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 doesn’t suck, and display isn’t a 300nits POS unusable even in a bright room.
You want the same performance as a MacBook Air without one of these fatal flaws? You’ll hand to spend $1500+ anyway so you save nothing. Then the OS is full of ads and pre-installed garbage “gaming-optimization-tool” or driver tools taking up 99% of a single core while being riddled with security holes.
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 16 inch variants)
- Dell Premium (with 14 and 16 inch variants)
- Dell Pro Essential (with 14 and 15 inch variants)
- Dell Pro (with 14 and 16 inch variants)
- Dell Pro Plus (with 14 and 16 inch variants)
- Dell Pro Premium (with 14 and 16 inch variants)
- Dell Pro Max (with 14 and 16 inch variants)
- Dell Pro Max Plus (with 14, 16, and 18 inch variants)
- Dell Pro Max Premium (with 14 and 16 inch variants)
It's maddening trying to sift through the differences at this level. Then when you select a model, there can upwards of 8 different pre-built options to review.
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 operating on the modern web. Others… disagree. Either way, it might entice some schools and school districts assuming they can volume discounts where 8GB is probably enough and it fills the spot in the Walmart part of the sales channel previously occupied by an 8GB RAM M1 MacBook Air Apple hadn’t sold itself in years.
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 M1 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM. It’s a great computer, but even on days where I’m doing fuck all but using the web I can pressure that memory easily. I also have a tendency to never reboot until that becomes the fastest way to fix whatever performance bottlenecks I’m running into.
I’m not saying you can’t get away with 8GB of RAM. You can, but I won’t recommend a Mac with only 8GB of RAM to anybody for a few reasons: 1) even normal users just using the web will find RAM to be the bottleneck and that will degrade their user experience over time. 2) they’ll spend $600 and even if RAM isn’t as much of a bottleneck for them today, with modern web developers and modern web browsers, it will be much sooner rather than later. And everything is a web app now.
For $600 in 2026, your computer shouldn’t be a bad experience in any way nor should it last less than 7 years and still be a kickass experience. Ideally it should last longer. The Neo is great for what it is, but the RAM is the deal killer for me.
macOS will pop up a window that says the system has run out of application memory, asking you to quit applications. I have a friend with, I believe a base M3 Air, who runs into this constantly with nothing but Firefox open.
(Been trying to get them to switch to Safari, but they prefer the Firefox name. I don't think there's anything wrong with Firefox other than it being less native.)
Does Safari use less RAM because it shares some parts with the rest of the OS? (e.g. in the same way Edge probably uses a bit less because half of its components are already idling on the OS)
You could say that. WebKit is in the dyld shared cache, so all of Safari's subprocesses share the same copy of it (and JavaScriptCore, etc.) in memory. But I would say it's more efficient because it integrates better with the platform's QoS primitives. I'm not sure what Firefox does in that regard, other than stuff from other platforms that don't have QoS (such as the throttling of JavaScript APIs like timers). Safari seems better at prioritizing the tabs you have open and backgrounding everything else, letting things go to swap, killing resource hogs, etc.
I have an M2 Air 24GB/1TB that has been such a beast that I haven't touched my 16" Pro in months. I have four browsers running, with a ton of tabs in Brave (daily driver) and I'm sitting at 21/24GB utilization with all sorts of apps running (granted, Docker is not at the moment, but it still doesn't make it sweat). I had ~8 pro laptops in a row going back to the late 2000s, but Apple Silicon has changed how I work. A future 14" OLED that was similarly light might turn my head, but if I had to replace it today I'd just buy another M5 Air with at least this much RAM. [FYI I never installed Chrome after M1 came out. Brave has been rock-solid for over a half-decade now.]
24GB is definitely solid. 16GB is like my minimum recommended for any kind of Mac, but if you can go for more you should go for more. I think 24GB should last a good long while though.
16GB, depending on your use, can be constraining and, sometimes, you need to get creative with complex processes. My colleagues complain about developing with several containers running peripheral services. In similar situations we asked the services teams to provide mocks that answered the same APIs without needing a large memory footprint.
> “1) even normal users just using the web will find RAM to be the bottleneck and that will degrade their user experience over time”
> “For $600 in 2026, your computer shouldn’t be a bad experience in any way”
In the article, Gruber normally uses a 64GB Mac, expected the 8GB RAM to be a problem and was surprised to find that it wasn’t, and judged the Neo as not being a bad experience in any way.
Gruber has also had it for a week at most by the time he published his review. It’s enough time to run some tests, not enough time to properly review what it will be like to actually live with it. I like the guy, but I also understand the limitations of how he reviews products.
8GB can be limiting on an iPad Pro, which runs a generally more memory efficient branch of Apple’s XNU-based system software and it’s not difficult to get it into a state where it is constantly paging out an app you had in front of you two minute ago if anything you’re doing involves the web at all. A Mac will just swap at that point, but swapping is also slow.
You could get away with 8GB 5 years ago and you still can do it now, but Macs are expected to last longer than that, and starting now with 8GB might become limiting 5 years from now. Here we retire them at about 10 years, or when the last OS they can run is EOL’ed.
Not to be devils's advocate here, but I'd suspect Apple is aiming for a smaller retirement window for this kind of product.
It's basically a Laptop engineered in the iPhone/iPad space of the company, it's only natural for Apple to target a shorter lifecycle.
8GB RAM is maybe the best way to achieve that, many of the MacBook Neo buyers of today will be very compelled to upgrade to a newer (or higher-tier) model in ~3 years from now...
If the Neo would have 16GB of RAM today, it would be harder to justify an upgrade in 3 years from now, when the common entry-tier for laptops is likely still at 16GB...
Over the years since the M1 has launched I’ve cycled through Firefox, Safari, Arc, Zen, Orion and Vivaldi. For the past year my primary browser has been Orion on one M1 Mac, and Firefox has been the main on another M1 work machine for the past 5 years with frequent dips into Chrome on that one, but I don’t leave it sitting in the background when I’m done with it either.
What actually kicked off my browser exploration on the personal was dissatisfaction with Safari’s performance, and 20 tabs or less was enough to make it drag at the time even with disciplined use. I don’t think it had any significant advantages over a Chromium-based browser that particular year except probably battery life but battery life has not been an issue for me these entire 5 years. RAM and swap are something I do end up monitoring more each year (and I’m not in Tahoe yet for either of them), but I’m planning to drive these into the ground before replacing them.
I particularly enjoyed (hated) "... is now the _least RAM browser_ ...".
Reminds me of a childhood friend of mine who always said "it looks very 3D" when he meant "the graphics are good". Pissed me off back then, and apparently still does.
Safari is the highest for 10 tabs but second-lowest for 20? This reads like AI slop, but even if it's not, it's definitely blogspam with no methodology.
in practice, I can have ~infinte tabs in Safari on my M1 MBP. I'll have multiple windows with hundreds of tabs open and I've never seen it stutter once.
It's actually enabling my worst tab-hoarding tendencies. In the Intel days I'd pay a performance price at some point and have to tend to my tabs, but now they just keep propagating....
Back in 2000 I got the M1 Air with 8G of RAM (needed the cheapest Mac to test some arm64 stuff) and that laptop served me very well. I never felt RAM-limited. I was always expecting to run out of memory during a big Bazel build or something, but never did.
It isn't the most powerful computer in the world but I never ran into any problems... so it's probably an OK compromise for most people, especially in the world where RAM is scarce because of AI datacenter buildouts.
The M1 Air would have blown people’s minds in 2000. 128MB of RAM was luxurious at the time for a laptop. In 2003 I borrowed and bought several sticks for a presentation (senior thesis on 3D presentation software), and got to 1GB in my desktop and felt like I’d broken some law of physics.
Shortly after I had a TiBook (PowerBook G4) that was _only_ 1-inch thick! Compared to 1.75” Dells my coworkers had, it seemed like the future. DVD drive, modem, Ethernet, full sized DVI port, FireWire, WiFi, Bluetooth, optical audio in and out, gigantic display with a bezel that was unrivaled for years, even among Macs. What a beast!
(I know you meant 2020, but it’s fun to think about the air in 2000).
In the year 2000, a M1 MacBook Air would have been the world's fastest supercomputer (or second fastest if you had the base model with the 7-core GPU).
Impressive, of course; but not quite that impressive.
Only true if all you're running is matmul (supercomputer has general purpose CPUs so more flexible than M1 GPU) - also those flops are probably FP64 in supercomputer ratings and FP32 in M1.
As a smart man I knew used to say, supercomputers are about I/O not raw compute. Those have terabytes of RAM not 8GB.
Your question hits directly at latency vs. throughput distinction. Depends on which you mean by "fast."
Throughput-wise, the supercomputer is competitive because it has a lot of local RAM connected to lots of independent nodes, which, in aggregate, is comparable to modern laptop's RAM throughput (still much more than disk) with a caveat, that you can only leverage the supercomputer bandwidth if your workload is embarrassingly parallel running on all nodes[1]. Latency-wise, old RAM still beats NVMe by two or three orders of magnitude.
[1]: there's another advantage that supercomputer has which is lots more of local SRAM caches. If the workload is parallel and can benefit from cache locality, it blows away the modern microprocessor.
as someone who wasn't around for PowerPC mac times (I was alive but I didn't have internet and only knew apple for iPod and Apple II), did non artist people use FireWire for anything other than synchronizing their first generation iPods? Was it common to have a firewire external drive and were there any other devices that aren't cameras, film scanners or audio interfaces that utilized firewire?
There were FireWire HDDs too. Non-artist people also used FireWire for their DV camcorders for home videos. It wasn't really common because most PCs didn't have Firewire.
It was also used by the PS2 for local multiplayer between multiple consoles. Although Sony eventually removed that port.
I have a 2008 iMac with (I think) 16Gb of RAM which is used for just Firefox. I've been meaning to upgrade it to Linux but that generation didn't boot from USB, need to burn a CD.
All our intel MacBooks now run Linux just fine. The oldest is 2012, with 4Gb but most are 8 or 16Gb.
I would always recommend more RAM first over a faster processor; back when I would build desktop machines for Windows, I would use the second best CPU and put the savings into RAM.
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.)
OTOH, for my development Mac, I have 64GB of RAM.
(Though 32GB would probably be fine.)
32GB is starting to feel like a minimum for a common workflow: Dockerized development + git worktree + Claude Code or equivalent for working on multiple branches at once.
Definitely brings our engineers' 24GB MBPs to their knees primarily b/c of the RAM chewed up by those multiple Docker instances.
Will 32GB also start looking paltry soon? It's hard to say. I want to say the realistic upper limit is 3-4 simultaneous worktrees for a given developer (at this point the developer becomes the bottleneck again?) but it's a wild guess that may be hilariously low.
Weird .. I easily run 40 docker containers on an 8GB MacBook just fine!
(Just posting this to show that you have to be very specific when talking about these kind of things. Yeah maybe you need 32GB because you run some large deployment 3 times. Others mayb be totally fine with less if they just develop a basic Python web app. Who knows. The devil is in the details. Omitting them makes the discussion ambiguous and just difficult.)
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.
> 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
Mac devices have been able to get away with less RAM (and higher priced upgrades) for well over a decade. During the Intel era, they were the first ones to adopt SSDs as the default option while everyone else still installed spinning rust. That alone provides for way faster swap storage to conceal a relative "lack" of RAM.
And when they went for their own fully integrated stacks of soldered RAM and SSD? Then everything went off the rails - close proximity and no sockets means very low latency for both RAM and persistent storage on one side and on the other side it also allows for much higher bandwidth because of much cleaner signals - remember, even at "measly" hundreds of megahertz you're already in the territory requiring precise PCB design.
On top of that, macOS's scheduler seems to be much, much more efficient and outright better in constrained RAM (and CPU) settings to provide the feeling of "the system is still responding" than either Windows or Linux. The only setting where macOS goes into molasses is when you not just run out of RAM but of free disk space as well.
If the phrase "Java app" is in your vocabulary this laptop probably isn't for you. This is for the first-time laptop buyer or the basic needs non-enthusiast user or for a child. And honestly, I think Apple might make a killing here. Basic laptop users want to do no research and they want it to just work, and accessible marketing is Apple's core competency.
Depends on the course I think.
But 8Gb is more than enough to run a Java 'Hello World' GUI app or even something heavier. Students don't - as a rule - get to deal with millions of lines codebases.
Just tried out a simple Java Swing popup and it uses 6Mb of heap so that's allright then ;). (on my machine it will reserve 160Mb of memory for thread stacks, code caches, buffers and GC but that won't be a problem unless you use it)
In the 90s I also thought that was wasteful (my first PC had 32Mb). Nowadays with Electron apps taking up gigabytes it doesn't seem that bad anymore.
I don't doubt that 8GB is enough for most uses today. But is it closer to "more than enough" or "just barely enough"? Seems unlikely to be the former at a price point this low.
Five years from now, I have no doubt that the processor will still be fine for most uses, but I doubt that 8GB will be. Especially given that some of the most common memory hogs aren't under Apple's control (cough Chrome cough).
A $600 laptop bought new should absolutely still be useful in 5 years. It should be useful longer than 5 years. That people’s standards are so low is a condemnation of the modern computer market.
> "From all the reviews, those of us who are skeptical of 8GB of RAM are very much wrong"
Yes and no. I had a M1 MacBook Air for several years, with 8 GB. It's fine if your needs are relatively simple (ie: just a browser, with not too many tabs, and a few other simple apps). But try to run too many apps and it would tend to hit a wall and get very slow.
One thing that did seem to help a lot was to keep the SSD relatively empty: the SSD seems to get slower once it has < 30% or so free space remaining, which would slow the whole system down because memory swapping takes longer)
Last year I upgraded to an M4 Air and got 24GB, which makes a world of difference. But I gave the M1 to my niece and she seems very happy with it!
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.
> 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-devs use will likely be universal binaries, or adapted from iOS versions. Chrome, Safari, Slack, Calendar, Gmail, Zoom, Claude, Contacts, Notes, Maps, Music, Pages, Numbers, etc. These are apps that run concurrently with no issues on the iPhone Pro 16. I'm not sure why people expect those same apps would cause issues on materially the same hardware because its package includes a hardware keyboard.
(The most RAM you could purchase in an iPhone until late 2024 was 6GB. iPhone 11 had 4 GB of RAM. I have not at any point since approximately iPhone 6 heard anyone complain about the speed of an iPhone Pro for "normal" consumer/not professional media stuff. iPhone 6s was released in late 2015 and had 2GB of RAM.)
Yes, MacOS is a different OS than iOS. But the very same company who built the Neo also make MacOS. They are known to adapt the OS to the hardware they are shipping. I'm willing to bet the experience for the non-dev is similar to the experience of using an iPhone 16 Pro in 2026.
> On iOS if an app remains in the background for over ~30 seconds, it gets killed.
Except 1) that's not entirely true (famously: music, Zoom) and 2) yes, cooperative state management. Users do not know or care that an app is not actually running if it appears that it is still running when they switch back to it. #2 obviously does not work for many dev use cases, but it would not impact my workflow if e.g. ChatGPT or Chrome were suspended when not in the foreground.
> 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.
I have 8GB of RAM in my M2 iPad Pro running iOS (yes, it’s “iOS” despite what Apple’s crack marketing team might call it), and I’ve certainly started to complain. Doing anything with the web, and like one or two other apps is enough to have apps I’m switching between page out like every two or three minutes.
Yes, I think they changed something in the new iOS; they are trying to get people to swap old devices.
I had issues with swapping before, but with the latest iOS, it has become very annoying on an old iPhone with a small amount of RAM (3GB, I think).
Apple fanboys laugh at Android users for many things, but they can use their devices longer even though they might not have the fastest CPU around (8GB+ has been normalized forever in Android world).
At this point the RAM only matters if you've got something that actually needs all that RAM continuously, likes games, virtual machines, or heavyweight user workflows like 4K video editing. For everything else, swap usage on Apple machines works so well that RAM might as well not exist.
> For everything else, swap usage on Apple machines works so well that RAM might as well not exist.
You and I disagree on this part so strenuously I don’t foresee a middle ground. Swap still absolutely sucks no matter how fast the SSD is, and the SSDs or probably the SSD controller are much slower than what’s in other Apple Silicon Macs.
Right, I mean even a fast SSD has an order of magnitude less throughput, and 2-3 orders of magnitude higher latency from RAM. No dispute there. If you are doing random access across 16GB of data and your machine only has 8GB of physical RAM, you're in the pain zone.
OTOH, if you are using multiple RAM-heavy apps that aren't actively hammering that RAM (e.g. an instance of Photoshop that is using 10GB but is just idling or whatever) then MacOS and their stupid fast SSDs handle that pretty seamlessly.
Most use cases are probably somewhere in the middle.
Browser use on the modern web is enough to put you in swap territory early and often on 8GB of RAM. My much more RAM efficient M2 iPad Pro with the non-desktop OS and 8GB of RAM frequently has to page out apps I had open two minutes ago if I’m doing anything with the web and like one or two other applications. This things eventual replacement in like 4 or 5 years is going to need twice or thrice the RAM for me to consider it an upgrade.
> Swap still absolutely sucks no matter how fast the SSD
People always forget that Apple does realtime compression on data that's in RAM allowing more things to fit in RAM; it also effectively increases the bandwidth of the SSD.
> Windows 10+ and Linux also have memory compression, though I don't know how the implementations compare.
A combination of Apple's Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) and hardware-accelerated instructions (SIMD/NEON) makes RAM compression on Macs very efficient. Because the storage controller is integrated into the SoC, the bandwidth is high enough that the transition between "Compressed RAM" and "Swap" is very smooth.
And because the CPU and GPU share the same memory, there are no wasted cycles moving data between VRAM and System RAM.
Apple uses WKDM (Wilson-Kaplan Direct Mapping), a specialized, high-speed compression algorithm designed specifically for in-memory data. WKDM is "architecturally aware"—it was built to compress the specific types of data structures found in a computer's RAM, such as pointers, integers, and memory addresses. WKDM treats RAM like a collection of 64-bit integers and pointers; and it's designed to fit entirely in L1/L2 cache [1]. This shipped in MacOS 10.9 Mavericks in 2013.
Windows/Linux treat RAM like a stream of bytes (similar to how you’d compress a .zip file) so it’s not as efficient. The vast majority of Windows and Linux machines don't have unified memory or storage controllers connected to their processors.
Because of this, Apple can often compress a page of memory using fewer CPU cycles than Windows or Linux, which is why M-series Macs can be so aggressive with compression without you ever noticing a "hitch" in the UI.
The fallback algorithm is their LZFSE algorithm, which is like "Zlib-level compression with 2x-3x the speed and efficiency". LZFSE achieves a nearly identical compression ratio but uses Finite State Entropy (FSE) coding, which allows it to decompress data significantly faster while using much less battery power.
LZFSE is optimized for the ARM NEON instruction set to minimize "wake time" for the CPU, making it arguably the more "green" choice for mobile devices [2].
It's safe to say that neither Windows nor Linux has the combination of hardware and software optimizations that Apple has when it comes to RAM compression.
[1]: Compressed Memory compresses the least recently used data residing in memory using the WKDM algorithm, which not only frees up memory but also reduces the amount of swapping going in the background. Not only is this faster than swapping to disk (even to SSDs), but Apple also claims it saves power -- essentially, that compressing data in memory uses less power than writing data to disk without compressing it. -- https://www.osnews.com/story/27121/os-x-109-mavericks/#:~:te...
> Windows/Linux treat RAM like a stream of bytes (similar to how you’d compress a .zip file) so it’s not as efficient.
That doesn't really follow. There are faster and slower compression algorithms no matter what, and 64-bit integers are kind of a waste of memory much of the time.
Also, unified memory has tradeoffs. The GPU improvements are real but it mostly means more pressured on memory, not less.
Very cool, thanks for the detail. This leads me to wonder....why haven't Windows and Linux done any similar optimizations? I assume they do lots of hardware optimizations in all sorts of places, but this seems pretty core.
Nobody forgot anything, and I certainly didn’t. You can tell when you hit swap, and it doesn’t matter what Mac OS X is designed to do, when you hit swap, you hit swap. When you’re hitting swap a lot, you’re hitting swap a lot.
> You can tell when you hit swap, and it doesn’t matter what Mac OS X is designed to do, when you hit swap, you hit swap. When you’re hitting swap a lot, you’re hitting swap a lot.
I have a 16GB M1 Pro machine from 2021 with 200 GB/s memory bandwidth; I can't tell when it's hitting swap, even with tons of browser tabs open, 3 or 4 terminal sessions, and several apps running. I often run two browsers with dozens of tabs open and there's no noticeable lag.
RAM Doubler was a third-party application in the days when a top-of-the-line Mac had 128MB of RAM, with a 40Mhz processor. The level 2 cache was 256 bytes.
That's not in the same universe as hardware compression on a 6-core, 64-bit ARM processor with cores that can run at 4GHz.
> 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.
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 some features. Currently, the OS uses much of the available RAM for caching (I've seen "40%" of total OS RAM usage) to make the system faster, whereas 8 GB RAM permits only essential caching.
(Surely, the tough 8 GB RAM decision was influenced by the three factors 1. current DRAM cost and 2. limited DRAM availability considerations as of 2026, and 3. the massive Neo market size resulting from its attractive price tag, and this may get reconsidered in future editions.)
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 which requires 16GB of RAM on a Mac, then you are doing state of the art tech stuff and should be rolling in money already and have no problem spending thousands and thousands on your computer.
>(Surely, the tough 8 GB RAM decision was influenced by the three factors 1. current DRAM cost and 2. limited DRAM availability considerations as of 2026, and 3. the massive Neo market size resulting from its attractive price tag, and this may get reconsidered in future editions.)
Actually it's because the A18 Pro only supports 8GB of RAM. It's packaged on top of the SoC itself using TSMC's InFO-PoP.
> Surely, the tough 8 GB RAM decision was influenced by the three factors 1. current DRAM cost and 2. limited DRAM availability considerations as of 2026, and 3. the massive Neo market size resulting from its attractive price tag, and this may get reconsidered in future editions.
I think it’s as simple as: 8GB is what the iPhones using the A18 Pro had. It’s this thing Apple likes to do where to keep costs down, they use some iPhone part or other SoC/SiP they have laying around as close to its standard configuration as possible with minimal changes.
Their new Studio Displays for example have an A19 Pro and 128GB of NAND. For basically just the firmware. Why? Because that’s the least amount of storage Apple ships with an A19 Pro iPhone, because like the previous Studio Display from 2022 which had an A13 Bionic in there, they probably just shoved an iPhone board in there to handle the logic and I/O.
So in theory, if they update the MacBook Neo next year to an A19 Pro, it should have 12GB of RAM.
Like freeways, it's not clear that increasing the baseline ram for basic laptops is an effective way to mitigate software bloat. Rather it likely creates bloat.
I think the big difference is that if you just want to optimize for some objective, it's usually very clear how to do that from Apple's options, so there's not much research to be done. It can still be challenging to choose what's the best value when it's your own money, but at least you know what you're getting, and the quality hasn't been a concern for years.
>> The number of overlapping iPad models and variants, for example, is getting kind of crazy these days.
One of the first things Steve Jobs immediately did after returning to Apple in 1997 was to kill most of Apple's product line-up, which had exploded in his absence.
Too bad he's not around to save them from the same over-segmentation anymore.
With respect, I think you're misremembering the product lineup in the 1994/5/6 era.
Back then, Apple had 16 to 32 distinct models[1] of just desktop computer (just the desktops!) with little to distinguish them. In many cases, the exact same internal hardware was shipped in two different boxes as two models aimed at two different customers (LC/Performa/Centris/Quadra/Workgroup Server). For example, the "LC 550" and "Performa 550" were the exact same computer[2] with two different names on the front, meant to be sold to the educational and home markets.
That's extremely confusing for the consumer. You had the same internal hardware being sold for two different price points, and computers with significantly different performance sold at the same price point. You don't want your customer to get analysis paralysis and give up before they purchase.
The point of Jobs's simplification is that there is one option for you to pick at a given price point in a given category of tablet/laptop/desktop, and that pricing and capability are clearly aligned. I don't see where Apple has gotten away from that.
I think It makes sense for iPad line up to be this way. Very clear feature segmentation that make sense. Most is directly result of underlying hardware. For consumer it's also very easy:
- decide on size
- go from your budget
- if still too many SKUs go by features
What features? Thunderbolt, Screen, Apple Pencil, Face ID
Alternatively if you know what features you want, start with that.
If you're struggling to choose which iPad you need then you might want an iPad for the sake of having an iPad (in which case get Air).
Yeah, I don't think this lineup is particular crazy:
- 8.3", one tier (mini)
- 11", three tiers (iPad, Air, Pro)
- 13", two tiers (Air, Pro)
Could you spend the same amount of money on a regular 11" iPad with a lot of storage, or an iPad Air with less storage? Sure.
Some people want lots of storage. Other people don't care but want a wide gamut screen, faster processor, and better pen capabilities.
It's nothing like trying to pick a laptop from Dell where you have to spend hours digging around to even figure out what your options are. If someone asked me which iPad to buy we could figure it out in under 5 minutes.
IMO it's telling that the lineup here is bucketized by screen size and not model. Screen size, processor performance, storage, sensors, etc are ambiguous concepts that don't mean much in their own merit. People don't really think "my priority is 8.3 inches"; people think in terms of use cases and cost.
For laptops the buckets are portability and performance. These two will always be at odds, and people will gladly prioritize one over the other; these are the ingredients you need for creating a model lineup. Each model prioritizes something different:
- Affordability, MacBook Neo
- Portability, MacBook Air
- Performance, MacBook Pro
There's people who will be carry this machine everywhere and will gladly sacrifice performance for portability. There's people who will gladly use a laptop as essentially a desktop they can occasionally move if it means maximum power. You even see this in the wider market; there's a clear category of laptops praised by their portability (ultrabooks), and another group praised by their power (gaming laptops).
I don't think there's an equivalent for tablets, since people don't really seem to need them for that much (lol). Apple has been focusing a lot on portability, but the market of people who carry their tablet everywhere isn't really that big, most people use them at home [1]. Digital nomads, students, PMs hopping around meetings: they're on laptops. Same with performance; people who need performance are on laptops.
The killer use-cases for tablets seem to be drawing and media consumption, but not only is drawing not a huge market, these two aren't at odds. Both are better with a better, bigger screen. A single dimension for improvement doesn't give you the ingredients for creating a model lineup, it gives you the ingredients for a price ladder where more money just gets you a bigger, better screen.
I think the iPad's lineup could be simplified to just one model, but I understand Apple want's to have several for marketing and price-ladder delineation, like it does with the iPhone. In that case, I think like the iPhone, the iPad could do with less overlap:
- 8.3", $ (iPad mini, affordable)
- 11", $$ (iPad, standard)
- 13", $$$ (iPad Pro, better in pretty much every way)
And keep the iPad Air in the same space as the iPhone Air, a novelty luxurious product that isn't the fastest nor the most affordable, but showcases premium hardware and what the future could look like.
I think Apple doesn't do this because it hopes to discover what people want through the grid of different screen size, thinness, performance, etc permutations that currently exist, but oh well.
> People don't really think "my priority is 8.3 inches"
Disagree, at least coming from a current iPad owner. I’m on an 8 year old 12.9” iPad Pro and if I bought a new iPad today it would be 11” because that’s the size I’d rather have at this point.
So hypothetically it’s between the Regular, Air, and Pro, and I would get the Air because I want the better screen and stylus compatibility but wouldn’t spend $1000 for it.
> People don't really think "my priority is 8.3 inches"
I have 12.9" iPad Pro, my priority was thunderbolt and screen size, but mainly screen size (battery life is given on Apple devices).
I also have iPad Mini where my priority was...bigger than the biggest iPhone, smaller than regular iPad.
> The killer use-cases for tablets seem to be drawing and media consumption, but not only is drawing not a huge market, these two aren't at odds. Both are better with a better, bigger screen.
It's like all-season tires, does not exceed in any particular field. I use my iPad for casual CAD with 3d printing in mind, it works great. I also use it as a bedroom screen on stand by the bed. Can two separate devices do a better job? Yes, but I don't need
> For laptops the buckets are portability and performance.
iPads not bucketed like this because you're not buying iPad for performance.
> I think the iPad's lineup could be simplified to just one model, but I understand Apple want's to have several for marketing and price-ladder delineation, like it does with the iPhone
Sure they can. This would lead to less overall sales. Right now 11" buyer have whole 3 feature set selections to choose from. I'd get rid of Pro, but not everyone needs 11" and Air features.
They're suggesting a hypothetical lineup would be cleaner if that weren't the case.
I don't disagree, but Apple seems to treat the Mini as an afterthought side project that gets updated every 3 years or so, compared to the mainline iPad being updated yearly from 2017 to 2022. Then it had a gap until 2025, apparently taking a while to get the slim bezel redesign down to the affordable model.
If the mini were the default affordable entry point they'd need to keep it up to date but they've decided not enough people want a mini for it to be worth that effort.
The goal is different. Jobs wanted to make the product spread simple to understand.
Apple's current method is a pricing ladder, make it simple to spend $200+ more than you planned.
MacBook Neo, $599. Great but maybe I want Touch ID & more storage, ok $699. Well at this point now it's "only" $300 to get the air which is much better. Well, now that you're already spending $1000, might as well just do the extra $500 and get the pro..."
Every product lineup is designed that way. It gets you thinking "eh, what's an extra $200" and slowly moves you up until you land at the highest tier.
Now that everything is using the same silicon, it costs Apple very little to maintain all these variants (that are mostly binning), so there's little reason not to.
I think you are completely misremembering what the Apple product lineup looked like even with the Steve Jobs cleanup. At its absolute simplest, it contained the iMac, iBook, PowerMac and PowerBook lines. Within each line was a "Good", "Better" and "Best" pre-configured model each being a few hundred different from the other and each of those models was further configurable to add additional storage / memory etc.
That level of simplicity lasted from approximately 1999 to 2002 when the 14 inch iBooks, the 17 inch iMacs and the eMacs were introduced, followed by the 12 and 17 inch powerbooks in 2003. By 2005 they had also introduced the Mac Mini. And again most of these had a "good", "better", "best" variant, though in some cases (like the first 17 inch iMacs, the "best" tier was also the next model variant).
Apple's lineup is undeniably more complicated now than it has been in the past, but the simplification was never really about cutting model types down, so much as it was about making distinct model categories that people could easily understand why they would pick one or the other.
I think they still do a relatively good job at retaining that distinction, and I agree that the iPad lineup is probably the most muddled. Though special mention goes to the "Macbook Pro with M4 Pro" branding, which anyone should have caught and thought that maybe they needed a better moniker than "Pro" for the processor variant (and of course also, is the "Pro", the "Max" or the "Ultra" the best?)
> Now that everything is using the same silicon, it costs Apple very little to maintain all these variants (that are mostly binning), so there's little reason not to.
Don't underestimate how much of a bitch it is to maintain all the separate SKUs. This isn't the old CTO days where you had: 1 chassis, N mainboards for different CPU/GPU combinations, a bunch of SODIMM's of varying capacities, and a couple of different fixed storage drives to toss in.
When any given MBP has 2 CPU/GPU options, multiple memory options, and multiple storage options, with everything being soldered to the board? Honestly, the Neo is the one product in their portable lineup that doesn't cause a massive headache for logistics.
But...even then, Tim Cook is CEO still, and he is a supply chain guy, so you better believe this is top of his list when it comes to their product lineup. You don't increase operational complexity for no reason, because that is where the cost for every product lies for them, it's not just dealing with silicon binning.
> But...even then, Tim Cook is CEO still, and he is a supply chain guy, so you better believe this is top of his list when it comes to their product lineup. You don't increase operational complexity for no reason, because that is where the cost for every product lies for them, it's not just dealing with silicon binning.
Sure... but when looking at sales numbers, HP and Apple are tied by monthly sales volume on Amazon [1], with everyone else being widely behind them. But HP has almost 300 models, Apple much, much less - and Apple can react much, much faster because they almost directly run the production sites and mostly sell themselves, so they can produce an initial run of products and whenever a store or a region runs out of one specific variant, they just tell Foxconn to, say, instead of making a run with black casings they now make a day worth of gray casings, ship that onto a plane and that's it. HP, Dell et al? Their inventory gets distributed by an intricate web of middlemen who all need buffer.
Those kind of pricing ladders are "fine" because at no point do you have to really make a decision. The problem is when it splits and you have a tree where what branch you go down precludes you from options on the other branch you might want.
> MacBook Neo, $599. Great but maybe I want Touch ID & more storage, ok $699. Well at this point now it's "only" $300 to get the air which is much better.
Yes
>Well, now that you're already spending $1000, might as well just do the extra $500 and get the pro..."
Disagree. The Air offers additional utility and longevity for the price, the Pro offers nothing that 90% of people will ever perceive.
I know a ton of people for whom the $500 would be nothing, but still get an Air rather than a Pro. Obviously, that’s not great data, but I feel like the jump from Air to Pro just doesn’t happen or won’t happen compared to jumps from Neo to Air.
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.
> 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):
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.
> Do I want an iPad Air or Pro? Both seem pretty thin. What am I not getting with the Air?
Horsepower (M5 vs M4), display ("XDR brightness: 1000 nits max full screen, 1600 nits peak (HDR content only"; "ProMotion technology"), option for more storage (2TB).
> Laptops also now fall into the trope of good/better/best with Neo/Air/Pro.
...until the bestest Ultra launches, as GP pointed out?
(Also Air used to be 'the light one', not the standard/middling one on same spectrum.)
We could say a similar thing with the Dell names above, the point is that it's confusing to work out which you need/want when there's so many, not that they don't fall in some sort of order across a line from mediocre to best.
This is basically the performance of M1 with 8GB ram (with shittier USB/connectivity). I've seen developers who used the 8GB air a few years ago on a project. It would't work for me (even the 24GB air I have is swapping), but I can see this working for students without any problems.
Buying this for a kid would be a no-brainer for me - especially if it was on a discount (and it's not uncommon for Apple stuff to get 10-20% discount drops at retailers). Even the USB 3.0 is enough to power an audio interface - should be good enough to run some basic DAW, a MIDI keyboard, electronic drums etc. Will probably pick it up for my son at some point to motivate him to learn to type.
Apple stopped numbering iPads with their generation so it's pretty messy compared to iPhones. I recently spent some time to decode their entire line-up (all models ever released) and made this comparison table which might clear things up a bit: https://comparisontabl.es/ipads/
It is giving me choice paralysis, last week I made a mental graph of the ones I wanted and went over all node pairs choose 2, now it's down to waiting for a fall M5 Mac mini paired with either: a MacBook Neo, or an iPad Air 13"; both options are very attractive for my intended usage though the latter seems higher risk since I've never used a 13 inch tablet before.
The iPad gives you touch interaction, hand-held operation, a higher quality (albeit smaller) display, and a more resilient operating system (albeit managed).
The Neo gives you a real keyboard, a bigger screen, and unified UX/software support with your desktop computer.
But are you sure you need two devices? Why not just get a MacBook Air (with the same spec as your proposed Mac mini) along with a USB-C dock accessory to connect charging/keyboard/mouse/video with a single cable? Also don't underestimate the value of having a battery in your "desktop" computer. It's a free UPS.
I never understood why they didn't use the Apple "UI". Where Apple presents fewer models (say N models), and when you select one, each is configurable for screen size/RAM/CPU/whatever (say K picks), yielding N*K possibilities, many Windows laptop sellers present a list of N*K SKUs where you need to triple check what the difference between SKU A and B.
My guess is that some cell in an excel sheet says that some customers bought certain models in the past and no manager at Dell has enough weight or enough courage to question that and rule to NOT release a certain model.
They're meant to replace vostro/latitude/precision - enterprise machines. I suspect that Dell expectes shoppers to either look at enterprise or consumer, not both.
Every time I've considered an alternative to my Mac laptop I'm confronted by this much choice (and that of other manufacturers) and I also have to deal with unknown and varying performance of keyboard, display and trackpad.
One thing PC manufacturers seem to prioritise and focus on is tech specs + performance and interface is tacked on (or at least the interface designers departments in their companies aren't leading the design), when by and large most consumers of their machines focus on the interface and whether the CPU is of a certain level is likely secondary to the experience.
Anyway, I keep on going back to apple every 7 years (as that's how long they typically last) simply because I can't handle the choice or the uncertainty, but I'd love to bust out and get a linux using machine next.
I used a work provided thinkpad in 2000 and I really liked it at the time. And I've been dabbling with linux every since then. But only switched my main desktop OS to linux last year (from Windows 11). So my last upgrade cycle linux wasn't really on the cards (for me).
The one thing that makes it harder for me to go the way of the think pad is the lack of models on display anywhere in Australia. For a 7 year commitment I really don't want any uncertainty about the feel of the machine. Lenovo do have plenty of ideapads available at retail and some thinkpads, but not the higher tier.
To be fair, the English language is the real victim here.
While “essential” cleanly maps to “can’t go without” - it doesn’t map to “bare minimum”.
For instance, let’s assume you’re surviving in the wilderness and you need to start a fire. Your fire starting kit is obviously essential, but it could also be included in a “Camper Value Pack” - but those things don’t have anything to do with each other. The kit is essential, and it was obtained in a value pack. This message brought to you by Mr. Obvious.
Hotel branding might be worse. Marriott has 30+ brands, each supposedly with its own identity but I can’t really see how having that many makes sense. Should I stay at the Fairfield or the AC or the Four Points or the Aloft or the Moxy or the CitizenM … how about just the Marriott?
I had a series of two XPS laptops in my last corporate job, finishing two years ago. My uncle has also had one of them that passed on to me when he died.
I can't speak for the other series you mention, but the XPS series is complete garbage and should be avoided at all costs. Three for three laptops, all in theory well specced, that were all horribly flawed in various ways (WiFi flakiness, constant driver issues, crappy trackpads, mediocre keyboards), does not speak well of that model line.
That Dell Pro Max Plus (that I legit thought might be a joke) is a big horkin laptop for ~$6k+. 3cm thick, nearly 3kg, and you can do wireframes on it, wow! A full HD screen with 500 nits brightness. What a piece of shit product comparatively speaking. I imagine someone would buy it for a niche specific engineering purpose that can only be practical on Intel Windows, but damn.
I really don't think it would fair better than a less costly M4/M5 Pro, and would probably be just an awful experience to use daily.
I use the non-Plus version as my work machine (not by choice).
It's massive and heavy and feels less snappy than my personal X1 Nano after all the corporate malware uses up most of the CPU and RAM.
The screen resolution is also shockingly bad (my 13 inch X1 Nano has a higher res than this 16 inch beast).
That being said, it's nice having 64gb of RAM, a fast CPU and an Nvidia card (we build stuff that runs on CUDA). Build times are quick and I can run some of our more demanding test suites without RAM filling up and slowing everything down.
> That being said, it's nice having 64gb of RAM, a fast CPU and an Nvidia card (we build stuff that runs on CUDA). Build times are quick and I can run some of our more demanding test suites without RAM filling up and slowing everything down.
No question there, more RAM and a specifically CUDA capable card make sense. At a big corp gig I did years ago, they issued me this atrocious HP thing they must have bought in bulk. I really tried to be optimistic, since it was just a tool and I was otherwise grateful for the work, and I'm sure the ram and CPU situation was fine, but for my use it only actively detracted from my ability to get things done. It pretty much had to be docked at all times, the screen had one viewing angle, Windows was functionally detrimental for my workflow (frontend web at that time), and the battery life was just sad.
ThinkPads have always seemed a bit better, even their more chonkier versions.
Yes, it will also have 5 mins of battery life when unplugged and have a power adapter the size of a shoe box. I tried a similar machine from Lenovo at work and quickly returned it.
My laptop is always either plugged into a dock at work, or plugged into a dock or just a power supply at home. I feel like there's an untapped market for 'same laptop, but slightly cheaper because there's no battery in it at all'.
Like you say most windows laptops have such garbage battery life already that it's not practical to use them unplugged.
Not the same - I still want to be able to just use and carry round the one thing without needing a monitor, mouse, keyboard etc at every single location, but I basically never need to use it somewhere where there isn't a wall socket available.
It seems ridiculous on the surface, since you'd think you'd just buy a desktop or something, but with a laptop with no battery, and hypothetically better everything else, it would eliminate the need for a bunch of other peripherals
Kind of an interesting idea. Only the portability but none of the mobile computing capability.
It does kind of seem like, outside a few select models, the PC market just gets the laptop part of laptops so so wrong. Bad touchpads, bad screens, no battery life, unpleasant industrial design usually, crammed with crapware and other bullshit. I hand it to the few companies that do try harder to remedy these.
Eh, I want some battery, it's nice when you need to move rooms or someone kicks the power cable out. Even 15 minutes would be enough for a chonkster machine like this.
The thing is, I think there's probably a niche for a workstation laptop like that, but this doesn't really check the right boxes.
For all that extra bulk it ought to be extremely robust and repairable, have the best specs possible, and be equipped with the kind of killer cooling system that a thin chassis can't deliver. Then the tradeoffs might make sense.
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.
My first laptop was xps 13 released in 2016, I think. I am still using it with linux installed. It’s a solid laptop. Good display, good port selection, good keyboard, even trackpad is not bad. It survived my long graduate degrees and survived covid when I was using it full time (mostly ssh though). I swapped the battery two times and battery life is not bad with minimal linux setup. What’s surprising the most to me is that it was just 900 usd.
The best part is how they don't have medium range laptops with 17-18 inch screens even though MANY offices where people work with spreadsheets use laptops...
The last time (2005) I was faced with this issue and had to buy a Dell laptop. There were also Windows license issues to consider. I was going to be doing unattended installations and the Windows licensing required the original purchase be a particular SKU or I would need to buy second Windows licenses to install over a network.
This naming is great compared to their traditional naming. I immediately know that I need a pro max premium if I want the one that compiles stuff fast and is heavy and has the fans running full speed all the time and only technically works unplugged, like my current Dell work laptop (guessing).
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.
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.
They forgot to add Dell Pro Max Premium Plus to complete the word salad, what a missed opportunity.
If the Dell product naming team is reading here I have a couple marketing buzzword suggestions: add “elite”, “ultra”, “platinum” or “diamond” to the mix please. Doesn’t “Dell Pro Max Elite Platinum Premium Plus” sound so much more marketable?
It's kind of hilarious that they copied the Apple model of arbitrary superlative suffixes without realizing that each should signify some specific and obvious model option(s).
Then the OS is full of ads and pre-installed garbage “gaming-optimization-tool” or driver tools taking up 99% of a single core while being riddled with security holes.
But inevitably, some chucklehead comes along "wut? I can get <proceeds to type spec sheet> for half that! Have fun paying the apple tax, lol." Someone posted that on Ars yesterday, with a random Amazon link from Naikan, your name for quality computing. Or rather, "Naikan, your name for a quality trackpad, screen, and high-quality ABS case! Be sure to check out the $12,000 of 'bonus' software add-ons, no extra charge!". It's amazing someone can post that without the slightest hint of self-awareness.
The first thing I do with any new system is immediately wipe the drive and install a fresh copy of Windows/Linux, so bundled shovelware is meaningless to me, and presumably many others.
(Of course it would be even better if they just came with a totally stock install already, but that's not worth hundreds of dollars to me)
Windows license stored inside BIOS. When you install fresh Windows, it'll get activated automatically.
What's more troublesome is that some laptops require drivers and customizations, so you need to tinker with your fresh Windows by installing carefully selected subset of drivers, so your hardware works and at the same time you don't install the same shovelware. The driver situation for Windows is truly dire. There are drivers from laptop manufacturer (e.g. Lenovo). There are drivers from part manufacturer (e.g. Nvidia). There are drivers that Windows was bundled with. There are drivers that Windows will download automatically and install as part of Windows Update. It's a huge mess and I don't think anybody knows how to navigate that. So there's no reliable recipe to create "stable" Windows from the scratch.
> When you install fresh Windows, it'll get activated automatically.
Same happens with some crapware provided by vendor. You can wipe drive all you want, but ASUS motherboard will ask Windows to automatically install "essential drivers", and to be specific - "Armoury Crate".
