I miss deep technical dives on hw, folks just shillmaxn now.
The MacBook Neo
921–930 of 1001 posts
Re: The MacBook Neo
#922Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, for a while my favorite laptop was the Surface Book 2. Decent specs, does what I want it to. Then Microsoft started going through "Marketing Driven Development" for Windows and its just been downhill for my experience with that laptop. It's not just the marketing trash, the OS has gotten noticeably slow despite me keeping it pretty vanilla. It's downright insulting. As for my desktops, I just smoosh over Window…
lol i just posted about how I was also scorned by MS/Surface Book 2. What a potentially amazing device. I hated that if you were playing a game or doing many video encodes, the charger (100w?) could not provide enough power -- so your battery drained. And make sure you don't let your base drain completely after being stored for a while -- the main computer won't be able to recognize it to even charge it again. And th…
I had a Surface Book 2 WITHOUT the base i.e. just the screen. Best tablet I've ever had. 15" and yet thinner (then) and lighter than an iPad Pro which still doesn't come bigger than 13".
Two useful accessories I had were 'surface connector to USBC' adapter (to mitigat the small battery) and a ring mouse. Scrolling on touchscreen for Windows has been as good as MacBook haptic trackpads, certainly better than most Windows oem trackpads.
There was brief moment in time where Panay was poised with the Surface Book and Surface Studio (just wish they made a monitor version of the studio) to give Apple a run for their money. But they replaced the Surface Book with Surface Laptop studio, devolved the OS with ads and AI and now I'm mainly only on the Mac...
Re: The MacBook Neo
#923The MacBook Neo is, to my mind, almost certainly a sink for rejected mobile chips. My understanding is that they run a nominally six-core chip in five-core mode.
This is fine, and actually a brilliant business move to monetize inventory investment that is otherwise sunk while releasing a new product that doesn't require them to fight for fab capacity.
It's just not something I'm seeing in the consumer discourse that, perhaps, people might like to understand.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#924If they made a thin client with these processors, in a mac-mini (mac-tiny?) format. I would be buying a couple on every paycheck. But that's very wishful thinking.
Mac Neo
Re: The MacBook Neo
#925Earlier 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 number of overlapping iPad models and variants, for example, is getting kind of crazy these days. Sort of, maybe (not)? First off there is the "mini", which is basically if you want a small screen / most portability. After that, the two questions you need to ask are "How much horsepower and storage do you need/want?" (plain vs Air/Pro), and then "How fancy of a screen do you want/need?" (Air vs Pro): * https://…
Do I want an iPad Air or Pro? Both seem pretty thin. Why is it called 'Air'. What am I not getting with the Air? When was the last time each product was updated, since I remember a time when different models were updated at different times (and I never updated my internal barometer if this changed)?
Further, I see older versions of the iPhone on display at the apple store. Does this mean I'm potentially browsing an older version of the iPad?
To be fair, there was some overlap in the Jobs apple store days (when the Santa Rosa processor dropped on the MBP and you didn't know if you were getting the older model unless you asked), but it was never this bad. You had the iPad, then the iPad 2. iPhone 4->4S->5. I don't know how the 'Air' slots in between the regular and the Pro, and I don't know if I'm seeing an older model on display. The whole thing is very confusing.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#926Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, for a while my favorite laptop was the Surface Book 2. Decent specs, does what I want it to. Then Microsoft started going through "Marketing Driven Development" for Windows and its just been downhill for my experience with that laptop. It's not just the marketing trash, the OS has gotten noticeably slow despite me keeping it pretty vanilla. It's downright insulting. As for my desktops, I just smoosh over Window…
I put Linux on an old Surface tablet. Works better than Windows on the same device. The only thing that isn't working under Linux is the camera. Built in extra privacy as a bonus!
I have thought about it, and I guess you bring up a good point, if I absolutely want a webcam, I guess I can plug in one... Maybe the camera "not working" is a hidden bonus for me.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#927Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's amazing how often people who post on here about hating macOS have only just got a Mac for the first time and simply can't be bothered to learn, or hate that the keyboard shortcuts are different, or desperately want their OS level adverts back or something. It's lazy.
It's also quite amazing how macOS doesn't support containerization which is hugely important for a hefty chunk of all devs out there. So, Docker Desktop, Colima, OrbStack. VMs. Deal with it. Not to mention the amazing amount of services running in the background, at least 80% of which I haven't needed in the 6.5 years I have my Mac, but can't stop / remove / disable. My Linux laptop is supposedly 40% weaker than my d…
I’m running Docker Desktop as I write this. What did you mean by “doesn’t support containerization”?
And really, who cares if it had 10,000 background services if 9,999 are idle at any given time? Run `ps auxwww` on a Linux box sometime and it’ll look similar.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#928What's the problem? By last years lenovo x-series, install linux, takes 10 minutes, done and everything works like a charm.
Incomprehensible how much time and effort people spend on something which takes no more than a few minutes.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#929Re: The MacBook Neo
#930Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly the 8GB is not really an issue. As opposed to basically every other computer on this price range, Apple puts real storage in their machines, making a well-tuned swap simply transparent. I'd also bet they have very performant hardware engines for memory (de)compression. A few years ago, my parents asked me for a laptop for my sisters, for university use. We targeted this price range. It's shocking but pretty…
The SSD in the Neo only manages around 1,500 MB/s in sequential benchmarks, it's not an impressive drive. > It's shocking but pretty much all laptops from Dell, HP, etc come with some form of eMMC storage. I just went to Dell's website and picked a random $400 laptop and it had an NVME SSD. The $650 Dell 14 Essential also is NVME. Both of which are M.2 so easily upgraded, replaced, or have data recovery done on them.…
> The SSD in the Neo only manages around 1,500 MB/s in sequential benchmarks, it's not an impressive drive.
That's sequential, not what you want for swap, but already a good start. I agree that it's not impressive, but already leagues ahead of a SATA SSD. And for swapping a 8GB machine it's more than enough (when the swap pattern is sequential though): you swapped your whole system memory in 3 seconds, which is impressive.
> The only eMMC options I'm seeing are the $300 Chromebooks? Which is no where close to "pretty much all laptops." In fact it'd be "pretty much none of the laptops"
Then it's good the situation improved, genuinely! Less e-waste being on the store shelves. Pretty sure windows is nigh unusable on eMMC. And yes, those were sold alongside chromebooks, but at a markup of a "real computer" despite having roughly the same internals.
Another thing that could impact, though, is availability in different markets. I am in France, and the offerings are perhaps worse than in the US? (quite likely, in fact). Add to that the usual price markup where US companies tend to do, at best, 1 USD = 1 EUR, and we get worse machines for the equivalent price range.