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The MacBook Neo

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Re: The MacBook Neo

#891

Post by tim333 »

intrasight wrote: post #321
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…

> it is the software that leaves to be desired That is how I had interpreted "And certainly not software quality" - that the PC not only competes but crushes the Mac.

I switched from a Windows laptop to a Macbook. When you closed the lid on the Windows one if whirred for about 30 seconds trying to sleep and if you opened and closed too quickly the os crashed and needed restarting. Mac you just open and close as you like and there's your stuff straight away.

Nothing's perfect but Mac seems good at the basics of running quickly without crashes.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#892

Post by philistine »

SllX wrote: post #351
Reason077 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 iPad line makes a lot more sense when you’re just shopping and realize you’re just on a price ladder.

That is ultimately what keeps saving Apple from turning into Dell. They want to offer you one model per price point. You'd be hard-pressed to find two iPads, Macs, iPhones with the exact same price. There's always a price difference with Apple, which helps immensely.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#893

Post by Spooky23 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #782
Spooky23 wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 2 4 2 3 4 (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.

I expressed that poorly. I mean the internal components.

The MacBook Neo has 2 configuations. The MacBook Pro has several, but the SOC funnels those configurations into a few paths and segments the market. You can't get a "base" MacBook Pro with 128GB of ram or a large SSD. Dell will sell whatever the components allow you to do, usually only limited by the hardware.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#894

Post by einr »

operatingthetan wrote: post #25
happymellon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I doubt Microsoft is holding developers hands when transitioning to Arm the way that Apple does. While this is key it has nothing to do with the walled garden approach, and everything to do with Microsoft's contempt for users of its platforms.

People may not be very happy with recent UI changes in Tahoe but it's still another universe compared to some the clunky Windows 2000-ish stuff still in Windows 11.

And what's worse, the clunky Windows 2000-ish stuff is the good stuff that works!

Re: The MacBook Neo

#895

Post by littlecranky67 »

TheDong wrote: post #870
littlecranky67 wrote: post #829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Agreed, macOS has hardly improved in the past decade I would argue the opposite. Shared clipboard with my iPhone is a killer feature (i copy a lot of OTP tokens) and I envy you in the US that can remote access the iPhone (it is currently blocked in the EU, but hopefully will come eventually). Also mulit-monitor setup has become way better (I used to use 3rd party tools to restore window and monitor positions).

And I can share between my android, iOS, and linux devices with KDE Connect https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ If there are reasons its not good enough, since it's open source you should be able to help fix them (excepting iOS issues, since those are mostly just apple locking down the OS too hard for various things to work). We're on hacker news, we should all want something we can hack on. Shared clipboard between two devi…

Good for you, not see how that is relevant for the discussion what features were added to macOS though. Also note that clipcoard sharing just as Airdrop are point-to-point and neither require internet connection, nor is the data send through a third party or network.

> since it's open source you should be able to help fix them

And I can also grow my own tomatoes and cucumbers in my back yard, but I still prefer to buy them from a supermarket.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#896

Post by carlosjobim »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #385
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 consumer laptop industry has been dying for a while now IMO. The average person doesn't need a computer. They have a smartphone, and if they need a bit more screen then they have a tablet. If you're a power user or gamer a desktop is preferable.

Casual users prefer using their smartphone instead of their laptop, because the smart phone unlocks instantly and is ready to go. Meanwhile, a PC laptop takes a few minutes to boot up, then when Windows has loaded it will hog all CPU and memory and all the internet bandwidth to download and install updates, while blasting the fans.

The user will make a pathetic attempt to open the web browser to do the hotel or flight or event reservation they wanted to do. Or open a document in Word. Everything is extremely slow because of the update running.

When the user has finished her task, she will close down the computer. Windows will cancel the update which was in progress, so that the user can have that same joyful laptop experience next month when she needs to use it again.

Is it any wonder that people prefer doing things on their smart phones, even with the tiny displays and no keyboards?

This is how the majority of consumers experience using a laptop. Then they try a Mac, where you just open the lid and go. If people knew this, then the consumer PC laptop market would die in three months.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#897

Post by etchalon »

asymco wrote: post #690
etchalon wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd reference all the iPod models Steve oversaw the introduction of (iPod, iPod Nano, iPod shuffle, iPod Mini, iPod Classic, iPod Touch)

With iPod line Apple was experimenting with completely new form factor, not so much with iPad or MacBook.

The Neo is a different form factor than the Air is a different form factor from the 14 inch is a different form factor than the 16.

"No, it's not! It's a laptop!"

And most iPods were iPods.

The iPod touch was just an iPhone, and the shuffle lacked a screen.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#898

Post by timpera »

giobox wrote: post #186
timpera wrote: post #142

Does anyone know if it runs Windows 11 well? It seems like the Parallels app has not been tested by reviewers so far. This could make a great Windows machine.

Given you only have 8gb of RAM to share between MacOS and the Windows VM, running a Windows 11 VM in Parallels is not a great usecase for this machine.

Update:

> Parallels Desktop runs on MacBook Neo, but the experience will depend on what you intend to run inside the virtual machine. > For light, occasional Windows use, like a legacy business tool, or a Windows-only utility, MacBook Neo may provide an acceptable experience. For CPU- or GPU-intensive Windows applications, this computer is not the right choice.

https://kb.parallels.com/en/131100

Re: The MacBook Neo

#899

Post by stetrain »

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…

I think assuming that this is a disposable, non-serviceable machine is a bit premature. Yes the RAM and SSD are soldered to the mainboard, but otherwise it looks like this might be Apple's most serviceable computer in a long time.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/12/macbook-neo-six-minute-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k7Lv7f-5CQ

Non-expandable is a fair criticism. I think 8GB would be a bit constraining for a CS student but will be fine for many others.

Re: The MacBook Neo

#900

Post by p_ing »

dagmx wrote: post #728
p_ing wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I am on my M2 w/ 24GB RAM and a couple of RAW 48MP photos will bog the system down. And if Time Machine kicks in, there goes any form of performance since Apple can't seem to figure out what a 'background task' is.

What are you editing with?

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