You can (partially) blame Microsoft for that. I still don't understand why it's seemingly OK for device manufacturers to distribute such crapware through Windows update. New keyboard? Oops, spyware. Printer on your LAN? Here, let me install these 16 utilities for you. Just give me a driver without any GUI tools. Or at the very least prompt me before installation.
My daily driver is a very basic Linux experience. From my perspective, both PCs and Apple computers come with bundled software that I don’t want. It’s hardly as awful as the experience
you describe but, even so, with Apple it’s the OS so it’s even harder to drop.
I feel quite self conscious saying this. It feels like whataboutism, as well as being potentially contrarian — 100% of my colleagues use and love macOS — but I fell in love with being able to read and edit the source code for my whole computer, and I don’t ever want to relinquish that freedom.
> It's amazing someone can post that without the slightest hint of self-awareness.
It's amazing that people attribute it to lacking self-awareness. You can spend $400 on a laptop and have a perfectly fine experience. There are damn good Chromebooks in the $200-300 territory that I can genuinely recommend to people. If you just need to do your taxes or answer a Zoom call, why would you get a Macbook Neo?
macOS itself has been declining in quality since at least Mojave; people don't rave about it anymore. The Macbook Neo will 100% continue the trend of people showing up at Best Buy and comparing the Lenovo machine to the Mac that costs 3x as much. This will not sway the average Joe any more than the Macbook Air did. It's not even seriously competing with the iPad price bracket that might tempt students.
> You can spend $400 on a laptop and have a perfectly fine experience.
Or you could spend $200 more (or $100 more with edu pricing) and get a MacBook Neo which has significantly higher build quality, a much better screen, a great trackpad, and amazing performance.
Seeing how college students throw laptops in backpacks, that extra $100 (edu pricing) could very easily save them money in the long run.
> There are damn good Chromebooks in the $200-300 territory
Every once in a while I go looking for a Chromebook-level laptop for some extra purpose and I am never impressed by anything. The current selection is all ancient processors, bad screens, creaky build quality. If you must stick to a strict budget then these can work, but I wouldn't call them good.
First impressions can be a very poor judge of build quality. If you pick up a mil-spec laptop it'll feel a lot more like the $200 Chromebook. Yet it'll survive endurance tests that neither the Chromebook nor the Macbook will.
That 'build quality' is a more complicated thing than many Apple fans believe. My good ol' Thinkpad is a bit creaky and frankly was so from the day 1, also it survived years of travels, lots of risky falls, and sticky spills. So I suppose its build quality is high. Also I upgraded its hardware pretty significantly twice. Somehow 'build quality' in Mac-land implies it's a taboo.
>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 without.
>macOS itself has been declining in quality since at least Mojave; people don't rave about it anymore.
Maybe because computing devices overall are just so good. The gains are to be had in services that are part of the Apple ecosystem, not the OS alone (for the most part).
>The Macbook Neo will 100% continue the trend of people showing up at Best Buy and comparing the Lenovo machine to the Mac that costs 3x as much. This will not sway the average Joe any more than the Macbook Air did. It's not even seriously competing with the iPad price bracket that might tempt students.
In the 2000s, Apple has not cared about competing at Best Buy. That isn't their customer. If anything though, the Neo is more of a foray into that wider market. Anyone with kids lugging home a crappy school-issued Chromebook though took one look at this device and knew this is a device Apple can position into schools -- a market they once dominated and lost. There are lots of markets where this will be a great device, where the customer wants a Mac and not "just" an iPad. In those cases, it isn't the end consumer buying this device, it's an IT manager - who can likely be tempted by that Mac ecosystem and a better grade of device relative to competition.
> Maybe not to you, but to many people Apple signals luxury. It signals trust.
In some countries Apple is (or was) a status symbol of luxury, but I haven't observed that much in the United States. Macs and iPhones are both mainstream and affordable. AirPods can be bought for $100 on sale. These are commodity items now, not symbols of luxury.
Now, most people go to Apple because they see it as a premium option, not a status symbol or luxury. If you get AirPods or an iPhone you know what you're getting. If you buy those $50 wireless earbuds on Amazon your expectations are lower.
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 thing, without looking at usability details like battery life is an oversimplification.
That's interesting because I have the opposite experience. An Android phone or Lenovo laptop I can bring to the street shop and get a 50-200usd repair that would cost upwards of 600 at Apple or just making me get a new device.
I've found that many repair shops acknowledge the existence of two smartphone brands: Apple and Samsung. Bring anything else in and the most you get is a puzzled look.
Apple has the distinction of the iPhone being what everybody thinks of when they hear the word "smartphone". Everybody is familiar with it. That little xylophone jingle that serves as the iPhone's default ringtone plays in every detective show my wife watches on streaming, and everybody knows instantly what it means. That sort of ubiquity has network effects that you're not going to get with a Motorola, Sony Xperia, or even a Pixel. I've had to turn to Aliexpress to score a decent protective cover for my Pixel.
Just the guarantee of being able to walk into a physical location and talk to a real person and have their full attention for a while when something goes wrong is worth all the other bullshit.
You can spend $400 on a laptop and have a perfectly fine experience.
Again, the trackpad will suck and the screen will be a dim, binned display panel, etc. If that works for you, fine, but that's not the conversation. The conversation everyone else is having is that your plastic $400 laptop with the bargain-bin components isn't the equivalent of $MACBOOK, no matter what the spec sheet says.
I have a relatively recent expensive gaming laptop from Asus for the occasional LAN party with friends. I hate it and it’s a huge piece of shit. Windows 11 is necessary for anti-cheat shenanigans. Apple could change the Mac OS wallpaper to a permanent photo of a turd and it would still be better than Windows 11. Also the trackpad and keyboard suck.
FYI, the very recently released Marathon with the BattleEye rootkit works fine on a maximally trimmed down Windows 10 LTSC, which is what I'm running on my PC (personal console).
Windows 10 LTSC is not available outside of volume licencing.
That you pirate an OS they refuse to sell to you to get a better experience is your choice, but it's unrealistic to suggest that it's a solution for the average person.
I don't rave about macOS any more because I've been here for decades and, barring the occasional fight with Windows when I want to play something, I've largely forgotten how awful all the other options are[1].
I've gone "OS blind", I guess, and now macOS, for me, is the "bare minimum of competence" - hence I won't rave about it (but I absolutely will moan about the stupid things it does[2].)
[1] I spent decades using various Unix GUIs (on Suns, SGIs, Linux, OpenBSD for a while); I have absolutely zero desire to explore them again.
[2] My current favourite is being able to notice when it's about to flip into "red battery, plug me in" mode because, for whatever godforsaken reason, the load average will rocket up into the 400s and everything turns to sludge for a couple of minutes. Oh how I laugh every time.
> macOS itself has been declining in quality since at least Mojave; people don't rave about it anymore.
There are levels to this. Sure, recent versions of macOS have some issues, no doubt. Part of the reason Mac users complain about relatively minor issues is because Apple has set the UI/UX bar so high.
But even in its current state, macOS is still leaps and bounds better than Windows. When I worked with customers using Windows and dealing the usual Windows issues, I realized most of them had no idea that computing didn’t have to be so bad, due to the Stockholm Syndrome that Windows users experience--they think all computers are the same.
The battery on my Macbook Pro, that I've owned since 2013, has finally gave out and I am looking for a new laptop. I considered buying an entry-level Air or a used Pro (<$1000 budget), but then Neo came out. I am now considering just getting the Neo. All I need is internet browsing, some very light coding maybe.
But if there are $200-300 Chromebooks just as good, I want to know. What are they?
I guess the market will speak for itself. I absolutely see the macOS percentage shoot to the sky, it's already almost 50% in the United States, with this, it will gravitate to 75%+ with significant penetration in Europe.
Microsoft is also helping by making Windows an absolute dump of an OS.
$300 to thread the eye of a needle through a field of dogshit, that can only run Google Chrome, or $500 for something entry level but very high quality that can run Google Chrome but also a vast library of well-designed native software that doesn't use garbage collection.
macOS isn't the power user focused, extra high polish OS it was in Snow Leopard era, but it's still the best UX and energy management in operating systems out of the box
> $500 for something entry level but very high quality that can run Google Chrome but also a vast library of well-designed native software
A vast library? With 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage you're not going to be running much, nor storing many files created by that library of software. Also, the only well-designed truly native software I have on my Mac, which I use daily, I can count on one hand. The vast majority of the apps most people use outside of "Pro" video and image editing, are in a browser, or are Electron apps that are exactly the same on a Mac as they are on a Chromebook.
And those "media" people using Premiere or Final Cut would never buy a computer that maxes out at 512GB SSD.
This is a pretty Chromebook substitute, which is cool, but it's obvious Apple doesn't want it to compete with the rest of their computers which start at $1,099.
8GB was a sad amount of RAM back then, and it's still a sad amount now. Ditto for the storage. I'm not complaining about the CPU at all, it's fine. I use an M1 daily, and for work just an M1 Pro and both are fine.
I know there's a RAM shortage. But if RAM didn't matter, Apple wouldn't have stopped shipping 8GB configurations in the rest of their line. Starving these of RAM and storage is the way they've chosen to protect their fat margins of the MacBook Air. Which is fine. I just think these are best recommended only with a giant asterisk that they're for web tasks only, exactly like a Chromebook.
It was sad but usable (and arguably is usable now, even me with all my crap is around 14 GB not counting cache, etc).
But then again I remember when 128 MB of RAM was simply unheard of largess; so huge that using much of it for anything but a RAM disk was hard to do (of course, I also had that problem back in the DOS era with 8MB).
Please don't call people chuckleheads while licking a boot of a single corporation.
C'mon, you can make a better counter-argument than that. People can prefer what they like as far as I'm concerned, but poorly-thought arguments and narrative-supporting go straight to the "chucklehead" bin. Perhaps you can do a better job describing how a $300 plastic laptop is superior to a MacBook Neo than OP did, I'm willing to listen.
The last competitor remaining is Lenovo with the ThinkPads and pre-installed Linux [1].
But even Lenovo cripples them:
* You need to be very careful. Select alwaysCTO build with the best available display. But even then, Lenovo *removed* the HiDPI display from the X13. The only actual competitor to the MacBook Air is the ThinkPad X13.
* Lenovo added useless camera humps protruding out of the panel. There is a thick bezel and enough space for a much better camera. And for opening the laptop used to be a dent in the (round!) palmrest, nothing protruding.
* AMD, Intel and Lenovo fail to ship a fanless X13 and T14. I would happily keep same performance for two years, just getting rid of it.
* Lenovo is drowning us in Yogas, Z13 or whatever Legion.
They still have huge advantages (keyboard, maintenance manual, replacement parts, Linux compatibility, much more ports in case of the X14 and T14). Apples keyboards are nowadays “acceptable” but not even comparable to a good ThinkPad keyboard.
[1] By the love of god. Don’t order them with Windows! You are putting 80 to 130 euro right into Microsoft’s stock owners. And they will use it to harm Linux. And of course, making Windows even worse. They use it to harm you. Select Linux. Donate the rest (Fasst, GNOME, KDE…) or use it for the better display.
Lenovo's website is a disaster. Not only do they appear to have 100 sku's but on a 27" 5K Apple Studio Display I can see four laptops in the grid[1], which are actually cut off with their prices below the fold. Every single grid item has a "Katapult" lease to own offer, a "My Lenovo Rewards" offer (who the fuck is collecting rewards points from Lenovo, and what customer prioritizes the rewards they might earn over literally every other piece of information about the laptop?). There are 30 copies of the "®" symbol on the page. It's honestly a lesson in how not to design an e-commerce site.
I know Lenovo has their issues, but out of all the non-Apple laptop companies, they are by far the best out there. And to their credit, they do try to listen to customer feedback.
Also, AFAIK, Lenovo still has their ThinkPad designs developed by a design think-tank lab in Japan that they own (and IBM still has a bit of influence here as well) so I know Lenovo still gives somewhat of a damn in trying to develop a solid laptop.
Only the T and X series benefit from the Japanese design studios though and have the build quality to match. The E and L series are indistinguishable from a myriad of bargain bin business laptops, including Lenovo's own ideapads.
Even just within the Thinkpad lineup, their website is a mess. Let's even restrict ourselves to just T series Thinkpads.
First, the page looks like it misrenders with garish, inverse-color boxes breaking the apparent margin of the page. Then we get to the models:
* ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 (14" Snapdragon) Laptop
* ThinkPad T16g Gen 3 (16" Intel) Laptop
* ThinkPad T1g Gen 8 (16" Intel) Laptop
* ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 (14" AMD) Laptop
* ThinkPad T14s 2-in-1 (14" Intel) Laptop
… that's just the first row. There are 17 items shown. Mostly it's just a poor presentation: there's ~3-4 actual lines, and the rest of what's show is combinatorical complexity of the various ways you can customize them. It's a crapshoot of a presentation.
The builds themselves seem worse now than they have before: they're overall more expensive for what you're getting vs. a few years ago. E.g., the GPU is … gone? They're all iGPUs now. They include a "45%NTSC" screen by default, which is something I've never heard of, and I thought sRGB was the literal bottom of the barrel, but I guess we can go deeper. The warranty is pathetic, but so too is Apple's.
You are right, you can get them without Windows now.
> It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awful
This, so much this! I run Asahi on M1 Air but wanted to upgrade to something with fuller Linux support. After trying Thinkpad T14s, trackpad quality has rosen to my attention, something I never thought about before. Turns out glass, haptic trackpads are still only available in probably about a dozen laptops on the market and it's not easy to actually know which ones are these!
At computex two years ago, Sensel had a couple demo ThinkPads with their trackpad on it. It felt very good, not glass but haptic, I would be very happy with it.
Didn't see them last year at computex and never found that Lenovo model again, not sure what happened with it, at the booth they said they had a partnership. I was hoping they'd link up with framework and make a module for them.
The early aluminum MacBook systems used a hinged trackpad. The "click" was a physical button under the trackpad, and you couldn't click on the top of the trackpad (because the hinge was on that side).
The MacBook Neo is a return to physical clicking, but they're using some sort of new mechanism which allows clicking anywhere.
Not really, not exactly. The older “clicky” MacBook trackpads couldn’t quite be “clicked” anywhere. They were levered at the top of the trackpad, so if you tried to click on the very top edge then they wouldn’t really click. Anywhere else, it felt fine, but maybe the top inch didn’t feel good. Not really a problem in normal use cause most people don’t try to click on the very top edge, but perhaps this new trackpad fixes that (I haven’t tested one myself). The current gen haptic ones have the same exact click feeling no matter where you press, of course.
That’s because PC manufacturers compete on spec sheets and how much does the trackpad suck isn’t one of the numbers on the spec sheet so they don’t care.
I used to use track points before moving on to Mac. After I tried moving back to Thinkpad I couldn't stomach the track point anymore , it's just too imprecise and I think it's because we use way higher resolutions nowadays with many more densely packed UI elements to click on.
You can buy a Magic Trackpad and pair it with your Thinkpad no problem. It's much more comfortable to use it side-by-side with your keyboard, most of the time I'm reaching for the Trackpoint if my hands are on home row.
If I use one of my Macs then I have to resort to hacks to get a decent OS. A crappy trackpad is ~10-20x less annoying than a hostile OEM, at least for my non-bus-based work.
In any case, my response was to cromka's comment and our shared dissatisfaction with Asahi.
I don't think you need a Mac to get a decent trackpad. You need one maybe to have a great one.
That is the main difference to me. I hate crappy trackpads but the ones on my 2 thinkpads are good enough for the nomad/mobile use. That doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer the one on a Mac but I wouldn't want to suffer a hostile, OS and lack of repairability just to get a better trackpad.
tbqh I think one can survive with a merely decent trackpad on a bus or at meetings.
I've dual run Macbooks and Thinkpads for a while and the Thinkpad trackpad really isn't that bad (the trackpoint getting randomly stuck in a non-neutral position is a common thing I've experienced though)
The nicest thing for the Macbook for me in practice (disclaimer: I don't do fancy things on the trackpad) is the size. It "feels" fancier but the thinkpad plastic works totally fine for me.
I think some Mac users overindex on the quality of like... $400 Acer laptops from 2008 or whatever as their metric for "cheap Windows laptop".
Software stuff is still garbage but lots of machines have just straightforwardly decent hardware. Apple hardware is _very very good_ but it's not like the bad old days of "I actually cannot use this trackpad" in windows land. As much
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 Windows and install Linux over now, I don't care about anything on Windows enough to keep it. I can play all my games on Linux just fine. I can do all my dev stuff on Linux too.
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 these were all known faults with no solution for the consumer other than to "buy the newer model." And you could never disable the damn windows update nag screens entirely. And you knew that you'd lose functionality if you upgraded something.
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...
an underrated reason for the decline in windows is that it went from a core product focus to being crowded out. I wouldn't be surprised if azure, sharepoint, office 365, devices, GH/Linkedin, bing/copilot, etc are all more important to msft leadership than windows.
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.
I recently helped a friend picking a new laptop. Just going through the options at the websites of manufacturers was a nightmare. Huge amount of choices, shitty filtering, separated into multiple product lines were I often enough had no idea what separated the lines from each other
15 years ago this comment would have been a troll.
Nowadays it’s solid advice. The current Mac line-up is a step ahead of the competition. App compatibility is hardly an issue anymore with the exception of some very niche software.
Cute, and while I will agree that Apple hardware is generally superior or at least an excellent value, and OS X is miles beyond Windows in usability, I can't in good conscience recommend a Mac on principle.
They impose obsessive control over their walled garden, constant pressure to use Apple ecosystem products, and they are staunchly opposed to interoperability regardless of it being an obviously anti-consumer tactical moat.
Buying a Mac in spite of such anti-consumer behavior reminds me of voting for a bad person because you like their policies.
but to make a binary for it? You do. Even if it's not-for-profit. Why do you think web interfaces are so popular for OSS, a lot easier for the code to be JIT'd and run in a browser than pay a $99 vig for something you did in 10 days to speed up a process for yourself etc.
I compile and run utilities on my Mac all the time, and I've never spent a penny on dev tools or unlocks.
Yes, there's a fee to get access to the App Store, but almost nobody on the Mac uses the App Store... the fee is mainly for putting stuff on iOS (and likely watchOS, tvOS).
The fee also gets you the absolute latest Xcode, but go back one version, and it's entirely free.
On Mac, you can install brew, and use it to install gcc, clang, qemu, whatever utilities you want.
You used to need the developer fee to put stuff on your iOS device at all, but these days you can put stuff on your personal devices without a fee, but the binary expires in a week... enough to learn and debug, but not ideal for a personal tool. That's about the only annoyance where the fee comes up... long term deployment to iOS.
> you can put stuff on your personal devices without a fee, but the binary expires in a week... enough to learn and debug, but not ideal for a personal tool
This sounds like dystopian cyberpunk written in the 80s
You're sort-of right, I think, because you do need an Apple account to sign in to the Mac App Store to get current Xcode in the first place - but the $99 is entirely optional!
For distributing your program without the fee, you'll probably moan about the hoops that people have to jump through to run your stuff: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh40616/mac - and I can't say I love this myself, but people can run your stuff, and no fee necessary.
(I've got a couple of (somewhat niche) FOSS things for macOS, and I build the releases using GitHub Actions with whatever default stuff the thing uses, then make up DMGs that people can download from the GitHub releases page. I added a bit in the documentation about visiting the security dialog if you're blocked - and that seems to have been sufficient.)
As opposed to Microsoft, the good guys right now? I don’t see how incessant privacy violations, selling your data, and general shovelware behavior of Windows 11 is better. In many ways, it’s much worse in my view.
Linux isn't a real choice for 99.9% of the population. If you're advising someone else on buying a laptop in an authority sense, rather than a colleague sense... telling someone to buy a Linux laptop (or, buy a laptop and put Linux on it), is a recipe for being tech support for them forever.
What “walled garden” burdens a Mac user? And what interoperability are you looking for? There is nothing proprietary about Thunderbolt, USB C, Bluetooth etc
> voting for a bad person because you like their policies.
These days, you're lucky if you get to pick from "Bad", "Very Bad", and "Worst".
(BTW, does Mr. Bad look like he'll competently implement and honestly administer his policies? 'Cause without those, "good" policies ain't worth squat):
They did end up getting a Macbook. I wouldn't have suggested it, because I don't want to make people switch operating systems if they themselves don't want to. But they threw it into the mix, so I did include it in the list of suggestions
> taking up 99% of a single core while being riddled with security holes.
And don't forget significantly shortening the usable battery life.
Windows 11 and the crapware it typically ships with are all very hard on battery life, and sleep support is unreliable so you can often find significant battery drain even when the machine is supposed to be sleeping.
For me it means that if I'm having to use a Windows laptop (and quite literally thank god that hasn't been true for 2 years now) then I've got to have the power supply and cables with me at all times, and I've got to be somewhere I have a realistic chance of plugging in just in case the worst has happened.
This is my advice anyone asks me about a laptop. The specs don't matter (at least if you're asking me, it means you don't know computers and will mostly just use a web browser, and therefore nearly any specs on the market will be fine) and the things that do matter are just never on a spec sheet -- keyboard, trackpad, speaker, screen quality. Some stuff won't be discovered until years later: for instance I had an Acer laptop in 2007 which was designed with insufficient cooling, and cooked its thermal paste in about a year or two. Once it was cooked, you couldn't play games or do anything intensive without rebooting the machine. I hadn't thought to research that issue since I figured cooling was a solved problem. But, I'm sure Acer saved a few dollars per unit. (and of course, the screen, trackpad, speaker (yes, singular!) and keyboard were all awful as well.)
I bought my last Acer around 2010 (Aspire 4820TG I think, good machine). Their notebooks were always on the cheaper side, where its price just sat right with the offered value. Cooling issues were always present and weren't a big problem as long as the machine was maintainable. Unfortunately maintainability in notebooks (and electronics in general) all changed around 2015-ish and from there on it was used ThinkPads only for me.
> 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 ...
Truer words were never spoken!
I gave up on PCs years ago because of this very reason. The irony is that it is well known from psychology that giving consumers too many choices is actually counter-productive. Most people do not have the time nor the knowledge to research and configure their "perfect" PC. They just know their usecase and want the best for their money.
I had hoped Microsoft Surface series would become the standard in the Windows world (i still have a 1st gen model) but they don't seem to read the market.
I had high hopes for Surface as well, but the pricing is ridiculous. The Surface Laptop 7 is more expensive than a MacBook Air, with the added benefit of having worse battery life and performance. Pricing hasn't come down in almost 2 years either. Availability is almost 0, I've never seen one in real life.
I had a Microsoft surface book 2. The provided charger could not provide enough power to the device when it was under heavy load and there was no higher charger option either. That shit should be illegal. And if the battery for the base/GPU died? You can't use the computer w the gpu even with a charger attached. The device itself could have been a dream and something i could have seen Apple doing : a touchscreen monitor that was also a computer and could be detached from the keyboard/gpu.
For a couple of days I had a Surface Book 1 before returning it. The keyboard was really good but otherwise just a terrible device and experience.
The touch screen was completely useless. Super laggy and sometimes the pen would still believe it was touching the screen even at like 1cm away. Windows 10 had almost no features for touch based interaction. It was just regular Windows with the same microscopic buttons for mouse.
Plus a ton of display ghosting, GPU glitches, etc.
I still have a Surface Book 1 that I occasionaly use and I never encountered any of those issues. I even used it for some sketching and there was no lag or spurious touching from the pen. In fact, sketching was why I was "drawn" to it (heheh), largely influenced by this review: https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2015/11/16/surface-bo...
My big problem with it is that the battery got swollen a few years ago, pushing out the bottom panel, and the device is way our of warranty to get it replaced. I'm waiting to find time to get that replaced.
As much as I like the performance and the power consumption of the current apple lineaup, the problems is I can not install Linux on the Neo. I can beraly install it on the M1, M2, and M3. And not everything works. If I could install Linux and have everything working, I will buy a Macbook (not a Neo) right away.
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 my next laptop. It's a big shame.
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.
> 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 the same SKU.
> 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.
I don’t know how they do things nowadays, but it used to be the case that the same SKU didn’t even guarantee you the same hardware. Two machines of the same order could even be slightly different, requiring different drivers.
> I don’t know how they do things nowadays, but it used to be the case that the same SKU didn’t even guarantee you the same hardware. Two machines of the same order could even be slightly different, requiring different drivers.
Apple is guilty of this too. For example, two iPhone's purchased at the same time can have displays from different manufactures, with noticeable quality differences between them.
And unless you looked it up, you'd never noticed the difference (save comparing the two side-by-side). Whereas the cheap laptop requires one to know the difference so you can get the right driver, or other jackery because your WiFi card was a mid-year change. It reminds of me of mid-year production changes on cars, where VINs XXX-YYY need part number ZZZ, but VINs AAA-BBB need part number CCC.
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.
Washing machines and the others don't have a company like Apple that is so differentiated that customers love their products so much they get to own something like 80% of the profits of the biggest personal computing market.
Inarguably one of the great things done by apple is the rather easily overseeable models. And no mattter the processing power in the models you get a rather great experience from the haptics, audio and visual in all of them.
And I would be very much in the Apple Camp for personal laptops, if Gaming was in any way shape or reasonable. Thats the only downside of apple. They tried to fix this before but that really did not work out.
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.
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 the same reason.
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.
Oh i have a steam deck and am in the process of migrating to linux latest when Win 12 hits. Just some problems with some software like Fusion 360.
I do like Linux alot.
It really is a pity that there’s no working business model around open source maintenance for software like wine. I’m the guy who fixed the wine bug that blocked new iTunes versions, because I like to keep my music in iTunes for easy iPhone sync. I also have Fusion 360 working flawlessly in wine, but the setup process required multiple sessions stepping manually with a debugger to avoid crashes and packaging that as scripts and/or just documenting all the little issues and their fixes and keeping that up to date with fusion updates would be serious work. So nobody is doing it.
CrossOver sells WINE and WINE consulting; I've been a happy customer on and off for about 20 years. If you're bothered by open source WINE i'd say give them a shot. In my experience it's worth the $70 or whatever to get a well-paved GUI path and support.
I’m a happy CrossOver customer myself. But they don’t have enough resources to keep all major Windows apps working well. Which, to me, indicates that the business model of selling support only to those who are willing to pay, while letting everyone use the results for free, isn’t such a great business model.
At the same time with effort they can run a surprising amount of games. Heroic Launcher makes it a bit easier to wrangle the game dev toolkit (riding off the back of work from the whisky dev before they quit dev work from all the complaining users).
I had Cyberpunk 2077 running on a M1 Macbook Air almost two years before the MacPort came at a very playable 30fps (900p Medium settings). Although I did have to use thermal pads to heatsink it to my metal laptop stand and added a slow spinning fan for good measure.
It's not perfect, but I've also spent a lot of time only buying games with no road blocks to running on Mac/Linux.
After growing up in eastern Europe it's still wild to see young Americans stupidly demand less choice and more monopolies in their market.
Like seriously, having laptop choice is causing you crippling issues? Is other people having a laptop to choose based on preference causing you distress when you go to Apple store?
I don’t think you fully understood their argument.
The problem is not that other manufacturers offer choices – the problem is that for a typical consumer it’s IMPOSSIBLE to really understand which computer in the lineup is appropriate for their needs. It seems most of them are focused on B2B sales.
Of course, if you are a gamer or a nerd like myself, you don’t mind spending a week finding the perfect computer. But that’s an exception.
Indeed, it’s a simple matter to figure out what you want if you’re buying a Mac. Laptop vs desktop. For desktop: integrated screen or not, for laptop, screen size, weight, then pick your processor, memory and storage and it’s done. There aren’t confusingly named and positioned overlapping models that it’s unclear what you’re gaining or losing for each one.
The apple pricing ladder is all about the confusingly named overlap.
The Air with more ram costs just a bit less than the pro non-pro. But then maybe you want the pro pro? Or do you need the pro max? Oh, and the ultra will come later but not for laptops. Also it will then be a smaller number M but ultra.
Oh, and the iPad air is, of course, heavier than the pro because "air".
I fully understood their argument and found out how ignorant it is by just looking at a huge list of all MacBook models on sale in local Apple Store which isn't all that different from an Asus or Dell list.
The posters are ignorant of how much they internalized Apple complexity and then uses that to crap on products they don't even know.
The problem is not that there is choice, it's that the choices don't make sense and overlap in weird ways. Apple presents a lineup that can be described as "good, better, best" while Windows OEMs have 20 models, all overlapping where one has a hinge that snaps in a year, the other has a defective trackpad, the other is the same thing as a another model but designed and manufactured in another country. You'd have to become fully invested in learning the companies products to understand which one you actually need and what the flaws of each model is.
It's like a restaurant that has a 30 page menu, where many of the options are bad, or cooked from stale frozen food from the back of the shelf. Fewer good options are better than numerous poor ones.
After growing up in the USSR but living in the US, the young Americans are correct. The number of choices are an illusion, most paths lead you down the same shit. People don't have the time or energy to dig deep into every option for every purchase.
The issue isn't choices but meaningless choices. Most PC manufactures have tons of SKUs that are functionally identical but offered in different sales channels.
A dozen SKUs to describe the same hardware isn't real choice. It's the illusion of choice so a sales rep can offer a "deal" the buyer can't meaningfully compare to other SKUs. They're all machines out of an ODM's catalog with the "manufacture" logo pasted on.
The more choice then the more procrastination occurs for buyers so they don't actually buy. Apple has made the Neo a two minute decision and you are not playing Russian Roulette with the specs as you know you'll get a uniform quality product, just one has double the storage than the other. Simple. Straightforward. Decisive.
In addition to your research categories - is the fan going to sound like a jet engine when just opening slack? Is the case going to wobble and creak after a few weeks? Is it going to tank performance when unplugged? And if not - is battery life going to be a concern?
In low price brackets those awful barrel jack charger ports that get loose at record speeds still appear too, which isn’t something people necessarily think about but will end up dragging down the user experience.
To what extent is there still a “consumer PC industry?” You mention Dell; for like a decade I think I’ve only ever seen Dells that were company-issued.
My sense is that consumers spend most of their tech money on phones, tablets, headphones, watches, services. People who really want a laptop get a Mac or Chromebook. Gamers buy / build PCs, for gaming. Linux geeks buy Linux machines for Linuxing.
I’m not saying no one buys PC laptops at consumer retail. I guess I’m just wondering how big that market is anymore after consumer discretionary spending on tech has been hollowed out by the above list.
(I’m sure most people reading this have purchased a laptop. I think the HN audience is a tech outlier compared to most consumers.)
> 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.
Yes!! It's awful. I'm a long time Mac user and my wife needs a Windows laptop because of a specific software. I've tried three times to pick a computer for her, but I always give up after 10min and postpone the task...
In my opinion PC industry is also cooked because of fans. I simply cannot use any recent PC laptop, because the moment you do something it engages fans in the most obnoxious way.
Every time someone turns on their PC laptop next to me, my ears feel assaulted.
My Mac does engage fans from time to time, but I never notice the noise.
How little attention cooling gets in the laptop industry outside of expensive gaming laptops is crazy. I have a ThinkPad that gets huffy when I plug it into a 2560x1440 external display while otherwise idle (yes, under Linux too) which shouldn’t even be possible.
Even the Intel MBP laptops had fans firing up the afterburners to keep the Intel CPU cool when monitors were plugged in. Intel CPUs of the past were just massive heating elements.
This is how I ended up with my first MacBook in >10 years. I'd been a Thinkpad (T series) guy in the early days, the tried a MacBook in 2015... couldn't get used to it and used a Chromebook for the next 8 years. Needed to buy a new laptop in 2023 and ... the entire Windows laptop industry turned me off. Yes, something like System76 is an option, and so is installing Linux on a Windows OEM machine, but then you still have to deal with the hardware. Apple isn't perfect, but MacBooks are consistent and reliable, with minimal telemetry and no advertising or upselling. That's enough for me.
> too many SKUs and models - it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ.
And yet, I just watched a YouTube video where a "PC guy" was like, "adding the Neo just completely confuses the Apple product line. Are we heading towards having too many Apple options that confuse the buyer here?"
I get it, other than price, the Neo and Air are a bit confusing product wise. Have they looked at how Asus, Lenovo, and Dell are doing their products though? It's absolutely wild the disparity between PC and Apple for laptops.
I run both PC's and Mac devices in our house, we use what fills the job. Recommending PC laptops for family members feels like a total crapshoot though. Every time, I do all I can to find the right device for their needs and there are just so many trade-offs. Maybe I get all the right specs, ensure it doesn't thermal throttle, keyboard/trackpad are A-OK... but the webcam is trash. Ooof... now Mom is complaining about how no one can see her properly at bridge club call.
I brought up how the Neo might do to the PC industry what the Air did to Ultrabooks back in the day. The amount of hate I got on YouTube/Verge with copy-paste, "hahaha, wut, with 8 GB of RAM? lmao, lol, you Apple bot?!" was expected, but also disappointing. There is clearly a market segment happy to continue to put up with the mess that Dell/Lenovo are selling (anything but a Mac).
Wild how tribal we are to our corporate computer overlords.
The era where something like Framework with its fully customizable, repairable, modular laptops becomes the standard can't come soon enough.
For the time being, I'll let Apple/PC continue to duke it out. Hope some competition helps in the long run. :shrug:
> I get it, other than price, the Neo and Air are a bit confusing product wise. Have they looked at how Asus, Lenovo, and Dell are doing their products though? It's absolutely wild the disparity between PC and Apple for laptops.
Yep.
I'm a long-time ThinkPad user, but I have no idea how Lenovo's ThinkPad T series differs from the ThinkPad E series or ThinkPad L series or ThinkPad X series, and their website certainly isn't going to tell me. I keep on buying T series because I'm honestly afraid of trying anything else.
To say nothing of Lenovo's non-ThinkPad laptop brands, including Ideapad, Legion, Yoga, ThinkBook (!), and LOQ.
I really don't know what laptop to recommend to a friend. One friend showed me specs for an Asus they found at Best Buy, and it looked okay, so I said "It's probably fine." Turns out it was shoddily made and overpriced: they had to sent it back not once but twice because the wifi and then the camera didn't work out of the box, then a few months later the hinge broke.
I am not a Mac fan, but it's easy to recommend them because you at least know they are universally well-built machines.
> I have no idea how Lenovo's ThinkPad T series differs from ...
My personal rundown and how they get assigned:
E - Educational / Lower office personnel spec
L - Office personnel you hate spec, but don't offer the E because they might complain.
T - Give this to all the technicians because they can't take care of anything and it will survive typically.
P - Give this to the engineers who believe having an RTX gpu will actually help them so that they are happy, and to the CAD operators who actually need it.
X - Smaller/Ultrabooks before the term got started, now somewhat a blurry line because T series have gotten lighter/thinner. But the X1 Carbon sure is a great way to spend a ton of money for a light laptop when a T-series would suffice.
Personally I stick to older used X series (currently x250) because I just enjoy a small laptop and they are dirt cheap now.
It weighs like 2.4 kg, and the weight is unbalanced.
The USB-C charge only works at 20V, nothing less.
While charging it overheats and spins up the fans.
It came with a TN screen with terrible viewing angles, that could not be used in a brightly lit room. I didn't use the laptop for two months while I waited for a replacement screen from aliexpress.
Keyboard is much thinner, the trackpoint drifts easily.
Camera quality is worse, somehow it cannot handle sun-lit scenes. Microphone and speakers are similar to the T14.
It stopped receiving firmware updates after two years.
It uses about 0.5 W while suspended, so its tiny 48 Wh battery typically doesn't last the weekend with the lid closed.
The motherboard has design issues, a missing protection diode in the headphone jack microphone input ended up frying the CPU due to a ground loop. Meanwhile the T14 has eaten the same ground loop and even a 48V passive PoE in an accident and dealt with it by rebooting. A T450 from 2015 is still running.
Neo and Air are quite simple when looking at it from the bottom up. Air is the "nice" Neo for basically $500 more. Backlit keyboard, MagSafe, Thunderbolt 4, M5, way faster SSD speeds, double the RAM, larger display, Force Touch trackpad.
> "hahaha, wut, with 8 GB of RAM? lmao, lol, you Apple bot?!"
And it would seem they never learn either. I saw the same comments when the M1 Air came out, then they quickly shut up when people were pushing those little base model airs well beyond what anyone thought they were capable of.
The same thing is happening with the Neo now. It feels like an M1 moment all over again for the PC OEM industry.
If you aren't a gamer, there is zero reason at this point to consider any other laptop besides a macbook. Apple now has one for every price point. This neo is going to destroy the consumer PC space. Dell, HP, Acer are probably sweating right now.
They're not sweating at all; they'll do what they always do. They'll release a new model to compete in time for Christmas 2026. They'll call it the ASUS Nuevo X856G-L or the Acer Nova 9500X or the Alienware Morpheus ZS and that will be it. They won't even consolidate their line at the 600$ price point; just one more model, bro!
Their sales will continue tapering off and they'll do what they always do; reduce investments, fire some designers and engineers, keep old models out even longer, and move out of Apple's way by selling even more 380$ laptops for 400$ while Apple siphons even more profits by selling a 400$ laptop at 600$.
Running Windows in 2026 is either a mistake, or a sad necessity. Fortunately, unless you need The Right Kind of Excel, you can choose either Linux on a PC (best, IMO), or a Mac.
Apple is great at marketing to consumers. The other big players, I have to assume, are more focused on B2B where the threshold for UX acceptability is lower.
The only ads I ever hear from them are on economics podcasts ostensibly aimed at business owners. For "Copilot+ AI PCs" no less, whatever that means. They're chasing a target audience of approximately 3 people in the world that are improbably held back from achieving their wildest AI dreams by not having a commodity laptop with an NPU.
People may not remember that Apple once had a product lineup like this (before SJ returned) with tons of different model numbers nobody could tell apart.
> Remember Apple in the late '90s? The tech giant was facing significant struggles until Steve Jobs returned and pinpointed the crux: a lack of innovation and focus. Jobs took bold steps to streamline Apple’s bloated product line. He cut down on the excessive range of choices, simplifying the product lineup to focus on quality and innovation. Jobs famously asked his team, "Which ones do I tell my friends to buy?" When he didn’t get a simple answer, he decided to reduce the number of Apple products by 70%. This move included cancelling projects like the Newton digital assistant and focusing on just four key products: the iMac, iBook, Power Macintosh G3, and PowerBook G3.
> it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ.
Don't forget, one is going to be the "Business" version and the other identical one is going to be the "Consumer" version. God help whoever buys a "business" category laptop for personal use. The world will come to an end!
Or, in actuality, the Dell business model will be designed for repairability. I tend to always advise friends who want Windows/Linux laptops to buy from the business lines, especially if a 1- or 2- year refurb will work.
Is the laptop market even choosy or discerning? Very few people I know would actually understand specs. Especially when you step outside people who majored in fields that require some programming. I assume they must buy laptops, if they still even buy laptops, based on things like yearly sales periods at retailers, since you do see a surprising amount of square footage reserved for laptops to sit open on tables (not just apple's) in places like best buy, costco, target, etc. So there must be buyers. Maybe their comparison only goes as far as whatever bullet points Costco highlights on the price tag I suspect, in a "bigger number is better for the price" sort of way vs understanding a persons own compute needs.
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.
The Neo is targeting the cheap laptop market for those people that DO need it. Again, another totally pointless comment by somebody who sounds clueless.
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.
The secret is to buy a used ThinkPad on eBay. I have two of them. I think the ridiculous MSRP for them combined is $7000 and I paid $1600 in total for a p series and an x1 carbon (3 years old, but essentially new).
These neos are for college and high school students.
Who is going to do that except a nerd looking for a specific type of laptop? Buying two of them for the price of 3+ Neos at EDU discount. You are so off in the weeds with your comment that I had to point it out.
For me right now, there are a bunch of Strix Halo unified memory laptops offering 64 to 128GB of unified memory that are the current best value. This will probably spill into next generation (Strix Medusa IIRC).
They're just very versatile and performant, and they're usually very good value. As a big plus you can run very decent models locally.
Framework are among my current top choices. Hearing good things about the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7a as well, and HP rather surprisingly. But there are a bunch of Ryzen AI Max+ 395 based laptops supporting up to 128GB of unified memory, and it looks like you can hardly go wrong with these.
A very important point is the RAM and flash shortage. With their humongous volumes, Apple is certainly a member of the happy few with preferential contracts with guaranteed volumes and prices. No other PC maker can remotely compete with Apple on volumes, and now they'll get their already thin margins crushed even more.
In the past Apple had constantly sold high-margin products and grabbed 70 to 80% of the whole industry's margins. Now they're coming for the rest !
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.
Exactly. PC manufacturers have so many SKUs and are changing so many things from one model to another that their brand doesn't mean anything anymore. Buying a Dell, HP, Lenovo or Asus branded laptop doesn't say anything meaningful about what you're actually going to get. Unlike Apple (or Framework) where the brand still means something.
Porsche is about BTO and customization. If you want a Porsche, go to a dealer and have them walk you through building the one you want. Or become knowledgeable in all the options and find a used one with 85% of what you want.
I'd really love it if the manufacturers would just say what wireless chipset they use in a given model but the unfortunate truth is even they don't always know for a given run
The SKU proliferation is truly awful. I honestly had to use Claude to understand the current landscape for daily driver Windows laptops when I finally needed to replace my old one.
too many SKUs and models - it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ.
Same for Apple, especially as you can't upgrade them so if you get a 8gig Nano, you have a 8gig Nano, That's a different SKU than a 16gig Nano. And if you get 16gig Nano with 256gig storage, that's a different SKU than a 16gig Nano with 512gig of storage.
Apple has 48 SKUs at their stores, not included adding in color and custom configurations
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.
>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.
Existential crisis?
This kind of nonsense has existed for the entire history of the laptop market.
One of the major reasons Apple is a trillion dollar company is they don't sell dozens of versions of their product. When it was a mystery which Dell laptop was the good one (or insert any other brand) you just picked the size of Apple that you wanted and it would be the good one.
The last Dell laptop I bought I really liked... except for the terrible battery life and the fact that the structure was so poor that if you held it at the corner it would force reboot because the circuit board flexed to much and shorted or unplugged something.
The CPU model naming is silly, but definitely not as bad as laptop naming or monitor naming. Intel and AMD at least pick a structured naming scheme and stick with it for two or three years, and almost all of the OEMs tell you which processor you're getting so you can comparison shop between brands.
> Apple pulled off what I thought wasn't possible. The MacBook Neo is poised to set the budget-laptop world on fire as a $599 system that's better-built and sharper than anything else at or below its price.
> even the cheapest MacBook Neo is good enough to be the go-to Apple laptop for a lot of people. Actually, not just the go-to Apple laptop; the Neo’s hardware simultaneously embarrasses an entire class of affordable (and even far pricier) Windows laptops, as well as just about any Chromebook. And the thing runs on an iPhone chip.
I understand the need to join the conversations about the same topic. Thanks for keeping the URLs separate. Reading Gruber's long form considered article is very different to reading some second hand Asus executive "shock" comments.
Go beyond the specs, though. Which windows laptops have similar combination of all metal build with tight tolerances, a display hinge that doesn’t wobble, a nice keyboard and even close to similar feeling trackpad at this 600 dollar price point? Most non haptic trackpads are dive board designs where you can only press the lower part of it because they hinge from the top, whereas as Neo’s trackpad is completely floating and can be pressed even on the very top. Also, one of main target audiences - students - can have this for much cheaper with education pricing.
If quality and in-hand feel matters to you at all, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more well rounded laptop than a MacBook at any price point.
IMO, there's nothing comparable to MacBook Air in its price range if you are an average user. Neo is even better in that aspect. The model you cited sounds better if you are planning to use Linux and are computer literate. But if you just want something that is good (not perfect) at everything usual, a MacBook is a no-brainer.
Not liking interacting with an OS is a fair choice to make, but don't be fooled by the bolted-on specs like "more RAM" when less of it is available to the user due to the built-in software and driver compatability issues. It's almost always slower, older, and less quality. They do Product Binning and give the worst quality leftovers to the built-in machines where people are less likely to notice and because it won't change the brand's reputation. The difference between i9, i7, etc are just how many defects there are- they're printed identically on the same wafers.
Even IF the processor and RAM combined with Windows and bloatware is faster, you know they're going to have to cut corners on things like keyboard, trackpad, monitor, battery, webcams, heatsinks, etc.
