu.be/kSwXyxAA9XY?t=2406
I think it's very interesting how they note that someone they know who is very non-technical noticed the sluggishness of web browsing with an 8GB M1 MacBook Air. I noticed that when I owned mine as well. I bought into the hype surrounding the faster RAM and was happy to save some money at the time. I wouldn't say I regret it but I would say it made the system last much less time.
Yes, you can edit 4K videos, but not all 4K video editing workflows are created equally. You can't just jump into Final Cut Pro with complex timelines and lots of plugins and expect a good time. But of course if you're editing 4K videos in CapCut, that's no problem.
For more casual users, this same concept applies: a Safari user who has 3 tabs open is having a much different experience than a Chrome user with 40 tabs open and a simultaneous big file download competing for swap disk writes, even though both of those users are "casual" and "non-technical" computer users.
And here's the other thing, which Dave2D also mentioned: If you're locked in at the level where you just cannot spend more than $499 on a laptop, the Neo is a good deal. But if you actually have some willingness to spend just a little bit more, you'll almost certainly find some kind of M2/M3 MacBook Air, often brand new discounted at a retailer like Walmart or Best Buy where you end up 16GB of RAM and a ton of additional niceties over the Neo (Haptic trackpad, backlit keyboard, larger battery, better screen, speakers, microphones, etc). That system is a system that will ultimately last you longer than a Neo and only a small additional cost gets you there.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#744While the impact of the MacBook Neo is huge, this type of review is really screaming of an inexperienced reviewer who can't actually make good purchase recommendations to average people. It's really cool that this device is cheap but 8GB of RAM is the elephant in the room. Even non-technical web browsing users will notice the sluggishness coming from that spec. The moment they upgrade it to the next iPhone processor,…
Here is a video of a user who opens up every single program on the Mac, including a video editor and edits 4k video at full resolution with no sluggishness. Care to reevaluate your opinion? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-VOt9559Gk
Looks pretty sluggish at 5:00, not that I'd even expect this class of system to handle that kind of video project all that well regardless of RAM pressure.
6:49 to 7:00 is how long Photoshop takes to go from the preview to the viewing the original resolution image zoomed in. Quite sluggish.
Dumping a bunch of out-of-focus idle apps into swap not only isn't the best test, but also isn't a magical solution that has no downsides even if it stays responsive a lot of the time.
There are all kinds of ways relying on swap can quickly turn your system into having a storage/memory bottleneck rather than a CPU bottleneck and they have very little to do with having a ton of backgrounded idle apps open.
He even mentioned one of them, which was screen recording, since that's adding write cycles to the disk while your system is also competing for disk writes for swap memory.
For example, let's say I'm downloading/extracting a large file (e.g., a game on Steam) while I have a lot of Chrome tabs and programs open with a good amount of RAM pressure. Now I might see more sluggishness than if I had a larger amount of RAM and the exact same system specs since my swap is competing with file write activity.
This isn't some kind of exotic uncommon activity.
A YouTuber doing a quick "open a bunch of apps and play around with them" doesn't necessarily test the kind of specific actions that would deal the most damage to a RAM-starved system.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#745Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry but if "Switch to Linux" is a valid suggestion, then you most likely aren't talking to someone the Neo is marketed to. As good as Linux is, non technical people still should not switch to it. It needs to be MacOS or Windows.
Why? Like many people I don't do serious work on my laptop. It is used for Web browsing, email, and to SSH into other machines. A simple, affordable, but well built machine like the Neo would be ideal for this, on the condition that I can run Linux on it. I currently use an aging XPS in that capacity and the Neo would be quite compelling as a substitute.
If web browsing, email, and SSH is all you do, then macOS is almost identical to Linux, while being so much easier to use.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#746Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
For me, the one feature that sells having an iphone and a Mac laptop to me is copy and paste between the two devices. I spend way more time on my phone than I should, but being able to go from my phone to my laptop and back is what has me in Apple's ecosystem (for now). MacOS and iOS feel like they are buggier than they used to be, (don't get me started on 26) but framing it purely as a luxury and brand identity thin…
I have that feature on Android and Linux via KDE Connect, which supports Windows, macOS and iOS, too. It's probably nerfed on iOS, though.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#747Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've only recently gotten a MacBook after using Linux Pretty much exclusively for over twenty years. And I have to say I'm really surprised how much I like it. For gaming it's all right, but not great. Factorio works but not much else. But for that I still have my Bazzite or Steam Deck. I really encourage you to try Linux for gaming. It's incredible what Valve has achieved on that front.
> Factorio works but not much else. Currently looking at the top 20 Steam games [0] for today, excluding non-games like Wallpaper Engine. 8 out of 20 work on Mac natively. Out of the remaining 12, 3 of them work with Crossover, so that makes it 11 out of 20. Almost all of the remaining 9 are competitive FPS games that don't work due to their kernel-level anticheat, almost all of which AFAIK won't work on Linux for th…
Should've clarified: not much else from my collection of favorite games. And that's because of the limited GPU power of the M2 Air, not strictly because the game wouldn't start.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#748> 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…
The software is fine. I've been using macs for over 20 years, currently running an M2 with Sequoia 15.7.3 and haven't had any issues. I can't remember the last time I had any OS issue with an Apple machine. Sure, their Music app is terrible, but the OS is just fine.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#749I 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.
I have a macbook air from 2022 and it is easily the "best" computer I have ever owned. Its portable. It has a great keyboard, screen, and battery life. No fans or overheating. No issues with the operating system or installing software I need. I can even use it for some lighter software development directly, and for everything else I can ssh back to a beefier machine. If I weren't already so happy with this macbook ai…
Same here. I've been buying Airs ever since they came out and they always exceed my expectations. I use them as primary dev machines.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#750Earlier 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…
> 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…
On iOS if an app remains in the background for over ~30 seconds, it gets killed.
So, you can't really compare. On iOS you can have 3GB of RAM and it wouldn't be a bottleneck.