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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#781

Post by bandrami »

nessus42 wrote: post #497
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.

I have an M2 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM that I bought three and half years ago. For browsing the web, listening to music, watching TV and movies, using Gmail, Google Sheets, Google Docs, etc., it's still perfectly fine. OTOH, for my development Mac, I have 64GB of RAM. (Though 32GB would probably be fine.)

I've got an M3 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM and it runs Ableton and Serato so well I don't actually need a Pro anymore, so Mac may have shot themselves in the foot there.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#782

Post by FireBeyond »

Spooky23 wrote: post #726
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…

When I worked for the government, we had a requirement to get a certification for every model of device Dell had on our contract. This excluded consumer devices. They had >350 SKUs, with probably millions of configurations. Apple a decade ago had like 10. Now probably 20-30 Mac configurations, and even those probably share alot of components. Honestly, I don’t understand how Dell does it.

There's 8 Mac configurations for the Neo alone (4 colors by 2 storage options).

The Air has 24234 (maybe not precisely, I'm not going to go through all the permutations) = 192 configurations.

I'm not going to try to go through the MBP, Studio, or Pro, but realistically you're looking at a few thousand configurations, not 30.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#783

Post by bitwize »

kwanbix wrote: post #451
lordgroff wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux will always be a second class citizen on Apple hardware. I have the M1 and have tried Linux a few times at different stages of maturity. As it is right now, it's still a far cry from the experience of a Linux on x86 hardware, and specifically Thinkpads. Bottom line is, even though I really like my laptop, I do NOT like Mac OS (and with every update I like it _less_) and will probably go back to a thinkpad for m…

I hope that at least this wakes up AMD/Intel/PC Manufacturers. I don't expect a 600 usd x64 laptop, but I could surelly use an 800~1000 one.

A used ThinkPad with way more than 8 GiB of RAM can cost way less than $600. I picked two up for $300 each. You're not gonna run frontier open-source models on it but it's a very nice dumb machine for basic tasks, or even the archaic practice of programming by hand.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#784

Post by mock-possum »

nottorp wrote: post #177
efficax wrote: post #164

Calling this a "content consumption" device seems wrong to me. Sure, it's not a professional laptop. You're going to have a bad time trying to run more than one Adobe creative suite app at once, or running the iOS emulator, but the chip in it is very powerful, and you can do real work on this laptop. I was even thinking of snagging one to use as a kind of thin client for dev accessing my big linux box via tailscale.…

If you ask me, all web devs should be forced to work on 4 Gb machines. This way you'll be able to run more than one "web app" at the same time on your devices.

Sure and all game devs should be forced to do their work on 80s NES dev kits or whatever. /eyeroll

This line of thought is ridiculous Ludditism. Artists and craftsmen deserve to work with SOTA tools, you can only benefit from having better more accessible more performant tools.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#785

Post by rpcope1 »

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…

I really really don't understand why the f** they thought it was a good idea to do away with the Latitude and Precision lines, as at least I had some idea of what the intended purpose of the device was and what to roughly expect.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#786

Post by ac29 »

dagmx wrote: post #727
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is swapping more efficient on Apple machines thana Wintel running Linux?

macOS employs some memory compression which does reduce pressure slightly. But I think a lot is also down to things like the dispatch library and scheduler being able to work together and being able to make assumptions about the hardware to have a smoother experience under pressure.

> macOS employs some memory compression

So do Windows and Linux

Re: The MacBook Neo

#787

Post by Someone »

dylan604 wrote: post #194
Someone wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO the consumer PC industry is near an existential crisis. The big players are just awful at marketing; too many SKUs and models - I see your point, but as a counterexample, look at the TV industry, at PC monitors, at washing machines, etc. There manufacturers have, for decades, created SKUs left and right, sometimes only so that a large dealer can offer to match lowest prices because no other dealer has access to…

Creating SKUs to avoid price matching is still just having one product coming out of the factory. It's just extra space in a database somewhere, so it costs nothing. The PC makers do have to create new physical products for each of those SKUs though. So it's apples and oranges here

> Creating SKUs to avoid price matching is still just having one product coming out of the factory. It's just extra space in a database somewhere, so it costs nothing.

They also have to label the products. But yes, it costs almost nothing to the manufacturer, but the effect on the consumer is large.

Also, for flatscreen monitors, I think differences go further than model numbers. It’s things like number of inputs, number of outputs, max power delivery, color of the frame, etc.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#788

Post by drysart »

orbital-decay wrote: post #239
timcobb wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big players are just awful at marketing; too many SKUs and models and as far as I know, they do this on purpose!

What's the purpose?

The more SKUs you have, the more digital shelf space you get on a shopping website. When your sole differentiating factor from your competitors is that your laptop has an "HP" logo on it and theirs has a "Dell" logo on it, your only effective strategy is to try to make sure fewer laptops with "Dell" logos on them show up above the fold in Amazon search results by creating lots of distinct SKUs to try to eat up as many of the slots on that first page of search results as possible.

Apple doesn't have to exist in that type of competitive environment. If you want a Mac, you're either getting it right from store.apple.com; or you're searching for Macs specifically -- in both cases, Apple owns all of the shopping screen real estate.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#789

Post by crashbunny »

The neo might be the start of the end of traditional home PCs. You buy a thin client and a monthly subscription and all of your files and compute is in the cloud.

Want to edit some raw video into a polished 20 minute video suitable for youtube? You don't open final cut pro, you tell your thin client to edit the raw video into a polished 20 minute video. Your monthly subscription includes AI and out pops an edited video.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#790

Post by system2 »

cryptos wrote: post #51

Windows reputation is declining, so the operating system might be the actual crisis. Linux with modern desktops (e.g. Gnome 3) might fill the gap, but the market is far from broad adoption. Promoting and improving Linux desktop and apps would be a long endeavour, but betting only on Windows which degrades to a cloud and AI advertising surface might be fatal.

There is no way all these corporations will change their infrastructure. Nearly impossible.
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