On HP's own online store though, this model number doesn't exist.
Took another look at the 16-fb0037nr that I found earlier when browsing HP's store by price, that one's a Snapdragon instead of Ryzen, so very different computer. Don't know what the state of Window's ARM compatibility layer is.
Anyway, this is the typical experience of looking at non-Apple laptops and it sucks.
I'd be interested in this but it seems the price is much higher than stated here, or this was some temporary deal. It's also larger and quite a bit heavier but I guess that is a personal preference. The screen also looks pretty lacking (300 nits!). I do see it around $1200 CAD where the new macbook is $800 CAD and in stock. However all said I do not think a lot of people will be buying this new macbook because they are comparing specifications. Laptop manufacturers show off their specifications and have tons of different models because that is how they can differentiate their products from each other. Apple doesn't need to play that game and can deliver usability and value, and good in-person after sales support to the general consumer.
That’s certainly up for debate. Thinkpads are some of the most rugged laptops available, and their top models are made from magnesium alloys or carbon fibre. Only their lower end E and L series are ABS builds.
In my personal experience, my MacBooks look much less shinier/worn out in the palm rest areas on either sides of trackpad compared to any windows laptop I’ve owned, which include an Alienware R15.
I don’t know enough about material science to have more than empirical data or correlations, though.
I actually dig the patinated look of my dented and scratched old MBP and my current MBA. My plastic Dells from work always look terrible after a few trips living in my backpack and getting banged around. Haven't had actual usability issues with either though.
Plastic is great, until your laptop falls and the plastic shell shatters. That's the weakness of plastic - it's brittle. I have a ten year old macbook with a dinged aluminium chassis. The structure of the shell is still intact despite a few falls.
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. It might be worthwhile to ensure that a web app you're developing will work on a less powerful machine without killing the browser, for example.
A few years ago, I had two computers on my desk, my beefy dev with double screens and some good specs for the time and my test machine which was the standard given to every non dev, with a 1024x768 screen.
I couldn't say to the boss that the code was ready until I tested it on that machine, which was sometimes eye opening and why a 2Mb HTML page wasn't a good idea.
I think for this plan to work you’d have to force the developers of Xcode to work on the 4 Gb machines first. If they could do that, the rest would follow naturally.
Hah. When I worked for a very big Just Print Money bank circa 2008, they gave me, a SDE with the Lenovo ThinkPads running Windows with 4GB of RAM and a bonus of Lotus Notes for email. This thing was slower than molasses. Not to mention because we had an offshore team in India. every morning every engineer would begin the day with syncing the Subversion repo. My team was in central US but we had to connect to a proxy in NYC for network traffic inspection. This makes the sync over 45 minutes long. Repeat the same for every SDE, from both sides of the world, and you can guess the amount of time wasted.
I don’t think I would want to work in that environment anymore.
Similar story, I had a customer who wanted me to change the entire UI of a legacy application, because some information would not fit on the ancient 1024*786 15" desktop monitor of one employee, meaning he would have to use horizontal scroll constantly.
I recommended them giving this employee a larger monitor, not only would that be much cheaper than having me rebuild the entire UI, it would also boost this employee's productivity. Not to mention that swapping a monitor takes 10 minutes, changing a UI probably weeks.
Customer insisted to change the UI, because "if we give him a new monitor, everyone in the office will want one". I nearly got fired for responding with "Great! Then everyone can benefit from more productivity!".
In the end we did change the UI, I believe the total cost was something like 30k. The customer had maybe 15 employees, so new monitors would still have been much cheaper.
A few months later their offices were remodelled with expensive designer furniture, wooden floors and custom artwork on the walls. Must have cost a fortune. In the end, the employees still worked on ancient computers with 15" monitors, because new computers didn't fit the budget.
Sometimes I have the feeling AAAs can be better optimized than Unity based indies.
It's probably a bit better than when Unity was new. I do remember the first x-com remake in 2012 was lasting longer on battery than $random_unity_indie.
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.
That's dumb. You can hardly even buy a machine with 4GB of memory on sale, at any price.
If you are making products that depend on people spending money on them, you generally don't have to care about broke people with 15 year old computers.
I must say, the irony of this comment in a thread about Apple moving down-market without losing quality is … well, it burns. Along with the arrogance: “Anyone who can’t afford 8GB isn’t worthy of being my customer,” is literally the opposite of what Steve Jobs always said.
I was stuck once in a cabin in the woods with an old Android phone. I’m glad it still worked, and that people curating software experiences for it had more empathy — and more business sense — than this comment displays.
Didn’t Steve Jobs basically say Apple didn’t know how to make a good computer for $500 and used that as a justification to not sell any products to the lowest priced area of the market?
There’s no irony here. The plain fact exists that 8GB of RAM has been considered not an especially exotic amount lot even on cheap on laptops and desktops for about a decade if not longer.
$450 in 2015 would have bought you a Dell laptop with 6GB of upgradable memory:
The point was that Apple has completely been uninterested in the bottom of the laptop market from 1976 to 2026, and there is therefore no irony in my statement that many businesses including Apple will purposefully ignore customers who do not have enough money to buy their stuff.
From the first comment I responded to:
> “Anyone who can’t afford 8GB isn’t worthy of being my customer,” is literally the opposite of what Steve Jobs always said.
This commenter is wrong. This idea that the bottom of the market is below Apple is almost exactly what the quote from the earnings call said. Jobs effectively said “we only make mid to high end computers, someone else can take the serve the budget customers.”
This is why I pointed out that most people employed making commercial software don’t have to concern themselves with the needs and desires of users on desperately outdated hardware, since those users can’t afford your product anyway.
Of course, at the time Jobs was alive that number for RAM was below 8GB, but that specific number is not specifically relevant other than the fact that I brought it up as a general example of the standard of the day from around 10 years ago.
I brought up a bunch of computing examples from the mid-2010s after Jobs’ death because they are about the oldest reasonable hardware you’d find around today, proof that even buyers of low-end hardware 10+ years ago were regularly getting more than 4GB of RAM.
Apple’s base model MacBook Air in 2017 had 8GB of RAM. The 2015 model started with 4GB configurable to 8GB. The 12” MacBook from 2016 had 8GB RAM.
So you literally have to go back a decade to find anything sold by Apple where getting less than 8GB was an option on the lowest possible configuration, never mind PC manufacturers who generally gave better specs per dollar and included socketed memory.
But hey, Apple shills will shout from the rooftops that a 2026 laptop with 8GB of RAM is a good deal just because it’s $500 if you lie about your status as a student and pinky promise with Apple that you’ll never use the computer for commercial usage.
No Steve Jobs said exactly what he said. The technology wasn’t to the point where they could offer products that aren’t junk. An unsubsidized $120 Android phone is “junk”. A $99 iPod Shuffle or a $300 low end iPad isn’t.
The Netbooks available in 2010 were junk even by that days standards.
The MacBook Neo which is fast enough, a better display than low end PCs and a good trackpad is not junk. It can do what most low end consumers care about well.
At least in the US, even during the SJ era you could get a “free” iPhone with a contract that anyone could afford - it was the last years phone
Well, here’s the thing…and, I apologize, this is a bit of a shift from what we were talking about.
The MacBook Neo is getting so much hype for being better than a low end PC, before it’s been put through its paces over the long term.
I had the same initial reaction. Wow, a Mac for $500, how incredible, how disruptive.
But then this morning I decided to look at the actual street pricing of laptops at my local Best Buy.
And here’s the thing: now that Apple has this machine with no haptic trackpad, no backlit keyboard, the worst screen available on any Apple product, very small keyboard, and very basic non-upgradable specs including a generations-old efficiency processor, I think the actual story here is that Apple has changed their mind and is willing to make a product that they would have previously called “junk.”
I’ll list off a couple of systems that I would absolutely buy as better machines over the MacBook Neo:
HP OmniBook X Flip, 16” 2K touch screen, Intel Core Ultra 5 226V, 16GB memory, 512GB storage, $699.
For the same price as the top model Neo you get double the RAM, a bigger and probably better screen, which is convertible and touch enabled. It is not some kind of bargain basement SKU, either, a legitimately well-reviewed laptop.
Right there in the pricing sweet spot you get more memory and basically all the benefits of an ARM architecture in another laptop that is well-regarded. You also get a number pad on the keyboard.
All these laptops have been getting well over 4.5 star reviews, like this one:
> This little guy has been amazing this semester plenty of power while being light and getting good battery life the quick charging feature is particularly impressive from almost dead to full in around half an hour all and all this laptop has met or exceeded all of my school life needs
Finally, this is probably my choice if I was in this segment:
Another great example of a laptop that is costing you less than the Neo’s top model before education discount, has better specs, and is again a legitimately good model of laptop solidly in the mid-range of the lineup, not a bargain basement SKU. I would actually be surprised if the Neo kept up with this particular model in terms of build quality, keyboard, etc.
The Neo’s main advantage is that it’s got a chassis made of aluminum, and that’s really its only differentiator. And I’d say that’s an overrated differentiator (e.g., plastic is lighter and isn’t automatically weaker/worse for long-term ownership).
Just looking at the first one - the screen is worse, it’s heavier and the processor is slower. Of course PC mags always grade crappy intel based PCs on a curve. Actually all of the screens are worse.
The Ryzen AI 340 isn't a bad match against the A18 Pro. It's actually ahead of the A18 Pro on multicore performance, and only 20% behind on single core benchmarks, not enough for anyone to notice. Yeah, it's true you're losing a lot of integrated GPU performance. Integrated GPUs do need more RAM, though, and I doubt the Neo is going to be handle a lot in the realm of "high school kids who want to game on the side" between that and the software compatibility situation.
My main point isn’t about caring or not, the point is that 4GB RAM in a laptop/desktop is incredibly rare for how outdated it is.
The PS4 came out in 2013 and has 8GB of RAM. In case you need help counting, that’s 13 years ago.
And that’s an optimized game console with no general purpose operating system and limited multitasking capability.
10 years ago, Samsung phones were shipping with 6GB of RAM. Not many phones even physically last that long.
My uncle bought a $350 trash Windows PC a couple years ago, literally the cheapest thing I could find on sale at Staples, and it came with 12GB of RAM.
The price of memory is insane, so if anyone wants to increase performance/dollar, they're likely going to have to do it in software. I would suspect 4Gb computers are going to come back if the hungry AI beast doesn't cool it soon.
How much memory does your parents and grandparents computers have? There are a lot of people out there with older computers, probably even some that you know :)
My uncle bought a $350 trash Windows PC a couple years ago, literally the cheapest thing I could find on sale at Staples, and it came with 12GB of RAM.
> It might be worthwhile to ensure that a web app you're developing will work on a less powerful machine
If that’s your goal this machine is still too powerful. Web apps generally care about single thread performance. The machine has a single thread performance that exceeds any and all Intel/AMD processors, according to Geekbench (A18 Pro: 3445; Ryzen 9 9950X: 3385). My own test for ensuring my web app performs well involves a machine less than half as fast, and my web app runs with all assertions turned on.
The CPU is capable. The 8GB of RAM not so much. If this had even just the 12GB of the A19 Pro that'd be a huge upgrade. Unless the RAM shortage gets developers to actually start giving a shit about RAM efficiency, but that seems unlikely to happen honestly.
Especially not when a certified macbook air refurb straight from Apple isn't that much more if you're not able to get the $500 EDU pricing on the Neo. $850 gets you a 16GB RAM / 512GB M4 Air, which is significantly better than the $700 Neo in every way.
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 much all laptops from Dell, HP, etc come with some form of eMMC storage. And I'm not speaking about the other specs like display or build quality. We ended up buying second-hand M1 and M2 macbook airs, and both I and my sisters are very happy about it.
(also, as the "tech support guy" of the family, I'm oh my so happy about them not running windows)
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 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"
> 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.
> you swapped your whole system memory in 3 seconds, which is impressive.
As a user a 3 second hang is unusable. Also, critically, swap consumes the life of the drive. Since the Neo's isn't user-replaceable, a 3-5 year lifespan before death is actually a non-trivial compromise, although time will tell on that one I suppose.
Should be fast enough to swap in a browser page I guess. Overall you're right that it's the wrong device for memory hungry applications, but it's not the target audience.
As Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) mentioned in his review, the Neo has the same keyboard as Apple's MacBook Pro line, just without backlighting. That makes them really good for writing and potentially coding on the go.
> The Neo doesn’t have a hardware indicator light for the camera. The indication for “camera in use” is only in the menu bar. There’s a privacy/security implication for this omission. According to Apple, the hardware indicator light for camera-in-use on MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads cannot be circumvented by software. If the camera is on, that light comes on, and no software can disable it. Because the Neo’s only camera-in-use indicator is in the menu bar, that seems obviously possible to circumvent via software.
iPhone and iPad does not have a hardware indicator light
There is a ton of fascinating work to make the "software" camera in use indicator just as secure if not more secure than an LED attached to the power lines of the camera. Apple hasn't publicly talked about it much but here are two sources that aren't terrible.
We've seen a few examples on HN lately (Coruna iOS Exploit Kit) of nation state level exploits in the hands of financially motivated organizations. I'm not free of bias here but the industry is quickly headed towards a reckoning in terms of security over the next few years.
Minus an intentionally bad hardware design, I struggle to imagine how a software version of the idea could ever be more secure than a power line hard-wired to an LED.
For those who are interested, you can disassemble/image the assembly and see there is no funny business. People have done it. If there is something more complex than a power line, something is afoot.
I'm pretty sure the Apple dev who was tasked with securing the older hardware "tally lamps" is on HN somewhere -- I seem to remember him posting about it. (is it you?)
I used to know a guy, about 15 years ago, who made his money exclusively through buying up laptops and hacking the tally lamp code (to stop it activating) one-by-one and selling the code directly to 3LAs. It was really good money.
I thought this too. If they're using the camera to do brightness, it needs to be on when the user isn't using it - if the activity LED is tied to the camera power rail (not sure if it is), it might look like there's something nefarious going on. No way Apple would let that go out the door.
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/mac-on-screen-camer...
> MacBook Neo combines system software and dedicated silicon elements within A18 Pro to provide additional security for the camera feed. The architecture is designed to prevent any untrusted software—even with root or kernel privileges in macOS—from engaging the camera without also visibly lighting the on-screen camera indicator light.
Isn't the argument that a hardware indicator light is (more) immune to bugs? If its just software, you're a software exploit/bug away from finding a way to access the sensor without tripping the software light.
Yes but also this has never been an issue on any phones (i.e. never heard a complaint), and you take that to the toilet. By comparison a laptop camera has much less access to your private life.
People who are truly worried about cameras will cover it regardless of indicator.
I might be mis-remembering but wasn't Pegasus spyware able to bypass the camera indicator? Or was the issue that journalists were constantly seeing the light appear for no reason. I believe it was one of those.
This depends on how the light is implemented -- if it's implemented in the camera module itself it's pretty bulletproof, but i would bet it's just a gpio to the processor on most of these devices and controlled by the os anyway. I could be wrong about that, but I err on the side of caution. I keep my phone in a bag most of the time.
Treat every gun as if it's loaded, and every camera as if it's filming.
On modern Apple devices, the HW indicator light is wired directly between the power rail of the camera module and ground. Turning the camera on via software energizes the power rail. The only way that the camera is on and the led is not is if the led has burned out.
This is a "nothing-up-my-sleeves" implementation, it's not really possible to hide anything weird in the complexity. Apple clearly didn't just want a light that's always on when the camera is on, they wanted an implementation where they can point to it and clearly prove that the light is always on if the camera is on.
I 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 air, I would be ecstatic for the neo.
Same. I got the 2024 15" Macbook Air when CostCo had it for $849.00*
Hadn't purchased a laptop new since college scholarship decades ago. This machine continues to make an immediate impression. The entire thing is thinner than just the bottom of my college CoreDuo. It also lasts 8x longer, on battery.
I just use mine as a tertiary machine (i.e. bedtime reading/podcast), but if you ever want to run the machine hard long-term, you can use 1mm thermal pads between the heatsink and bottom of external case (and then it'll never throttle).
> if you ever want to run the machine hard long-term, you can use 1mm thermal pads between the heatsink and bottom of external case (and then it'll never throttle).
That will spread the heat to the battery and degrade it much faster.
This removes heat from the internal compartments (which logic board heat sink and battery co-habitate [0]) by transferring it outside via heat conduction through the case. There is no detectible heat increase (to touch) — consider the heat masses relative sizes (processor v. entire metal case).
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.
Same. Equally comfortable on Windows, Mac and Linux. But almost almost all new hardware choices for the last 25 plus years have been mostly from Apple. The old Macs don't really die, even as I replace them with faster models, so my house is slowly becoming an Apple/Mac museum, starting with a Mac 512k, Mac CI and Mac LC, and so on, right down to a trash can Mac in the mix, and then to M series Macs. All CPU generations from Apple: 6502 (Apple ][), 68000, 68040 (NeXT) PPC, ARM (Newton, iDevices), Intel and M series. Can't get myself to throw/give/sell them away.
Coming to terms with two uncomfortable truths: I'm a hoarder, and an unapologetically incorrigible Apple fanboi.
> 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 gardens with app stores, excessive power over developers and users). MacOS is also very behind Linux these days in terms of app compatibility (especially games).
I won't be buying a Neo before a compatible Linux distro is confirmed. If the stock OS can't be replaced for one reason or another, it's dead on arrival as far as I am concerned.
Agreed, macOS has hardly improved in the past decade. The only improvements are about ecosystem integration, which I don't really care about. Everything else is stuck in the 2010s. UI has regressed if you ask me.
Windows Terminal and PowerToys are pretty nice. The Phone Link app is convenient, and screenshots are way better (no need to paste into Paint anymore, just use snip and sketch)
The snipping tool (with all features I'm using today) was added to PowerToys more than 20 years ago. It was integrated directly into Windows 10 pretty early in the update cycle. Not sure it qualifies for "the last decade".
Or their constant use of dark patterns to push you into using Bing and Edge. I was actually an Edge user myself. I liked a few of its built-in features, and it felt pretty fast. But then they started tricking me into changing my default search engine to Bing. I fell for it a couple of times, and then I quit.
> 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).
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 devices with proprietary OSs we can't hack on is a great feature for the masses, but not us.
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.
It has even regressed, I'm still on my High Sierra 2011 MacBook Air, but on my mom's M3 Air I can't help but observe that they did all that engineering to reduce the black bezel around the lid, only for Tahoe to have overly rounded windows and huge title bars.
No, macOS has improved a ton in a lot of ways under-the-hood. Battery life, memory compression, paging behaviour. The MacBook Neo wouldn't be possible at 8GB without all this stuff.
Ecosystem integration is the shining difference between Apple and others, as it is radically better than any other available implementation.
I would argue that ecosystem integration is the only primary consideration that you need to use at the top/first-culling-step of the flowchart to either include or discount Apple products in any purchasing decision. Anything else is secondary, and has workarounds.
> UI has regressed
Honestly, I love the UI of MacOS 9.2.2 the most. But I don’t have a Time Machine or Elon Musk levels of wealth to chart a different course.
And sure, some UI decisions of late have been questionable. That is always the case with non-niche products that don’t have highly focused and largely conforming users. Apple moved out of that category back in the early 2000s, and it is forced to make the same UI tradeoffs that Microsoft makes.
I actually don’t mind the modern UI, and aside from a few warts I think they’re going in a very user-friendly direction even if power users feel slighted and abandoned.
Same here, MacBooks are decent hardware but nowhere near so superior as to justify all the downsides and increasingly dark patterns Apple has been pushing left and right.
I agree that it isn’t as good as it was but compared to windows (with adds in the start menu, and two different settings menus for a decade as examples) it’s still better. More of a glass of warm cheap whiskey, than a glass of cool ice water in hell.
> but both Mac and Linux are too far behind Windows or consoles to be considered as gaming machines.
That's absolutely not true, the vast majority of Windows games now run flawlessly on Linux via Proton. This is especially true for the kind of games you can expect to run on such modest hardware, i.e. not AAA games with kernel-level anticheat.
I, a developer, have never heard of Proton. Googling Proton, I only find Protonmail, and googling "Linux Proton," Valve's Proton is not even the first result. If you are not terminally online keeping up with Linux distro discourse, it's also difficult to even recognize any of the newer names and players.
Linux is not even remotely considerable as an option for the average consumer, which is fine and fully intentional with the audience and goals Linux distros serve.
You could even consider this a strong positive, because a Linux distro geared towards average consumers would probably be an analog to Samsung's take on Android. What makes your experience with Linux good is that it isn't catering towards a wider audience.
Personally, I've actually had noticeably better compatibility on Linux with older games, compared to Windows. And every single one I've been interested in for the past several years works flawlessly on it. (I don't enjoy most AAA games, so my sample is definitely skewed, but it's a fairly common result)
All games I've installed on Steam Deck, with our without official compatibility, have worked well. Steam Deck runs a Linux. It all works thanks to Proton. And I'd go as far as saying, it just works.
Regarding gaming I disagree: my gaming needs (using a Mac for everything else) are fully satisfied by an additional steam deck, a "console" running linux. Of the top of my head I know only of one game I would like to run it on the steam deck but can't.
MacOS is a bug filled nightmare, and it's still light years better than Windows. I haven't used Ubuntu extensively since early 2019, but it still wasn't comparable to OSX at the time.
Apple and specifically MacOS is significantly worse than it has ever been, but again, still far better than the alternatives.
Its a shame there isn't more goodwill for some companies to bankroll a project like asahi linux. Keeping up with reverse engineering apple silicon seems like a very large task.
> i can't help but wonder why apple appears to be fully singular in their arm dominance
I have to imagine that a big part of it is the company can plan and act as a single unit. The teams building the CPU, the computers which house that CPU, and the operating system and software that'll run on those computers are all working together, and can plan new features which cut across those boundaries. Other ARM CPU/system manufacturers don't have that advantage.
I fully agree. My use case sees a fairly intensive use of MacOS, Linux and Windows, and out of all these, MacOS is the worst experience for me, and that's saying a lot when I prefer to use Windows 11 over MacOS.
Macs have very strong advantages but the software, the OS is absolutely infuriating. There's so many annoyances over regular use. You can remedy some of them with third party software (which should have been just system settings), but not all, and by the way some of these cost money for stupidly basic settings.
Finally and probably most painful, is Apple's constant push to update your software stack and things just stop working, and they expect you to keep chasing their decisions. You can't really build anything for Apple that's meant to last. It's exhausting. Meanwhile Windows can run programs from 30 years ago and Linux has extremely efficient, beautifully implemented software from all eras probably already installed in your Distro.
This depends heavily on your use case. I'd get rid of Windows entirely if I could. For most people I'd say MacOS is the most sane and plug and play experience. The email/browser/note taking experience is better than on Windows, and easier than on Linux.
This gets less and less true when you start pluging peripherals and wanting to change the default behavior or use certain apps. But then they're not the target of the Neo.
that example is just worthless... most people are used to notepad and windows (by a huge margin) than ANY mac thing you can say. So, no, sorry, you are wrong, the sanest plug and play experience, still, is windows, who is pirated all across the globe and put on anything.
Those extremely efficient and beautifully implemented software runs in macOS, probably from the same source code.
The only GUI I use on Mac is browser, so I never felt anything - maybe the only thing that I don't deal with on linux is the weird requirement of xcode, which is mostly a chore that you do once. Still can't beat the hardware.
How do you reconcile the fact that that Apple will sell millions of these devices without a compatible Linux distribution shipping for years if ever with your claim about it being DOA?
Like sure it’s DOA to you, but in what world does that really matter when it’s going to sell so well?
The same way I reconcile the fact that the 11" Macbook sold millions of devices; consumers don't care. They don't buy Macs as a conscious evaluation of what the device is capable of or how well it was made. Even the 2019 16" Macbook Pro, arguably the worst Mac ever sold, has millions of units floating around in Obsoleteland.
Personally I agree with the parent's comment. I used to buy Macs, but nowadays Apple alienates me. I'm one of the millions that don't buy a Mac because the hardware is gimped by arbitrary software limitations. Unless Apple changes that stance, I'm a lost customer. Cupertino has the market share statistics, they know where to find me.
Consider how many Macs in total that Apple sold during the years that Apple sold the 11 inch Air and that they discontinued it, I doubt it was a raging success.
Especially seeing that with the Apple now selling the 13 inch Neo and it decided to sell a larger Air instead of a small one, I don’t think it sold that well.
I use Windows and macOS both daily and it's truly baffling to me that anyway could consider Windows software quality to crush the Mac -- either first party or third party. macOS has no shortage of bugs but compared to Windows it works like a dream.
As one example of many, Night Light (Windows' version of adjusting your screen to be warmer at night) has been broken for me, for 5+ years. I mean literally it just never works on its own. The only way to kick it into working is toggling HDR on and then off, every single time I wake it up.
I would guess it's just my configuration but I built a second PC from totally new parts, and got a different monitor, and installed Windows 11 instead of 10, and it's still broken.
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.
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.
Not sure that’s true in general, but the comparison here is between Linux and macOS. And I believe that for the set of users contemplating Linux, GP is largely correct.
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.
I think the thing is "MacOS" itself hasn't really been evolved for some time - what has been happening is taking iOS ideas and concepts and porting them back.
Updating video drivers in Ubuntu is so so so much easier than under Windows it's ridiculous.
Windows has more drivers for more things, but if Linux has drivers (e.g. you buy a Laptop with Linux support) then driver management is massively easier.
I spent god knows how many hours getting the windows drivers for my last self built gaming PC working. Linux I just installed and was done. In reality the Windows experience was also a lot worse than having to drop to the console occasionally. It definitely required more in depth knowledge, even if everything was UI driven...
Unless you have very specialized needs, the driver experience on Windows is "turn the machine on". The driver update experience is "connect to the internet" and occasionally "reboot". That's it.
Linux is significantly easier than it was 20 years ago but still not as easy in general.
I've been building machines myself for nearly 30 years, including multiple in the last 5, and I assure you I've needed to do nothing besides connect to the internet and let it get updates each time.
It's been Year Of The Linux Handheld for gaming since 2022, the best platform to play games is Steam Deck where updates are clicking "Update" in the System panel. You can run either Bazzite or SteamOS on your own hardware, although I haven't tried that.
sure "best" is subjectively true for my criteria: it plays the largest number of games with about zero annoyance / friction. maybe desktop windows plays more games, but it certainly has a bazillion more frictions and annoyances
I don't know about this, MacOS for productivity is still better performing than Windows.
Both Apple and Microsoft have been pushing the industry into directions we aren't happy with. But MacOS is still fantastic and in this laptop will work extremely well.
People also aren't buying this laptop to play any games that require decent power.
As someone who buys Asus motherboards when he builds PC's, it hasn't been a shock for me as an owner of a Macbook for the last 18 years.
I've been of the firm opinion for a very long time that Macbook's are the best productivity laptops and now even more so once Apple moved from Intel to their own M chips. Their entry level Macbook before the Neo you could buy and it would be a laptop that would see you for many many years.
all of my normal pcs served me well for many many years. They don't get slower naturally, it was windows getting ever more bloated. I put linux on an 8 year old computer and it just flies again
Fully agree. When I have to use Windows from time to time, I’m always surprised by how laggy the cursor feels even on hardware that can do 8K VR just fine.
> Their entry level Macbook before the Neo you could buy and it would be a laptop that would see you for many many years.
I hope they fixed the ultra brittle screens of their Macbook lineup. I bought a MacBook Air M1 a few years ago and I've been royally pissed off when, after 13 months (one month out of warrant in my case/country) the "bendgate" hit me: the screen died overnight, without any reason (was fine the day before, woke up: screen dead. MacBook Air didn't move). Many people had the same happen to them and they called this the "bendgate" (except there was no "bend").
This prevented me from buying a MacBook M2, M3, M4 and now M5.
Well... Unless I can be convinced that this time the screen isn't going to die overnight.
Saddest thing of them all: I'm the kind of person to only ever use the laptop at home on my lap and never ever put it in a backpack (I don't even own a backpack).
Personally, I would not buy any laptop without 2-3 years of warranty support / Apple Care. Laptops are expensive and things can stop working for lots of reasons. It's why I've loved ThinkPads, though I now use Apple as my usage these days is less dev / more fun.
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.
While that's true, I also think these things tend to happen as a gradual build up to the tipping-point effect where the zeitgeist shifts so suddenly that a massive player is suddenly irrelevant.
Microsoft is structurally incapable of making Windows better. Intel is intrinsically incapable of making x86 better (enough to matter). x86 hardware manufacturers are in a price race to the bottom, and there's no way around that.
Apple doesn't have any of those problems. Instead, more and more young people can afford and aspire to get a Mac. They want to buy software that works on the mac, and they'll want to write software for the Mac. The network effect compounds.
I swear that I read this comment in 2019, and it's still wrong today. Young people want iPhones, go look at Apple's revenue breakdown. iPhones and iPhone accessories dwarf Mac sales, the only comparable product in terms of revenue is the iPad. There is no evidence that Apple Silicon has changed that B2C story.
In the broader B2B sense, Apple lost pole-position to Nvidia. They're not the ecosystem kingmaker they once were, and their ARM architecture is failing to subsume demand for their competitors. The "Private Compute" Mac-based servers are going terribly according to reports, and their contribution to the chip shortage has even driven them to collaborate with Intel Foundry Services: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/28/intel-rumored-to-supply...
The zeitgeist exists on forums like this. Outside where people touch grass now and then, they largely don't care.
x86 OEMs are a race to the bottom because that's how the PC market has been for eons as PCs are a tool, not a status symbol, but how has x86 not 'gotten better'? It's significantly more battery friendly than it has ever been by a long margin, matching the M-series.
It's just momentum. You buy windows because you have windows. You buy windows because there's not really much of a choice. You have windows because you're not going out of your ways to reconfigure hundreds of laptops at your company just for your employees to be less comfortable with Linux.
Now introduce a choice… and things might change.
With the vast majority of software nowadays living in the browser, your OS matters less and less, especially for a business that buys machines for its employees.
OTOH, client Windows is the smallest and least important building block in it. Microsoft is helpfully also setting all their native apps on fire too and replacing them with webslop that runs equally poorly on MacOS, ChromeOS and Linux as it does on Windows 11, so the biggest concern is (A)AD integration and centralized management… and all three are decently manageable these days. If Microsoft didn't throw in the Windows licenses for free, more orgs would already be looking at ditching Windows 11, and if it keeps getting worse, even that won't look like a good deal any more.
Yeah I got one from work. I was quite excited to get one as macos is supposed to be a paragon of design but after using it I'm so glad I didn't spend my own money on it as it's been a total disappointment. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't want to launch it off the roof.
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.
What 3rd party tools would those be? I've been using Macs since ~1994 and my 3rd party tool use has fluctuated wildly over that time. I have a lot of 3rd party software installed but I can't think of anything that I'd call a "requirement" to "fix" the OS.
The most obvious one is that there's no native way to handle having too many icons in the top bar. If you have too many, they just start disappearing, instead of being hidden in an expansion like on Windows. This _literally_ makes them unusable without a third party program.
And if you have the notch this is very far from a theoretical problem.
The native solution to this is to hold the command key and drag unneeded icons out of the bar to remove them. If the programs you’re using refuse to let you remove those icons (or they keep re-adding them against your wishes) then those programs are bad citizens and you should probably stop using them!
That's not really a solution. I don't want the icons permanently gone, I want them accessible because they are there to provide essential functionality.
If I delete my Dropbox icon out of the menu bar how am I supposed to know that it's running, click on it to see its status, quit the program, etc.
I use the password manager built into the OS (iCloud Keychain) which doesn’t put an icon into that bar.
We’re talking about a limited resource (a few inches of screen real estate at the top of the screen) that tons of app developers feel entitled to occupy. Now we could have some kind of system whereby excess icons get dumped into a … menu, but that defeats the entire purpose since they’re no longer on the screen all the time!
There are plenty of apps out there which do not feel entitled to a slice of this precious screen real estate. I think it’s worth supporting them!
> Now we could have some kind of system whereby excess icons get dumped into a … menu, but that defeats the entire purpose since they’re no longer on the screen all the time!
This is just not true. The purpose is not necessarily to have the icon on the screen all the time. If the menu doesn't exist, the buttons don't exist either, and plenty of applications are built assuming that you have access to their bar icons while they're running.
If the icon is missing there is _literally_ no other way to use the relevant functionality. If the icon is hidden in a menu, you can use the functionality, it's just an extra click.
Yeah but all OSes have UX problems that require third party tools to fix. Hell, you could argue that FDO/GNOMEs "no use an extension" attitude is exactly the same thing.
'Plenty' vs an atrocious amount that constantly nags.
MacOS's ads whilst I still detest, is a one-off prompt.
Window's ads can sometimes only be removed with registry key configs OR deployment of management policies...
Nagging for OneDrive?
Nagging for sign in?
Nagging for edge-as-default?
Nagging for copilot with edge?
Nagging for sync your bookmarks and let copilot handle it?
I’m a local account user. I don’t use any of the above.
As a lifetime Mac user, I will say that the last few updates to MacOS have made me start looking towards linux. Ignoring the many sins of liquid glass, Disk utility is almost nonfunctional, as are many of the built-in utilities. Sure I can use the command line tools but to me it's a concerning trend that highlights poor attention to detail that the Mac was always known for.
As someone who has done this very thing, and is a lifelong Linux fanboy (I run Linux on literally everything else), I would strongly suggest you don't do this if you're using a Macbook. The losses on battery life are far too high to accept, and if you have lower specs on the Mac laptop, you will really feel them on most Linux flavours.
> The losses on battery life are far too high to accept,
Why do people keep saying this? I have been on M1 Air on Asahi for the last 4 weeks, getting 8-10 hours daily. I see my wattage consumption on screen at all times, it varies between 2.5-3W when scrolling web and around 5W when actively working with apps. I see no difference between macOS and Linux! The only difference is the s2idle consumption but personally I don't care, besides all other modern Linux laptops have same exact issue, often worse.
On my Intel T14s 4th Gen I was getting maybe 5 hours, and that's already with heavily optimized setup!
Impressive, that must be a recent fix then, and it's good to hear. I tried Asahi some time ago and it was about 3-4 hours on average. I am still running Linux Mint on an old 2015 Macbook Pro and had to make some major power management tweaks (preventing it from _ever_ boosting up from base CPU and GPU frequency) to get close to the battery life I had before.
Definitely not 5h, not anymore. I just got off the train after working on my laptop for 3.5h, connected over wifi to the internet, browsing, searching files, etc., and ended with my battery down to 65%. I have no complaints, this is as good as it gets for Linux users. I think it's worth noting that Linux and its stack is probably most efficient OS nowadays, performance wise, so while not totally optimized for hardware, the software gets extra 10% or so over macOS and it might be showing.
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 desktop Mac, so the online sheets say at least. It runs my work's integration test suite 15% faster.
A lot of us have given Macs a very honest chance. It's okay and it's very workable, that much is a fact -- but if one is willing to pimp their machine and OS -- nowadays made even easier by LLMs -- then the experience and everyday ergonomics and actual dev-enhancing abilities quickly outpace a Mac.
And I wish that wasn't true because I wasn't looking forward to changing my main machine. But the annoyances and slowness and closeness just compound until they start literally reducing your everyday productivity.
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.
Does not support it _natively_ and is measurably slower than a supposedly much weaker Linux machine was my point, which I believe I expressed quite clearly.
> And really, who cares if it had 10,000 background services if 9,999 are idle at any given time?
Normally I don't. I have an okay idea on how modern OS-es work; temporary swaps, compressing RAM for rarely used background processes etc. -- they work amazing, macOS included.
I suppose my problem is more the services that _do_ interfere, like the one that feels it has to scan every CLI command I launch, to the point that it became noticeable, especially side by side with the "weaker" Linux laptop and hell, even with a VM-ed Linux inside my gaming PC as well.
So OK, I accept the correction: does not much matter how many are they in general. Those that interfere though, and I can't stop them -- this is where I drew the line and gradually started my migration away from macOS.
And this:
> Run `ps auxwww` on a Linux box sometime and it’ll look similar
...is objectively false. I just tried it; even my home server that's doing plenty of stuff I get 244 items. On the Mac I am writing this? 840.
Maybe the laptop with KDE will have a touch more than 244, but I doubt they'd be 840.
Call me a purist, I like to know what my background services are doing, though I'll admit I care less and less with age.
I’m not trying to be pedantic here, but I genuinely don’t know what you mean here. Macs have built-in virtualization and containerization. Docker and podman etc are wrappers around it, but the internals are built in.
Did you mean they have to emulate x86 code if you download an x86 image instead of a native one?
I mostly meant they don't support cgroups and other Docker-required machinery and have to emulate them.
OrbStack bridges a good chunk of the Linux performance gap however. I was using Colima before and then the Linux laptop was running the integration test suite ~60% faster. OrbStack reduced that to 15%.
I think the real point is a) change is difficult, and b) we all have different needs.
If you asked me to use a Windows machine I would be frustrated from day one and would want my Mac back, but everyone else where I work (except one) uses Windoes every day, and I don't know how they do it.
As far as needs, I haven't been a serious dev for a long time (ask my employees who won't let me near any code), so containerization is a non issue I could care less about for myself, but (for personal use) there are apps on Mac that work for me that don't run on Windows, and definitely don't run on Linux.
There are probably reasonably "objective" measures that can be used to rank OS's agains each other, like security or bugs, but even some measures that sound objective may be based on data but their value is subjective. The OS wars are old, and maybe I'm old too, but they're getting tired (unless we want to discuss how the AmigaOS was better than any other OS at the time but with one fatal flaw.)
I can't quite work out if this is serious or not, but for anyone who doesn't know, you can set global and app-specific keyboard shortcuts in System Settings->Keyboard->Keyboard Shortcuts. Shortcuts map to menu item titles which means you can set a "Select Next Tab" shortcut and that shortcut will work in every single app that uses "Select Next Tab" in a menu - it's one of the best features on macOS.
I generally run chrome/firefox and vscode full screen, and then alt-tab between those and my email (outlook at current company) and messaging (slack). Plus terminal window/s. That workflow is mostly reproducible across win/mac/linux. What features are you using that MacOS is getting in the way?
Decent package manager, brew is awful compared to apt. Window snapping can only be done on Apple keyboards not on external keyboards. No Alt+Tab, Cmd+Tab is not the same. No window previews when hovering over dock, ridiculous animation speed when switching workspaces that can't be changed (and somehow Ctrl+1/2/3 is 2x faster than Ctrl+Left/Right? What is that all about). Needing third-party apps for basic things like: setting a custom resolution (BetterDisplay), setting scroll direction for mouse wheel independent of touchpad scroll direction. And the Settings app is super slow.
What is bad about brew?
I have used it in the past and I found it fine. With apt I have less experience since I only used it when playing with a raspberry pi.
I find it generally slow and by default it gets in the way in a very annoying way.
Without disabling the feature l, every single time I try to install something it also looks for updates so instead of installing a single package I end up upgrading many additional packages
> Decent package manager, brew is awful compared to apt.
Use Macports. Installs itself properly out of the way in /opt. Works with the Apple frameworks (eg Python), allows multiple versions of software to be installed in parallel (using port select).
> Window snapping can only be done on Apple keyboards not on external keyboards.
Yes, you need some free 3rd party apps for affordances that should be built in. Hardly a deal breaker.
Rectangle allows you to set the hotkeys for window snapping and sizing for example.
As for scroll directions, yes, it's different to Windows, but it's the same on the Mac and iPhone. Didn't take very long to adjust.
Agreed that the new Settings app is a PITA and obviously inherited from iOS and sucks, but how often are you accessing Settings?
From work, I have a Thinkpad X1 gen 13 and it's awesome. Super lightweight, and great power. But, when I tried Linux a few months ago its hardware was still too bleeding edge. Things may be better with kernel v7 on the way. I like the Gram as a personal device so may I know what model Gram you have?
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. It had an Intel U series 6th gen (12th gen was latest then) i5, an NVMe ssd and was always responsive.
If I were a student in this day, and all I could find were these laptops this is what I would think. 1 they're out of budget for most students in developing countries. 2 I will most likely out grow 8 GB ram faster than my laptops CPU performance. 3 I am limited to learning with what can run on apple silicon(most Linux distros excluding asahi). Finally I end up paying basically 50-60% of the cost of a decent machine and replaced it with a disposable one.
Maybe this machine is perfect for a specific set of users, students with higher income households or degrees which need better a better quality display.
I still advise every computing student I meet to get a under $200 old used laptop that has expandable memory and atleast an NVMe ssd. That way they can maximise their time learning and experimenting. Anything that needs more complex hardware can always be offloaded into your institutes machines. Once you're settled a bit and have a decent amount of cash to burn go ahead and buy whatever maxed out MacBook your heart desires.
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.
TBF my friends who were getting business degrees struggled with their 8 gigs pc. When they need to run something like SPSS next to a chrome instance, their ram got tight pretty fast.
Second hand apple products are fantastic deals! Just bought a second 2016 iPhone for 50€. Apple still push security updates 10 years after release! I wonder what's their business rationale, while being delighted buy the cheap, light, small and perfectly usable device compatible with my bank and all communication apps. Only downside are the unsolicited disapproving comments IRL.
I'm very keen to buy a 50€ macbook Neo in 10 years.
> 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.
Just imagine what Apple would do to the market if they also offered a full Linux support, but not Windows... They'd probably own some 70% of Linux market outright and also double its overall size overnight.
They already cannibalized a lot of Linux users, developers mainly when they released MacOS X around year 2000.
Suddenly you could have a Unix, with pretty much the same CLI as Linux but without all the supported hardware/driver issues. Laptop sleep in particular was pretty finicky.
If MacOS didn't pick a Unix/BSD base, I'm pretty sure all the tech companies running Mac would be on Linux.
I thought about it , but cloud is getting way more expensive since they don't own the infrastructure, while they themselves have long term components contracts that actually help to increase their margin on their hardware. So they're most likely gonna make more money off of hardware going forward. And nothing stops them from offering integration with other devices, effectively all they lose is potential income from AppStore on macOS, which doesn't sell much anyway. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me!
Does not accepting contributions make you not open source? I would assume if the license allows you to fork it, that makes it open source (as opposed to "shared source" licenses that basically say "look don't touch")
I feel like Apple wouldn't want to make full Linux work on their hardware, but they could enable their Darwin kernel to emulate Linux syscalls and provide a way to boot into a mode that basically loads the kernel and whatever Linux shell you want
> Reception was mixed, focusing on the difficult installation process and the significant performance costs of the Mach kernel. Reviewers noted its potential as a "Unix killer", but that it required users to abandon the user-friendly Macintosh experience for a pure Linux environment.
1996 is not now. This comparision makes little to no sense.
I'm sure if Apple provided support for installing your own OS on their M series laptops it would be incredibly popular. And I don't need to guess at this using weird 1996 research on microkernels because Asahi Linux exists and clearly there is interest in it.
Do you forget what Apple in '96 was? Or are you saying that Tahoe is too polished for the Apple of '96?
Apple was not a bastion of quality in the 90's. They couldn't modernize the Mac OS, and that continued with little more than window dressing over what was released in the 80's. The Mac line up was a horrible mess of barely different models that needed a Ph.D to figure out what was different. The company was bleeding money and seriously close to bankruptcy.
The Apple of the mid 90's wishes it could release something like Tahoe.
Ya ok, unless you looked at it wrong, then it crashed.
OS 8 was a platinum theme over System 7. Which was a slightly better System 6, which wasn't significantly different than System 4.
System 7 was good for the time, OS 8 and 9 were not, and Apples inability to improve the OS were really starting to show. Windows 95 was a more stable OS than OS 8. Tahoe is better.
Yeah - an OS that crashed every time you launched Netscape and you as an end user had to manually allocate memory to apps?
Not to mention that the OS itself was still mostly 68K emulated code even on PPC Macs and holding the mouse down over the menu caused all apps to stop running.
Apple circa 1996 would be charging for its updates and licensing out the software to Power Computing and UMAX. They were making a lot of "interesting" decisions.
My daughter just ordered one of these. She’s a student (not stem) and her ancient 8Gb MacBook Air with an intel processor was still serving well but the battery has become unuseable and her keyboard is becoming flaky.
