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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#871

Post by dwighttk »

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…

Reading that felt like an SNL sketch from the 90s

Re: The MacBook Neo

#872

Post by soulofmischief »

dhosek wrote: post #403
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…

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.

My M2 has an IDE and a couple active Firefox tabs open and I'm sitting at 30GB RAM usage, with about 5GB more on swap. It's a 32GB machine and I'm constantly opening Activity Monitor to kill Firefox tabs whose memory usage just seems to grow unbounded over time.

Software shouldn't be written this way. I shouldn't have to disable mds-store because it likes to take up 2-3 cores at full throttle when I'm on 10% remaining battery. But it is, and 32GB isn't enough for me to even have a basic computing experience anymore, it seems.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#873

Post by solatic »

written-beyond wrote: post #634

You greatly underestimate the utility used, serviceable laptops have provided to broke students. My first laptop was a decommissioned pos office dell ultrabook. By every metrics it would've been the worst option to choose, but since it had replaceable memory I was able to push it to 16 gigs and get through my computer science degree and many side projects. Computational speed was adequate for me, I ran Linux on it. I…

> laptop for a computer science student ... most likely outgrow 8 GB RAM faster than laptop CPU

A couple years ago I would have agreed with you. Today I'm not sure how reasonable it is to try to future-proof via expandable RAM. Imagine a hypothetical point a few years in the future where RAM factories have ramped up production and manufacturers are pumping out laptops with 512 GB RAM to enable running local LLM. You couldn't expand a current laptop to have enough RAM if you wanted to, so I'm not sure how reasonable it is to try to prepare for that future.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#874

Post by maybewhenthesun »

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…

I fully agree.

Ann then try to buy a nice linux compatible laptop. The research period climbs to days. It's ridiculous.

I don't even really mind spending 1500 (well , I do, but if that's what it takes) but 'just buy apple' doesn't work when you want a linux laptop, with apple trying to sabotage running linux on their hardware at every opportunity.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#875

Post by kvgr »

Reason077 wrote: post #278
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…

Apple isn’t this bad, of course, but they’re slowly heading in that direction. The number of overlapping iPad models and variants, for example, is getting kind of crazy these days. Now there’s the MacBook Neo and a rumoured new MacBook Ultra in the pipeline. The easy days of “pick standard or pro, select a display size, select RAM & storage” are starting to fade.

But for any real work, like coding/photo/video you just pick Pro with parameters you want and you are good. For office work you can choose air and for low level students or whatever you can have neo. You still basically know what you need, without needing to try really hard to understand it.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#876

Post by tim333 »

globular-toast wrote: post #798
MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The best computer, but with the worst software (well maybe Windoze is even worse these days). If you could run Linux on them, without compromises, it would be perfect.

It's not that bad really. Windows was always a bit flakey and crashy and Linux has a job running the software I use. I'll give you Apple can be a bit control freaky as to what you do with your own machine - getting rid of 32 bit annoyed me - but nothing's perfect.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#877

Post by neop1x »

dagmx wrote: post #5

I was watching this video and it’s pretty impressive what can be done on this spec machine. https://youtu.be/d-VOt9559Gk?si=tYlDstnaxtQWoJ88 He opens 50+ apps at once while working in Final Cut and Lightroom. Obviously anyone doing those full time would benefit from more resources but I think this is going to be enough for a big chunk of the population, and will be more appealing than the windows alternatives.

I wonder how long those flash chips can survive with the OS swapping 24/7.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#878

Post by dwighttk »

carlosjobim wrote: post #714
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…

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…

Or using chrome to browse the internet

Re: The MacBook Neo

#879

Post by _giorgio_ »

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…

Often I don’t purchase anything because I have to sift through a billion different options.

Model identifiers are often unique to specific stores, because they carry laptop configurations made just for them.

Apple, AmazonBasics, and a few others, by contrast, understand the consumer and offer a very limited—though often configurable—selection.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#880

Post by BoredomIsFun »

fsh wrote: post #338
zarzavat wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The manufacturers don't care about display quality, because displays are hard and expensive. Apple has enough volume that they can get a custom panel. Users on the other hand, they definitely care about display quality more than they care about RAM. The display is the part you look at! If you're in store and there's a Neo with a crisp 200 PPI screen and a Windows laptop with a cheap screen but more RAM, the vast majo…

On the contrary, displays are commodity components. So much so that motivated enthusiasts have managed to swap better panels into their ThinkPads for a long time. Manufacturers don't prioritize display quality in cheap devices because it doesn't show up on the spec sheet and most customers don't care that much.

Apple has way more stringent quality gates for panel uniformity compared to even high end Windows laptops. And uniformity is hard to achieve on LCD; the probably refuse at least half of the panels.
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