The Neo is such a perfect replacement and easier than fixing the Air.
The keyboard issue was probably caused by the battery, which can be replaced, and the keyboard would have likely returned to normal after the battery replacement.
In fact, depending on the model, the battery replacement may well have also entailed replacing the whole top cover (including the keyboard).
The Intel MacBook Air battery was very easy to swap, just opening the bottom lid. Amazon has kits for about 40 bucks with the two necessary screwdrivers included.
> Given Apple's historically very premium pricing, launching such an affordable product is certainly a shock to the entire market
No? Apple has been delivering way cheaper laptops ever since M1, this one is just even cheaper. I thought PC execs were asleep at the wheel but not this bad.
Apple sold the the base model M1 Macbook Air through Walmart for $600 between when they stopped selling it directly up to early this year. It looks like this computer is about as performant as that one, so I guess they started to have trouble sourcing components and came up with the Neo as their replacement.
I know that Walmart and Costco sold discounted M1 MacBook Airs, which why I used introductory prices.
> so I guess they started to have trouble sourcing components and came up with the Neo as their replacement.
There’s no indication Apple had any issues with getting components; they’re have problems with sourcing more expensive components.
Apple tends to be very deliberate with products; this isn’t a replacement for something else.
In fact, there was an article stating unlike some other laptop manufacturers, Apple’s prices aren’t expected to rise because their buying power and having contracts in place [1].
A low-cost MacBook using an iPhone process has been rumored for at least a year.
>Apple sold the the base model M1 Macbook Air through Walmart for $600 between when they stopped selling it directly up to early this year.
I took advantage of this after the fact. I bought a pristine open box M1 from VIPoutlet (Walmart's closeout brand, as I understand it) on Walmart last month for ~$350 as a backup computer.[1] The Neo reinforced the wisdom of my purchase, as M1 has slightly better specs for less money.
[1] If the M4 Pro MacBook I am typing this on needs repair, I will use the M1 with a bootable clone of the M4's drive made with SuperDuper!.
I’m sure Apple has wanted to create a low-cost Mac laptop (the base Mac mini was already $499) for a long time, regardless of what previous models have done.
They waited until they could do it in alignment with Apple’s brand, going back to Steve Jobs saying during the netbook hysteria: “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk. [1]”
And to their credit the Mac Neo is not a piece of junk.
This product effectively cuts the entry price for a new model Mac laptop in half. The cheapest current-generation MacBook has been $999 or above for a very long time, even back to the iBook days.
Yes, Apple has offered discounted prices by continuing to sell older models or offer straight discount sales via third party retailers. But I expect that will continue here too. This is $599 MSRP at Apple but will probably be $499 via the usual retailers by the end of 2026.
That's a bit different than continuing to sell a 5-year-old model at a discount.
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 still remember how Apple fans run around singing praises what their 8GB M1 absolutely kicked ass of Intel Macs with 16GB (and even more). Only to quietly replace them with a model with more RAM next year or some even way earlier than that.
I can open even 500 apps on any laptop. This is what swap for. But with only 8GB you are getting into the swap territory very fast because you need almost half of it for the OS and video memory.
More RAM is better. But doesn’t negate that it’s still very usable. Did you even bother to watch the video for responsiveness before commenting? Also it was a couple years after the transition to arm that Apple bumped the minimum RAM they shipped their laptops with.
It’s hard to take you seriously or at face value if you did watch the video and called it a glorified terminal.
What in the video is remotely glorified terminal like? What terminal are you using that gives you local 4K editing capabilities and the ability to run locally run Lightroom for 50MP files?
It's hard to take you seriously when you measure the performance of a computer by performing a very specific single tasks. The thing what dividies a smartphone and a proper computer is an ability to actually multi-task without dropping the context and not waiting ages for the programs to reload.
And yes nowadays your terminal is capable of rendering HTML5 pages and encoding MPEG.
EDIT: to give you an improper analogy:
You are pointing at a sport bike and say "this is very good vehicle because it is very fast".
Is it fast? Sure. Does it allows to move 1 kilogram of cargo very fast? Surely. Does it allows to move 1 tonne of cargo very fast? Hell no. You need a 1 thousand trips to move 1 kilogram each time or you need a cargo truck - totally different vehicle.
This laptop is nowhere near the "moving cargo" territory despite being hyped as such.
Again, in the video (that you clearly didn’t watch) they’re multi tasking without loading times as they switch.
And yes you can encode an mpeg from your console. Don’t be facetious, because that’s NOT what is shown in the video. They show editing the video and photos interactively with live views of the changes taking place. Can you do that in your terminal?
Anyway, enjoy raging about the product with your arbitrary goalpost for what constitutes being usable. It seems like that’s really what you want to do rather than talk seriously about the product.
Terminal is not necessary CLI/TUI only text terminal. And by the way you do have a terminal in your pocket, maybe you even typing your responses on it.
But again you are again comparing a single task in a demo (when was the last time someone bashed pre-release Apple products?), totally ignoring what 5 years ago very similar M1 with 8GB showed where this configuration did work - and where it did not. But you don't need common sense, you need to argue in the favour of your beloved company?
> Again, in the video (that you clearly didn’t watch)
Except I did but you need to claim what I didn't, right?
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.
Let me rephrase what I said: I do not expect everyone to be able to do Apple style quality hardware. But the build quality of a Thinkpad from 20 years ago I think is still doable.
600 is a bargain for a MacBook, but I can't see the public windows users switching en masse. Most people who buy cheap windows laptops do so because
1) they need to replace a broken laptop and want to pay the lowest amount possible
2) they don't want to learn some new thing
600 might seem budget, but it's out of budget for most people. And my guess is PC manufacturers will retaliate against this by cutting prices just a little to drop under that 600 price point for mid range ryzens, with more ram and space.
Any family members I've helped shop for computers only care about how much space it has, how cheap it is, and will it struggle to run things like the last one. As it sits the MacBook is more money for less gigabytes
Also, there are plenty of users such as myself that won't be "switching" but will instead be augmenting my AMD desktop with a laptop. I've not purchased a new Mac since year 2000-ish but I do play to purchase a Neo.
The last time certain family members asked me for a computer recommendation, I gave them a detailed breakdown of which MacBook they could get to meet their lightweight needs for the next decade. They thanked me, agreed, went to Best Buy, and came back with the laptop that the salesperson convinced them was better "because he knows computers". It was an utter piece of crap and they've had nothing but problems with it.[0]
Had this existed when they were shopping, I would've just asked what color they wanted it in, ordered it for them, and been done with it.
[0] OTOH, that got me out of all future tech support duties. "Hey, why can't I connect our new printer to it?" "I'm not sure. Does that Best Buy expert still work there? He might have some suggestions." (Phrased more politely IRL because I'm not a monster, but the intent was there.)
My dad the other month, in need of a computer with webcam and ideally portable, bought some $400-500 HP 17" laptop. He was so proud of it, proud of buying a piece of hardware without asking me, and rather than tell him the truth, I nodded and said "yeah this is neat".
The monitor is awful. Like, the horrible way it changes color and brightness depending on exact viewing angle is sickening; I am shocked California hasn't declared it illegal. It feels cheap, keyboard is cheap, who knows what the battery life is.
If the Apple Neo were available then, and he had asked what to buy, I would have instantly told him to get one.
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.)
And I still stand behind the fact that, for that price, you've got a very competent device that is better specced for light use and friendlier for mom and pop (look, it has a HDMI, you can straight up connect it to the telly! Look, it has USB A ports, so that old camera, hard drive with the family pictures, old weird ergo mouse just works out of the box !).
Again, we’re not comparing a brand new Mac price to an old PC price. Yes, old will be cheaper. Old MacBooks are cheaper than new ones, too.
But for giggles, let’s look at the old PC.
Despite being heavier, wider, taller, thicker, slower, dimmer, lower resolution, hotter, older, and having less battery life, it is, indeed, $20 cheaper.
Put another way, there’s no way on earth I’d pick that over a MacBook Neo to save $20 at the cost of having a worse laptop in almost every way.
That's a valid opinion to hold. I think both machines are Pareto-optimal though. The ThinkPad will likely have a longer useful life because of its heavy build, extra I/O (each port gets less use), and upgradeable parts. The Neo clearly wins on power efficiency, battery life, resolution...
TBH, if I imagined I was the median casual user, I would also take the $20 marginal cost for the Neo. "Worse in almost every way" just depends on how you weight each individual parameter, which for me, is quite atypical.
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.
Here it’s because the old PC they picked is worse in every way than the brand new PC, except for RAM, which the Mac largely mitigates by having ludicrously fast flash hanging off the CPU. Of course an older, worse PC is going to be cheaper than a new Mac. (Except in this case, buying the boat anchor saves you a whopping $20. It’s not even better specs for the same price: it’s worse than the Apple gear that costs the same.)
If we want to compare new vs used, then how much would you have to spend to buy a brand new PC laptop as powerful as last year’s MacBook Pro?
> that thing has no IO and not even enough RAM for nowadays light web browsing.
You can literally open up every app (50+) on it and simultaneously edit 4k video without issues. It handles all of the pro apps really well. So it objectively can handle light web browsing just fine.
LOL I had the exact same experience. Somehow it was a goddamned HP too (oh how I detest HP everything).
And to think I'd explicitly mentioned to him that Apple would probably be releasing the kind of cheap beautiful laptop he was looking for in a month :(
you might be underestimating how much lifting the apple logo on the lid will do for this laptop. If it advertises the whole apple ecosystem thing well, then those people who already have iPhones, AirPods etc they would be very very compelled to go with this versus an Acer or a Lenovo
> 600 might seem budget, but it's out of budget for most people.
Out of budget for my parents but I'll pay the difference myself. It's just painful to see them use their pile of shit $300 laptop that can barely open a text editor, sounds like a jet engine and has about 45 minutes of battery life.
The only haptic feedback they get if the entire fucking thing creaking as soon as you lightly touch it.
They've been through at least 5 of them since I bought my 2015 mbp, which is still working fine in every aspects
The funny thing is that it would do the same for double the price.
You need to spend a ridiculous amount of time on research because the producer itself is selling very different product (very different quality) from a year to another.
I wish a "brand" would be consistant but it's not 99% of the time.
And it's even more painful for me to do the remote tech support for my (80+ years old) parents so paying the difference is a kind of preservation of my mental health...
You need to think about the tech support you do for your parents and decide if it would really be less by moving them to another platform, where "there's no start button" and "where did the top of the window go" and "how do I install this obscure app Ive used for twenty years"
Most of the support questions I field from my folks and in-laws are actually phone things these days. 90% of what I have to deal with is "this thing came up on my phone during the week and I clicked on it, am I hacked? No I don't remember what it said"
I remember a whole slew of inexpensive netbooks and the like that were technically Windows XP or Windows 7 machines, but came with a dumbed-down "starter" OS, not enough RAM, only a 32-bit CPU in an era were 64 bits were already becoming standard - the sum of which amounted to a barely usable imitation of a real Windows machine and as a result most of these became garage sale fodder pretty quickly.
I thought I was so clever for buying one of those things for like $190 and putting Lubuntu on it to make it usable. It worked - but the joke was still on me when it died a year later.
I used have a netbook as a second personal device around 2013 and loved it. Very easy to carry around and work on the go, and it could do everything except development work (web browsing, Word, Excel). I actually miss the form factor.
I've yet to meet anyone who wants AI added to anything. If they released a version of windows+office tomorrow that was "guaranteed free of AI" it would be their top seller
But, then all Microsoft's top managers, who apparently have bonuses based on how much AI is shoved down our throats, wouldn't get those bonuses. Nobody's cares whether or not something is a top seller because their incentives are obviously aligned toward cramming AI.
Was my first thought also when I saw it. I honestly planned to ditch Macbooks before they released M1, but this hardware is just so much better than anything Intel or AMD can offer at least for laptops. For people that are not too demanding I've recommended Airs for a while, but this basically has the potential to destroy the entire midrange PC market. Some people will be reluctant to switch, but I don't think the OS is as important today as it was before. So much happens on the web anyway.
edit: also on a tangent, Apple's pricing has become weird. It actually feels like it's a really good bang got the buck. Regular iPads are under 400 now, and they're just better than the competition. MacBook Pro is about the same price as it ever was, but it's just so much better than it was etc.
Note that 8GB of ram on a Mac plays out a lot more different than 8GB on a PC.
I work professionally on a Macbook Air 16GB now and I have quite a few docker images and services running bare metal, + browser, vscode etc. on top. Not a problem until I start loading up some LLMs.
The paging works wonderfully well; an advantage of everything being fused.
If anything, I'm much more bound by the CPU limitations and the eco-cores than the memory.
On a PC, I wouldn't think about less than 32GB for a dev pc.
If I had a fulltime gig programming C, I'd even say I could work on this A14 8GB device. Why not? It's as powerful as a 10 year old powerful machine; probably. Or in that ballpark.
> The paging works wonderfully well; an advantage of everything being fused.
I think it's more of a combination of 1) lower baseline usage by macOS and 2) your swap is guaranteed to be on a fast SSD (1.5+ GB/s read/write).
Also when you buy a budget PC they cut back on everything, while you get roughly the same SoC across the board for Mac (give or take a few cores). There are absolutely horrid CPUs, GPUs, and SSDs still being released today! If you cut your budget too much you can get a slow E-core only CPU with a no name SSD that's barely faster than a HDD.
Hopefully the MacBook Neo puts pressure on manufacturers to do better.
There are lots of reviews on YouTube of people demoing the performance of the Neo in typical non-power-user usage scenarios (multiple apps, lots of browser tabs, etc.) It works perfectly fine for typical consumer usage.
I can't be the only one who remembers the celebration 18 months ago when Apple finally stopped selling Macs with 8GB of memory... only for 8GB to suddenly be excused again when the Neo arrived. Perhaps it's not the same people but the general vibe is giving me whiplash.
Because people can’t differentiate between the cheapest MacBook available, then or now, and what they may need? For some reason they think it’s okay to expect Apple to give them stuff for free.
My money is on 12GB in the second gen since that's what the A19 Pro has, and it would still conveniently differentiate from the other MacBooks with at least 16GB.
I've had an 8GB M1 since they came out and had almost no problems with memory shortage. The only thing is Firefox sometimes gets in a loop and takes up 20GB+ doing nothing much and you have to close it but that's not really the laptop's fault. You can have programs use >8GB because it swaps to the SSD very well.
Eastern europe here. At mobile operator that offers laptops for 2 year no interest loans. The only laptops that are cheaper than Neo are essentially atom garbage with crappy screens. And those that cost about the same are also 8gb ones.
I am perfectly fine with many of the technological restrictions on this device, and think it represents a great balance.
However, I think that two will bring sour tastes to people’s metaphorical mouths much more than expected: the RAM and drive space.
There should have been a 16Gb option. Nosebleed the price if you have to, or include a SODIMM slot if needed, but the option should have been there to expand the memory to 16Gb either on spec or at a later date. Because each version of MacOS gets weightier and more demanding of hardware - Windows isn’t the only resource hog out there - and at 8Gb the pain will begin to be felt long before the 7-year usability cycle comes to an end.
There should have been a 1Tb option. Not because people use that much drive space - many don’t - but because 1Tb is the level which provides enough cells in parallel to properly saturate the PCIe bus, ensuring maximum performance. Not always at that 1Tb level, and not on every machine. But typically 1Tb or above, rather than below. Even if it required a hairdryer to unstick the original due to the constrained space not permitting a lock-down screw, the drive should have been either replaceable or with the size as (again) a nosebleed-price option at provisioning.
Because while I see every other compromise as acceptable, it is those two which make me hesitate on getting this as a long-term secondary/casual system.
Other than that, this is a laptop which can only goose Apple’s further adoption among students and casual users.
> Anyone who knows what any of that means, or even to looks at those specs, are not in the market for this and should know better.
Why? I am a power user, and if I didn’t already have a copious stable of second-hand machines (a side effect of also being in the hardware end of IT), I would gladly pick one of these machines up as a “vacation/personal device”.
I mean, as a power user I am going to need high specs… for my work.
In my off time and on my vacation time, all I need is something that can connect to the Internet, let me do basic eMail and web surfing, and lets me connect remotely to my iron back in my office to keep a light touch on things.
And in that regard, this machine is perfect.
My issue with the device is in term of long-term ownership, where 8Gb RAM and 512Gb of storage isn’t going to get me all the way out to 7-8 years of usage in a comfortable manner. Even with light duties, imma gonna see the seams stretch uncomfortably so somewhere in the 4-6 year stage.
16GB is going to leap you into the air category. They intentionally make this an entry premium laptop. The retina itself and MacOSX’s mandate of font conformity make this premium over other budget laptop in that price range.
“I’ll just say it: I think I’m done with iPads. Why bother when Apple is now making a crackerjack Mac laptop that starts at just $600?”
I’m curious to see this machine in person, but I’d bet the an iPad is still the best large device in Apple’s ecosystem for anything that benefits from viewing in portrait mode.
Portrait or landscape - if your use is dominated by looking at the screen and/or situations where it can't set it down (to use the KB), then the iPad is better.
Assuming the software you need supports iPad, etc.
Cheers, opening System Settings and then Option clicking Displays, did the trick and showed the rotation option for the built in display. It's mostly PDFs I'd be reading so might try the PDF reader option, as yeah, navigation using the trackpad after the screen rotates is challenging.
Edit: Just tried rotation in the built in MacOS Preview app, (Command+R or Command+L) and works really well. You do have to set the View to Single Page, and rotate each page separately (it does remember which pages were rotated), but other than that it's great.
No, you’re not the only person. I use it to read news, blogs & hckrnews. Probably more than 2h per day. Often in an IKEA bamboo Bergenes, which I have several laying around the house, upside down with a usb-c cord charging it till 80%.
Looks like the PC laptop market is going to have to stop being bad on purpose. I hope this causes significant pain for vendors like Dell, Microsoft and Asus.
I don't see any way they can get out of this situation without seriously improving the UX of their products. Windows itself is likely implicated here too.
USB-C PD (power delivery) has been a standard for over a decade now. I first used it on a Nexus 4 or 5, and later on a Chromebook Pixel in 2016. It would be surprising for apple to not use that standard, particularly when both ports are probably run from the same controller.
I think that makes it a non-standard implementation though (I agree it's certainly more practical for the user), sounds like it's usb-c pd but with nerfed data, an odd choice that feels like it would actually have cost more to develop than just adding two identical usb-c 3.x ports...
I suspect the limitation is that the SOC doesn't have the IO bandwidth to support two ports at usb 3 speeds (remembering that the SOC was designed for iphones which physically only have one port).
Why would it be non-standard? USB-PD is almost completely decoupled from the rest of USB, and USB-C connector doesn't imply 'super speed' lanes are available. The only thing it really changes from an implementation perspective is that you don't have to route high speed lanes to the port, and don't need them to be available on your USB controller.
Doesn't seem to be very Apple-like to have two identical looking ports with different function, though.
I'm not sure exactly what the USB specs require, but there are a lot of phones out there that only support USB 2.0 data speed but do implement the current fast charging protocols. It's absolutely a mainstream thing.
> That means you can charge and use the fast usb port at the same time.
For some use cases, you can do that with a single USB port, too. For example, a single USB cable connected to a monitor can both send video and charge the laptop.
The legacy PC makers are lucky that Ubuntu doesn’t work on this, or else they’d face even more competition. By now, everyone hates Windows. And I’d wager some people hate it enough to be willing to switch to whatever works and is halfway ad-free.
>The legacy PC makers are lucky that Ubuntu doesn’t work on this
If Linux would be able to be installed and fully working on this out of the box, then the laptop wouldn't cost 600 dollars. Apple profits from monetizing people tied to its iOS+MacOS ecosystem. If you're not gonna be a MacOS/iOS user, you're worthless to them and selling you a laptop for only 600 dollars is not good for business anymore.
I've used an MacAir with 8GB ram starting at 700€ for years, writing and testing compilers. This was until the macOS and butterfly keyboard desasters, which made me go back to 450€ ThinkPad Ryzen laptops with Fedora, upgraded to 64GB RAM.
My wife is using a fancy new air for 2500€, which is way better. But I still think of the good old MacAir times, they'll try to bring up again.
The missing camera light seems pretty serious. Any sandbox escape can turn on the camera and record without you noticing. Or your school or employer could. If you're in full screen mode the menu bar is hidden too. It's a very strange move for privacy centered Apple.
The indicators are controlled along with sensor access at a very low level within a secure “exclave” from the main kernel; this is how the on-screen indicators have worked on iPhones for a few years. The indicator is rendered within the display controller at the firmware level, so can’t be affected by anything in _either_ user mode or kernel mode. [1][2]
It's not just the menu bar icon (which can definitely be spoofed), but an on screen dot where the system is controlling pixels directly bypassing any OS level drawing on the screen.
I do not really understand why the Walmart $599 M1 MBA comparison is so lost in the MSM. The Neo is the same price (without edu discount). The Neo CPU benchmarks slightly better until the 4W performance limit factors in more real-world cases (then the M1 wins handily). So much is given up with the Neo: Worse screen, Worse keyboard, No TouchId, Worse Trackpad, etc. Yet Apple is praised for the Neo. No longer matters of course as it appears that the Walmart M1 is history, and we now have the Neo -- worse in almost every way vs. M1 MBA. The only real beneficiary is undoubtedly Apple's margin. I guess the MSM and Apple fanbois hatred of Walmart and the "losers who shop there" influences this, but even so. Neo only benefits Apple vs. Walmarts M1 MBA deal.
How do you came to this conclusion when both are passingly cooled and A19 Pro is faster. Not to mention AV1 and other newer codec hardware accelerator and NPU / GPU improvements.
Also remember M1 MBA is may be Walmart and US only. Around the world most dont even get a chance to buy M1 at $599. The display dont have P3 but is actually brighter than M1 400 nits. Not sure how Keyboard is worse. Neo also have 1080P webcam rather than 720P.
And if Walmart is selling M1 at $599, I am sure they will also sell Neo at lower than RSP may be even same as educational discount $499. And this point surely Neo would win?
What a lot of people dont talk about, and may be wait until iFixit to confirm. Neo is basically the iPhone 17 of MacBook. It is perhaps the easiest to repair and cheapest MacBook for Apple to services.
"...handily...". Apple set the power limit for the A19 at 4 watts. The M1 does not have this limit. So in all tests using processes that tax the CPU, the M1 wins. Apple ignored the greater thermal cooling available with the new case. The A19 would beat the M1 if Apple did not do this. But no one really cares cause... it is Apple. The other points re: Walmart are valid. However, it goes to the point that Apple could sell the M1 at this price point, but chose not to. Seems likely the Walmart M1 at $599 had lower margins (My Guess), so the Neo was born.
This is most likely for battery life. The Neo has a smaller and cheaper battery, so if you didn't limit the power somewhat you'd burn through it too fast.
Neo has ~5 more years of support, is not US specific from a specific store,comes at $100 off for students (which is a primary target for the product), and many of the things you say are worse often are a balance of tradeoffs in many ways (e.g. the screen on the Neo is definitely brighter).
I had an M1 MacBook Air and just set a Neo up for my niece. If I had to pick between the two for myself I'd choose the Neo again.
They are also selling them on eBay too and people with photo reviews show that some of these are straight returns, almost brand new, like less than 10 battery cycles
For me the longer software support would play a role in my decisions. The M1 MBA will probably lose support in 4-5 years whereas the Neo has a longer road ahead.
Combine that with the enormously improved single core performance (which matters more in the real world than sustained load for an entry level notebook), fun colors and 499 price tag for students and I can see the interest.
The screen is good compared to the MBA (only loses P3 colors) but the bummer seems to be ports and the "normal" trackpad.
Why compare the M1 MBA discounted at Walmart but not give the same edu discount to the Neo? The target audience for Neo is likely people who would be able to use the edu discount.
I know many people who would not care about the differences you have outlined and gladly pay $499 for the Neo.
> "I’d consider paying double the price of the Neo for a MacBook with similar specs (but more RAM and better I/O) that weighed 2.0 pounds or less. I’d buy such a MacBook not to replace my 14-inch MacBook Pro, but to replace my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro as my “carry around the house” secondary computer."
> "As it stands, I might buy a Neo for that same purpose, 2.7-pound weight be damned."
The wonders of the closed ecosystem / walled-garden, where you don't have to face competition on equal terms, because you already locked-in your customers...
Not Asus, but I have a crappy Lenovo plastic laptop that was around that price range when new, and it's horrible. The hinges have so much resistance that the garbage display panel flexes when you try to open the lid. The junk trackpad is the size of a credit card, and requires some amount of force to actually pick up the fact that your finger is moving on it. The SDCard reader has failed twice (I'm on my third). It's just a piece of garbage and is even then it's about middle of the road when it comes to PC laptop quality. And outside of specific defects, (and this is what's endemic throughout the PC laptop ecosystem) the build quality just subjectively feels like it's barely held together with tape and glue. Like what you'd expect from a toy from an old cracker jack box. These OEMs have been shipping absolute trash for years, and it's about time the industry got a shock.
It's remarkable to me that this shows what an iPhone chip has been capable of, and a reminder about how strongly Apple works to keep phone, tablet, and laptop in separate segments. Even though they share the same chips.
Going to be signficiantly harder for Qualcomm X2 Elite to make a splash, given the price here. I have high hopes for the X2 Elite Extreme (even if it is going to be cursed with incredible difficulty trying to get each of these non-ACPI / DeviceTree systems running Linux). But this raises the bar signficiantly.
People keep calling this "a phone chip" when M1 was literally "a phone chip" to begin with, based on A14. It's entirely reasonable that in 4 generations of "phone chips", the A18 reaches the speed that M1 did during its "one-generation" rework.
The M1 was beefed up in quite a number of ways. More cores, much bigger GPU, double the memory bandwidth, more clocks, more power, a massive io subsystem that just didn't exist period with thunderbolt, pcie, etc.
You are correct that the architecture was indeed the same, but it was quite a different chip. "Literally a phone chip to begin with, based on", to me, misleads from how different the m1 was. But yes, they appear to share the same architecture.
> A decade ago, Apple began switching from trackpads with mechanical clicking mechanisms to Magic Trackpads, where clicks are simulated via haptic feedback (in Apple’s parlance, the Taptic Engine).... The Neo’s trackpad is mechanical. It actually clicks, even when the machine is powered off.
I wonder if the real clicks on mechanical trackpad will actually feel better than the simulated clicks on the Magic Trackpad.
Why do you need to wonder about this? We've had mechanical trackpads for ages to compare them to. They feel worse. Getting even click pressure across a large surface is nearly impossible.
I cannot believe I am saying this, but I am honestly thinking about getting one.
So my iPad Pro is nice and I love my Mac Studio, but my MacBook Pro is out of support and installing Fedora Linux on it will be a hassle due to the touchbar from what I can tell. So I am actually in a marked for a laptop to just write on when I am on the go... The neo fits that spec perfectly....
> The biggest shortcoming of the decade-ago MacBook “One”, aside from the baffling decision to include just one USB-C port that was also its only means of charging, was the shitty performance of Intel’s Core M chips.
MMMMMMM.....I don't know. I think the biggest shortcomings of that laptop were super common keyboard (dustgate), SSD, USB-C port, display, battery, and CPU (popcorning) failure.
I know this is being marketed for students and such but honestly even if you are a developer who works primarily with web dev stuff you will be able to do all of it on this device. Or if you are a product manager in a tech company, this is perfect device.
IMO there is a small subset of Mac users today(gamers, local LLM users, editors, mobile devs) for which this won't be the best option
If the Neo had been the next 12" macbook (2.0 lb), it would be the first apple product I would have lined up for.
The article sums up why quite well:
"The biggest shortcoming of the decade-ago MacBook “One”, aside from the baffling decision to include just one USB-C port that was also its only means of charging, was the shitty performance of Intel’s Core M chips. Those chips were small enough and low-power enough to fit in the MacBook’s thin and fan-less enclosure, but they were slow as balls. It was a huge compromise for a laptop that carried a somewhat premium price. Today, performance, performance-per-watt, and physical chip size are all solved problems with Apple Silicon. I’d consider paying double the price of the Neo for a MacBook with similar specs (but more RAM and better I/O) that weighed 2.0 pounds or less. I’d buy such a MacBook not to replace my 14-inch MacBook Pro, but to replace my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro as my “carry around the house” secondary computer.5"
Considering it'd be running an M series chip, plus battery life, it would have more horsepower than the 12" Macbook. Add to that more ram, and the 2lb or less alternative to iPad is real.
I think what you're describing is vertical integration rather than the walled garden specifically. The walled garden is the App Store restrictions, iMessage lock-in, that kind of thing. What made the Neo possible is that Apple controls the silicon, the OS, the firmware, and the industrial design as a single unit. They could put a phone chip in a laptop form factor and have it feel coherent because there's no seam between the hardware and software teams.
The distinction matters because it changes what the lesson is for the rest of the industry. You don't need a walled garden to compete here. You need to own enough of the stack that you can make aggressive tradeoffs (like shipping 8GB and an A18 Pro) without everything falling apart at the integration boundaries. Microsoft can't do that because they don't make the hardware. Dell and Lenovo can't do that because they don't make the OS. Qualcomm can't do that because they don't control the software ecosystem.
The one company that could theoretically pull this off is Google with ChromeOS on their own Tensor chips, and the fact that they haven't is probably the more interesting question than why Asus is shocked.
>The one company that could theoretically pull this off is Google with ChromeOS on their own Tensor chips, and the fact that they haven't is probably the more interesting question than why Asus is shocked.
Successful Chromebook’s have always been the throwaway $200 models. Higher end ones like the Pixelbook served more as flagship devices to prove they could do more but were never really marketed.
I don’t think Google’s gonna make a souped up Chromebook because they know their place. They’re entirely internet dependent devices with little brand recognition and no serious software. The Neo serves somewhere in between that. They have the brand recognition and MacOS.
What software do you want to be considered serious? With the addition of Linux/Crostini, there's 3D modeling, CAD, and NLE video editing and compilers and everything else.
What's the etc? Davinci Resolve is available on Linux and is an industry standard for video editing. Blender's no slouch either these days. I'll give you Ableton though.
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.
I still can't get over how this thing is priced the same as the 2013 Macbook Air... when looking at JPY prices.
I wonder how much of the Neo pricing wow factor is Apple taking advantage of the strong dollar vs much else that's changed on the ground (obv the processor pick is a "real thing")
Well the Macbook Air pricing in USD was always around $1000 right?
2013 MBA pricing in USD was $1100
2013 MBA pricing in JPY was 110k JPY
2026 Macbook Neo pricing in JPY is ~100k JPY
2026 Macbook Neo pricing in USD is $600
2026 Macbook Air pricing in JPY is ~140k JPY
2026 Macbook Air pricing in USD is ..~$1100
So depending on the currency either the Neo is a massively cheaper thing or filling a gap in a product line that inflation created.
I wonder how much of Apple's costs are USD-denominated. The fact that the MBA hasn't changed pricing at all makes me guess that not that much, but I don't know how manufacturing contracts work
I dunno, I find it interesting, but JPY inflation is a recent phenomenon
Apple has a different relationship with the Paradox of Choice than most companies. The price stability makes it a bad idea generally to buy the old model right when the new one comes out. And not chasing inflation numbers I think is also part of that.
They also have some of the highest margins on consumer electronics in the business. Higher IIRC than Nokia had, before smartphones killed them. So absorbing a 3% bump in the dollar isn't that big a deal for them.
> because the key caps are brand new, it feels even better than the keyboard on my own now-four-years-old MacBook Pro, the most-used key caps on which are now a little slick
Honestly, I have a hard time typing on a new Apple laptop; it doesn't feel right until the keycaps are a bit worn.
yeah, I expect they use the camera as a make-shift ambient light-sensor, just with a lower frequency than a illumination sensor would be used (due to power consumption impact), and with overall lower accuracy (lower dynamic range, reduced FoV, very bad accuracy in low-light/bright conditions,...).
This pretty much matches the described experience in the article that Gruber had, as he mentions he had to adjust brightness up and down at least twice every day...
If you ever try a mac laptop - there is simply no way back. I've got top tier Lenovo and Dell - the build quality is just incomparable. And that is sad. They may have edge on separate components - e.g. a gorgeous screen,but not the combination of it all.
Closer and closer to the desktop and mobile devices running the same OS...
One other thing, how repairable is this thing going to be? I'm guessing it's going to end up with an extremely low repairability score, considering they seem to solder both RAM and storage these days. Looking at the MacBook Pro (repairability score 4/10) it seems crazy difficult even to swap the battery: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+14-Inch+Late+2023+(...
My kids (ages 10, 14) have never used a Windows computer. They were introduced to computing with iPhone and iPad, and they use Chromebooks at school. At home I have Win, Linux and MacOS computers, but they've only used the MacOS ones (not interested in the others). I am trying to get them to use Linux, but unless they want to do hacking-type stuff (that's not them), then it's hard to sell them on it.
When we buy them personal laptops (not there yet), it'll be a MacBook Neo (or its successor). I expect that unless they're forced to at work, they'll never touch a Windows computer in their life.
Windows is such an offensive, defect-ridden pile of shit now that every PC maker should be blaming Microsoft for their inability to compete with the Neo.
I bought my parents Asus laptops years ago, and can't wait to replace them with a Neo.
Microsoft has spurned and scorned users. Now it's time for computer makers to push back and reject its shit. I'd love to see a consortium of computer makers come together to refine a Linux distro that's consumer-friendly enough to oust Windows and compete with Mac OS.
>I'd love to see a consortium of computer makers come together to refine a Linux distro that's consumer-friendly enough to oust Windows and compete with Mac OS.
System 76 already has Pop!_OS.
Lenovo.com/linux will redirect you to a list of linux compatible lenovo laptops that's a mile long.
That's cool, but they need to mount a marketing campaign to announce the arrival of a "new OS" to the everyday user. They need to go on the offensive against Microsoft and educate consumers.
I got an xps long time back that had the option to pay extra for ubuntu. I'm not going to pay to plug in a usb and I also get the joy of erasing a windows install from the face of this earth.
I'm curious but could not find any information if virtualization is possible on the Neo. Not that 8GB is that promising to start with, but running a slimmed down VM has its uses.
This was always going to be the case. Apple has perfected the art of finding slots for different use cases and consumer buckets just as well as they have perfected the hardware and software. This is a no brained for most home use and particularly education. Only issue for home use is photos and able to process an entire photo database at once and doing ML operations on them. Of course apple’s photos is the one black mark in their software stack, or may be something I don’t like.
I grabbed a Neo w/ the edu discount for my niece. Very pleased with it on day 1.
So far I think the only thing I can add to the conversation about it is the only real disappointment is that the only upgrade option is to go to 512G w/ touch ID for $100. That's not to say the 8 GB option was bad by any means, it actually works even better than I was expecting, but it still leaves a big gap on the way up to the base model Air at $1100 and the splash could have been twice as large.
The 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.
> When I wrote last week that the MacBook Neo is the first product from Apple with an A-series chip sporting more than one USB port — addressing complaints that the Neo’s second USB-C port only supports USB 2.0 speeds — a few readers pointed to the Apple Silicon developer transition kits.
A12Z is really M0 (or you could say M1 is A14X or A14Z depending on GPU bin), so I would not characterize it as "(iPhone) A-series."
"Of course, it's not that it cannot do all the work, but considering user experience and those hardware limitations, the experience, I think, differs significantly from mainstream products..."
I worked in retail for a decade, a lot of that was selling computers. The vast majority of what people buy computers for could be done a toaster. You don't exactly need top end specs to browse the internet, reply to emails, and write the occasional document.
Exactly. That's why the comment was seemed arranged to me.
For the most part, there's gamers/editors and a few other groups who need a lot of horsepower. They're generally gonna have decent hardware. Then there's everyone else, who wouldn't notice a difference regardless of hardware (to a point). There just isn't a whole lot of middle ground.
This is imho great MB for traveling, you want to edit some pictures, read/write and edit some code without being afraid of you 3K MB Pro getting damaged or stolen? Great!
I want to do more travel and photography, with occasional light work on my own project. And this feels like better option than iPad, because i can use Xcode and android Studio. And for +- the same price.
> The A9, in 2015, benchmarked comparably to a two-year-old MacBook Air from 2013. More impressively, it outperformed the then-new no-adjective 12-inch MacBook in single-core performance (by a factor of roughly 1.1×) and was only 3 percent slower in multi-core.
Too bad that performance is (still) locked in the walled garden and cannot be used as a small Linux server.
"I wish Apple would make a MacBook that’s akin to the iPhone Air — crazy thin and surprisingly performant."
I think a lot of us wish that! I'm struggling to pick either the Neo or the new iPad Air 13", the former for having MacOS, or the latter for light weight and light usage purposes. And come this fall pair whichever choice with an M5 mini at home.
> And there’s the whole thing with the second USB-C port only supporting USB 2 speeds. That stinks. But if Apple could sell a one-port MacBook a decade ago, they can sell one with a shitty second port today.
This is the kind of reasoning behind why I can not take any Apple product review seriously, or any Apple fan seriously.
My only problem with the Neo is that the base config has a good price, but if I want 512GB storage it reaches into the usable PC category.
Usable for me: 16GB/512GB, Arc/RDNA 3.5 GPU
Different tradeoffs obiously: light, good screen & touchpad versus Linux compatibility and backlit keyboard.
> my personal workstation remains a 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro
I was surprised that a guy who shills Apple for a living still uses a 5 year old MacBook. It goes to show how the longevity of laptops has increased over time. I'm also on a M1 Macbook and find it hard to justify an upgrade.
I used both my thinkpads for 8+ years, generating $$$ for me. Build quality matters a lot when it comes to longevity, thinkpads were great at it decades ago. I would expect the same from MacBooks nowadays (I also had an M1 Pro Max from a former employer).
I don't know... I used to upgrade MacBooks more frequently in the past even when they were functioning perfectly fine. There was usually a compelling reason like a markedly better screen, a big jump in performance, or noticeably improved battery life. Nowadays I have a hard time finding a compelling reason. Maybe I'm just getting old.
Someone didn’t read the “There is something rotten in Cupertino” article that caused Apple not only to not make an executive available for his post WWDC podcast for the first time in a decade or how he continuously criticizes Tim Cook kissing Trump’s ass.
He has also been a continuous critic of Apple’s App Store policies and its handling of regulators
Is he your uncle or something? I was just saying that it's surprising someone whose livelihood revolves around Apple uses a 5 year old MacBook. And yeah, if he was not an Apple enthusiast, Apple wouldn't suffer but his blog would.
No I am saying it’s dumb to call someone a shill when he has a very public spat with Apple, he constantly criticizes its CEO, its App Store policies, the latest OS, etc.
Exactly what would you like him to criticize? That the latest Apple Watch doesn’t run Linux?
Why exactly would he need to buy a new Mac just to maintain a blog? He buys a new iPhone every year and he gets review units of everything.
I am still sad that they stopped putting it into iPhone, I think the tech is great and the watch really proves what can be done with it when it is a fundamental part of the hardware and the OS can be built around it. But we never had a situation that every compatible iPhone had force touch so everything that could be done with it had to work in other ways.
I think the iPad made that even more complicated since I doubt we would have ever gotten it on a screen that large, if it would have even worked.
As far as it being on the trackpad, it is honestly pretty wild when you realize it. It does an incredible job of faking feeling like it is actually moving. Was similar with the fake home button that some iPhone’s had for a little while.
I remember being totally flummoxed when I was trying to figure out why my trackpad wasn't clicking when the machine was off. I had no idea it wasn't a mechanical lever anymore!
> 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.
You don’t have to if the software you need needs Windows.
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.
"- yeah I have a macbook" "- what, an air?" "- no a macbook" "- ..?" "- the one in colors, not the one-port 12 inch one from 2015 but you know it just released!"
This already happened in 2015, they probably don't want for it to happen again.
If you were to align the MacBook line with iPhone line logically this would be an ‘e’ class device, the Air would just become the MacBook, pro remains pro, and there would be a nice gap for a new ultra light MacBook Air, a modern Apple silicon version of the 12” MacBook - expensive, small and fast, analogous to iPhone Air.
Also new names are fun. This name is a fun name. Nice to see some playfulness from Apple.
It might be helpful to have a modifier on all the models. It's a bit awkward (not that the naming geniuses at Apple have ever cared about how awkward it's to talk about their products, witness "Apple Watch Edition" and Max Macs) to talk about iPads, because one of them lacks a modifier. "Which iPad" "The iPad iPad", etc.
It's as if people forgot about the MacBook One (anagram: Neo) from 2015 (which I daily drove for a year and loved). I suspect the Neo will sell about the same, and be forgotten in as many years.
Very obvious next step is to release 15" or 16" variant. It would put nail in coffin on cheap PC market. But would also cannibalize their own air/pro sales.
Sadly, "nail in coffin" is an exaggeration. Though the press would be throwing that phrase around. With plenty of dire-sounding quotes from cheap PC manufacturers.
Limiting cannibalization wouldn't be hard. Just load up a Neo, a 13" Air, and a 15" Air on the Apple web store's Compare page - a 15" or 16" Neo would be the "obviously lesser" laptop by 90% of the metrics.
My bet is that Apple has prototypes of the larger variant, and is waiting to see how the situation develops.
> 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.
Interesting metrics, though I'd add that if you count storage and memory as metrics, it'd be hard to find a worse PC laptop. And I don't see why we should artificially exclude ARM PC laptops from the comparison.
2x the RAM and 2x the storage isn't meaningless to a lot of people.
The PC has a single-core geekbench around 2100 single / 10,000 multicore.
The Neo is apparently in the range of 3600 / 9,000 multicore.
No arguments on the Mac's screen being way nicer though. However, the low-end computer market - unlike most of us on HN - has never cared about pixel density, color accuracy, or really any screen specs other than size (Looks like the Asus has the Mac by an inch on that spec).
Bottom line, for a high-end Chromebook replacement (literally everything is done in the cloud, so storage doesn't matter, and only running a browser, so RAM isn't a big deal), as long as it's for someone who will take care of such a delicate device, the Neo is pretty great. For everyone else, it's debatable.
> And certainly not software quality.
This is most definitely only a little true in that Windows has jumped the shark lately with ads and various enshittification, and thus ties with Mac OS. Tahoe is without a doubt the worst Mac OS ever released. It's both poor quality and poorly designed.
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 majority of consumers will choose the laptop with the better display. People make purchasing decisions based on feels and the Neo has great feels.
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.
Consumers don't read spec sheets. My mother doesn't even know the difference between RAM and SSD - it's all just "memory" right? But she knows that when she goes to the Apple Store the computers are built to an impressive standard.
Quality speaks for itself, and the way that people buy computers is through their eyes and fingertips, not their heads.
Go to the Apple Store and just observe how people make their buying decisions. They don't just look at the spec sheet, they lift, type on, caress the computers. They want to know how it will feel to own one.
People already in the Apple Store have already chosen to probably buy an Apple computer, and they all have approximately equally great displays to the layperson (myself included -- I can't tell an important difference between my M1 MacBook Air's screen and the one on the nicest MacBook Pro in the Apple Store).
Go into a non-Apple space though, where money is not "no object," and see how many people would choose a 16-17" 1920x1080 screen over a 13" MacBook Neo purely because of the big screen, nevermind that the Mac has roughly 4x the number of pixels. I guarantee you, it's more than you think.
My only point was that yes, the MacBook Neo wins on quality construction and aesthetics (but I'll argue NOT on durability since plastic laptops can take a lot more incidental bumps than Macs will), cool factor/perceived eliteness, and screen quality. I am sure there are plenty of people who care about those things, but I think most of those people are already buying a Mac today.
I suspect we'll actually see a modest cannibalization of those casual but cheap Mac users from the MacBook Air, since most people don't really understand how to evaluate RAM and storage size, but a lot of them will have a bad experience after filling the disk.
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.
>And I don't see why we should artificially exclude ARM PC laptops from the comparison.
As an ARM enthusiast who has tried a lot of WinARM, I think at this point I really struggle to believe MS has a single care in the world for improving quality of life for WinARM users. They sure do market it, and the laptops do work most of the time. I've just never had any other computers shit the bed when it comes to graphics drivers like a Qualcomm powered PC. Website with too many video/gifs playing? Screen whites out/all the video boxes go pink and explorer resets. Open up the gif search in Discord? Basically a coin flip chance its going to kill the graphics driver and reset explorer again. I had a Dell Inspiron with the Qualcomm 8CX Gen2 that could reliably be crashed just by quickly scrolling twitter on a video posting heavy day.
I would rather take a Mediatek powered Chromebook any other day until the Neo showed up and started to approach the sub $500 ARM chromebook price point.
That's sad to hear. I continue to hold out hope for more efficient ARM CPUs outside of the increasingly controlling Apple walled garden (and for those computers to be good).
I also am not a huge fan of the 256GB storage, but if someone doesn’t already know what ram is, they really won’t care and won’t notice much. I’m a tech guy. I bought an M1 air with 256GB storage and 8GB RAM. I was able to do development and mobile development fine. I never encountered RAM related slowdowns. I have an iCloud subscription because I don’t want to manage my own NAS. This is a heavier use case than what, say, a normal college student will do with it, and it worked just fine for me. This is by far the best laptop I have seen in this bracket. If I was just heading to college today, and I didn’t have the money for a Pro or Air, I would 100% get this far before a windows laptop.
Rather than just looking at Apple's motivations as to address ~new customers, I'd like to point out Mr. Gruber surprised himself:
> I am in no way arguing that the MacBook Neo is an iPad killer, but it’s a splendid iPad alternative for people like me, who don’t draw with a Pencil, do type with a keyboard, and just want a small, simple, highly portable and highly capable computer to use around the house.
My wife and I prefer iPads around the house as she is a pencil centric artist and loosely speaking I prefer touch to keyboards. But his framing points out Apple is expansively addressing broad market work/school/home computing needs/preferences and thus also brings up a question I think is under discussed...
What is Apple's user experience roadmap for Apple TV mass market home computing? And for home computing in general?
We are overdue for a leap up there, where Apple, as with the Neo, exploits their ability to profitably deliver higher end hardware which enables features at prices below any comparable competition.
I know folks are fond of pointing to Apple struggling to deliver Siri/AI advances but I view that like their Apple Maps fiasco: an ongoing priority roadmap that they will keep working at until it is better than good enough.
I believe Apple will soon accelerate the power ramp up in Apple TV both because they could now ~ Neo that device into very $/performance competitive vs game consoles but also because they likely predict an ever increasing demand for home compute by consumers.
Not just speech i/o and AI conversation but also active realtime cheap private application of compute, such as personalizing your sports game feed, for example:
a) continually show me where the ball is by [dynamic method]
b) rewind to when player X had the ball
c) freeze there and show me what might have happened if they had passed to Y
d) dress all the players in tutus
e) change to my cooking show but warp me back to this game if someone scores
f) etc etc etc.
Their 5+ year planning and commitment to the Apple Watch and Vision Pro show that they are ardent bettors on personal computing continuing to evolve very rapidly if they can concoct a profitable multi-year course from niche to ubiquitous. [not just for a product but for their synergistic products]
Remember they build elaborate fake homes as test centers, and not just to film product promos. I would be very surprised to learn their current 5 year outlook ignores robotics. Look around the edges of their public activities and imagine how what you notice might also fit together with something new but hidden.
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.
> 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.
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.
RK3399 6-core ARM v8, Mali-T864 GPU, 1.9lb aluminum body, 10" IPS multitouch display, USB-C, compact chicklet-style keyboard -- or since it's a 2-in-1, flip it around and use your own portable ergo/ortholinear. coreboot/libreboot support...
When it lasts 5 to 10 years. I’m still using my 2020 MacBook Pro, and figure I’ll get another half decade out of it. That’s <$200/year. The Neo could be a <$100/year laptop, which puts it in the same class as $200 shitbooks that crap out after two or three years.
Is that more rents are insane though, british perspective but 600 ~ £450, £450 is still around a third of an average rent, but I'd consider a budget laptop those in the £2-350 range. For the average user £400+ (so $500+) is decidely midrange purely on the virtue that its the middle of the range for general use laptops (being £150-1000 really, anything more than that and you're entering decent gaming/workstation specs).
Not really a comment on laptops, but I recently built a new desktop for the first time in nearly two decades. I'm sure that there has been some innovation in the space, but overall I was surprised that everything just seemed... the exact same?
PCI slots are from the 90s.
DIMM from the 90s.
SATA from the early 00s.
LGA sockets from the mid 00s.
I woke up to see my other comment downvoted by some rando, but I honestly think this is the best line in the entire article and Gruber's wish is telling (I quote the line only here, but it is best read in context of the original passage):
"I wish Apple would make a MacBook that’s akin to the iPhone Air — crazy thin and surprisingly performant."
What this reflects is all those comments and users, myself included, over the years saying "I would get an iPad if only it could run MacOS", and the ensuing discussion to the effect of why Apple won't do it, the chips are just as powerful, etc. A tablet Mac is a lot of people's (both casual and tech) holy grail in portable computing, justified/sensible or not in terms of technology and UI form factor. Gruber's wish is precisely the expression of this not unpopular sentiment. And also the Tahoe iPad OS features is a clue that Apple knows this.
The iPad has a touchscreen, supports Apple Pencil, etc. but the observation that the iPad has been Apple's "budget" computing platform for a while is spot on. It is interesting that they have reformulated it into a Mac laptop (and also that A-series iPhone chips offer M1-class performance.)
Fortunately/unfortunately for Apple, the M1 MacBook Air from 2020 is still a great laptop.
Imagine if future versions had a sim card slot for data-only connections. That would be killer - a main reason I've considered an iPad is for "ambient internet" wherever you go. Why has that phone feature not made its way to laptops?
I’m a bit confused about who this article is really for. The MacBook Neo starts at $600 so when I read:
“MacBook Neo is built on an iPhone chip—the A18 Pro. It’s far less capable of running intensive tasks than any of Apple’s M‑series chips or any moderately powered Intel or AMD processor.”
and that:
“It’s merely the right kind of performance for anybody who wants to browse the internet or stream video.”
...at this price point there are plenty of alternatives for laptops with better performance and specs.
For example, you can get a 15.6" Ryzen 7 5700U laptop with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD for less than the “unbeatable” price of the Neo:
Standard HDMI/USB‑C video out for external displays
So I can definitely see the appeal of the Neo for people who just want an inexpensive way into macOS, but the claim that “no other budget laptop can compete.” doesn't track.
Maybe it should have been "The least expensive Macbook yet, but that comes with significant downsides."
MKBHD said it best: If you're looking at the reviews of the product on tech youtube channels or tech news sites - it's not the laptop for you.
As for your comparisons: My aunt doesn't need a terabyte of storage or a Ryzen 7 5700U, she needs 15+ hours of battery life because the laptop is going to live next to her spot on the couch and she most likely can't remember to plug it in every night.
Also the first laptop is from a reputable brand called NIAKUN. They must have amazing customer service and unbeatable warranties, right? =) And they certainly will exist in 12 months when you go look for the brand on Amazon and won't be replaced by another random set of letters in all caps selling the exact same product?
The HP is on sale, it's MSRP is $699 and for some weird fucking reason has the numpad on it, making the whole keyboard wonky. Who wants that on a laptop?
And the final thing, as with all price-forward comparisons: build quality. We need an objective standard measurement for chassis and keyboard flex, the ability to open the lid with one finger, the amount of creaking and squeaking said laptop will do in normal use and how hot and loud it gets in your lap when doing light browsing.
Anyone doing accounts and data entry wants a numpad. My dad recently damaged his laptop keyboard. I gave him a spare usb keyboard, and he still went out and bought a new keyboard just for the numpad. There's a reason pc makers keep stuffing those lopsided monstrosities in there
Anyone doing data entry with a numpad will also want a proper one, not a squishy laptop one.
But they're clearly not the majority of the people - the rest of us have to live with a lopsided keyboard because a few people for some reason do data entry on a laptop keyboard.
Ah the classic NIAKUN, what we expect from brand name quality: awesome keyboard layout (love a number pad that smashes into the arrow keys), great resolution (1920x1080 so good for 2026!). I'm sure the speakers are state of the art for the form factor, gets amazing battery life (love me max 4-5 hrs on moderate usage), and of course can't forget the plastic body.
I'm sure a similar story can be said about the HP.
If you didn't detect the sarcasm, a laptop is much more than cpu, memory, and storage; it'd be short-sighted to only fixate on this trio. PC laptops compromise on pretty much everything and usually do everything poorly, including CPU (since apple silicon Macs are much better performance per watt).
Then there's the whole aspect of Apple support for both hardware AND software, something no PC vendor can provide.
I was about to say the same thing. How can people compare Apple to a NIAKUN throwaway laptop? I'm no Mac fanboy - I use Windows, Linux and Mac at home. I find MacOS somewhat annoying, but as a Internet browsing laptop, I'd much rather pay for the Mac Neo than "NIAKUN".
> ...at this price point there are plenty of alternatives for laptops with better performance and specs.
Laughable. Seriously, how long has it been since the M1 Air dropped? And we're still this clueless?
> For example, you can get a 15.6" Ryzen 7 5700U laptop with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD for less than the “unbeatable” price of the Neo:
Awesome spec dump. Now, what's the real life usage battery life of that laptop like? Oh? Yeah, thought so.
Nobody buys a list of specs, they buy a set of capabilities. And the Neo is capable of supporting normal usage for 12h+ on battery. Go ahead and link me some alternative laptops that can do that, with comparable performance of course — which is on par or better than the original M1 Air mind you.
Killer move by Apple, and I'm shocked there's still so much ignorance around.
Looked up more info on this laptop, my cursory thoughts:
plastic chassis: gross.
keyboard with a numberpad: yuck
no inverted-T for arrow keys: yuck
limited size trackpad, not to mention a PC trackpad: yuck
display looks good and is matte: nice
fans: gross
usb-c (charging) port is not the first port in the array: yuck
supplied charger brick: yuck, why not something a bit more modern
But at least it seems to have comparable battery life to the neo.
I don't care, it holds, it is not slippery (a huge problem with my current phone with metal body). What exactly is better with metal?
> keyboard with a numberpad: yuck
I would prefer one without, but that's just a matter of preference here. The layout is good. In fact, it's the keyboard that mostly makes me feel good whenever I use this laptop.
> inverted-T for arrow keys: yuck
In theory I agree, but for some reason that did not feel problematic on this particular keyboard.
> limited size trackpad
?
> not to mention a PC trackpad
To each their own
> fans: gross
Never heard them, not even sure they are there.
> usb-c (charging) port is not the first port in the array
Sounds like a minor issue
> supplied charger brick: yuck, why not something a bit more modern
I prefer "bricks" on the wire to "bricks" on the plug like Apple does because it does not take 10 slots on a power strip.
I would ask the opposite. For years now for most of my family even a Raspberry Pi 3B+ 3ould be enough. 95% of people use their machine to run a web browser, that easily ran on hardware that was old 20 years ago.
Well but that's the thing. It is priced like a phone for exactly the kind of person who would spend 600 bucks on a phone. I don't think this is a coincidence.
In terms of performance the raw compute people have in their pockets nowadays surpasses what they typically need by magnitudes for a while now. Granted: programmers and tech companies find new ways of wasting that compute on features that people ultimately do not need, so they may need that the compute so things feel snappy, but if I think about what my parents do on their devices you could easily enable them to do theirs tasks with far less. They are essentially doing the same as ca. 2006 with pictures and videos being higher fidelity & resolution and websites running hundred thousand lines of javascript being the main difference.
The thing with laptops in my experience is a) they last ~6 years (macs at any rate) so that's ~$100/year or 27c a day and b) people spend a lot of time on them, hours a day often. Is it really worth cutting back much on that when it's like 1/10th the cost of getting a cup of coffee?
I would take 8x worse specs for the computer to be built by Apple because it's guaranteed to be 2x faster and a 10x better user experience. Raw specs are meaningless.
> It’s far less capable of running intensive tasks than any of Apple’s M‑series chips or any moderately powered Intel or AMD processor.”
This is false. The A18 Pro has much better single core performance than the M1 and slightly better multi core performance. Most people would see no noticeable benefit to a faster CPU. Especially with a fanless design, the additional cores of a comparable M-series chip would give you better burst performance for some workloads, but possibly not much improvement in sustained performance.
> In extended single-core benchmarks, performance drops to the 3.7-to-3.5 GHz range within a minute or so, and they drop to the 2.9-to-3.2 GHz range after about five minutes. Both the M1 Air and the new M5 Air (4.46 GHz) are able to sustain their peak clock speeds indefinitely in single-core mode.
That's a fair point above sustained multicore, but this is probably the right tradeoff for this class of device. Few people are regularly maxing out all of their cores for more than a few minutes at a time, and the people who are doing that probably weren't going to buy Apple's budget $600 MacBook anyway. The increase in single core performance over the M1 is much more valuable to most users.
That's probably true, although once again it's the sustained _single core_ performance that suffers. Statements like "the A18 Pro has much better single core performance than the M1" without this context still aren't true.
The A18's sustained single core performance is about the same as the M1's and the "burst" performance is quite a bit better. So I'd say it clearly has better single core performance overall.
I wonder if the new displays with A19 processors have better heat dissipation. (and if they can be modified to run full iOS instead of the displayOS variant)
Your amazon links are broken. But I think you're missing the point of this thing. This isn't for people that really even care about performance. It's for people that want a laptop that works with their iPhone, does all the things their school needs them to do in a browser, and doesn't come with a complete dogsh*t OS, and isn't of dubious quality like an HP or a "NIAKUN", whatever that is.
>This isn't for people that really even care about performance. It's for people that want a laptop that works with their iPhone
That was my conclusion to my comment in my original. The title of "no other budget laptop can compete" is not just sensationalized, it is factually wrong. It should have been "the least expensive macbook yet comes with a catch"
"No other budget laptop can compete on offering MacOS" is certainly a correct statement, but it's not a particularly interesting one. If they're missing the point, it's because it was exaggerated to the point of not being recognizable.
And for their kids sick and tired of trying to help them fix Window's incompetence. You're into Dell for at least $800 for anything approaching an actually usable laptop. This is definitely my mom's next laptop.
The target customer for this wants a laptop that will live in a dedicated space and rarely/never travel, except to the couch. 15 inches is perfect for that.
Except for the bit that immediately killed it for us in the office: only one external display. Even if you close the lid.
I dream of the day I can kick windows into the next bin, but this is the one thing that the Neo fails hard on, all other compromises would've made this a great remote dev machine.
Any shitty dell can support two external displays with a docking station. And I truly mean it when I say that for a second the Neo got me excited to drop Dell.
That's interesting. In my country ThinkPad E14 16/512 is 37% more expensive and comes with garbage 60% srgb screen. It's actually more expensive than MacBook air M4 16/512.
It't true that the ThinkPad display kind of sucks. Though I can upgrade to a 2K OLED panel for additional 80 USD. That makes the E14 30 bucks more expensive than the Neo.
This is going to be against a lot of the comments and opinion posted on HN here.
The best selling Macbook in history, as percentage of total MacBook sold is the 11" $899 MacBook Air. That was when Apple learned people are willing to give up on performance and features just to get a Mac, or just to use OSX.
And despite the declining state of macOS, as Gruber said it is still zillions times better than Windows.
Apple Mac has always been more expensive than PC. But they are also better built. No Laptop has decent trackpad until M$ pull R&D into their surface book. PC Speaker was appalling until YouTuber start to state the obvious how MacBook speakers were better. But none of these matters, at the end of the day most consumer dont understand spec. They see that is the cheapest MacBook, it looks good and works, just like the MacBook Air 11", if they could afford to buy a $500 laptop, they will spend extra $100 on Apple. Even if the spec on paper is arguably worse.
And if we are really talking about spec and compare. If you even want some after sales services, you would at least have to look at Dell, HP or ASUS. And not some random Chinese brand.
These 1920 * 1080 15" screen is not a decent screen. Even ignoring P3 colour, you will have to find a screen with 200PPI+, let alone Apple do it with 220PPI.
If you want to use Amazon as comparison, they have been selling M4 MacBook Air at $200 discount sometimes $250 for most of the time. I have no idea why, but I would not be surprised the $699 model be selling at $599, same as EDU price. Then at this point the MacBook Neo is extremely competitively priced. You get better screen, faster CPU for less storage and less ram.
And let's fast forward a year. A Neo with A19 Pro as used in iPhone 17 Air and Pro with 12GB RAM, Double the SSD Speed. WiFI 7. Assuming that is true, I dont even see anything on the PC roadmap that is competitive, especially when they are all facing DRAM pricing pressure. ( Although I also think Apple will bump A19 Pro version by additional $100 )
Forgetting all that for a second, not a single review look into the actual Neo hardware. We will have to wait for iFixit for detail teardown. But is should be the easiest to fix Mac, and designed to be simple to manufacture as they said in the interview. The chassis is likely heavier due to this process but could see further refinement. The mechanical trackpad is work of genius, I am not sure if this is Apple only innovation or something that is on the market already. That trackpad alone is 150g, that is nearly one tenth of the weight of whole Neo.
The Neo is, as far as I am aware perhaps the first Apple product that was designed and engineered to be as practical and cost effective as possible. True to their words this isn't some cost reduction exercise using old design and components. This makes Neo the most boring Apple product on paper, but sometimes boring is good. And I agree with MKBHD, this is perhaps the most disruptive Apple product since the original iPhone.
There are roughly 1.5 - 2 billions Windows PC in use today. And Apple has at best 150 to 200M Mac user. So there is plenty of room to grow. I would be happy if they could double that in 5 years time.
I am really liking everything this New Apple is coming through so far. Molly Anderson as Industrial Engineer. John Ternus on Hardware Engineering. Not sure if Steve Lemay is great but my gut feeling is he would restore a lot of Apple HID.
The only thing missing is software ( And may be Services lead ). I know Craig Federighi is popular on HN and internet but I haven't liked a single software engineering direction since he took charge. Stop adding features and Resume driven development and start fixing bugs.
May be lastly, Tim Cook has never been any good at picking person. But all these new selection seems to be great. This cant be a coincidence. I am wondering if there are some additional changes in the background at Apple we dont see.
I have been giving Tim Cook's Apple plenty benefits of doubt but losing faith steadily for 10 years. This is the first time ever since Steve Jobs passed away I am excited to see changes in direction. The name Neo is just great. Truly something new.
Pretty much everything I expected from the Quick Look of it on Dave2D. Only surprises were the keyboard.
I dont think there has ever been a MacBook that has been designed with this level of practicality. I think we need to go back to Powerbook era and I dont think we have that either.
Would have been perfect if they come with A19 Pro 12GB DRAM and double the SSD speed next year.
I wonder if this will get RISC-V adoption on the roadmap of competitors. We had a thread in the last 24 hours over how slow as molasses it is, but honestly x86 isn’t the way to go. I like that the AMD x64 literature tries to push down on the legacy cruft but some of it is evident in the ISA which is harder to ignore, like default behaviours of registers and other things that are left over for backwards compat and as such everything around it suffers in a thousand broken windows sort of way.
nb I haven’t delved too deep into RISCV but I am under a general impression it did away with all this. My concern is the layers that are added will turn it into a CISCV over time.
Yes, compared to other Apples, which fall apart if you look at them funny.
The Apple Neo is only slightly better than an HP or Dell for the same price. But HP and Dell don't need to maintain a service center in every major city and shopping center. They make cheap devices that just work.
> 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.
My old x86 "PC" laptop with the $0 Debian certainly compares positively to Apple in terms of software quality.
As much as I like the form factor and price point of the MB Neo, I just can't accept a computer that needs to phone home when reinstalling the (one approved) OS.
Bought yet another second hand 11" MBA instead. Now looking at SMT soldering equipmemt for doing ipgrades and repairs.
While 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, it'll get 12GB of RAM, and it will need it.
And the other elephant in the room that John doesn't bring up is the fact that you can definitely find in-warranty MacBook Air options for ~$700 and they'll be much better buys.
You'll get more RAM, keep your Touch ID, better trackpad, better screen, better battery life, better speakers, better mics, I think even a better webcam? Maybe.
That reminds me: the small battery in the Neo means that high screen brightness or more than light usage will more quickly deplete it compared to other Mac systems.
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?
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.
> 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 had to switch was the storage. Sluggishness wasn't on the top 10 issues I had with that device.
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.
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 doesn’t suck, and display isn’t a 300nits POS unusable even in a bright room.
You want the same performance as a MacBook Air without one of these fatal flaws? You’ll hand to spend $1500+ anyway so you save nothing. Then the OS is full of ads and pre-installed garbage “gaming-optimization-tool” or driver tools taking up 99% of a single core while being riddled with security holes.
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 16 inch variants)
- Dell Premium (with 14 and 16 inch variants)
- Dell Pro Essential (with 14 and 15 inch variants)
- Dell Pro (with 14 and 16 inch variants)
- Dell Pro Plus (with 14 and 16 inch variants)
- Dell Pro Premium (with 14 and 16 inch variants)
- Dell Pro Max (with 14 and 16 inch variants)
- Dell Pro Max Plus (with 14, 16, and 18 inch variants)
- Dell Pro Max Premium (with 14 and 16 inch variants)
It's maddening trying to sift through the differences at this level. Then when you select a model, there can upwards of 8 different pre-built options to review.
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 operating on the modern web. Others… disagree. Either way, it might entice some schools and school districts assuming they can volume discounts where 8GB is probably enough and it fills the spot in the Walmart part of the sales channel previously occupied by an 8GB RAM M1 MacBook Air Apple hadn’t sold itself in years.
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 M1 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM. It’s a great computer, but even on days where I’m doing fuck all but using the web I can pressure that memory easily. I also have a tendency to never reboot until that becomes the fastest way to fix whatever performance bottlenecks I’m running into.
I’m not saying you can’t get away with 8GB of RAM. You can, but I won’t recommend a Mac with only 8GB of RAM to anybody for a few reasons: 1) even normal users just using the web will find RAM to be the bottleneck and that will degrade their user experience over time. 2) they’ll spend $600 and even if RAM isn’t as much of a bottleneck for them today, with modern web developers and modern web browsers, it will be much sooner rather than later. And everything is a web app now.
For $600 in 2026, your computer shouldn’t be a bad experience in any way nor should it last less than 7 years and still be a kickass experience. Ideally it should last longer. The Neo is great for what it is, but the RAM is the deal killer for me.
If you had 32G RAM it would use that too. It uses all it can. 8GB is fine. And will be for years.
macOS will pop up a window that says the system has run out of application memory, asking you to quit applications. I have a friend with, I believe a base M3 Air, who runs into this constantly with nothing but Firefox open.
(Been trying to get them to switch to Safari, but they prefer the Firefox name. I don't think there's anything wrong with Firefox other than it being less native.)
Does Safari use less RAM because it shares some parts with the rest of the OS? (e.g. in the same way Edge probably uses a bit less because half of its components are already idling on the OS)
You could say that. WebKit is in the dyld shared cache, so all of Safari's subprocesses share the same copy of it (and JavaScriptCore, etc.) in memory. But I would say it's more efficient because it integrates better with the platform's QoS primitives. I'm not sure what Firefox does in that regard, other than stuff from other platforms that don't have QoS (such as the throttling of JavaScript APIs like timers). Safari seems better at prioritizing the tabs you have open and backgrounding everything else, letting things go to swap, killing resource hogs, etc.
I have an M2 Air 24GB/1TB that has been such a beast that I haven't touched my 16" Pro in months. I have four browsers running, with a ton of tabs in Brave (daily driver) and I'm sitting at 21/24GB utilization with all sorts of apps running (granted, Docker is not at the moment, but it still doesn't make it sweat). I had ~8 pro laptops in a row going back to the late 2000s, but Apple Silicon has changed how I work. A future 14" OLED that was similarly light might turn my head, but if I had to replace it today I'd just buy another M5 Air with at least this much RAM. [FYI I never installed Chrome after M1 came out. Brave has been rock-solid for over a half-decade now.]
24GB is definitely solid. 16GB is like my minimum recommended for any kind of Mac, but if you can go for more you should go for more. I think 24GB should last a good long while though.
16GB, depending on your use, can be constraining and, sometimes, you need to get creative with complex processes. My colleagues complain about developing with several containers running peripheral services. In similar situations we asked the services teams to provide mocks that answered the same APIs without needing a large memory footprint.
> “1) even normal users just using the web will find RAM to be the bottleneck and that will degrade their user experience over time”
> “For $600 in 2026, your computer shouldn’t be a bad experience in any way”
In the article, Gruber normally uses a 64GB Mac, expected the 8GB RAM to be a problem and was surprised to find that it wasn’t, and judged the Neo as not being a bad experience in any way.
Gruber has also had it for a week at most by the time he published his review. It’s enough time to run some tests, not enough time to properly review what it will be like to actually live with it. I like the guy, but I also understand the limitations of how he reviews products.
8GB can be limiting on an iPad Pro, which runs a generally more memory efficient branch of Apple’s XNU-based system software and it’s not difficult to get it into a state where it is constantly paging out an app you had in front of you two minute ago if anything you’re doing involves the web at all. A Mac will just swap at that point, but swapping is also slow.
You could get away with 8GB 5 years ago and you still can do it now, but Macs are expected to last longer than that, and starting now with 8GB might become limiting 5 years from now. Here we retire them at about 10 years, or when the last OS they can run is EOL’ed.
Not to be devils's advocate here, but I'd suspect Apple is aiming for a smaller retirement window for this kind of product.
It's basically a Laptop engineered in the iPhone/iPad space of the company, it's only natural for Apple to target a shorter lifecycle.
8GB RAM is maybe the best way to achieve that, many of the MacBook Neo buyers of today will be very compelled to upgrade to a newer (or higher-tier) model in ~3 years from now...
If the Neo would have 16GB of RAM today, it would be harder to justify an upgrade in 3 years from now, when the common entry-tier for laptops is likely still at 16GB...
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Over the years since the M1 has launched I’ve cycled through Firefox, Safari, Arc, Zen, Orion and Vivaldi. For the past year my primary browser has been Orion on one M1 Mac, and Firefox has been the main on another M1 work machine for the past 5 years with frequent dips into Chrome on that one, but I don’t leave it sitting in the background when I’m done with it either.
What actually kicked off my browser exploration on the personal was dissatisfaction with Safari’s performance, and 20 tabs or less was enough to make it drag at the time even with disciplined use. I don’t think it had any significant advantages over a Chromium-based browser that particular year except probably battery life but battery life has not been an issue for me these entire 5 years. RAM and swap are something I do end up monitoring more each year (and I’m not in Tahoe yet for either of them), but I’m planning to drive these into the ground before replacing them.
Please don't link to LLM generated crap.
I particularly enjoyed (hated) "... is now the _least RAM browser_ ...".
Reminds me of a childhood friend of mine who always said "it looks very 3D" when he meant "the graphics are good". Pissed me off back then, and apparently still does.
Interesting! I think I have hundreds of tabs open right now.
Safari is the highest for 10 tabs but second-lowest for 20? This reads like AI slop, but even if it's not, it's definitely blogspam with no methodology.
in practice, I can have ~infinte tabs in Safari on my M1 MBP. I'll have multiple windows with hundreds of tabs open and I've never seen it stutter once.
It's actually enabling my worst tab-hoarding tendencies. In the Intel days I'd pay a performance price at some point and have to tend to my tabs, but now they just keep propagating....
Back in 2000 I got the M1 Air with 8G of RAM (needed the cheapest Mac to test some arm64 stuff) and that laptop served me very well. I never felt RAM-limited. I was always expecting to run out of memory during a big Bazel build or something, but never did.
It isn't the most powerful computer in the world but I never ran into any problems... so it's probably an OK compromise for most people, especially in the world where RAM is scarce because of AI datacenter buildouts.
The M1 Air would have blown people’s minds in 2000. 128MB of RAM was luxurious at the time for a laptop. In 2003 I borrowed and bought several sticks for a presentation (senior thesis on 3D presentation software), and got to 1GB in my desktop and felt like I’d broken some law of physics.
Shortly after I had a TiBook (PowerBook G4) that was _only_ 1-inch thick! Compared to 1.75” Dells my coworkers had, it seemed like the future. DVD drive, modem, Ethernet, full sized DVI port, FireWire, WiFi, Bluetooth, optical audio in and out, gigantic display with a bezel that was unrivaled for years, even among Macs. What a beast!
(I know you meant 2020, but it’s fun to think about the air in 2000).
In the year 2000, a M1 MacBook Air would have been the world's fastest supercomputer (or second fastest if you had the base model with the 7-core GPU).
https://top500.org/lists/top500/list/2000/06/
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-M1-GPU-Benchmarks-and-Sp...
Impressive, of course; but not quite that impressive.
Only true if all you're running is matmul (supercomputer has general purpose CPUs so more flexible than M1 GPU) - also those flops are probably FP64 in supercomputer ratings and FP32 in M1.
As a smart man I knew used to say, supercomputers are about I/O not raw compute. Those have terabytes of RAM not 8GB.
I do wonder, how fast is the RAM on a 2000 era supercomputer vs. the disk on a 2026 MacBook Pro?
Your question hits directly at latency vs. throughput distinction. Depends on which you mean by "fast."
Throughput-wise, the supercomputer is competitive because it has a lot of local RAM connected to lots of independent nodes, which, in aggregate, is comparable to modern laptop's RAM throughput (still much more than disk) with a caveat, that you can only leverage the supercomputer bandwidth if your workload is embarrassingly parallel running on all nodes[1]. Latency-wise, old RAM still beats NVMe by two or three orders of magnitude.
[1]: there's another advantage that supercomputer has which is lots more of local SRAM caches. If the workload is parallel and can benefit from cache locality, it blows away the modern microprocessor.
as someone who wasn't around for PowerPC mac times (I was alive but I didn't have internet and only knew apple for iPod and Apple II), did non artist people use FireWire for anything other than synchronizing their first generation iPods? Was it common to have a firewire external drive and were there any other devices that aren't cameras, film scanners or audio interfaces that utilized firewire?
There were FireWire HDDs too. Non-artist people also used FireWire for their DV camcorders for home videos. It wasn't really common because most PCs didn't have Firewire.
It was also used by the PS2 for local multiplayer between multiple consoles. Although Sony eventually removed that port.
thanks. I also just remembered that iSight webcams from apple used firewire, neat external design
I have a 2008 iMac with (I think) 16Gb of RAM which is used for just Firefox. I've been meaning to upgrade it to Linux but that generation didn't boot from USB, need to burn a CD.
All our intel MacBooks now run Linux just fine. The oldest is 2012, with 4Gb but most are 8 or 16Gb.
I would always recommend more RAM first over a faster processor; back when I would build desktop machines for Windows, I would use the second best CPU and put the savings into RAM.
You mean 2020, not 2000
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.)
Definitely brings our engineers' 24GB MBPs to their knees primarily b/c of the RAM chewed up by those multiple Docker instances.
Will 32GB also start looking paltry soon? It's hard to say. I want to say the realistic upper limit is 3-4 simultaneous worktrees for a given developer (at this point the developer becomes the bottleneck again?) but it's a wild guess that may be hilariously low.
Weird .. I easily run 40 docker containers on an 8GB MacBook just fine!
(Just posting this to show that you have to be very specific when talking about these kind of things. Yeah maybe you need 32GB because you run some large deployment 3 times. Others mayb be totally fine with less if they just develop a basic Python web app. Who knows. The devil is in the details. Omitting them makes the discussion ambiguous and just difficult.)
I have M2 Air with 8 and don't have problem either. Even runs WoW ok.
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.
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> 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
Mac devices have been able to get away with less RAM (and higher priced upgrades) for well over a decade. During the Intel era, they were the first ones to adopt SSDs as the default option while everyone else still installed spinning rust. That alone provides for way faster swap storage to conceal a relative "lack" of RAM.
And when they went for their own fully integrated stacks of soldered RAM and SSD? Then everything went off the rails - close proximity and no sockets means very low latency for both RAM and persistent storage on one side and on the other side it also allows for much higher bandwidth because of much cleaner signals - remember, even at "measly" hundreds of megahertz you're already in the territory requiring precise PCB design.
On top of that, macOS's scheduler seems to be much, much more efficient and outright better in constrained RAM (and CPU) settings to provide the feeling of "the system is still responding" than either Windows or Linux. The only setting where macOS goes into molasses is when you not just run out of RAM but of free disk space as well.
Large Java apps like Android Studio are not good at managing 8gb of RAM. Emulators are terrible as well. They don't play well with the swap feature.
I believe the Neo doesn't necessarily target Android Studio users as their primary segment.
If the phrase "Java app" is in your vocabulary this laptop probably isn't for you. This is for the first-time laptop buyer or the basic needs non-enthusiast user or for a child. And honestly, I think Apple might make a killing here. Basic laptop users want to do no research and they want it to just work, and accessible marketing is Apple's core competency.
Don't students learn java any more?
Yes but only comp sci ones do - and if you are doing that then you need more than a base computer.
Students in non STEM areas will not usually need more than writing and reading tools.
Depends on the course I think. But 8Gb is more than enough to run a Java 'Hello World' GUI app or even something heavier. Students don't - as a rule - get to deal with millions of lines codebases.
I don’t know if you’re serious but a Java Swing all that’s simple should not consume more than 8 Mb, let alone GB!
Just tried out a simple Java Swing popup and it uses 6Mb of heap so that's allright then ;). (on my machine it will reserve 160Mb of memory for thread stacks, code caches, buffers and GC but that won't be a problem unless you use it) In the 90s I also thought that was wasteful (my first PC had 32Mb). Nowadays with Electron apps taking up gigabytes it doesn't seem that bad anymore.
I don't doubt that 8GB is enough for most uses today. But is it closer to "more than enough" or "just barely enough"? Seems unlikely to be the former at a price point this low.
Five years from now, I have no doubt that the processor will still be fine for most uses, but I doubt that 8GB will be. Especially given that some of the most common memory hogs aren't under Apple's control (cough Chrome cough).
You don’t buy a $600 laptop to be useful in 5 years. And I’ll bet it will be more useful in 5 years than any 2031 $600 PC laptop.
A $600 laptop bought new should absolutely still be useful in 5 years. It should be useful longer than 5 years. That people’s standards are so low is a condemnation of the modern computer market.
I would, and have. I disagree that I shouldn't expect a new laptop to still be useful (not perfect, not great, just useful) after only five years.
If it's not even useful after such a short time, then I question whether it was really fit for the intended purpose even when it was new.
> "From all the reviews, those of us who are skeptical of 8GB of RAM are very much wrong"
Yes and no. I had a M1 MacBook Air for several years, with 8 GB. It's fine if your needs are relatively simple (ie: just a browser, with not too many tabs, and a few other simple apps). But try to run too many apps and it would tend to hit a wall and get very slow.
One thing that did seem to help a lot was to keep the SSD relatively empty: the SSD seems to get slower once it has < 30% or so free space remaining, which would slow the whole system down because memory swapping takes longer)
Last year I upgraded to an M4 Air and got 24GB, which makes a world of difference. But I gave the M1 to my niece and she seems very happy with it!
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.
> 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-devs use will likely be universal binaries, or adapted from iOS versions. Chrome, Safari, Slack, Calendar, Gmail, Zoom, Claude, Contacts, Notes, Maps, Music, Pages, Numbers, etc. These are apps that run concurrently with no issues on the iPhone Pro 16. I'm not sure why people expect those same apps would cause issues on materially the same hardware because its package includes a hardware keyboard.
(The most RAM you could purchase in an iPhone until late 2024 was 6GB. iPhone 11 had 4 GB of RAM. I have not at any point since approximately iPhone 6 heard anyone complain about the speed of an iPhone Pro for "normal" consumer/not professional media stuff. iPhone 6s was released in late 2015 and had 2GB of RAM.)
Yes, MacOS is a different OS than iOS. But the very same company who built the Neo also make MacOS. They are known to adapt the OS to the hardware they are shipping. I'm willing to bet the experience for the non-dev is similar to the experience of using an iPhone 16 Pro in 2026.
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.
> On iOS if an app remains in the background for over ~30 seconds, it gets killed.
Except 1) that's not entirely true (famously: music, Zoom) and 2) yes, cooperative state management. Users do not know or care that an app is not actually running if it appears that it is still running when they switch back to it. #2 obviously does not work for many dev use cases, but it would not impact my workflow if e.g. ChatGPT or Chrome were suspended when not in the foreground.
> 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.
I have 8GB of RAM in my M2 iPad Pro running iOS (yes, it’s “iOS” despite what Apple’s crack marketing team might call it), and I’ve certainly started to complain. Doing anything with the web, and like one or two other apps is enough to have apps I’m switching between page out like every two or three minutes.
Yes, I think they changed something in the new iOS; they are trying to get people to swap old devices.
I had issues with swapping before, but with the latest iOS, it has become very annoying on an old iPhone with a small amount of RAM (3GB, I think).
Apple fanboys laugh at Android users for many things, but they can use their devices longer even though they might not have the fastest CPU around (8GB+ has been normalized forever in Android world).
At this point the RAM only matters if you've got something that actually needs all that RAM continuously, likes games, virtual machines, or heavyweight user workflows like 4K video editing. For everything else, swap usage on Apple machines works so well that RAM might as well not exist.
> For everything else, swap usage on Apple machines works so well that RAM might as well not exist.
You and I disagree on this part so strenuously I don’t foresee a middle ground. Swap still absolutely sucks no matter how fast the SSD is, and the SSDs or probably the SSD controller are much slower than what’s in other Apple Silicon Macs.
Right, I mean even a fast SSD has an order of magnitude less throughput, and 2-3 orders of magnitude higher latency from RAM. No dispute there. If you are doing random access across 16GB of data and your machine only has 8GB of physical RAM, you're in the pain zone.
OTOH, if you are using multiple RAM-heavy apps that aren't actively hammering that RAM (e.g. an instance of Photoshop that is using 10GB but is just idling or whatever) then MacOS and their stupid fast SSDs handle that pretty seamlessly.
Most use cases are probably somewhere in the middle.
Browser use on the modern web is enough to put you in swap territory early and often on 8GB of RAM. My much more RAM efficient M2 iPad Pro with the non-desktop OS and 8GB of RAM frequently has to page out apps I had open two minutes ago if I’m doing anything with the web and like one or two other applications. This things eventual replacement in like 4 or 5 years is going to need twice or thrice the RAM for me to consider it an upgrade.
> Swap still absolutely sucks no matter how fast the SSD
People always forget that Apple does realtime compression on data that's in RAM allowing more things to fit in RAM; it also effectively increases the bandwidth of the SSD.
Windows 10+ and Linux also have memory compression, though I don't know how the implementations compare.
Although, I guess Windows 3.1 and 95 users enjoyed it first thanks to this extremely high quality third-party implementation!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftRAM
> Windows 10+ and Linux also have memory compression, though I don't know how the implementations compare.
A combination of Apple's Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) and hardware-accelerated instructions (SIMD/NEON) makes RAM compression on Macs very efficient. Because the storage controller is integrated into the SoC, the bandwidth is high enough that the transition between "Compressed RAM" and "Swap" is very smooth.
And because the CPU and GPU share the same memory, there are no wasted cycles moving data between VRAM and System RAM.
Apple uses WKDM (Wilson-Kaplan Direct Mapping), a specialized, high-speed compression algorithm designed specifically for in-memory data. WKDM is "architecturally aware"—it was built to compress the specific types of data structures found in a computer's RAM, such as pointers, integers, and memory addresses. WKDM treats RAM like a collection of 64-bit integers and pointers; and it's designed to fit entirely in L1/L2 cache [1]. This shipped in MacOS 10.9 Mavericks in 2013.
Windows/Linux treat RAM like a stream of bytes (similar to how you’d compress a .zip file) so it’s not as efficient. The vast majority of Windows and Linux machines don't have unified memory or storage controllers connected to their processors.
Because of this, Apple can often compress a page of memory using fewer CPU cycles than Windows or Linux, which is why M-series Macs can be so aggressive with compression without you ever noticing a "hitch" in the UI.
The fallback algorithm is their LZFSE algorithm, which is like "Zlib-level compression with 2x-3x the speed and efficiency". LZFSE achieves a nearly identical compression ratio but uses Finite State Entropy (FSE) coding, which allows it to decompress data significantly faster while using much less battery power.
LZFSE is optimized for the ARM NEON instruction set to minimize "wake time" for the CPU, making it arguably the more "green" choice for mobile devices [2].
It's safe to say that neither Windows nor Linux has the combination of hardware and software optimizations that Apple has when it comes to RAM compression.
[1]: Compressed Memory compresses the least recently used data residing in memory using the WKDM algorithm, which not only frees up memory but also reduces the amount of swapping going in the background. Not only is this faster than swapping to disk (even to SSDs), but Apple also claims it saves power -- essentially, that compressing data in memory uses less power than writing data to disk without compressing it. -- https://www.osnews.com/story/27121/os-x-109-mavericks/#:~:te...
[2]: https://lyncd.com/2015/09/lossless-compression-innovation/
LZ4 not LZFSE.
> Windows/Linux treat RAM like a stream of bytes (similar to how you’d compress a .zip file) so it’s not as efficient.
That doesn't really follow. There are faster and slower compression algorithms no matter what, and 64-bit integers are kind of a waste of memory much of the time.
Also, unified memory has tradeoffs. The GPU improvements are real but it mostly means more pressured on memory, not less.
Very cool, thanks for the detail. This leads me to wonder....why haven't Windows and Linux done any similar optimizations? I assume they do lots of hardware optimizations in all sorts of places, but this seems pretty core.
Nobody forgot anything, and I certainly didn’t. You can tell when you hit swap, and it doesn’t matter what Mac OS X is designed to do, when you hit swap, you hit swap. When you’re hitting swap a lot, you’re hitting swap a lot.
> You can tell when you hit swap, and it doesn’t matter what Mac OS X is designed to do, when you hit swap, you hit swap. When you’re hitting swap a lot, you’re hitting swap a lot.
I have a 16GB M1 Pro machine from 2021 with 200 GB/s memory bandwidth; I can't tell when it's hitting swap, even with tons of browser tabs open, 3 or 4 terminal sessions, and several apps running. I often run two browsers with dozens of tabs open and there's no noticeable lag.
YMMV.
On an my old Intel Mac, it was pretty obvious.
It is an old trick https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/RAM_Doubler
RAM Doubler was a third-party application in the days when a top-of-the-line Mac had 128MB of RAM, with a 40Mhz processor. The level 2 cache was 256 bytes.
That's not in the same universe as hardware compression on a 6-core, 64-bit ARM processor with cores that can run at 4GHz.
That is why it is an old trick
Sure, but there’s a difference between a hack and an intentional architectural decision.
> 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.
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 some features. Currently, the OS uses much of the available RAM for caching (I've seen "40%" of total OS RAM usage) to make the system faster, whereas 8 GB RAM permits only essential caching.
(Surely, the tough 8 GB RAM decision was influenced by the three factors 1. current DRAM cost and 2. limited DRAM availability considerations as of 2026, and 3. the massive Neo market size resulting from its attractive price tag, and this may get reconsidered in future editions.)
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 which requires 16GB of RAM on a Mac, then you are doing state of the art tech stuff and should be rolling in money already and have no problem spending thousands and thousands on your computer.
You can't load a 8.001GB dataset in R on an 8GB macBook!
Or using chrome to browse the internet
Laptops are a bit of a niche client for browsing the internet.
Have to intentionally install chrome to use it on this computer
>(Surely, the tough 8 GB RAM decision was influenced by the three factors 1. current DRAM cost and 2. limited DRAM availability considerations as of 2026, and 3. the massive Neo market size resulting from its attractive price tag, and this may get reconsidered in future editions.)
Actually it's because the A18 Pro only supports 8GB of RAM. It's packaged on top of the SoC itself using TSMC's InFO-PoP.
> Surely, the tough 8 GB RAM decision was influenced by the three factors 1. current DRAM cost and 2. limited DRAM availability considerations as of 2026, and 3. the massive Neo market size resulting from its attractive price tag, and this may get reconsidered in future editions.
I think it’s as simple as: 8GB is what the iPhones using the A18 Pro had. It’s this thing Apple likes to do where to keep costs down, they use some iPhone part or other SoC/SiP they have laying around as close to its standard configuration as possible with minimal changes.
Their new Studio Displays for example have an A19 Pro and 128GB of NAND. For basically just the firmware. Why? Because that’s the least amount of storage Apple ships with an A19 Pro iPhone, because like the previous Studio Display from 2022 which had an A13 Bionic in there, they probably just shoved an iPhone board in there to handle the logic and I/O.
So in theory, if they update the MacBook Neo next year to an A19 Pro, it should have 12GB of RAM.
8GB would be fine if not for a decade of terrible development practices creating bloated software.
Like freeways, it's not clear that increasing the baseline ram for basic laptops is an effective way to mitigate software bloat. Rather it likely creates bloat.
Induced demand.
I wish they would release a Pro version of the iPad Mini. Maybe the iPhone foldable will somewhat be this?
I think the big difference is that if you just want to optimize for some objective, it's usually very clear how to do that from Apple's options, so there's not much research to be done. It can still be challenging to choose what's the best value when it's your own money, but at least you know what you're getting, and the quality hasn't been a concern for years.
>> The number of overlapping iPad models and variants, for example, is getting kind of crazy these days.
One of the first things Steve Jobs immediately did after returning to Apple in 1997 was to kill most of Apple's product line-up, which had exploded in his absence.
Too bad he's not around to save them from the same over-segmentation anymore.
With respect, I think you're misremembering the product lineup in the 1994/5/6 era.
Back then, Apple had 16 to 32 distinct models[1] of just desktop computer (just the desktops!) with little to distinguish them. In many cases, the exact same internal hardware was shipped in two different boxes as two models aimed at two different customers (LC/Performa/Centris/Quadra/Workgroup Server). For example, the "LC 550" and "Performa 550" were the exact same computer[2] with two different names on the front, meant to be sold to the educational and home markets.
That's extremely confusing for the consumer. You had the same internal hardware being sold for two different price points, and computers with significantly different performance sold at the same price point. You don't want your customer to get analysis paralysis and give up before they purchase.
The point of Jobs's simplification is that there is one option for you to pick at a given price point in a given category of tablet/laptop/desktop, and that pricing and capability are clearly aligned. I don't see where Apple has gotten away from that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mac_models
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_LC_500_series
I think It makes sense for iPad line up to be this way. Very clear feature segmentation that make sense. Most is directly result of underlying hardware. For consumer it's also very easy:
- decide on size
- go from your budget
- if still too many SKUs go by features
What features? Thunderbolt, Screen, Apple Pencil, Face ID
Alternatively if you know what features you want, start with that.
If you're struggling to choose which iPad you need then you might want an iPad for the sake of having an iPad (in which case get Air).
Yeah, I don't think this lineup is particular crazy:
- 8.3", one tier (mini)
- 11", three tiers (iPad, Air, Pro)
- 13", two tiers (Air, Pro)
Could you spend the same amount of money on a regular 11" iPad with a lot of storage, or an iPad Air with less storage? Sure.
Some people want lots of storage. Other people don't care but want a wide gamut screen, faster processor, and better pen capabilities.
It's nothing like trying to pick a laptop from Dell where you have to spend hours digging around to even figure out what your options are. If someone asked me which iPad to buy we could figure it out in under 5 minutes.
Also it’s just one adjective per device. Compare that to the dell pro max premium
Hilariously when I looked that one up the Dell store page says
I think they have the model number wrong and corresponds to a 14” version, because further down the “order code” is bts101_ma16250_usxEven Dell can’t keep their computers straight.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/dell-pro-max-16...
Edit: confirmed, here is a different laptop listed with the same model number https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/dell-pro-max-14...
IMO it's telling that the lineup here is bucketized by screen size and not model. Screen size, processor performance, storage, sensors, etc are ambiguous concepts that don't mean much in their own merit. People don't really think "my priority is 8.3 inches"; people think in terms of use cases and cost.
For laptops the buckets are portability and performance. These two will always be at odds, and people will gladly prioritize one over the other; these are the ingredients you need for creating a model lineup. Each model prioritizes something different:
- Affordability, MacBook Neo
- Portability, MacBook Air
- Performance, MacBook Pro
There's people who will be carry this machine everywhere and will gladly sacrifice performance for portability. There's people who will gladly use a laptop as essentially a desktop they can occasionally move if it means maximum power. You even see this in the wider market; there's a clear category of laptops praised by their portability (ultrabooks), and another group praised by their power (gaming laptops).
I don't think there's an equivalent for tablets, since people don't really seem to need them for that much (lol). Apple has been focusing a lot on portability, but the market of people who carry their tablet everywhere isn't really that big, most people use them at home [1]. Digital nomads, students, PMs hopping around meetings: they're on laptops. Same with performance; people who need performance are on laptops.
The killer use-cases for tablets seem to be drawing and media consumption, but not only is drawing not a huge market, these two aren't at odds. Both are better with a better, bigger screen. A single dimension for improvement doesn't give you the ingredients for creating a model lineup, it gives you the ingredients for a price ladder where more money just gets you a bigger, better screen.
I think the iPad's lineup could be simplified to just one model, but I understand Apple want's to have several for marketing and price-ladder delineation, like it does with the iPhone. In that case, I think like the iPhone, the iPad could do with less overlap:
- 8.3", $ (iPad mini, affordable)
- 11", $$ (iPad, standard)
- 13", $$$ (iPad Pro, better in pretty much every way)
And keep the iPad Air in the same space as the iPhone Air, a novelty luxurious product that isn't the fastest nor the most affordable, but showcases premium hardware and what the future could look like.
I think Apple doesn't do this because it hopes to discover what people want through the grid of different screen size, thinness, performance, etc permutations that currently exist, but oh well.
[1]: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...
> People don't really think "my priority is 8.3 inches"
Disagree, at least coming from a current iPad owner. I’m on an 8 year old 12.9” iPad Pro and if I bought a new iPad today it would be 11” because that’s the size I’d rather have at this point.
So hypothetically it’s between the Regular, Air, and Pro, and I would get the Air because I want the better screen and stylus compatibility but wouldn’t spend $1000 for it.
> People don't really think "my priority is 8.3 inches"
I have 12.9" iPad Pro, my priority was thunderbolt and screen size, but mainly screen size (battery life is given on Apple devices).
I also have iPad Mini where my priority was...bigger than the biggest iPhone, smaller than regular iPad.
> The killer use-cases for tablets seem to be drawing and media consumption, but not only is drawing not a huge market, these two aren't at odds. Both are better with a better, bigger screen.
It's like all-season tires, does not exceed in any particular field. I use my iPad for casual CAD with 3d printing in mind, it works great. I also use it as a bedroom screen on stand by the bed. Can two separate devices do a better job? Yes, but I don't need
> For laptops the buckets are portability and performance.
iPads not bucketed like this because you're not buying iPad for performance.
> I think the iPad's lineup could be simplified to just one model, but I understand Apple want's to have several for marketing and price-ladder delineation, like it does with the iPhone
Sure they can. This would lead to less overall sales. Right now 11" buyer have whole 3 feature set selections to choose from. I'd get rid of Pro, but not everyone needs 11" and Air features.
> 8.3", $ (iPad mini, affordable) > 11", $$ (iPad, standard)
iPad mini ($499) is more expensive than base iPad ($349) [1][2]
[1] iPad mini → https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-ipad/ipad-mini [2] iPad → https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-ipad/ipad
They're suggesting a hypothetical lineup would be cleaner if that weren't the case.
I don't disagree, but Apple seems to treat the Mini as an afterthought side project that gets updated every 3 years or so, compared to the mainline iPad being updated yearly from 2017 to 2022. Then it had a gap until 2025, apparently taking a while to get the slim bezel redesign down to the affordable model.
If the mini were the default affordable entry point they'd need to keep it up to date but they've decided not enough people want a mini for it to be worth that effort.
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.
The goal is different. Jobs wanted to make the product spread simple to understand.
Apple's current method is a pricing ladder, make it simple to spend $200+ more than you planned.
MacBook Neo, $599. Great but maybe I want Touch ID & more storage, ok $699. Well at this point now it's "only" $300 to get the air which is much better. Well, now that you're already spending $1000, might as well just do the extra $500 and get the pro..."
Every product lineup is designed that way. It gets you thinking "eh, what's an extra $200" and slowly moves you up until you land at the highest tier.
Now that everything is using the same silicon, it costs Apple very little to maintain all these variants (that are mostly binning), so there's little reason not to.
I think you are completely misremembering what the Apple product lineup looked like even with the Steve Jobs cleanup. At its absolute simplest, it contained the iMac, iBook, PowerMac and PowerBook lines. Within each line was a "Good", "Better" and "Best" pre-configured model each being a few hundred different from the other and each of those models was further configurable to add additional storage / memory etc.
That level of simplicity lasted from approximately 1999 to 2002 when the 14 inch iBooks, the 17 inch iMacs and the eMacs were introduced, followed by the 12 and 17 inch powerbooks in 2003. By 2005 they had also introduced the Mac Mini. And again most of these had a "good", "better", "best" variant, though in some cases (like the first 17 inch iMacs, the "best" tier was also the next model variant).
Apple's lineup is undeniably more complicated now than it has been in the past, but the simplification was never really about cutting model types down, so much as it was about making distinct model categories that people could easily understand why they would pick one or the other.
I think they still do a relatively good job at retaining that distinction, and I agree that the iPad lineup is probably the most muddled. Though special mention goes to the "Macbook Pro with M4 Pro" branding, which anyone should have caught and thought that maybe they needed a better moniker than "Pro" for the processor variant (and of course also, is the "Pro", the "Max" or the "Ultra" the best?)
That level of simplicity lasted from approximately 1999 to 2002
Don’t forget the G4 Cube (most people do ;) which was also around at this time for reasons that are mostly unclear (looks cool though)
> Now that everything is using the same silicon, it costs Apple very little to maintain all these variants (that are mostly binning), so there's little reason not to.
Don't underestimate how much of a bitch it is to maintain all the separate SKUs. This isn't the old CTO days where you had: 1 chassis, N mainboards for different CPU/GPU combinations, a bunch of SODIMM's of varying capacities, and a couple of different fixed storage drives to toss in.
When any given MBP has 2 CPU/GPU options, multiple memory options, and multiple storage options, with everything being soldered to the board? Honestly, the Neo is the one product in their portable lineup that doesn't cause a massive headache for logistics.
But...even then, Tim Cook is CEO still, and he is a supply chain guy, so you better believe this is top of his list when it comes to their product lineup. You don't increase operational complexity for no reason, because that is where the cost for every product lies for them, it's not just dealing with silicon binning.
> But...even then, Tim Cook is CEO still, and he is a supply chain guy, so you better believe this is top of his list when it comes to their product lineup. You don't increase operational complexity for no reason, because that is where the cost for every product lies for them, it's not just dealing with silicon binning.
Sure... but when looking at sales numbers, HP and Apple are tied by monthly sales volume on Amazon [1], with everyone else being widely behind them. But HP has almost 300 models, Apple much, much less - and Apple can react much, much faster because they almost directly run the production sites and mostly sell themselves, so they can produce an initial run of products and whenever a store or a region runs out of one specific variant, they just tell Foxconn to, say, instead of making a run with black casings they now make a day worth of gray casings, ship that onto a plane and that's it. HP, Dell et al? Their inventory gets distributed by an intricate web of middlemen who all need buffer.
[1] https://laptopmedia.com/highlights/august-2025-best-selling-...
Those kind of pricing ladders are "fine" because at no point do you have to really make a decision. The problem is when it splits and you have a tree where what branch you go down precludes you from options on the other branch you might want.
> MacBook Neo, $599. Great but maybe I want Touch ID & more storage, ok $699. Well at this point now it's "only" $300 to get the air which is much better.
Yes
>Well, now that you're already spending $1000, might as well just do the extra $500 and get the pro..."
Disagree. The Air offers additional utility and longevity for the price, the Pro offers nothing that 90% of people will ever perceive.
I know a ton of people for whom the $500 would be nothing, but still get an Air rather than a Pro. Obviously, that’s not great data, but I feel like the jump from Air to Pro just doesn’t happen or won’t happen compared to jumps from Neo to Air.
You keep saying $200 extra - I don’t think you know what that means.
[dead]
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.
> 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://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/
* https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/?modelList=ipad-pro-11-m5...
The "mini" is a bit of a 'wild card', but otherwise it's very close to the usual good/better/best trope (plain-iPad/Air/Pro).
Laptops also now fall into the trope of good/better/best with Neo/Air/Pro.
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.
> Do I want an iPad Air or Pro? Both seem pretty thin. What am I not getting with the Air?
Horsepower (M5 vs M4), display ("XDR brightness: 1000 nits max full screen, 1600 nits peak (HDR content only"; "ProMotion technology"), option for more storage (2TB).
Hence the two questions I put forward:
* horsepower and storage (A16/M4/M5; ≥1T)
* display
> Laptops also now fall into the trope of good/better/best with Neo/Air/Pro.
...until the bestest Ultra launches, as GP pointed out?
(Also Air used to be 'the light one', not the standard/middling one on same spectrum.)
We could say a similar thing with the Dell names above, the point is that it's confusing to work out which you need/want when there's so many, not that they don't fall in some sort of order across a line from mediocre to best.
This is basically the performance of M1 with 8GB ram (with shittier USB/connectivity). I've seen developers who used the 8GB air a few years ago on a project. It would't work for me (even the 24GB air I have is swapping), but I can see this working for students without any problems.
Buying this for a kid would be a no-brainer for me - especially if it was on a discount (and it's not uncommon for Apple stuff to get 10-20% discount drops at retailers). Even the USB 3.0 is enough to power an audio interface - should be good enough to run some basic DAW, a MIDI keyboard, electronic drums etc. Will probably pick it up for my son at some point to motivate him to learn to type.
Apple stopped numbering iPads with their generation so it's pretty messy compared to iPhones. I recently spent some time to decode their entire line-up (all models ever released) and made this comparison table which might clear things up a bit: https://comparisontabl.es/ipads/
It is giving me choice paralysis, last week I made a mental graph of the ones I wanted and went over all node pairs choose 2, now it's down to waiting for a fall M5 Mac mini paired with either: a MacBook Neo, or an iPad Air 13"; both options are very attractive for my intended usage though the latter seems higher risk since I've never used a 13 inch tablet before.
The iPad gives you touch interaction, hand-held operation, a higher quality (albeit smaller) display, and a more resilient operating system (albeit managed).
The Neo gives you a real keyboard, a bigger screen, and unified UX/software support with your desktop computer.
But are you sure you need two devices? Why not just get a MacBook Air (with the same spec as your proposed Mac mini) along with a USB-C dock accessory to connect charging/keyboard/mouse/video with a single cable? Also don't underestimate the value of having a battery in your "desktop" computer. It's a free UPS.
Isn’t the Neo 13” as well? Also the iPad is usually closer to your eyes in use, so is effectively larger in terms of visual field.
Especially with things like: will my pencil work with this iPad.
I never understood why they didn't use the Apple "UI". Where Apple presents fewer models (say N models), and when you select one, each is configurable for screen size/RAM/CPU/whatever (say K picks), yielding N*K possibilities, many Windows laptop sellers present a list of N*K SKUs where you need to triple check what the difference between SKU A and B.
My guess is that some cell in an excel sheet says that some customers bought certain models in the past and no manager at Dell has enough weight or enough courage to question that and rule to NOT release a certain model.
They do. That's just the different base models. You can customize each one.
Personally I would not cluster 2/3rds of my product line under the single moniker of "dell pro"
They're meant to replace vostro/latitude/precision - enterprise machines. I suspect that Dell expectes shoppers to either look at enterprise or consumer, not both.
Every time I've considered an alternative to my Mac laptop I'm confronted by this much choice (and that of other manufacturers) and I also have to deal with unknown and varying performance of keyboard, display and trackpad.
One thing PC manufacturers seem to prioritise and focus on is tech specs + performance and interface is tacked on (or at least the interface designers departments in their companies aren't leading the design), when by and large most consumers of their machines focus on the interface and whether the CPU is of a certain level is likely secondary to the experience.
Anyway, I keep on going back to apple every 7 years (as that's how long they typically last) simply because I can't handle the choice or the uncertainty, but I'd love to bust out and get a linux using machine next.
The choice is really simple: it's a Thinkpad series T, with an AMD APU, the most powerful configuration you can afford :)
I used a work provided thinkpad in 2000 and I really liked it at the time. And I've been dabbling with linux every since then. But only switched my main desktop OS to linux last year (from Windows 11). So my last upgrade cycle linux wasn't really on the cards (for me).
The one thing that makes it harder for me to go the way of the think pad is the lack of models on display anywhere in Australia. For a 7 year commitment I really don't want any uncertainty about the feel of the machine. Lenovo do have plenty of ideapads available at retail and some thinkpads, but not the higher tier.
Intel is fine too, for some uses.
Why AMD?
Because AMD had the better chips for the majority of the last decade. Intel has only recently caught up.
But they have caught up and so hence my question.
I guess because Panther lake ThinkPads won't ship until April, but definitely something to watch out for.
They do look sweet. I'll wait for the hands-on reviews.
> Dell Pro Max Premium
> Dell Pro Essential
At least they have a sense of humour
Pro... Essential?! If the sold hotel rooms they'd offer a Deluxe Economy ??
To be fair, the English language is the real victim here.
While “essential” cleanly maps to “can’t go without” - it doesn’t map to “bare minimum”.
For instance, let’s assume you’re surviving in the wilderness and you need to start a fire. Your fire starting kit is obviously essential, but it could also be included in a “Camper Value Pack” - but those things don’t have anything to do with each other. The kit is essential, and it was obtained in a value pack. This message brought to you by Mr. Obvious.
Hotel branding might be worse. Marriott has 30+ brands, each supposedly with its own identity but I can’t really see how having that many makes sense. Should I stay at the Fairfield or the AC or the Four Points or the Aloft or the Moxy or the CitizenM … how about just the Marriott?
Pro Essential is what the people in the cubes get. Pro Max Premium is what the people in the bigger cubes get.
It looks like a rebrand and further segmentation of the Latitude/Precision segmentation.
As against the Economy Deluxe.
I had a series of two XPS laptops in my last corporate job, finishing two years ago. My uncle has also had one of them that passed on to me when he died.
I can't speak for the other series you mention, but the XPS series is complete garbage and should be avoided at all costs. Three for three laptops, all in theory well specced, that were all horribly flawed in various ways (WiFi flakiness, constant driver issues, crappy trackpads, mediocre keyboards), does not speak well of that model line.
That Dell Pro Max Plus (that I legit thought might be a joke) is a big horkin laptop for ~$6k+. 3cm thick, nearly 3kg, and you can do wireframes on it, wow! A full HD screen with 500 nits brightness. What a piece of shit product comparatively speaking. I imagine someone would buy it for a niche specific engineering purpose that can only be practical on Intel Windows, but damn.
I really don't think it would fair better than a less costly M4/M5 Pro, and would probably be just an awful experience to use daily.
I use the non-Plus version as my work machine (not by choice).
It's massive and heavy and feels less snappy than my personal X1 Nano after all the corporate malware uses up most of the CPU and RAM.
The screen resolution is also shockingly bad (my 13 inch X1 Nano has a higher res than this 16 inch beast).
That being said, it's nice having 64gb of RAM, a fast CPU and an Nvidia card (we build stuff that runs on CUDA). Build times are quick and I can run some of our more demanding test suites without RAM filling up and slowing everything down.
> That being said, it's nice having 64gb of RAM, a fast CPU and an Nvidia card (we build stuff that runs on CUDA). Build times are quick and I can run some of our more demanding test suites without RAM filling up and slowing everything down.
No question there, more RAM and a specifically CUDA capable card make sense. At a big corp gig I did years ago, they issued me this atrocious HP thing they must have bought in bulk. I really tried to be optimistic, since it was just a tool and I was otherwise grateful for the work, and I'm sure the ram and CPU situation was fine, but for my use it only actively detracted from my ability to get things done. It pretty much had to be docked at all times, the screen had one viewing angle, Windows was functionally detrimental for my workflow (frontend web at that time), and the battery life was just sad.
ThinkPads have always seemed a bit better, even their more chonkier versions.
Yes, it will also have 5 mins of battery life when unplugged and have a power adapter the size of a shoe box. I tried a similar machine from Lenovo at work and quickly returned it.
My laptop is always either plugged into a dock at work, or plugged into a dock or just a power supply at home. I feel like there's an untapped market for 'same laptop, but slightly cheaper because there's no battery in it at all'.
Like you say most windows laptops have such garbage battery life already that it's not practical to use them unplugged.
> 'same laptop, but slightly cheaper because there's no battery in it at all'
So, a simple computer? You can even choose your keyboard, mouse and screens.
Not the same - I still want to be able to just use and carry round the one thing without needing a monitor, mouse, keyboard etc at every single location, but I basically never need to use it somewhere where there isn't a wall socket available.
When I bought a Thinkpad a few months ago there was an option to order it with a smaller battery (which I selected).
It seems ridiculous on the surface, since you'd think you'd just buy a desktop or something, but with a laptop with no battery, and hypothetically better everything else, it would eliminate the need for a bunch of other peripherals
Ah but then you'd need to hard shut down to carry it home. The battery should keep the ram active to commute while sleeping
Kind of an interesting idea. Only the portability but none of the mobile computing capability.
It does kind of seem like, outside a few select models, the PC market just gets the laptop part of laptops so so wrong. Bad touchpads, bad screens, no battery life, unpleasant industrial design usually, crammed with crapware and other bullshit. I hand it to the few companies that do try harder to remedy these.
Eh, I want some battery, it's nice when you need to move rooms or someone kicks the power cable out. Even 15 minutes would be enough for a chonkster machine like this.
I wonder if a big capacitor would be cheaper than a battery, probably not with how huge in scale battery production is at this point.
The early hybrid car of computers
The thing is, I think there's probably a niche for a workstation laptop like that, but this doesn't really check the right boxes.
For all that extra bulk it ought to be extremely robust and repairable, have the best specs possible, and be equipped with the kind of killer cooling system that a thin chassis can't deliver. Then the tradeoffs might make sense.
FWIW, it's a little better on the thinkpad side, even today: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:Models
If they want dell, though, they want dell. I'd say give them a budget and have them send you a SKU that fits :P
Reading that felt like an SNL sketch from the 90s
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.
My first laptop was xps 13 released in 2016, I think. I am still using it with linux installed. It’s a solid laptop. Good display, good port selection, good keyboard, even trackpad is not bad. It survived my long graduate degrees and survived covid when I was using it full time (mostly ssh though). I swapped the battery two times and battery life is not bad with minimal linux setup. What’s surprising the most to me is that it was just 900 usd.
at our company we just pick the most current X1 13in Thinkpad 32/1000 for the windows preferrers.
The best part is how they don't have medium range laptops with 17-18 inch screens even though MANY offices where people work with spreadsheets use laptops...
The last time (2005) I was faced with this issue and had to buy a Dell laptop. There were also Windows license issues to consider. I was going to be doing unattended installations and the Windows licensing required the original purchase be a particular SKU or I would need to buy second Windows licenses to install over a network.
Which is a whole other set of frustrations.
This naming is great compared to their traditional naming. I immediately know that I need a pro max premium if I want the one that compiles stuff fast and is heavy and has the fans running full speed all the time and only technically works unplugged, like my current Dell work laptop (guessing).
Note that this is the new simplified lineup that they "cleaned up" a year or so ago
I had the same experience looking at thinkpads a few years ago. I finally just gave up and bought a macbook.
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.
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.
That's absolutely insane.
The Dell part or the windows preference part?
Both :)
Pro, Plus, Max - that's a nice blend of Apple names too.
They forgot to add Dell Pro Max Premium Plus to complete the word salad, what a missed opportunity.
If the Dell product naming team is reading here I have a couple marketing buzzword suggestions: add “elite”, “ultra”, “platinum” or “diamond” to the mix please. Doesn’t “Dell Pro Max Elite Platinum Premium Plus” sound so much more marketable?
At this point, I've got no idea which one to buy. They should provide a configurator and be done with it.
I want this much RAM. this CPU. this GPU. this touch screen. this size. What options? None? what if I remove touch? ok good there's 3. and so on.
All that Pro Plus Premium nonsense is just too much marketing gibberish.
And thats just this year's model.
It's last year's. I read a few weeks ago that they ditched the "Pro Premium" madness naming scheme and they're back to just XPS <size>.
They haven't retired or replaced most of the models under the old naming scheme, and in many cases they're still manufacturing those models.
> Pro Max Premium
lol
It's kind of hilarious that they copied the Apple model of arbitrary superlative suffixes without realizing that each should signify some specific and obvious model option(s).
Then the OS is full of ads and pre-installed garbage “gaming-optimization-tool” or driver tools taking up 99% of a single core while being riddled with security holes.
But inevitably, some chucklehead comes along "wut? I can get <proceeds to type spec sheet> for half that! Have fun paying the apple tax, lol." Someone posted that on Ars yesterday, with a random Amazon link from Naikan, your name for quality computing. Or rather, "Naikan, your name for a quality trackpad, screen, and high-quality ABS case! Be sure to check out the $12,000 of 'bonus' software add-ons, no extra charge!". It's amazing someone can post that without the slightest hint of self-awareness.
The first thing I do with any new system is immediately wipe the drive and install a fresh copy of Windows/Linux, so bundled shovelware is meaningless to me, and presumably many others.
(Of course it would be even better if they just came with a totally stock install already, but that's not worth hundreds of dollars to me)
That’s an added windows license though?
Windows license stored inside BIOS. When you install fresh Windows, it'll get activated automatically.
What's more troublesome is that some laptops require drivers and customizations, so you need to tinker with your fresh Windows by installing carefully selected subset of drivers, so your hardware works and at the same time you don't install the same shovelware. The driver situation for Windows is truly dire. There are drivers from laptop manufacturer (e.g. Lenovo). There are drivers from part manufacturer (e.g. Nvidia). There are drivers that Windows was bundled with. There are drivers that Windows will download automatically and install as part of Windows Update. It's a huge mess and I don't think anybody knows how to navigate that. So there's no reliable recipe to create "stable" Windows from the scratch.
> When you install fresh Windows, it'll get activated automatically.
Same happens with some crapware provided by vendor. You can wipe drive all you want, but ASUS motherboard will ask Windows to automatically install "essential drivers", and to be specific - "Armoury Crate".
You can (partially) blame Microsoft for that. I still don't understand why it's seemingly OK for device manufacturers to distribute such crapware through Windows update. New keyboard? Oops, spyware. Printer on your LAN? Here, let me install these 16 utilities for you. Just give me a driver without any GUI tools. Or at the very least prompt me before installation.
Thanks, neat, I had no idea. That’s a nice system.
With Lenovo thinkpad, windows downloads all the needed drivers and even bios updates.
My T14 Gen1 (We are at gen7 now I think?) still gets updates. It's pretty neat.
You can extract the key and write it down. It's a 2-minute job.
I can imagine doing that for Linux ... but why tech people battle Windows at this point is beyond me.
My daily driver is a very basic Linux experience. From my perspective, both PCs and Apple computers come with bundled software that I don’t want. It’s hardly as awful as the experience you describe but, even so, with Apple it’s the OS so it’s even harder to drop.
I feel quite self conscious saying this. It feels like whataboutism, as well as being potentially contrarian — 100% of my colleagues use and love macOS — but I fell in love with being able to read and edit the source code for my whole computer, and I don’t ever want to relinquish that freedom.
> It's amazing someone can post that without the slightest hint of self-awareness.
It's amazing that people attribute it to lacking self-awareness. You can spend $400 on a laptop and have a perfectly fine experience. There are damn good Chromebooks in the $200-300 territory that I can genuinely recommend to people. If you just need to do your taxes or answer a Zoom call, why would you get a Macbook Neo?
macOS itself has been declining in quality since at least Mojave; people don't rave about it anymore. The Macbook Neo will 100% continue the trend of people showing up at Best Buy and comparing the Lenovo machine to the Mac that costs 3x as much. This will not sway the average Joe any more than the Macbook Air did. It's not even seriously competing with the iPad price bracket that might tempt students.
> You can spend $400 on a laptop and have a perfectly fine experience.
Or you could spend $200 more (or $100 more with edu pricing) and get a MacBook Neo which has significantly higher build quality, a much better screen, a great trackpad, and amazing performance.
Seeing how college students throw laptops in backpacks, that extra $100 (edu pricing) could very easily save them money in the long run.
> There are damn good Chromebooks in the $200-300 territory
Every once in a while I go looking for a Chromebook-level laptop for some extra purpose and I am never impressed by anything. The current selection is all ancient processors, bad screens, creaky build quality. If you must stick to a strict budget then these can work, but I wouldn't call them good.
First impressions can be a very poor judge of build quality. If you pick up a mil-spec laptop it'll feel a lot more like the $200 Chromebook. Yet it'll survive endurance tests that neither the Chromebook nor the Macbook will.
That 'build quality' is a more complicated thing than many Apple fans believe. My good ol' Thinkpad is a bit creaky and frankly was so from the day 1, also it survived years of travels, lots of risky falls, and sticky spills. So I suppose its build quality is high. Also I upgraded its hardware pretty significantly twice. Somehow 'build quality' in Mac-land implies it's a taboo.
TIL Apple fans actually believe MacBook has 'higher build quality.'
?
>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 without.
>macOS itself has been declining in quality since at least Mojave; people don't rave about it anymore.
Maybe because computing devices overall are just so good. The gains are to be had in services that are part of the Apple ecosystem, not the OS alone (for the most part).
>The Macbook Neo will 100% continue the trend of people showing up at Best Buy and comparing the Lenovo machine to the Mac that costs 3x as much. This will not sway the average Joe any more than the Macbook Air did. It's not even seriously competing with the iPad price bracket that might tempt students.
In the 2000s, Apple has not cared about competing at Best Buy. That isn't their customer. If anything though, the Neo is more of a foray into that wider market. Anyone with kids lugging home a crappy school-issued Chromebook though took one look at this device and knew this is a device Apple can position into schools -- a market they once dominated and lost. There are lots of markets where this will be a great device, where the customer wants a Mac and not "just" an iPad. In those cases, it isn't the end consumer buying this device, it's an IT manager - who can likely be tempted by that Mac ecosystem and a better grade of device relative to competition.
> Maybe not to you, but to many people Apple signals luxury. It signals trust.
In some countries Apple is (or was) a status symbol of luxury, but I haven't observed that much in the United States. Macs and iPhones are both mainstream and affordable. AirPods can be bought for $100 on sale. These are commodity items now, not symbols of luxury.
Now, most people go to Apple because they see it as a premium option, not a status symbol or luxury. If you get AirPods or an iPhone you know what you're getting. If you buy those $50 wireless earbuds on Amazon your expectations are lower.
>These are commodity items now, not symbols of luxury.
Maybe I should have used the word "premium" rather than luxury.
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 thing, without looking at usability details like battery life is an oversimplification.
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.
Apple's support is top in the industry. And it's not even that great, it's but everyone else's support is just that bad.
Easily worth the extra money alone.
That's interesting because I have the opposite experience. An Android phone or Lenovo laptop I can bring to the street shop and get a 50-200usd repair that would cost upwards of 600 at Apple or just making me get a new device.
I've found that many repair shops acknowledge the existence of two smartphone brands: Apple and Samsung. Bring anything else in and the most you get is a puzzled look.
Apple has the distinction of the iPhone being what everybody thinks of when they hear the word "smartphone". Everybody is familiar with it. That little xylophone jingle that serves as the iPhone's default ringtone plays in every detective show my wife watches on streaming, and everybody knows instantly what it means. That sort of ubiquity has network effects that you're not going to get with a Motorola, Sony Xperia, or even a Pixel. I've had to turn to Aliexpress to score a decent protective cover for my Pixel.
Just the guarantee of being able to walk into a physical location and talk to a real person and have their full attention for a while when something goes wrong is worth all the other bullshit.
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You can spend $400 on a laptop and have a perfectly fine experience.
Again, the trackpad will suck and the screen will be a dim, binned display panel, etc. If that works for you, fine, but that's not the conversation. The conversation everyone else is having is that your plastic $400 laptop with the bargain-bin components isn't the equivalent of $MACBOOK, no matter what the spec sheet says.
I beg to differ on "damn good chromebooks for the $200-$300 territory."
I had a phase 2 years ago where I tried many cheap Chromebooks. I initially liked the stripped down experience and "value for dollar" hardware.
But ChromeOS UX gaps, bad keyboards, and a litany of other issues wore me down and I gave up on the "second computer" quest.
I look back now and see many of those Chromebooks don't even exist anymore.
The Macbook Neo is $599. Looking at my local Best Buy and dividing by 3, the laptops below $200 are all HP Chromebooks:
Chromebook/N4500 (2021!)/4GB RAM/64GB eMMC, $149 white $179 in grey Windows/N150/4GB RAM/128GB, $219 (first Windows machine)
The first Lenovo is a Chromebook that's $299, and it's got a MediaTek processor from 2022 and is supposedly on a $100 sale.
I have a relatively recent expensive gaming laptop from Asus for the occasional LAN party with friends. I hate it and it’s a huge piece of shit. Windows 11 is necessary for anti-cheat shenanigans. Apple could change the Mac OS wallpaper to a permanent photo of a turd and it would still be better than Windows 11. Also the trackpad and keyboard suck.
FYI, the very recently released Marathon with the BattleEye rootkit works fine on a maximally trimmed down Windows 10 LTSC, which is what I'm running on my PC (personal console).
Windows 10 LTSC is not available outside of volume licencing.
That you pirate an OS they refuse to sell to you to get a better experience is your choice, but it's unrealistic to suggest that it's a solution for the average person.
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> people don't rave about [macOS] anymore
I don't rave about macOS any more because I've been here for decades and, barring the occasional fight with Windows when I want to play something, I've largely forgotten how awful all the other options are[1].
I've gone "OS blind", I guess, and now macOS, for me, is the "bare minimum of competence" - hence I won't rave about it (but I absolutely will moan about the stupid things it does[2].)
[1] I spent decades using various Unix GUIs (on Suns, SGIs, Linux, OpenBSD for a while); I have absolutely zero desire to explore them again.
[2] My current favourite is being able to notice when it's about to flip into "red battery, plug me in" mode because, for whatever godforsaken reason, the load average will rocket up into the 400s and everything turns to sludge for a couple of minutes. Oh how I laugh every time.
> macOS itself has been declining in quality since at least Mojave; people don't rave about it anymore.
There are levels to this. Sure, recent versions of macOS have some issues, no doubt. Part of the reason Mac users complain about relatively minor issues is because Apple has set the UI/UX bar so high.
But even in its current state, macOS is still leaps and bounds better than Windows. When I worked with customers using Windows and dealing the usual Windows issues, I realized most of them had no idea that computing didn’t have to be so bad, due to the Stockholm Syndrome that Windows users experience--they think all computers are the same.
> macOS itself has been declining in quality since at least Mojave; people don't rave about it anymore.
If you need someone to rave about macOS, you simply need to ask me. Going from Windows to Linux to macOS was like coming home.
> If you just need to do your taxes or answer a Zoom call, why would you get a Macbook Neo?
To not have to deal with Windows (or Linux (speaking as a Linux sysadmin)).
What are these Chromebooks?
The battery on my Macbook Pro, that I've owned since 2013, has finally gave out and I am looking for a new laptop. I considered buying an entry-level Air or a used Pro (<$1000 budget), but then Neo came out. I am now considering just getting the Neo. All I need is internet browsing, some very light coding maybe.
But if there are $200-300 Chromebooks just as good, I want to know. What are they?
I guess the market will speak for itself. I absolutely see the macOS percentage shoot to the sky, it's already almost 50% in the United States, with this, it will gravitate to 75%+ with significant penetration in Europe.
Microsoft is also helping by making Windows an absolute dump of an OS.
30% in the US.
>There are damn good Chromebooks in the $200-300 territory that I can genuinely recommend to people.
Can you list one?
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$300 to thread the eye of a needle through a field of dogshit, that can only run Google Chrome, or $500 for something entry level but very high quality that can run Google Chrome but also a vast library of well-designed native software that doesn't use garbage collection.
macOS isn't the power user focused, extra high polish OS it was in Snow Leopard era, but it's still the best UX and energy management in operating systems out of the box
> $500 for something entry level but very high quality that can run Google Chrome but also a vast library of well-designed native software
A vast library? With 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage you're not going to be running much, nor storing many files created by that library of software. Also, the only well-designed truly native software I have on my Mac, which I use daily, I can count on one hand. The vast majority of the apps most people use outside of "Pro" video and image editing, are in a browser, or are Electron apps that are exactly the same on a Mac as they are on a Chromebook.
And those "media" people using Premiere or Final Cut would never buy a computer that maxes out at 512GB SSD.
This is a pretty Chromebook substitute, which is cool, but it's obvious Apple doesn't want it to compete with the rest of their computers which start at $1,099.
It's a M1 Macbook Air substitute with significantly better single core performance. Any comparison with a chromebook is just hilarious.
If it runs 4 year old software then you'll likely have a "vast library" available.
This machine is on-par with the "world breaking" top performance M1 laptops when they came out; now it is "insufficient".
8GB was a sad amount of RAM back then, and it's still a sad amount now. Ditto for the storage. I'm not complaining about the CPU at all, it's fine. I use an M1 daily, and for work just an M1 Pro and both are fine.
I know there's a RAM shortage. But if RAM didn't matter, Apple wouldn't have stopped shipping 8GB configurations in the rest of their line. Starving these of RAM and storage is the way they've chosen to protect their fat margins of the MacBook Air. Which is fine. I just think these are best recommended only with a giant asterisk that they're for web tasks only, exactly like a Chromebook.
It was sad but usable (and arguably is usable now, even me with all my crap is around 14 GB not counting cache, etc).
But then again I remember when 128 MB of RAM was simply unheard of largess; so huge that using much of it for anything but a RAM disk was hard to do (of course, I also had that problem back in the DOS era with 8MB).
Better integration with your iPhone is a very compelling reason to buy a Macbook Neo.
The edu price is $499. Of course that seriously competes with the base iPad ($329 without keyboard).
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Please don't call people chuckleheads while licking a boot of a single corporation.
C'mon, you can make a better counter-argument than that. People can prefer what they like as far as I'm concerned, but poorly-thought arguments and narrative-supporting go straight to the "chucklehead" bin. Perhaps you can do a better job describing how a $300 plastic laptop is superior to a MacBook Neo than OP did, I'm willing to listen.
The last competitor remaining is Lenovo with the ThinkPads and pre-installed Linux [1].
But even Lenovo cripples them:
They still have huge advantages (keyboard, maintenance manual, replacement parts, Linux compatibility, much more ports in case of the X14 and T14). Apples keyboards are nowadays “acceptable” but not even comparable to a good ThinkPad keyboard.[1] By the love of god. Don’t order them with Windows! You are putting 80 to 130 euro right into Microsoft’s stock owners. And they will use it to harm Linux. And of course, making Windows even worse. They use it to harm you. Select Linux. Donate the rest (Fasst, GNOME, KDE…) or use it for the better display.
Lenovo's website is a disaster. Not only do they appear to have 100 sku's but on a 27" 5K Apple Studio Display I can see four laptops in the grid[1], which are actually cut off with their prices below the fold. Every single grid item has a "Katapult" lease to own offer, a "My Lenovo Rewards" offer (who the fuck is collecting rewards points from Lenovo, and what customer prioritizes the rewards they might earn over literally every other piece of information about the laptop?). There are 30 copies of the "®" symbol on the page. It's honestly a lesson in how not to design an e-commerce site.
- [1]: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/subseries-results/?visi...
Use PSREF: https://psref.lenovo.com
ThinkPads are also getting some real love, if ifixit didn't clickbait, the new lineup includes a lot of innovations to improve repairability
https://www.ifixit.com/News/115827/new-thinkpads-score-perfe...
I know Lenovo has their issues, but out of all the non-Apple laptop companies, they are by far the best out there. And to their credit, they do try to listen to customer feedback.
Also, AFAIK, Lenovo still has their ThinkPad designs developed by a design think-tank lab in Japan that they own (and IBM still has a bit of influence here as well) so I know Lenovo still gives somewhat of a damn in trying to develop a solid laptop.
Only the T and X series benefit from the Japanese design studios though and have the build quality to match. The E and L series are indistinguishable from a myriad of bargain bin business laptops, including Lenovo's own ideapads.
Even just within the Thinkpad lineup, their website is a mess. Let's even restrict ourselves to just T series Thinkpads.
First, the page looks like it misrenders with garish, inverse-color boxes breaking the apparent margin of the page. Then we get to the models:
… that's just the first row. There are 17 items shown. Mostly it's just a poor presentation: there's ~3-4 actual lines, and the rest of what's show is combinatorical complexity of the various ways you can customize them. It's a crapshoot of a presentation.The builds themselves seem worse now than they have before: they're overall more expensive for what you're getting vs. a few years ago. E.g., the GPU is … gone? They're all iGPUs now. They include a "45%NTSC" screen by default, which is something I've never heard of, and I thought sRGB was the literal bottom of the barrel, but I guess we can go deeper. The warranty is pathetic, but so too is Apple's.
You are right, you can get them without Windows now.
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> It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awful
This, so much this! I run Asahi on M1 Air but wanted to upgrade to something with fuller Linux support. After trying Thinkpad T14s, trackpad quality has rosen to my attention, something I never thought about before. Turns out glass, haptic trackpads are still only available in probably about a dozen laptops on the market and it's not easy to actually know which ones are these!
At computex two years ago, Sensel had a couple demo ThinkPads with their trackpad on it. It felt very good, not glass but haptic, I would be very happy with it.
Didn't see them last year at computex and never found that Lenovo model again, not sure what happened with it, at the booth they said they had a partnership. I was hoping they'd link up with framework and make a module for them.
To me clear the Neo dose not have a glass, haptic trackpad.
It’s glass but not haptic. Honestly the fact that they figured out how to make the entire pad clickable without haptics is pretty impressive.
Their trackpads were that way since the move to aluminium for the chassis until the release of the 2017 Macbook.
Apple had solved the issue around 2012 and still PC manufacturer refuse to spend on trackpad quality.
The early aluminum MacBook systems used a hinged trackpad. The "click" was a physical button under the trackpad, and you couldn't click on the top of the trackpad (because the hinge was on that side).
The MacBook Neo is a return to physical clicking, but they're using some sort of new mechanism which allows clicking anywhere.
Not really, not exactly. The older “clicky” MacBook trackpads couldn’t quite be “clicked” anywhere. They were levered at the top of the trackpad, so if you tried to click on the very top edge then they wouldn’t really click. Anywhere else, it felt fine, but maybe the top inch didn’t feel good. Not really a problem in normal use cause most people don’t try to click on the very top edge, but perhaps this new trackpad fixes that (I haven’t tested one myself). The current gen haptic ones have the same exact click feeling no matter where you press, of course.
That’s because PC manufacturers compete on spec sheets and how much does the trackpad suck isn’t one of the numbers on the spec sheet so they don’t care.
I'm not so sure I should be impressed. It is a bulky design, occupying the full thickness of the laptop in that area.
I exclusively use the trackpoint on thinkpads, to the point that I disable the trackpads in the BIOS or disconnect them from the motherboard entirely.
I used to use track points before moving on to Mac. After I tried moving back to Thinkpad I couldn't stomach the track point anymore , it's just too imprecise and I think it's because we use way higher resolutions nowadays with many more densely packed UI elements to click on.
I go back and forth between a T430 and M3 Air without issue
You can buy a Magic Trackpad and pair it with your Thinkpad no problem. It's much more comfortable to use it side-by-side with your keyboard, most of the time I'm reaching for the Trackpoint if my hands are on home row.
You can buy a Magic Trackpad and pair it with your Thinkpad no problem.
Yeah, that works great on the bus. It's one more thing to tote around to meetings, but hey, at least I didn't have to buy a MacBook!
Or I could just buy a Mac and not have to resort to hacks to get a decent trackpad.
If I use one of my Macs then I have to resort to hacks to get a decent OS. A crappy trackpad is ~10-20x less annoying than a hostile OEM, at least for my non-bus-based work.
In any case, my response was to cromka's comment and our shared dissatisfaction with Asahi.
I never said I am dissatisfied! To the contrary, it's way better than my Thinkpad even with Linux. I just miss the fingerprint scanner..
I don't think you need a Mac to get a decent trackpad. You need one maybe to have a great one.
That is the main difference to me. I hate crappy trackpads but the ones on my 2 thinkpads are good enough for the nomad/mobile use. That doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer the one on a Mac but I wouldn't want to suffer a hostile, OS and lack of repairability just to get a better trackpad.
tbqh I think one can survive with a merely decent trackpad on a bus or at meetings.
I've dual run Macbooks and Thinkpads for a while and the Thinkpad trackpad really isn't that bad (the trackpoint getting randomly stuck in a non-neutral position is a common thing I've experienced though)
The nicest thing for the Macbook for me in practice (disclaimer: I don't do fancy things on the trackpad) is the size. It "feels" fancier but the thinkpad plastic works totally fine for me.
I think some Mac users overindex on the quality of like... $400 Acer laptops from 2008 or whatever as their metric for "cheap Windows laptop".
Software stuff is still garbage but lots of machines have just straightforwardly decent hardware. Apple hardware is _very very good_ but it's not like the bad old days of "I actually cannot use this trackpad" in windows land. As much
It seems like PC makers just don't want to invest in quality trackpads.
It's criminal that my now almost decade-old Pixelbook still has a better trackpad than 99% of PCs (including ones that cost way more money).
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 Windows and install Linux over now, I don't care about anything on Windows enough to keep it. I can play all my games on Linux just fine. I can do all my dev stuff on Linux too.
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 these were all known faults with no solution for the consumer other than to "buy the newer model." And you could never disable the damn windows update nag screens entirely. And you knew that you'd lose functionality if you upgraded something.
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...
an underrated reason for the decline in windows is that it went from a core product focus to being crowded out. I wouldn't be surprised if azure, sharepoint, office 365, devices, GH/Linkedin, bing/copilot, etc are all more important to msft leadership than windows.
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.
I recently helped a friend picking a new laptop. Just going through the options at the websites of manufacturers was a nightmare. Huge amount of choices, shitty filtering, separated into multiple product lines were I often enough had no idea what separated the lines from each other
If they're your friend, why didn't you just tell them to get a Mac?
15 years ago this comment would have been a troll.
Nowadays it’s solid advice. The current Mac line-up is a step ahead of the competition. App compatibility is hardly an issue anymore with the exception of some very niche software.
OS X / macOS has been ahead of Windows for a long time for anyone who lives in a web browser.
Niche software, and almost all video games.
A laptop is for getting work done, I'm not a child.
15 years ago I couldn’t file my taxes on a Mac. That is the type of applications I am talking about. For games I have a console.
Cute, and while I will agree that Apple hardware is generally superior or at least an excellent value, and OS X is miles beyond Windows in usability, I can't in good conscience recommend a Mac on principle.
They impose obsessive control over their walled garden, constant pressure to use Apple ecosystem products, and they are staunchly opposed to interoperability regardless of it being an obviously anti-consumer tactical moat.
Buying a Mac in spite of such anti-consumer behavior reminds me of voting for a bad person because you like their policies.
A Mac isn’t really a walled garden though.
You don’t even need an Apple account to use one. Unlike Windows.
but to make a binary for it? You do. Even if it's not-for-profit. Why do you think web interfaces are so popular for OSS, a lot easier for the code to be JIT'd and run in a browser than pay a $99 vig for something you did in 10 days to speed up a process for yourself etc.
I compile and run utilities on my Mac all the time, and I've never spent a penny on dev tools or unlocks.
Yes, there's a fee to get access to the App Store, but almost nobody on the Mac uses the App Store... the fee is mainly for putting stuff on iOS (and likely watchOS, tvOS).
The fee also gets you the absolute latest Xcode, but go back one version, and it's entirely free.
On Mac, you can install brew, and use it to install gcc, clang, qemu, whatever utilities you want.
You used to need the developer fee to put stuff on your iOS device at all, but these days you can put stuff on your personal devices without a fee, but the binary expires in a week... enough to learn and debug, but not ideal for a personal tool. That's about the only annoyance where the fee comes up... long term deployment to iOS.
> you can put stuff on your personal devices without a fee, but the binary expires in a week... enough to learn and debug, but not ideal for a personal tool
This sounds like dystopian cyberpunk written in the 80s
look what I "get" to do with my "own" device
You're sort-of right, I think, because you do need an Apple account to sign in to the Mac App Store to get current Xcode in the first place - but the $99 is entirely optional!
For distributing your program without the fee, you'll probably moan about the hoops that people have to jump through to run your stuff: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh40616/mac - and I can't say I love this myself, but people can run your stuff, and no fee necessary.
(I've got a couple of (somewhat niche) FOSS things for macOS, and I build the releases using GitHub Actions with whatever default stuff the thing uses, then make up DMGs that people can download from the GitHub releases page. I added a bit in the documentation about visiting the security dialog if you're blocked - and that seems to have been sufficient.)
and what happens when Apple suddenly decides they don't care to provide you the luxury of self-determination?
We'll find out when it happens! Which, so far, it hasn't.
Why do you think you need to pay $99 to build a binary that runs on macOS? I do it regularly and have never paid.
As opposed to Microsoft, the good guys right now? I don’t see how incessant privacy violations, selling your data, and general shovelware behavior of Windows 11 is better. In many ways, it’s much worse in my view.
Nah, as opposed to Linux (for me).
Linux isn't a real choice for 99.9% of the population. If you're advising someone else on buying a laptop in an authority sense, rather than a colleague sense... telling someone to buy a Linux laptop (or, buy a laptop and put Linux on it), is a recipe for being tech support for them forever.
[dead]
What “walled garden” burdens a Mac user? And what interoperability are you looking for? There is nothing proprietary about Thunderbolt, USB C, Bluetooth etc
> voting for a bad person because you like their policies.
These days, you're lucky if you get to pick from "Bad", "Very Bad", and "Worst".
(BTW, does Mr. Bad look like he'll competently implement and honestly administer his policies? 'Cause without those, "good" policies ain't worth squat):
>> voting for a bad person because you like their policies
Is it better to
(1) vote for a bad person whose policies you believe are correct
or
(2) vote for a good person whose policies you believe are wrong?
I'd pick (1) every time. (Sure, I'd love a good person whose policies are right...)
They did end up getting a Macbook. I wouldn't have suggested it, because I don't want to make people switch operating systems if they themselves don't want to. But they threw it into the mix, so I did include it in the list of suggestions
Why would I inflict that to my friends?
> taking up 99% of a single core while being riddled with security holes.
And don't forget significantly shortening the usable battery life.
Windows 11 and the crapware it typically ships with are all very hard on battery life, and sleep support is unreliable so you can often find significant battery drain even when the machine is supposed to be sleeping.
For me it means that if I'm having to use a Windows laptop (and quite literally thank god that hasn't been true for 2 years now) then I've got to have the power supply and cables with me at all times, and I've got to be somewhere I have a realistic chance of plugging in just in case the worst has happened.
This is my advice anyone asks me about a laptop. The specs don't matter (at least if you're asking me, it means you don't know computers and will mostly just use a web browser, and therefore nearly any specs on the market will be fine) and the things that do matter are just never on a spec sheet -- keyboard, trackpad, speaker, screen quality. Some stuff won't be discovered until years later: for instance I had an Acer laptop in 2007 which was designed with insufficient cooling, and cooked its thermal paste in about a year or two. Once it was cooked, you couldn't play games or do anything intensive without rebooting the machine. I hadn't thought to research that issue since I figured cooling was a solved problem. But, I'm sure Acer saved a few dollars per unit. (and of course, the screen, trackpad, speaker (yes, singular!) and keyboard were all awful as well.)
I bought my last Acer around 2010 (Aspire 4820TG I think, good machine). Their notebooks were always on the cheaper side, where its price just sat right with the offered value. Cooling issues were always present and weren't a big problem as long as the machine was maintainable. Unfortunately maintainability in notebooks (and electronics in general) all changed around 2015-ish and from there on it was used ThinkPads only for me.
Specs only really matter to many relative to battery life. A higher specced system may unnecessarily burn energy.
> 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 ...
Truer words were never spoken!
I gave up on PCs years ago because of this very reason. The irony is that it is well known from psychology that giving consumers too many choices is actually counter-productive. Most people do not have the time nor the knowledge to research and configure their "perfect" PC. They just know their usecase and want the best for their money.
I had hoped Microsoft Surface series would become the standard in the Windows world (i still have a 1st gen model) but they don't seem to read the market.
I had high hopes for Surface as well, but the pricing is ridiculous. The Surface Laptop 7 is more expensive than a MacBook Air, with the added benefit of having worse battery life and performance. Pricing hasn't come down in almost 2 years either. Availability is almost 0, I've never seen one in real life.
I had a Microsoft surface book 2. The provided charger could not provide enough power to the device when it was under heavy load and there was no higher charger option either. That shit should be illegal. And if the battery for the base/GPU died? You can't use the computer w the gpu even with a charger attached. The device itself could have been a dream and something i could have seen Apple doing : a touchscreen monitor that was also a computer and could be detached from the keyboard/gpu.
For a couple of days I had a Surface Book 1 before returning it. The keyboard was really good but otherwise just a terrible device and experience.
The touch screen was completely useless. Super laggy and sometimes the pen would still believe it was touching the screen even at like 1cm away. Windows 10 had almost no features for touch based interaction. It was just regular Windows with the same microscopic buttons for mouse.
Plus a ton of display ghosting, GPU glitches, etc.
I still have a Surface Book 1 that I occasionaly use and I never encountered any of those issues. I even used it for some sketching and there was no lag or spurious touching from the pen. In fact, sketching was why I was "drawn" to it (heheh), largely influenced by this review: https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2015/11/16/surface-bo...
My big problem with it is that the battery got swollen a few years ago, pushing out the bottom panel, and the device is way our of warranty to get it replaced. I'm waiting to find time to get that replaced.
As much as I like the performance and the power consumption of the current apple lineaup, the problems is I can not install Linux on the Neo. I can beraly install it on the M1, M2, and M3. And not everything works. If I could install Linux and have everything working, I will buy a Macbook (not a Neo) right away.
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 my next laptop. It's a big shame.
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.
That is what I have for me. Refurbished thinkpads, returns from banks and such, for 1/3 the original price.
> 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 the same SKU.
> 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.
I don’t know how they do things nowadays, but it used to be the case that the same SKU didn’t even guarantee you the same hardware. Two machines of the same order could even be slightly different, requiring different drivers.
> I don’t know how they do things nowadays, but it used to be the case that the same SKU didn’t even guarantee you the same hardware. Two machines of the same order could even be slightly different, requiring different drivers.
Apple is guilty of this too. For example, two iPhone's purchased at the same time can have displays from different manufactures, with noticeable quality differences between them.
And unless you looked it up, you'd never noticed the difference (save comparing the two side-by-side). Whereas the cheap laptop requires one to know the difference so you can get the right driver, or other jackery because your WiFi card was a mid-year change. It reminds of me of mid-year production changes on cars, where VINs XXX-YYY need part number ZZZ, but VINs AAA-BBB need part number CCC.
What colour is the stripe on the spring? I can't look this up, not even by VIN.
Wore off eight years ago. Can we guess?
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.
Washing machines and the others don't have a company like Apple that is so differentiated that customers love their products so much they get to own something like 80% of the profits of the biggest personal computing market.
I know a few Miele fanboys...
The epitome of "sku engineering" is mattresses, to keep consumers from comparison shopping. Retail HATES competition and informed shoppers.
Inarguably one of the great things done by apple is the rather easily overseeable models. And no mattter the processing power in the models you get a rather great experience from the haptics, audio and visual in all of them.
And I would be very much in the Apple Camp for personal laptops, if Gaming was in any way shape or reasonable. Thats the only downside of apple. They tried to fix this before but that really did not work out.
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 the same reason.
[0] https://steamdb.info/charts/
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.
Oh i have a steam deck and am in the process of migrating to linux latest when Win 12 hits. Just some problems with some software like Fusion 360. I do like Linux alot.
It really is a pity that there’s no working business model around open source maintenance for software like wine. I’m the guy who fixed the wine bug that blocked new iTunes versions, because I like to keep my music in iTunes for easy iPhone sync. I also have Fusion 360 working flawlessly in wine, but the setup process required multiple sessions stepping manually with a debugger to avoid crashes and packaging that as scripts and/or just documenting all the little issues and their fixes and keeping that up to date with fusion updates would be serious work. So nobody is doing it.
CrossOver sells WINE and WINE consulting; I've been a happy customer on and off for about 20 years. If you're bothered by open source WINE i'd say give them a shot. In my experience it's worth the $70 or whatever to get a well-paved GUI path and support.
I’m a happy CrossOver customer myself. But they don’t have enough resources to keep all major Windows apps working well. Which, to me, indicates that the business model of selling support only to those who are willing to pay, while letting everyone use the results for free, isn’t such a great business model.
https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
fusion360 is supported.
Ooh yeah its all coming together
At the same time with effort they can run a surprising amount of games. Heroic Launcher makes it a bit easier to wrangle the game dev toolkit (riding off the back of work from the whisky dev before they quit dev work from all the complaining users).
I had Cyberpunk 2077 running on a M1 Macbook Air almost two years before the MacPort came at a very playable 30fps (900p Medium settings). Although I did have to use thermal pads to heatsink it to my metal laptop stand and added a slow spinning fan for good measure.
It's not perfect, but I've also spent a lot of time only buying games with no road blocks to running on Mac/Linux.
Try Sikarugir for PC gaming on macOS. It runs everything I've cared to try, with little or no tweaking.
https://github.com/Sikarugir-App/Sikarugir
After growing up in eastern Europe it's still wild to see young Americans stupidly demand less choice and more monopolies in their market.
Like seriously, having laptop choice is causing you crippling issues? Is other people having a laptop to choose based on preference causing you distress when you go to Apple store?
I don’t think you fully understood their argument.
The problem is not that other manufacturers offer choices – the problem is that for a typical consumer it’s IMPOSSIBLE to really understand which computer in the lineup is appropriate for their needs. It seems most of them are focused on B2B sales.
Of course, if you are a gamer or a nerd like myself, you don’t mind spending a week finding the perfect computer. But that’s an exception.
Indeed, it’s a simple matter to figure out what you want if you’re buying a Mac. Laptop vs desktop. For desktop: integrated screen or not, for laptop, screen size, weight, then pick your processor, memory and storage and it’s done. There aren’t confusingly named and positioned overlapping models that it’s unclear what you’re gaining or losing for each one.
The apple pricing ladder is all about the confusingly named overlap.
The Air with more ram costs just a bit less than the pro non-pro. But then maybe you want the pro pro? Or do you need the pro max? Oh, and the ultra will come later but not for laptops. Also it will then be a smaller number M but ultra.
Oh, and the iPad air is, of course, heavier than the pro because "air".
I fully understood their argument and found out how ignorant it is by just looking at a huge list of all MacBook models on sale in local Apple Store which isn't all that different from an Asus or Dell list.
The posters are ignorant of how much they internalized Apple complexity and then uses that to crap on products they don't even know.
The problem is not that there is choice, it's that the choices don't make sense and overlap in weird ways. Apple presents a lineup that can be described as "good, better, best" while Windows OEMs have 20 models, all overlapping where one has a hinge that snaps in a year, the other has a defective trackpad, the other is the same thing as a another model but designed and manufactured in another country. You'd have to become fully invested in learning the companies products to understand which one you actually need and what the flaws of each model is.
It's like a restaurant that has a 30 page menu, where many of the options are bad, or cooked from stale frozen food from the back of the shelf. Fewer good options are better than numerous poor ones.
That's not really true if you look at Neo/Air/Pro 14" options now, is it?
After growing up in the USSR but living in the US, the young Americans are correct. The number of choices are an illusion, most paths lead you down the same shit. People don't have the time or energy to dig deep into every option for every purchase.
The issue isn't choices but meaningless choices. Most PC manufactures have tons of SKUs that are functionally identical but offered in different sales channels.
A dozen SKUs to describe the same hardware isn't real choice. It's the illusion of choice so a sales rep can offer a "deal" the buyer can't meaningfully compare to other SKUs. They're all machines out of an ODM's catalog with the "manufacture" logo pasted on.
The more choice then the more procrastination occurs for buyers so they don't actually buy. Apple has made the Neo a two minute decision and you are not playing Russian Roulette with the specs as you know you'll get a uniform quality product, just one has double the storage than the other. Simple. Straightforward. Decisive.
In addition to your research categories - is the fan going to sound like a jet engine when just opening slack? Is the case going to wobble and creak after a few weeks? Is it going to tank performance when unplugged? And if not - is battery life going to be a concern?
In low price brackets those awful barrel jack charger ports that get loose at record speeds still appear too, which isn’t something people necessarily think about but will end up dragging down the user experience.
How they're still selling laptops with those in this age of usb-c is criminal.
To what extent is there still a “consumer PC industry?” You mention Dell; for like a decade I think I’ve only ever seen Dells that were company-issued.
My sense is that consumers spend most of their tech money on phones, tablets, headphones, watches, services. People who really want a laptop get a Mac or Chromebook. Gamers buy / build PCs, for gaming. Linux geeks buy Linux machines for Linuxing.
I’m not saying no one buys PC laptops at consumer retail. I guess I’m just wondering how big that market is anymore after consumer discretionary spending on tech has been hollowed out by the above list.
(I’m sure most people reading this have purchased a laptop. I think the HN audience is a tech outlier compared to most consumers.)
Take a look at a Sam's Club or Costco. The Windows PCs from Dell, HP, Lenovo outnumber the Macs 4:1 or more.
I have never seen a shopper testing out the wares.
I think it depends where you are, at least for Costco.
> 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.
Yes!! It's awful. I'm a long time Mac user and my wife needs a Windows laptop because of a specific software. I've tried three times to pick a computer for her, but I always give up after 10min and postpone the task...
In my opinion PC industry is also cooked because of fans. I simply cannot use any recent PC laptop, because the moment you do something it engages fans in the most obnoxious way.
Every time someone turns on their PC laptop next to me, my ears feel assaulted.
My Mac does engage fans from time to time, but I never notice the noise.
How little attention cooling gets in the laptop industry outside of expensive gaming laptops is crazy. I have a ThinkPad that gets huffy when I plug it into a 2560x1440 external display while otherwise idle (yes, under Linux too) which shouldn’t even be possible.
Even the Intel MBP laptops had fans firing up the afterburners to keep the Intel CPU cool when monitors were plugged in. Intel CPUs of the past were just massive heating elements.
I think a big part of this is the RISC vs ARM architecture, unless RISC has improved more than I know in this area
This is how I ended up with my first MacBook in >10 years. I'd been a Thinkpad (T series) guy in the early days, the tried a MacBook in 2015... couldn't get used to it and used a Chromebook for the next 8 years. Needed to buy a new laptop in 2023 and ... the entire Windows laptop industry turned me off. Yes, something like System76 is an option, and so is installing Linux on a Windows OEM machine, but then you still have to deal with the hardware. Apple isn't perfect, but MacBooks are consistent and reliable, with minimal telemetry and no advertising or upselling. That's enough for me.
This... so much this.
> too many SKUs and models - it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ.
And yet, I just watched a YouTube video where a "PC guy" was like, "adding the Neo just completely confuses the Apple product line. Are we heading towards having too many Apple options that confuse the buyer here?"
I get it, other than price, the Neo and Air are a bit confusing product wise. Have they looked at how Asus, Lenovo, and Dell are doing their products though? It's absolutely wild the disparity between PC and Apple for laptops.
I run both PC's and Mac devices in our house, we use what fills the job. Recommending PC laptops for family members feels like a total crapshoot though. Every time, I do all I can to find the right device for their needs and there are just so many trade-offs. Maybe I get all the right specs, ensure it doesn't thermal throttle, keyboard/trackpad are A-OK... but the webcam is trash. Ooof... now Mom is complaining about how no one can see her properly at bridge club call.
I brought up how the Neo might do to the PC industry what the Air did to Ultrabooks back in the day. The amount of hate I got on YouTube/Verge with copy-paste, "hahaha, wut, with 8 GB of RAM? lmao, lol, you Apple bot?!" was expected, but also disappointing. There is clearly a market segment happy to continue to put up with the mess that Dell/Lenovo are selling (anything but a Mac).
Wild how tribal we are to our corporate computer overlords.
The era where something like Framework with its fully customizable, repairable, modular laptops becomes the standard can't come soon enough.
For the time being, I'll let Apple/PC continue to duke it out. Hope some competition helps in the long run. :shrug:
> I get it, other than price, the Neo and Air are a bit confusing product wise. Have they looked at how Asus, Lenovo, and Dell are doing their products though? It's absolutely wild the disparity between PC and Apple for laptops.
Yep.
I'm a long-time ThinkPad user, but I have no idea how Lenovo's ThinkPad T series differs from the ThinkPad E series or ThinkPad L series or ThinkPad X series, and their website certainly isn't going to tell me. I keep on buying T series because I'm honestly afraid of trying anything else.
To say nothing of Lenovo's non-ThinkPad laptop brands, including Ideapad, Legion, Yoga, ThinkBook (!), and LOQ.
I really don't know what laptop to recommend to a friend. One friend showed me specs for an Asus they found at Best Buy, and it looked okay, so I said "It's probably fine." Turns out it was shoddily made and overpriced: they had to sent it back not once but twice because the wifi and then the camera didn't work out of the box, then a few months later the hinge broke.
I am not a Mac fan, but it's easy to recommend them because you at least know they are universally well-built machines.
> I have no idea how Lenovo's ThinkPad T series differs from ...
My personal rundown and how they get assigned:
E - Educational / Lower office personnel spec
L - Office personnel you hate spec, but don't offer the E because they might complain.
T - Give this to all the technicians because they can't take care of anything and it will survive typically.
P - Give this to the engineers who believe having an RTX gpu will actually help them so that they are happy, and to the CAD operators who actually need it.
X - Smaller/Ultrabooks before the term got started, now somewhat a blurry line because T series have gotten lighter/thinner. But the X1 Carbon sure is a great way to spend a ton of money for a light laptop when a T-series would suffice.
Personally I stick to older used X series (currently x250) because I just enjoy a small laptop and they are dirt cheap now.
This still doesn't tell me how they differ. What are the factual objective measurable differences between E/L/T/P?
I was assigned an E14 once. Compared to a T14:
The case is all thick ABS.
It weighs like 2.4 kg, and the weight is unbalanced.
The USB-C charge only works at 20V, nothing less.
While charging it overheats and spins up the fans.
It came with a TN screen with terrible viewing angles, that could not be used in a brightly lit room. I didn't use the laptop for two months while I waited for a replacement screen from aliexpress.
Keyboard is much thinner, the trackpoint drifts easily.
Camera quality is worse, somehow it cannot handle sun-lit scenes. Microphone and speakers are similar to the T14.
It stopped receiving firmware updates after two years.
It uses about 0.5 W while suspended, so its tiny 48 Wh battery typically doesn't last the weekend with the lid closed.
The motherboard has design issues, a missing protection diode in the headphone jack microphone input ended up frying the CPU due to a ground loop. Meanwhile the T14 has eaten the same ground loop and even a 48V passive PoE in an accident and dealt with it by rebooting. A T450 from 2015 is still running.
Interesting, I own an E14 and it charges with 12V PD profile, stock ugreen powerbank. Maybe they differ across models?
Spoiler: they are all identical hardware, but marketed differently.
I think I got it:
- E is for economy
- L is for loser
- T is for tank
- P is for power
- X is for executive
Fine, but how is anyone supposed to divine all that nuance from a single letter?
As much as I hate Apple, they really do have product names down to a science.
Neo and Air are quite simple when looking at it from the bottom up. Air is the "nice" Neo for basically $500 more. Backlit keyboard, MagSafe, Thunderbolt 4, M5, way faster SSD speeds, double the RAM, larger display, Force Touch trackpad.
> "hahaha, wut, with 8 GB of RAM? lmao, lol, you Apple bot?!"
And it would seem they never learn either. I saw the same comments when the M1 Air came out, then they quickly shut up when people were pushing those little base model airs well beyond what anyone thought they were capable of.
The same thing is happening with the Neo now. It feels like an M1 moment all over again for the PC OEM industry.
If you aren't a gamer, there is zero reason at this point to consider any other laptop besides a macbook. Apple now has one for every price point. This neo is going to destroy the consumer PC space. Dell, HP, Acer are probably sweating right now.
They're not sweating at all; they'll do what they always do. They'll release a new model to compete in time for Christmas 2026. They'll call it the ASUS Nuevo X856G-L or the Acer Nova 9500X or the Alienware Morpheus ZS and that will be it. They won't even consolidate their line at the 600$ price point; just one more model, bro!
Their sales will continue tapering off and they'll do what they always do; reduce investments, fire some designers and engineers, keep old models out even longer, and move out of Apple's way by selling even more 380$ laptops for 400$ while Apple siphons even more profits by selling a 400$ laptop at 600$.
That's how PCs die.
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> the OS is full of ads and pre-installed garbage
Running Windows in 2026 is either a mistake, or a sad necessity. Fortunately, unless you need The Right Kind of Excel, you can choose either Linux on a PC (best, IMO), or a Mac.
> The big players are just awful at marketing
Apple is great at marketing to consumers. The other big players, I have to assume, are more focused on B2B where the threshold for UX acceptability is lower.
The only ads I ever hear from them are on economics podcasts ostensibly aimed at business owners. For "Copilot+ AI PCs" no less, whatever that means. They're chasing a target audience of approximately 3 people in the world that are improbably held back from achieving their wildest AI dreams by not having a commodity laptop with an NPU.
People may not remember that Apple once had a product lineup like this (before SJ returned) with tons of different model numbers nobody could tell apart.
> Remember Apple in the late '90s? The tech giant was facing significant struggles until Steve Jobs returned and pinpointed the crux: a lack of innovation and focus. Jobs took bold steps to streamline Apple’s bloated product line. He cut down on the excessive range of choices, simplifying the product lineup to focus on quality and innovation. Jobs famously asked his team, "Which ones do I tell my friends to buy?" When he didn’t get a simple answer, he decided to reduce the number of Apple products by 70%. This move included cancelling projects like the Newton digital assistant and focusing on just four key products: the iMac, iBook, Power Macintosh G3, and PowerBook G3.
https://strategeos.com/f/how-your-business-can-focus-on-the-...
> it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ.
Don't forget, one is going to be the "Business" version and the other identical one is going to be the "Consumer" version. God help whoever buys a "business" category laptop for personal use. The world will come to an end!
Or, in actuality, the Dell business model will be designed for repairability. I tend to always advise friends who want Windows/Linux laptops to buy from the business lines, especially if a 1- or 2- year refurb will work.
Is the laptop market even choosy or discerning? Very few people I know would actually understand specs. Especially when you step outside people who majored in fields that require some programming. I assume they must buy laptops, if they still even buy laptops, based on things like yearly sales periods at retailers, since you do see a surprising amount of square footage reserved for laptops to sit open on tables (not just apple's) in places like best buy, costco, target, etc. So there must be buyers. Maybe their comparison only goes as far as whatever bullet points Costco highlights on the price tag I suspect, in a "bigger number is better for the price" sort of way vs understanding a persons own compute needs.
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.
The Neo is targeting the cheap laptop market for those people that DO need it. Again, another totally pointless comment by somebody who sounds clueless.
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.
The secret is to buy a used ThinkPad on eBay. I have two of them. I think the ridiculous MSRP for them combined is $7000 and I paid $1600 in total for a p series and an x1 carbon (3 years old, but essentially new).
These neos are for college and high school students.
Who is going to do that except a nerd looking for a specific type of laptop? Buying two of them for the price of 3+ Neos at EDU discount. You are so off in the weeds with your comment that I had to point it out.
For me right now, there are a bunch of Strix Halo unified memory laptops offering 64 to 128GB of unified memory that are the current best value. This will probably spill into next generation (Strix Medusa IIRC).
They're just very versatile and performant, and they're usually very good value. As a big plus you can run very decent models locally.
Framework are among my current top choices. Hearing good things about the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7a as well, and HP rather surprisingly. But there are a bunch of Ryzen AI Max+ 395 based laptops supporting up to 128GB of unified memory, and it looks like you can hardly go wrong with these.
A very important point is the RAM and flash shortage. With their humongous volumes, Apple is certainly a member of the happy few with preferential contracts with guaranteed volumes and prices. No other PC maker can remotely compete with Apple on volumes, and now they'll get their already thin margins crushed even more.
In the past Apple had constantly sold high-margin products and grabbed 70 to 80% of the whole industry's margins. Now they're coming for the rest !
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.
Exactly. PC manufacturers have so many SKUs and are changing so many things from one model to another that their brand doesn't mean anything anymore. Buying a Dell, HP, Lenovo or Asus branded laptop doesn't say anything meaningful about what you're actually going to get. Unlike Apple (or Framework) where the brand still means something.
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.
Not just PC industry!
Feels that way in auto too.
I go to Tesla, Lucid websites. Breath of fresh air. Clear choices.
Porsche website: WTF. (just one example, there are many)
Porsche is about BTO and customization. If you want a Porsche, go to a dealer and have them walk you through building the one you want. Or become knowledgeable in all the options and find a used one with 85% of what you want.
Of course. I own one! But, I think they could ease the process somewhat with some obvious defined package sets.
I bought a $50 ThinkPad last year and put Linux on it.
I'm obviously not the target market, but this seems to me like the "correct" way to use a PC laptop, and solves all the problems you mentioned.
(I don't game though, which seems like the only reason most people get a PC in the first place.)
The base model of the MacBook Air is $1099 now. That has 16GB ram and 512gb disk. And it’s a hell of a computer.
The crazy thing is we often cite an Apple Tax, but in this case, I think they actually have a cheaper product.
I'd really love it if the manufacturers would just say what wireless chipset they use in a given model but the unfortunate truth is even they don't always know for a given run
The SKU proliferation is truly awful. I honestly had to use Claude to understand the current landscape for daily driver Windows laptops when I finally needed to replace my old one.
too many SKUs and models - it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ.
Same for Apple, especially as you can't upgrade them so if you get a 8gig Nano, you have a 8gig Nano, That's a different SKU than a 16gig Nano. And if you get 16gig Nano with 256gig storage, that's a different SKU than a 16gig Nano with 512gig of storage.
Apple has 48 SKUs at their stores, not included adding in color and custom configurations
It's a false comparison, because you are aggregating hardware and OS vendors in the same category while Apple is actually the one doing both.
> 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.
PC laptops have been dead outside of jobs that give them to you for years.
>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.
Existential crisis?
This kind of nonsense has existed for the entire history of the laptop market.
One of the major reasons Apple is a trillion dollar company is they don't sell dozens of versions of their product. When it was a mystery which Dell laptop was the good one (or insert any other brand) you just picked the size of Apple that you wanted and it would be the good one.
The last Dell laptop I bought I really liked... except for the terrible battery life and the fact that the structure was so poor that if you held it at the corner it would force reboot because the circuit board flexed to much and shorted or unplugged something.
Takes 1 hour to open notebookcheck?
It gets worse when you look at Intel/AMD's CPU naming schemes. Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, Intel Core Ultra 9 285H. Clown show all around.
The CPU model naming is silly, but definitely not as bad as laptop naming or monitor naming. Intel and AMD at least pick a structured naming scheme and stick with it for two or three years, and almost all of the OEMs tell you which processor you're getting so you can comparison shop between brands.
Not really. Both AMD and intel have several models where the names are similar but differ in an important way such as one being pervious generation.
I'll just get a Pentium Gold CPU, with a name like that I bet it will be the best model!
It's the marketing depts that go mental with these schemes.
PC Magazine came to the same conclusion:
> Apple pulled off what I thought wasn't possible. The MacBook Neo is poised to set the budget-laptop world on fire as a $599 system that's better-built and sharper than anything else at or below its price.
https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/apple-macbook-neo
Similar to the Verge:
> even the cheapest MacBook Neo is good enough to be the go-to Apple laptop for a lot of people. Actually, not just the go-to Apple laptop; the Neo’s hardware simultaneously embarrasses an entire class of affordable (and even far pricier) Windows laptops, as well as just about any Chromebook. And the thing runs on an iPhone chip.
https://www.theverge.com/tech/891741/apple-macbook-neo-a18-p...
(We've since merged the threads, but the pcmag.com link is in the toptext above)
I understand the need to join the conversations about the same topic. Thanks for keeping the URLs separate. Reading Gruber's long form considered article is very different to reading some second hand Asus executive "shock" comments.
The comment was originally in a thread discussing Engadget's take:
> MacBook Neo review: Apple puts every $600 Windows PC to shame
https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/macbook-neo-revie...
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Go beyond the specs, though. Which windows laptops have similar combination of all metal build with tight tolerances, a display hinge that doesn’t wobble, a nice keyboard and even close to similar feeling trackpad at this 600 dollar price point? Most non haptic trackpads are dive board designs where you can only press the lower part of it because they hinge from the top, whereas as Neo’s trackpad is completely floating and can be pressed even on the very top. Also, one of main target audiences - students - can have this for much cheaper with education pricing.
If quality and in-hand feel matters to you at all, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more well rounded laptop than a MacBook at any price point.
As I said in another thread $650 HP OmniBook 5 on Ryzen is faster, more RAM, feels great to use, and I don't have to deal with MacOS!
IMO, there's nothing comparable to MacBook Air in its price range if you are an average user. Neo is even better in that aspect. The model you cited sounds better if you are planning to use Linux and are computer literate. But if you just want something that is good (not perfect) at everything usual, a MacBook is a no-brainer.
I don't think MacOS is better than Windows, so I disagree with that take.
Most people that I have interacted with consider macOS to be more confusing and less usable than Windows. It's not just you.
Not liking interacting with an OS is a fair choice to make, but don't be fooled by the bolted-on specs like "more RAM" when less of it is available to the user due to the built-in software and driver compatability issues. It's almost always slower, older, and less quality. They do Product Binning and give the worst quality leftovers to the built-in machines where people are less likely to notice and because it won't change the brand's reputation. The difference between i9, i7, etc are just how many defects there are- they're printed identically on the same wafers.
Even IF the processor and RAM combined with Windows and bloatware is faster, you know they're going to have to cut corners on things like keyboard, trackpad, monitor, battery, webcams, heatsinks, etc.
To save anyone else trying to figure out what computer lostmsu is talking about, at least going by the current prices on HP's website (not MSRP):
HP OmniBook 5 Laptop Next Gen AI 16-fb0037nr
If I were shopping for a cheap laptop I would have given up and bought a Macbook Neo before I found that one.
Sorry about that, here's a link where you can buy one: https://www.staples.com/hp-omnibook-5-16-2k-laptop-copilot-p...
I have no affiliation with them of any kind
Oh, the 16-ag1067st not the 16-fb0037nr, of course!
It's out of stock for me, and the couple of other locations that I checked via VPN.
The "st" at the end appears to be a Staples specific part number, so I found the less specific "16-ag1067" on Amazon for $1051. https://www.amazon.ca/HP-OmniBook-1920x1200-Graphics-Keyboar...
On HP's own online store though, this model number doesn't exist.
Took another look at the 16-fb0037nr that I found earlier when browsing HP's store by price, that one's a Snapdragon instead of Ryzen, so very different computer. Don't know what the state of Window's ARM compatibility layer is.
Anyway, this is the typical experience of looking at non-Apple laptops and it sucks.
I'd be interested in this but it seems the price is much higher than stated here, or this was some temporary deal. It's also larger and quite a bit heavier but I guess that is a personal preference. The screen also looks pretty lacking (300 nits!). I do see it around $1200 CAD where the new macbook is $800 CAD and in stock. However all said I do not think a lot of people will be buying this new macbook because they are comparing specifications. Laptop manufacturers show off their specifications and have tons of different models because that is how they can differentiate their products from each other. Apple doesn't need to play that game and can deliver usability and value, and good in-person after sales support to the general consumer.
What about battery life and weight though?
And how much does the charger weigh as well? The neo can basically share the charger with your phone…
How’s the screen, battery life, trackpad?
lol $150 more for a crappy low res display etc. So bad.
Apple appears to know better by asking whole $200 more for upgrading from 13 to 15 inch screen in their Air line.
An all metal build doesn't stand up well to abuse versus higher quality plastics.
Looks nicer. For a time, or if taken care of.
That’s certainly up for debate. Thinkpads are some of the most rugged laptops available, and their top models are made from magnesium alloys or carbon fibre. Only their lower end E and L series are ABS builds.
In my personal experience, my MacBooks look much less shinier/worn out in the palm rest areas on either sides of trackpad compared to any windows laptop I’ve owned, which include an Alienware R15.
I don’t know enough about material science to have more than empirical data or correlations, though.
Ask me about my PowerBook G4 Ti! Loved that laptop. Too bad about the titanium.
I actually dig the patinated look of my dented and scratched old MBP and my current MBA. My plastic Dells from work always look terrible after a few trips living in my backpack and getting banged around. Haven't had actual usability issues with either though.
I have.
Plastic is great, until your laptop falls and the plastic shell shatters. That's the weakness of plastic - it's brittle. I have a ten year old macbook with a dinged aluminium chassis. The structure of the shell is still intact despite a few falls.
Not all plastics are brittle, even after time. It is highly dependent on the plastic used.
ok, now please explain whether any plastic is more or less brittle than aluminium.
It's not.
That being said, aluminum will suffer from dents and scratches. Every material is a trade off. You're not going to pull a "gotcha" comment, here.
It definitely would have competitive issues with 8MB RAM and a 256MB SSD.
Knocking it for having a tablet processor means you haven't actually been paying attention to Apple's in-house processor development.
What better options?
*Gb not Mb
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. It might be worthwhile to ensure that a web app you're developing will work on a less powerful machine without killing the browser, for example.
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.
Should be forced to Test on a 4gb machine.
A few years ago, I had two computers on my desk, my beefy dev with double screens and some good specs for the time and my test machine which was the standard given to every non dev, with a 1024x768 screen.
I couldn't say to the boss that the code was ready until I tested it on that machine, which was sometimes eye opening and why a 2Mb HTML page wasn't a good idea.
I think for this plan to work you’d have to force the developers of Xcode to work on the 4 Gb machines first. If they could do that, the rest would follow naturally.
Web devs use xcode?
I agree, but it's nice to be able to run LLMs locally on my laptop. LLMs are actually the only reason I'm looking to upgrade my 2013 hardware.
Hah. When I worked for a very big Just Print Money bank circa 2008, they gave me, a SDE with the Lenovo ThinkPads running Windows with 4GB of RAM and a bonus of Lotus Notes for email. This thing was slower than molasses. Not to mention because we had an offshore team in India. every morning every engineer would begin the day with syncing the Subversion repo. My team was in central US but we had to connect to a proxy in NYC for network traffic inspection. This makes the sync over 45 minutes long. Repeat the same for every SDE, from both sides of the world, and you can guess the amount of time wasted.
I don’t think I would want to work in that environment anymore.
Similar story, I had a customer who wanted me to change the entire UI of a legacy application, because some information would not fit on the ancient 1024*786 15" desktop monitor of one employee, meaning he would have to use horizontal scroll constantly.
I recommended them giving this employee a larger monitor, not only would that be much cheaper than having me rebuild the entire UI, it would also boost this employee's productivity. Not to mention that swapping a monitor takes 10 minutes, changing a UI probably weeks.
Customer insisted to change the UI, because "if we give him a new monitor, everyone in the office will want one". I nearly got fired for responding with "Great! Then everyone can benefit from more productivity!".
In the end we did change the UI, I believe the total cost was something like 30k. The customer had maybe 15 employees, so new monitors would still have been much cheaper.
A few months later their offices were remodelled with expensive designer furniture, wooden floors and custom artwork on the walls. Must have cost a fortune. In the end, the employees still worked on ancient computers with 15" monitors, because new computers didn't fit the budget.
I like to imagine the gaming landscape if developers were forced to work on 5yr old hardware.
You mean like consoles?
Kinda, games ported to mobile also.
Porting to mobile comes with a dumbing down of the control scheme and thus dumbing down of game complexity since you can't control it.
And they turn into "free" with IAPs.
Rather not.
Sometimes I have the feeling AAAs can be better optimized than Unity based indies.
It's probably a bit better than when Unity was new. I do remember the first x-com remake in 2012 was lasting longer on battery than $random_unity_indie.
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.
That's dumb. You can hardly even buy a machine with 4GB of memory on sale, at any price.
If you are making products that depend on people spending money on them, you generally don't have to care about broke people with 15 year old computers.
I must say, the irony of this comment in a thread about Apple moving down-market without losing quality is … well, it burns. Along with the arrogance: “Anyone who can’t afford 8GB isn’t worthy of being my customer,” is literally the opposite of what Steve Jobs always said.
I was stuck once in a cabin in the woods with an old Android phone. I’m glad it still worked, and that people curating software experiences for it had more empathy — and more business sense — than this comment displays.
Didn’t Steve Jobs basically say Apple didn’t know how to make a good computer for $500 and used that as a justification to not sell any products to the lowest priced area of the market?
Found it, it was from an earnings call: https://appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/22/steve_jobs_on_app...
There’s no irony here. The plain fact exists that 8GB of RAM has been considered not an especially exotic amount lot even on cheap on laptops and desktops for about a decade if not longer.
$450 in 2015 would have bought you a Dell laptop with 6GB of upgradable memory:
https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-inspiron-15-5...
The PS4 launched in 2013 and had 8GB of RAM with an operating system that barely multi-tasks.
Steve Jobs died in 2011. Did you check the specs of cheap laptops when SJ said that?
Why does that matter?
The point was that Apple has completely been uninterested in the bottom of the laptop market from 1976 to 2026, and there is therefore no irony in my statement that many businesses including Apple will purposefully ignore customers who do not have enough money to buy their stuff.
From the first comment I responded to:
> “Anyone who can’t afford 8GB isn’t worthy of being my customer,” is literally the opposite of what Steve Jobs always said.
This commenter is wrong. This idea that the bottom of the market is below Apple is almost exactly what the quote from the earnings call said. Jobs effectively said “we only make mid to high end computers, someone else can take the serve the budget customers.”
This is why I pointed out that most people employed making commercial software don’t have to concern themselves with the needs and desires of users on desperately outdated hardware, since those users can’t afford your product anyway.
Of course, at the time Jobs was alive that number for RAM was below 8GB, but that specific number is not specifically relevant other than the fact that I brought it up as a general example of the standard of the day from around 10 years ago.
I brought up a bunch of computing examples from the mid-2010s after Jobs’ death because they are about the oldest reasonable hardware you’d find around today, proof that even buyers of low-end hardware 10+ years ago were regularly getting more than 4GB of RAM.
Apple’s base model MacBook Air in 2017 had 8GB of RAM. The 2015 model started with 4GB configurable to 8GB. The 12” MacBook from 2016 had 8GB RAM.
So you literally have to go back a decade to find anything sold by Apple where getting less than 8GB was an option on the lowest possible configuration, never mind PC manufacturers who generally gave better specs per dollar and included socketed memory.
But hey, Apple shills will shout from the rooftops that a 2026 laptop with 8GB of RAM is a good deal just because it’s $500 if you lie about your status as a student and pinky promise with Apple that you’ll never use the computer for commercial usage.
No Steve Jobs said exactly what he said. The technology wasn’t to the point where they could offer products that aren’t junk. An unsubsidized $120 Android phone is “junk”. A $99 iPod Shuffle or a $300 low end iPad isn’t.
The Netbooks available in 2010 were junk even by that days standards.
The MacBook Neo which is fast enough, a better display than low end PCs and a good trackpad is not junk. It can do what most low end consumers care about well.
At least in the US, even during the SJ era you could get a “free” iPhone with a contract that anyone could afford - it was the last years phone
Well, here’s the thing…and, I apologize, this is a bit of a shift from what we were talking about.
The MacBook Neo is getting so much hype for being better than a low end PC, before it’s been put through its paces over the long term.
I had the same initial reaction. Wow, a Mac for $500, how incredible, how disruptive.
But then this morning I decided to look at the actual street pricing of laptops at my local Best Buy.
And here’s the thing: now that Apple has this machine with no haptic trackpad, no backlit keyboard, the worst screen available on any Apple product, very small keyboard, and very basic non-upgradable specs including a generations-old efficiency processor, I think the actual story here is that Apple has changed their mind and is willing to make a product that they would have previously called “junk.”
I’ll list off a couple of systems that I would absolutely buy as better machines over the MacBook Neo:
HP OmniBook X Flip, 16” 2K touch screen, Intel Core Ultra 5 226V, 16GB memory, 512GB storage, $699.
For the same price as the top model Neo you get double the RAM, a bigger and probably better screen, which is convertible and touch enabled. It is not some kind of bargain basement SKU, either, a legitimately well-reviewed laptop.
Lenovo IdeaLad Slim 3x, 15.3” 2K touchscreen, Snapdragon X1, 16GB memory, 256GB storage. $549
Right there in the pricing sweet spot you get more memory and basically all the benefits of an ARM architecture in another laptop that is well-regarded. You also get a number pad on the keyboard.
All these laptops have been getting well over 4.5 star reviews, like this one:
> This little guy has been amazing this semester plenty of power while being light and getting good battery life the quick charging feature is particularly impressive from almost dead to full in around half an hour all and all this laptop has met or exceeded all of my school life needs
Finally, this is probably my choice if I was in this segment:
Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 14” 2k touch screen Ryzen AI 340, 16GB memory, 512GB SSD, $679.99.
Another great example of a laptop that is costing you less than the Neo’s top model before education discount, has better specs, and is again a legitimately good model of laptop solidly in the mid-range of the lineup, not a bargain basement SKU. I would actually be surprised if the Neo kept up with this particular model in terms of build quality, keyboard, etc.
The Neo’s main advantage is that it’s got a chassis made of aluminum, and that’s really its only differentiator. And I’d say that’s an overrated differentiator (e.g., plastic is lighter and isn’t automatically weaker/worse for long-term ownership).
Just looking at the first one - the screen is worse, it’s heavier and the processor is slower. Of course PC mags always grade crappy intel based PCs on a curve. Actually all of the screens are worse.
They are bigger screens, which many people may prefer. They also have touchscreens, which many people may prefer.
The Lenovo Yoga has an OLED screen, I am somewhat doubtful the average person would find it worse than the screen on the Neo.
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_a18_pro-vs-a...
The Ryzen AI 340 isn't a bad match against the A18 Pro. It's actually ahead of the A18 Pro on multicore performance, and only 20% behind on single core benchmarks, not enough for anyone to notice. Yeah, it's true you're losing a lot of integrated GPU performance. Integrated GPUs do need more RAM, though, and I doubt the Neo is going to be handle a lot in the realm of "high school kids who want to game on the side" between that and the software compatibility situation.
What did Steve Jobs say?
Not caring makes the world worse for everyone. All of us. Including you.
My main point isn’t about caring or not, the point is that 4GB RAM in a laptop/desktop is incredibly rare for how outdated it is.
The PS4 came out in 2013 and has 8GB of RAM. In case you need help counting, that’s 13 years ago.
And that’s an optimized game console with no general purpose operating system and limited multitasking capability.
10 years ago, Samsung phones were shipping with 6GB of RAM. Not many phones even physically last that long.
My uncle bought a $350 trash Windows PC a couple years ago, literally the cheapest thing I could find on sale at Staples, and it came with 12GB of RAM.
The price of memory is insane, so if anyone wants to increase performance/dollar, they're likely going to have to do it in software. I would suspect 4Gb computers are going to come back if the hungry AI beast doesn't cool it soon.
The RAM market will stabilize. These crazy spikes never last.
How much memory does your parents and grandparents computers have? There are a lot of people out there with older computers, probably even some that you know :)
My parents have 8GB and 16GB, respectively. The computer with 8GB is 6 years old and it was the base model at the time.
$450 in 2015 would have bought you a Dell laptop with 6GB of upgradable memory:
https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-inspiron-15-5...
My uncle bought a $350 trash Windows PC a couple years ago, literally the cheapest thing I could find on sale at Staples, and it came with 12GB of RAM.
ebay
> It might be worthwhile to ensure that a web app you're developing will work on a less powerful machine
If that’s your goal this machine is still too powerful. Web apps generally care about single thread performance. The machine has a single thread performance that exceeds any and all Intel/AMD processors, according to Geekbench (A18 Pro: 3445; Ryzen 9 9950X: 3385). My own test for ensuring my web app performs well involves a machine less than half as fast, and my web app runs with all assertions turned on.
> The machine has a single thread performance that exceeds any and all Intel/AMD processors
Not true at all: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/single-thread/
Those chart seem _very_ suspect when it comes to Apple CPUs, to the point I don't think they're worth considering much.
M3 Ultra being fastest in single core than M4 or A19 Pro doesn't make any sense.
Those chart also suggest that M3->M4 was a _regression_ in performance, which, is... an interesting conclusion.
True for Geekbench.
Which notoriously favors anything made by Apple.
Said only by those that don’t favor Apple.
The CPU is capable. The 8GB of RAM not so much. If this had even just the 12GB of the A19 Pro that'd be a huge upgrade. Unless the RAM shortage gets developers to actually start giving a shit about RAM efficiency, but that seems unlikely to happen honestly.
Especially not when a certified macbook air refurb straight from Apple isn't that much more if you're not able to get the $500 EDU pricing on the Neo. $850 gets you a 16GB RAM / 512GB M4 Air, which is significantly better than the $700 Neo in every way.
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 much all laptops from Dell, HP, etc come with some form of eMMC storage. And I'm not speaking about the other specs like display or build quality. We ended up buying second-hand M1 and M2 macbook airs, and both I and my sisters are very happy about it.
(also, as the "tech support guy" of the family, I'm oh my so happy about them not running windows)
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 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"
> 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.
> you swapped your whole system memory in 3 seconds, which is impressive.
As a user a 3 second hang is unusable. Also, critically, swap consumes the life of the drive. Since the Neo's isn't user-replaceable, a 3-5 year lifespan before death is actually a non-trivial compromise, although time will tell on that one I suppose.
Should be fast enough to swap in a browser page I guess. Overall you're right that it's the wrong device for memory hungry applications, but it's not the target audience.
There are multiple videos out there of reviewers running multiple “Pro” apps at the same time on the Neo. It’s an impressive machine.
As Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) mentioned in his review, the Neo has the same keyboard as Apple's MacBook Pro line, just without backlighting. That makes them really good for writing and potentially coding on the go.
I can definitely see why the Asus CEO would want to put it in that box, though.
I have a macbook pro m1 with 8gb ram and it has been surprisingly good for all kinds of work. And I've had it since about 2020.
I have the same, and I probably won't get another that soon. I have used it for dev work daily for 6 years.
Content consumption definitely seems like the wrong term, it seems perfectly cromulent for let's say a college student, or an executive.
It’s not even a less powerful device. It has the same performance as the M1, which is still a beast.
> The Neo doesn’t have a hardware indicator light for the camera. The indication for “camera in use” is only in the menu bar. There’s a privacy/security implication for this omission. According to Apple, the hardware indicator light for camera-in-use on MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads cannot be circumvented by software. If the camera is on, that light comes on, and no software can disable it. Because the Neo’s only camera-in-use indicator is in the menu bar, that seems obviously possible to circumvent via software.
iPhone and iPad does not have a hardware indicator light
There is a ton of fascinating work to make the "software" camera in use indicator just as secure if not more secure than an LED attached to the power lines of the camera. Apple hasn't publicly talked about it much but here are two sources that aren't terrible.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09272 https://randomaugustine.medium.com/on-apple-exclaves-d683a2c... https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/19/on-apple-exclav...
We've seen a few examples on HN lately (Coruna iOS Exploit Kit) of nation state level exploits in the hands of financially motivated organizations. I'm not free of bias here but the industry is quickly headed towards a reckoning in terms of security over the next few years.
Minus an intentionally bad hardware design, I struggle to imagine how a software version of the idea could ever be more secure than a power line hard-wired to an LED.
You build it directly into the GPU firmware and don't give the operating system any access to it.
> You build it directly into the GPU firmware and don't give the operating system any access to it.
State-level actors have been know to fiddle with firmware, specifically in the past for hard drives:
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13534...
* https://www.wired.com/2015/02/nsa-firmware-hacking/
I could see how cameras and microphones could be enticing targets.
That is still a blackbox code implementation which could be updated at any time. I trust wires, not programmers.
The firmware could be flashed to the device in factory and then write-protected by burning a fuse in the circuit.
This is not the case.
I mean, we don't really have any indication that the MacBook camera light is hard wired into anything.
For those who are interested, you can disassemble/image the assembly and see there is no funny business. People have done it. If there is something more complex than a power line, something is afoot.
I have no way of interrogating some GPU firmware.
I still don’t see how this could be more secure than connecting the LED to the camera’s power lines.
I'm pretty sure the Apple dev who was tasked with securing the older hardware "tally lamps" is on HN somewhere -- I seem to remember him posting about it. (is it you?)
I used to know a guy, about 15 years ago, who made his money exclusively through buying up laptops and hacking the tally lamp code (to stop it activating) one-by-one and selling the code directly to 3LAs. It was really good money.
No, I was not in the industry at the time :)
I am well aware of that work and the result is not more secure than power lines turning the LED on.
It's possible that they use the camera to measure room brightness
I thought this too. If they're using the camera to do brightness, it needs to be on when the user isn't using it - if the activity LED is tied to the camera power rail (not sure if it is), it might look like there's something nefarious going on. No way Apple would let that go out the door.
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/mac-on-screen-camer... > MacBook Neo combines system software and dedicated silicon elements within A18 Pro to provide additional security for the camera feed. The architecture is designed to prevent any untrusted software—even with root or kernel privileges in macOS—from engaging the camera without also visibly lighting the on-screen camera indicator light.
Huh. I hadn't digested the iphone indicator was also software based only.
But it's not like hardware indicators are foolprof, even apple has suffered hardware based circunvent via firmware: https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/12/18/researchers-find-...
I guess for Neos it's back to the good old postit.
Arguably with SIP a hardware indicator light is not strictly necessary, the OS could force the indicator pixels to be lit.
Isn't the argument that a hardware indicator light is (more) immune to bugs? If its just software, you're a software exploit/bug away from finding a way to access the sensor without tripping the software light.
Yes but also this has never been an issue on any phones (i.e. never heard a complaint), and you take that to the toilet. By comparison a laptop camera has much less access to your private life.
People who are truly worried about cameras will cover it regardless of indicator.
I might be mis-remembering but wasn't Pegasus spyware able to bypass the camera indicator? Or was the issue that journalists were constantly seeing the light appear for no reason. I believe it was one of those.
Pegasus is primarily a mobile spyware toolkit and iPhone does not have a hardware light
This depends on how the light is implemented -- if it's implemented in the camera module itself it's pretty bulletproof, but i would bet it's just a gpio to the processor on most of these devices and controlled by the os anyway. I could be wrong about that, but I err on the side of caution. I keep my phone in a bag most of the time.
Treat every gun as if it's loaded, and every camera as if it's filming.
On modern Apple devices, the HW indicator light is wired directly between the power rail of the camera module and ground. Turning the camera on via software energizes the power rail. The only way that the camera is on and the led is not is if the led has burned out.
This is a "nothing-up-my-sleeves" implementation, it's not really possible to hide anything weird in the complexity. Apple clearly didn't just want a light that's always on when the camera is on, they wanted an implementation where they can point to it and clearly prove that the light is always on if the camera is on.
That's going to be a problem for the education market though.
Why?
I 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 air, I would be ecstatic for the neo.
Same. I got the 2024 15" Macbook Air when CostCo had it for $849.00*
Hadn't purchased a laptop new since college scholarship decades ago. This machine continues to make an immediate impression. The entire thing is thinner than just the bottom of my college CoreDuo. It also lasts 8x longer, on battery.
I just use mine as a tertiary machine (i.e. bedtime reading/podcast), but if you ever want to run the machine hard long-term, you can use 1mm thermal pads between the heatsink and bottom of external case (and then it'll never throttle).
> if you ever want to run the machine hard long-term, you can use 1mm thermal pads between the heatsink and bottom of external case (and then it'll never throttle).
That will spread the heat to the battery and degrade it much faster.
The inverse is true:
This removes heat from the internal compartments (which logic board heat sink and battery co-habitate [0]) by transferring it outside via heat conduction through the case. There is no detectible heat increase (to touch) — consider the heat masses relative sizes (processor v. entire metal case).
[0] See <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXY9tCBpf48&t=188> — thermal pad placement goes between four central screws (above processor)
As a thought experiment: how would ejecting heat from the inside increase its temperature?
Nice hardware (except for the reflective screen). Software is okay, fiddly, often fights with the user, bugs surprisingly often.
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.
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.
Same. Equally comfortable on Windows, Mac and Linux. But almost almost all new hardware choices for the last 25 plus years have been mostly from Apple. The old Macs don't really die, even as I replace them with faster models, so my house is slowly becoming an Apple/Mac museum, starting with a Mac 512k, Mac CI and Mac LC, and so on, right down to a trash can Mac in the mix, and then to M series Macs. All CPU generations from Apple: 6502 (Apple ][), 68000, 68040 (NeXT) PPC, ARM (Newton, iDevices), Intel and M series. Can't get myself to throw/give/sell them away.
Coming to terms with two uncomfortable truths: I'm a hoarder, and an unapologetically incorrigible Apple fanboi.
> 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 gardens with app stores, excessive power over developers and users). MacOS is also very behind Linux these days in terms of app compatibility (especially games).
I won't be buying a Neo before a compatible Linux distro is confirmed. If the stock OS can't be replaced for one reason or another, it's dead on arrival as far as I am concerned.
Agreed, macOS has hardly improved in the past decade. The only improvements are about ecosystem integration, which I don't really care about. Everything else is stuck in the 2010s. UI has regressed if you ask me.
What improvements has Windows made in the last decade? I think what you're describing is a symptom of modern software development as a whole.
I wouldn't say as a whole. KDE is way ahead of where it was 10 years ago!
KDE was far less mature than macOS and Windows 10 years ago. Of course it’s come a long way.
Windows Terminal and PowerToys are pretty nice. The Phone Link app is convenient, and screenshots are way better (no need to paste into Paint anymore, just use snip and sketch)
The snipping tool (with all features I'm using today) was added to PowerToys more than 20 years ago. It was integrated directly into Windows 10 pretty early in the update cycle. Not sure it qualifies for "the last decade".
You get AI EMBEDDED EXPLORER! Just wait 2 seconds for LLM to open up your folder.
Oh and don't forget to watch the ads.
Or their constant use of dark patterns to push you into using Bing and Edge. I was actually an Edge user myself. I liked a few of its built-in features, and it felt pretty fast. But then they started tricking me into changing my default search engine to Bing. I fell for it a couple of times, and then I quit.
> 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 devices with proprietary OSs we can't hack on is a great feature for the masses, but not us.
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.
It has even regressed, I'm still on my High Sierra 2011 MacBook Air, but on my mom's M3 Air I can't help but observe that they did all that engineering to reduce the black bezel around the lid, only for Tahoe to have overly rounded windows and huge title bars.
I wouldn't say it hasn't improved. Security has improved considerably, and it's one of the main reasons to use a Mac.
However, there's too many bundled apps. Just wrote about this last week: https://medium.com/@hbbio/let-me-uninstall-spotlight-1fe64a3...
The tab key doesn't even work consistently across apps and screens.
No, macOS has improved a ton in a lot of ways under-the-hood. Battery life, memory compression, paging behaviour. The MacBook Neo wouldn't be possible at 8GB without all this stuff.
Ecosystem integration is the shining difference between Apple and others, as it is radically better than any other available implementation.
I would argue that ecosystem integration is the only primary consideration that you need to use at the top/first-culling-step of the flowchart to either include or discount Apple products in any purchasing decision. Anything else is secondary, and has workarounds.
> UI has regressed
Honestly, I love the UI of MacOS 9.2.2 the most. But I don’t have a Time Machine or Elon Musk levels of wealth to chart a different course.
And sure, some UI decisions of late have been questionable. That is always the case with non-niche products that don’t have highly focused and largely conforming users. Apple moved out of that category back in the early 2000s, and it is forced to make the same UI tradeoffs that Microsoft makes.
I actually don’t mind the modern UI, and aside from a few warts I think they’re going in a very user-friendly direction even if power users feel slighted and abandoned.
Same here, MacBooks are decent hardware but nowhere near so superior as to justify all the downsides and increasingly dark patterns Apple has been pushing left and right.
I agree that it isn’t as good as it was but compared to windows (with adds in the start menu, and two different settings menus for a decade as examples) it’s still better. More of a glass of warm cheap whiskey, than a glass of cool ice water in hell.
Haven’t HN users been warning that Apple was going to turn the Mac into a wall garden since the Mac App Store was introduced in 2009?
> MacOS is also very behind Linux these days in terms of app compatibility (especially games).
For the average consumer looking for a $599 MacBook Neo, Mac is the better choice for apps they actually use.
Linux can be used for gaming with a lot of titles, but both Mac and Linux are too far behind Windows or consoles to be considered as gaming machines.
> but both Mac and Linux are too far behind Windows or consoles to be considered as gaming machines.
That's absolutely not true, the vast majority of Windows games now run flawlessly on Linux via Proton. This is especially true for the kind of games you can expect to run on such modest hardware, i.e. not AAA games with kernel-level anticheat.
I, a developer, have never heard of Proton. Googling Proton, I only find Protonmail, and googling "Linux Proton," Valve's Proton is not even the first result. If you are not terminally online keeping up with Linux distro discourse, it's also difficult to even recognize any of the newer names and players.
Linux is not even remotely considerable as an option for the average consumer, which is fine and fully intentional with the audience and goals Linux distros serve.
You could even consider this a strong positive, because a Linux distro geared towards average consumers would probably be an analog to Samsung's take on Android. What makes your experience with Linux good is that it isn't catering towards a wider audience.
You've probably heard of the state of Mac gaming, if you've played video games much at all.
Linux has twice the number of active Steam users as Mac, with probably very nearly all of them using Proton to some degree: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
Personally, I've actually had noticeably better compatibility on Linux with older games, compared to Windows. And every single one I've been interested in for the past several years works flawlessly on it. (I don't enjoy most AAA games, so my sample is definitely skewed, but it's a fairly common result)
You, a developer, just happened to not know a very well known software. This fact is not as meaningful as you believe it is.
You don’t need to know what proton is to click ‘install’ in Steam.
All games I've installed on Steam Deck, with our without official compatibility, have worked well. Steam Deck runs a Linux. It all works thanks to Proton. And I'd go as far as saying, it just works.
I agree in general with your first point.
Regarding gaming I disagree: my gaming needs (using a Mac for everything else) are fully satisfied by an additional steam deck, a "console" running linux. Of the top of my head I know only of one game I would like to run it on the steam deck but can't.
The Linux gaming runtime is free, much like Windows redistributables. macOS gets singled-out for not having DXVK/Proton, and rightfully so.
macOS does have DXVK*, just not Proton.
*but it’s a bit slow because you also have to emulate Vulkan using Metal
MacOS is a bug filled nightmare, and it's still light years better than Windows. I haven't used Ubuntu extensively since early 2019, but it still wasn't comparable to OSX at the time.
Apple and specifically MacOS is significantly worse than it has ever been, but again, still far better than the alternatives.
Its a shame there isn't more goodwill for some companies to bankroll a project like asahi linux. Keeping up with reverse engineering apple silicon seems like a very large task.
My hope is they can extend support for the A chips as Asahi Fedora has been splendid for my M1 Pro
asahi is great and i hope they keep going but i can't help but wonder why apple appears to be fully singular in their arm dominance
> i can't help but wonder why apple appears to be fully singular in their arm dominance
I have to imagine that a big part of it is the company can plan and act as a single unit. The teams building the CPU, the computers which house that CPU, and the operating system and software that'll run on those computers are all working together, and can plan new features which cut across those boundaries. Other ARM CPU/system manufacturers don't have that advantage.
As a developer, MacOS is super reliable to me. I love Linux, but there are always somethings not working, which drive me crazy.
I buy a macbook for the hardware and tolerate macos. I mostly do terminal stuff so i can largely avoid it.
I fully agree. My use case sees a fairly intensive use of MacOS, Linux and Windows, and out of all these, MacOS is the worst experience for me, and that's saying a lot when I prefer to use Windows 11 over MacOS.
Macs have very strong advantages but the software, the OS is absolutely infuriating. There's so many annoyances over regular use. You can remedy some of them with third party software (which should have been just system settings), but not all, and by the way some of these cost money for stupidly basic settings.
Finally and probably most painful, is Apple's constant push to update your software stack and things just stop working, and they expect you to keep chasing their decisions. You can't really build anything for Apple that's meant to last. It's exhausting. Meanwhile Windows can run programs from 30 years ago and Linux has extremely efficient, beautifully implemented software from all eras probably already installed in your Distro.
This depends heavily on your use case. I'd get rid of Windows entirely if I could. For most people I'd say MacOS is the most sane and plug and play experience. The email/browser/note taking experience is better than on Windows, and easier than on Linux.
This gets less and less true when you start pluging peripherals and wanting to change the default behavior or use certain apps. But then they're not the target of the Neo.
that example is just worthless... most people are used to notepad and windows (by a huge margin) than ANY mac thing you can say. So, no, sorry, you are wrong, the sanest plug and play experience, still, is windows, who is pirated all across the globe and put on anything.
Those extremely efficient and beautifully implemented software runs in macOS, probably from the same source code.
The only GUI I use on Mac is browser, so I never felt anything - maybe the only thing that I don't deal with on linux is the weird requirement of xcode, which is mostly a chore that you do once. Still can't beat the hardware.
They might or might run. osx has no namespaces, no cgroups, no compiler extension for thread local storage, no wayland, no dbus.
Modern linux software won't run for sure, unless it is written with osx in mind and comes with plenty of workarounds.
Linux compatibility would be sweet, but Apple has no incentive.
Hopefully this product gives other companies the kick in the pants they need to improve their hardware.
Though they still haven’t been able to complete that well against the Air and Pro, so seems unlikely they will adapt well to this either.
How do you reconcile the fact that that Apple will sell millions of these devices without a compatible Linux distribution shipping for years if ever with your claim about it being DOA?
Like sure it’s DOA to you, but in what world does that really matter when it’s going to sell so well?
The same way I reconcile the fact that the 11" Macbook sold millions of devices; consumers don't care. They don't buy Macs as a conscious evaluation of what the device is capable of or how well it was made. Even the 2019 16" Macbook Pro, arguably the worst Mac ever sold, has millions of units floating around in Obsoleteland.
Personally I agree with the parent's comment. I used to buy Macs, but nowadays Apple alienates me. I'm one of the millions that don't buy a Mac because the hardware is gimped by arbitrary software limitations. Unless Apple changes that stance, I'm a lost customer. Cupertino has the market share statistics, they know where to find me.
Consider how many Macs in total that Apple sold during the years that Apple sold the 11 inch Air and that they discontinued it, I doubt it was a raging success.
Especially seeing that with the Apple now selling the 13 inch Neo and it decided to sell a larger Air instead of a small one, I don’t think it sold that well.
Most consumers don't use Linux, and MacOS is far ahead of Windows IMO -- and I use all three OSs (and have for 30 years)
I disagree that the software leaves to be desired
Just an example, I'll take Apple's Office suite (Pages, etc.) over MS Office any day - or LibreOffice.
> 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 use Windows and macOS both daily and it's truly baffling to me that anyway could consider Windows software quality to crush the Mac -- either first party or third party. macOS has no shortage of bugs but compared to Windows it works like a dream.
As one example of many, Night Light (Windows' version of adjusting your screen to be warmer at night) has been broken for me, for 5+ years. I mean literally it just never works on its own. The only way to kick it into working is toggling HDR on and then off, every single time I wake it up.
I would guess it's just my configuration but I built a second PC from totally new parts, and got a different monitor, and installed Windows 11 instead of 10, and it's still broken.
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.
for 99% of consumers, the question is windows vs. macOS, and that's all there is to it. Between the two on a budget-price laptop, it's no competition.
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.
Firefox, Gmail, and ssh have essentially the same user experience on Linux as on macOS.
your average neo buyer doesn't know what ssh is and would probably like media apps ranging from capcut to lightroom.
Not sure that’s true in general, but the comparison here is between Linux and macOS. And I believe that for the set of users contemplating Linux, GP is largely correct.
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.
I think the thing is "MacOS" itself hasn't really been evolved for some time - what has been happening is taking iOS ideas and concepts and porting them back.
I think that's ended up with a bit of a mess.
Yeah. There are a couple of Apple devices in the house and it's the software that causes me the most grief. The only thing worse is a Chromebook.
Is 2026 the year of the linux desktop?
Can I update video drivers in Linux without seeing a console? OS X updates them automatically where it's a non-issue.
Updating video drivers in Ubuntu is so so so much easier than under Windows it's ridiculous.
Windows has more drivers for more things, but if Linux has drivers (e.g. you buy a Laptop with Linux support) then driver management is massively easier.
I spent god knows how many hours getting the windows drivers for my last self built gaming PC working. Linux I just installed and was done. In reality the Windows experience was also a lot worse than having to drop to the console occasionally. It definitely required more in depth knowledge, even if everything was UI driven...
Unless you have very specialized needs, the driver experience on Windows is "turn the machine on". The driver update experience is "connect to the internet" and occasionally "reboot". That's it.
Linux is significantly easier than it was 20 years ago but still not as easy in general.
Tell me what happens if you run a Windows machine for say 12 months and decide to switch the GPU from NVIDIA to AMD (or vice versa)? Yeah.
In linux it tends to be a nonissue.
When is the last time you used Windows? XP? It hasn't been an issue for decades.
Graphics drivers moved out of kernel space in Windows Vista.
That's true if you buy a Laptop with all drivers preinstalled. But it's absolutely not true if you install on a machine you built yourself.
I've been building machines myself for nearly 30 years, including multiple in the last 5, and I assure you I've needed to do nothing besides connect to the internet and let it get updates each time.
It's been Year Of The Linux Handheld for gaming since 2022, the best platform to play games is Steam Deck where updates are clicking "Update" in the System panel. You can run either Bazzite or SteamOS on your own hardware, although I haven't tried that.
The best platform, provided the games you want to play actually work and work well. Many do not, even some popular ones.
I own a steam deck and love it, but please, let’s temper the enthusiasm with realism.
sure "best" is subjectively true for my criteria: it plays the largest number of games with about zero annoyance / friction. maybe desktop windows plays more games, but it certainly has a bazillion more frictions and annoyances
In some distros you have rolling updates where it happens for you and you're always on cutting edge.
> I won't be buying a Neo before a compatible Linux distro is confirmed.
You mean confirmed by Apple? I think that seems unlikely
No, just supported by, say, Asahi.
I don't know about this, MacOS for productivity is still better performing than Windows.
Both Apple and Microsoft have been pushing the industry into directions we aren't happy with. But MacOS is still fantastic and in this laptop will work extremely well.
People also aren't buying this laptop to play any games that require decent power.
As someone who buys Asus motherboards when he builds PC's, it hasn't been a shock for me as an owner of a Macbook for the last 18 years.
I've been of the firm opinion for a very long time that Macbook's are the best productivity laptops and now even more so once Apple moved from Intel to their own M chips. Their entry level Macbook before the Neo you could buy and it would be a laptop that would see you for many many years.
all of my normal pcs served me well for many many years. They don't get slower naturally, it was windows getting ever more bloated. I put linux on an 8 year old computer and it just flies again
Fully agree. When I have to use Windows from time to time, I’m always surprised by how laggy the cursor feels even on hardware that can do 8K VR just fine.
> Their entry level Macbook before the Neo you could buy and it would be a laptop that would see you for many many years.
I hope they fixed the ultra brittle screens of their Macbook lineup. I bought a MacBook Air M1 a few years ago and I've been royally pissed off when, after 13 months (one month out of warrant in my case/country) the "bendgate" hit me: the screen died overnight, without any reason (was fine the day before, woke up: screen dead. MacBook Air didn't move). Many people had the same happen to them and they called this the "bendgate" (except there was no "bend").
This prevented me from buying a MacBook M2, M3, M4 and now M5.
Well... Unless I can be convinced that this time the screen isn't going to die overnight.
Saddest thing of them all: I'm the kind of person to only ever use the laptop at home on my lap and never ever put it in a backpack (I don't even own a backpack).
Personally, I would not buy any laptop without 2-3 years of warranty support / Apple Care. Laptops are expensive and things can stop working for lots of reasons. It's why I've loved ThinkPads, though I now use Apple as my usage these days is less dev / more fun.
2016-2019 was an awful blip but otherwise I agree
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.
Windows 11 has 1 Billion+ installs. That's not a decline and hardly a crisis. That's a huge install base.
While that's true, I also think these things tend to happen as a gradual build up to the tipping-point effect where the zeitgeist shifts so suddenly that a massive player is suddenly irrelevant.
Microsoft is structurally incapable of making Windows better. Intel is intrinsically incapable of making x86 better (enough to matter). x86 hardware manufacturers are in a price race to the bottom, and there's no way around that.
Apple doesn't have any of those problems. Instead, more and more young people can afford and aspire to get a Mac. They want to buy software that works on the mac, and they'll want to write software for the Mac. The network effect compounds.
I swear that I read this comment in 2019, and it's still wrong today. Young people want iPhones, go look at Apple's revenue breakdown. iPhones and iPhone accessories dwarf Mac sales, the only comparable product in terms of revenue is the iPad. There is no evidence that Apple Silicon has changed that B2C story.
In the broader B2B sense, Apple lost pole-position to Nvidia. They're not the ecosystem kingmaker they once were, and their ARM architecture is failing to subsume demand for their competitors. The "Private Compute" Mac-based servers are going terribly according to reports, and their contribution to the chip shortage has even driven them to collaborate with Intel Foundry Services: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/28/intel-rumored-to-supply...
I think it's truer now than it was in 2019. Don't you think? This doesn't have to be a binary thing.
The zeitgeist exists on forums like this. Outside where people touch grass now and then, they largely don't care.
x86 OEMs are a race to the bottom because that's how the PC market has been for eons as PCs are a tool, not a status symbol, but how has x86 not 'gotten better'? It's significantly more battery friendly than it has ever been by a long margin, matching the M-series.
This.
Ofc a huge chunk of that is in companies but I'm fairly sure there are at least two windows 11 machines per one mac in consumer segment as well.
It's just momentum. You buy windows because you have windows. You buy windows because there's not really much of a choice. You have windows because you're not going out of your ways to reconfigure hundreds of laptops at your company just for your employees to be less comfortable with Linux.
Now introduce a choice… and things might change.
With the vast majority of software nowadays living in the browser, your OS matters less and less, especially for a business that buys machines for its employees.
As OS matters less that’s probably not going to entrench Microsoft less. Their relationship with OEM:s is not market based but a two way relationship.
At this point I would not be surprised if MS started to subvent the PC manufacturers to favour Windows over Linux if that ever comes to that.
> At this point I would not be surprised if MS started to subvent the PC manufacturers to favour Windows over Linux if that ever comes to that.
I've always assumed this has been happening since the 90s.
I would have expected MS has charged some fee for Windows but honestly no clue.
I'm sure there are readers with actual insight here :)
Generally you can see the Windows fee. Just go to an OEM like Lenovo and configure a laptop without Windows. It'll be some -$ amount.
There's an anecdote about flies and shit there somewhere =)
There is no way all these corporations will change their infrastructure. Nearly impossible.
OTOH, client Windows is the smallest and least important building block in it. Microsoft is helpfully also setting all their native apps on fire too and replacing them with webslop that runs equally poorly on MacOS, ChromeOS and Linux as it does on Windows 11, so the biggest concern is (A)AD integration and centralized management… and all three are decently manageable these days. If Microsoft didn't throw in the Windows licenses for free, more orgs would already be looking at ditching Windows 11, and if it keeps getting worse, even that won't look like a good deal any more.
But you’re stuck with MacOS.
I can’t stand it and every update makes it worse.
Been running popos abs everything I can and it’s petty nice.
Installed it on a new LG Gram and everything works including fingerprint reader. Is my favorite laptop and my old Mac sits gathering dust,
Yeah I got one from work. I was quite excited to get one as macos is supposed to be a paragon of design but after using it I'm so glad I didn't spend my own money on it as it's been a total disappointment. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't want to launch it off the roof.
I use it everyday, I love it. Native unix, great apps and ecosystem.
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.
Been using macOS for years, even main it for both personal and work. It has a LOT of UX issues and requires many 3rd party tools to "fix" it.
macOS has plenty of it's own OS adverts.
What 3rd party tools would those be? I've been using Macs since ~1994 and my 3rd party tool use has fluctuated wildly over that time. I have a lot of 3rd party software installed but I can't think of anything that I'd call a "requirement" to "fix" the OS.
The most obvious one is that there's no native way to handle having too many icons in the top bar. If you have too many, they just start disappearing, instead of being hidden in an expansion like on Windows. This _literally_ makes them unusable without a third party program.
And if you have the notch this is very far from a theoretical problem.
The native solution to this is to hold the command key and drag unneeded icons out of the bar to remove them. If the programs you’re using refuse to let you remove those icons (or they keep re-adding them against your wishes) then those programs are bad citizens and you should probably stop using them!
That's not really a solution. I don't want the icons permanently gone, I want them accessible because they are there to provide essential functionality.
If I delete my Dropbox icon out of the menu bar how am I supposed to know that it's running, click on it to see its status, quit the program, etc.
I just uninstalled the Dropbox app to get rid of that icon because it was annoying me. I guess we have different priorities!
Same issue for my password manager, my VPN, etc.
Sure, I could also uninstall all the programs I use but that does seem to defeat the purpose of having the computer.
I use the password manager built into the OS (iCloud Keychain) which doesn’t put an icon into that bar.
We’re talking about a limited resource (a few inches of screen real estate at the top of the screen) that tons of app developers feel entitled to occupy. Now we could have some kind of system whereby excess icons get dumped into a … menu, but that defeats the entire purpose since they’re no longer on the screen all the time!
There are plenty of apps out there which do not feel entitled to a slice of this precious screen real estate. I think it’s worth supporting them!
> Now we could have some kind of system whereby excess icons get dumped into a … menu, but that defeats the entire purpose since they’re no longer on the screen all the time!
This is just not true. The purpose is not necessarily to have the icon on the screen all the time. If the menu doesn't exist, the buttons don't exist either, and plenty of applications are built assuming that you have access to their bar icons while they're running.
If the icon is missing there is _literally_ no other way to use the relevant functionality. If the icon is hidden in a menu, you can use the functionality, it's just an extra click.
MacOS Tahoe lets you hide ones you don’t want to see. I uninstalled ICE after I upgraded because I don’t need it anymore.
Rectangle (Apple's implementation is not as good), Balance Lock, Mos, Ice, Monitor Control.
Different sound device output for different apps. Apple still hasn't fixed this. In 2026. Still requires 3rd party apps. It's embarrassing.
Yeah but all OSes have UX problems that require third party tools to fix. Hell, you could argue that FDO/GNOMEs "no use an extension" attitude is exactly the same thing.
It's a useless metric.
'Plenty' vs an atrocious amount that constantly nags.
MacOS's ads whilst I still detest, is a one-off prompt. Window's ads can sometimes only be removed with registry key configs OR deployment of management policies...
I don't see any ads on my retail Pro install.
Nagging for OneDrive? Nagging for sign in? Nagging for edge-as-default? Nagging for copilot with edge? Nagging for sync your bookmarks and let copilot handle it?
I’m a local account user. I don’t use any of the above.
As a lifetime Mac user, I will say that the last few updates to MacOS have made me start looking towards linux. Ignoring the many sins of liquid glass, Disk utility is almost nonfunctional, as are many of the built-in utilities. Sure I can use the command line tools but to me it's a concerning trend that highlights poor attention to detail that the Mac was always known for.
As someone who has done this very thing, and is a lifelong Linux fanboy (I run Linux on literally everything else), I would strongly suggest you don't do this if you're using a Macbook. The losses on battery life are far too high to accept, and if you have lower specs on the Mac laptop, you will really feel them on most Linux flavours.
> The losses on battery life are far too high to accept,
Why do people keep saying this? I have been on M1 Air on Asahi for the last 4 weeks, getting 8-10 hours daily. I see my wattage consumption on screen at all times, it varies between 2.5-3W when scrolling web and around 5W when actively working with apps. I see no difference between macOS and Linux! The only difference is the s2idle consumption but personally I don't care, besides all other modern Linux laptops have same exact issue, often worse.
On my Intel T14s 4th Gen I was getting maybe 5 hours, and that's already with heavily optimized setup!
Impressive, that must be a recent fix then, and it's good to hear. I tried Asahi some time ago and it was about 3-4 hours on average. I am still running Linux Mint on an old 2015 Macbook Pro and had to make some major power management tweaks (preventing it from _ever_ boosting up from base CPU and GPU frequency) to get close to the battery life I had before.
Definitely not 5h, not anymore. I just got off the train after working on my laptop for 3.5h, connected over wifi to the internet, browsing, searching files, etc., and ended with my battery down to 65%. I have no complaints, this is as good as it gets for Linux users. I think it's worth noting that Linux and its stack is probably most efficient OS nowadays, performance wise, so while not totally optimized for hardware, the software gets extra 10% or so over macOS and it might be showing.
Conversely, it's amusing how often do Apple people assume everyone else is Holding It Wtong (tm).
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 desktop Mac, so the online sheets say at least. It runs my work's integration test suite 15% faster.
A lot of us have given Macs a very honest chance. It's okay and it's very workable, that much is a fact -- but if one is willing to pimp their machine and OS -- nowadays made even easier by LLMs -- then the experience and everyday ergonomics and actual dev-enhancing abilities quickly outpace a Mac.
And I wish that wasn't true because I wasn't looking forward to changing my main machine. But the annoyances and slowness and closeness just compound until they start literally reducing your everyday productivity.
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.
Does not support it _natively_ and is measurably slower than a supposedly much weaker Linux machine was my point, which I believe I expressed quite clearly.
> And really, who cares if it had 10,000 background services if 9,999 are idle at any given time?
Normally I don't. I have an okay idea on how modern OS-es work; temporary swaps, compressing RAM for rarely used background processes etc. -- they work amazing, macOS included.
I suppose my problem is more the services that _do_ interfere, like the one that feels it has to scan every CLI command I launch, to the point that it became noticeable, especially side by side with the "weaker" Linux laptop and hell, even with a VM-ed Linux inside my gaming PC as well.
So OK, I accept the correction: does not much matter how many are they in general. Those that interfere though, and I can't stop them -- this is where I drew the line and gradually started my migration away from macOS.
And this:
> Run `ps auxwww` on a Linux box sometime and it’ll look similar
...is objectively false. I just tried it; even my home server that's doing plenty of stuff I get 244 items. On the Mac I am writing this? 840.
Maybe the laptop with KDE will have a touch more than 244, but I doubt they'd be 840.
Call me a purist, I like to know what my background services are doing, though I'll admit I care less and less with age.
> Does not support it _natively_
I’m not trying to be pedantic here, but I genuinely don’t know what you mean here. Macs have built-in virtualization and containerization. Docker and podman etc are wrappers around it, but the internals are built in.
Did you mean they have to emulate x86 code if you download an x86 image instead of a native one?
I mostly meant they don't support cgroups and other Docker-required machinery and have to emulate them.
OrbStack bridges a good chunk of the Linux performance gap however. I was using Colima before and then the Linux laptop was running the integration test suite ~60% faster. OrbStack reduced that to 15%.
I think the real point is a) change is difficult, and b) we all have different needs.
If you asked me to use a Windows machine I would be frustrated from day one and would want my Mac back, but everyone else where I work (except one) uses Windoes every day, and I don't know how they do it.
As far as needs, I haven't been a serious dev for a long time (ask my employees who won't let me near any code), so containerization is a non issue I could care less about for myself, but (for personal use) there are apps on Mac that work for me that don't run on Windows, and definitely don't run on Linux.
There are probably reasonably "objective" measures that can be used to rank OS's agains each other, like security or bugs, but even some measures that sound objective may be based on data but their value is subjective. The OS wars are old, and maybe I'm old too, but they're getting tired (unless we want to discuss how the AmigaOS was better than any other OS at the time but with one fatal flaw.)
On KDE I open system settings and I change every shortcut I don't like. On OSX that's not possible because they know better, apparently.
I agree, they are lazy.
I can't quite work out if this is serious or not, but for anyone who doesn't know, you can set global and app-specific keyboard shortcuts in System Settings->Keyboard->Keyboard Shortcuts. Shortcuts map to menu item titles which means you can set a "Select Next Tab" shortcut and that shortcut will work in every single app that uses "Select Next Tab" in a menu - it's one of the best features on macOS.
MacOS was the paragon of design 5-10 years ago. Sadly, Apple is subject to enshittification just like MS and others.
> But you’re stuck with MacOS
I believe this is the whole reason this device exists. Apple saw Windows 11 fiasco and decided to push MacOS to low-end computer market.
I generally run chrome/firefox and vscode full screen, and then alt-tab between those and my email (outlook at current company) and messaging (slack). Plus terminal window/s. That workflow is mostly reproducible across win/mac/linux. What features are you using that MacOS is getting in the way?
Decent package manager, brew is awful compared to apt. Window snapping can only be done on Apple keyboards not on external keyboards. No Alt+Tab, Cmd+Tab is not the same. No window previews when hovering over dock, ridiculous animation speed when switching workspaces that can't be changed (and somehow Ctrl+1/2/3 is 2x faster than Ctrl+Left/Right? What is that all about). Needing third-party apps for basic things like: setting a custom resolution (BetterDisplay), setting scroll direction for mouse wheel independent of touchpad scroll direction. And the Settings app is super slow.
What is bad about brew? I have used it in the past and I found it fine. With apt I have less experience since I only used it when playing with a raspberry pi.
I find it generally slow and by default it gets in the way in a very annoying way. Without disabling the feature l, every single time I try to install something it also looks for updates so instead of installing a single package I end up upgrading many additional packages
> Decent package manager, brew is awful compared to apt.
Use Macports. Installs itself properly out of the way in /opt. Works with the Apple frameworks (eg Python), allows multiple versions of software to be installed in parallel (using port select).
> Window snapping can only be done on Apple keyboards not on external keyboards.
Yes, you need some free 3rd party apps for affordances that should be built in. Hardly a deal breaker.
Rectangle allows you to set the hotkeys for window snapping and sizing for example.
As for scroll directions, yes, it's different to Windows, but it's the same on the Mac and iPhone. Didn't take very long to adjust.
Agreed that the new Settings app is a PITA and obviously inherited from iOS and sucks, but how often are you accessing Settings?
Macports is alive and well and works great.
Nix darwin + package manager with aerospace and sketchybar make it almost the same as my desktop pc. Could that be an alternative?
For now. These will be pretty cool Linux machines if Asahi starts supporting them at some point.
It's going to take 3 years+ and it will be a 8GB RAM linux machine.
Still would be a good ssh terminal or presentation laptop.
From work, I have a Thinkpad X1 gen 13 and it's awesome. Super lightweight, and great power. But, when I tried Linux a few months ago its hardware was still too bleeding edge. Things may be better with kernel v7 on the way. I like the Gram as a personal device so may I know what model Gram you have?
macOS pre-26 was great. I'm on Sequoia, and it's… fine?
I really, really hope Apple fixes liquid glAss with macOS 27, especially now that Alan Dye left.
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. It had an Intel U series 6th gen (12th gen was latest then) i5, an NVMe ssd and was always responsive.
If I were a student in this day, and all I could find were these laptops this is what I would think. 1 they're out of budget for most students in developing countries. 2 I will most likely out grow 8 GB ram faster than my laptops CPU performance. 3 I am limited to learning with what can run on apple silicon(most Linux distros excluding asahi). Finally I end up paying basically 50-60% of the cost of a decent machine and replaced it with a disposable one.
Maybe this machine is perfect for a specific set of users, students with higher income households or degrees which need better a better quality display.
I still advise every computing student I meet to get a under $200 old used laptop that has expandable memory and atleast an NVMe ssd. That way they can maximise their time learning and experimenting. Anything that needs more complex hardware can always be offloaded into your institutes machines. Once you're settled a bit and have a decent amount of cash to burn go ahead and buy whatever maxed out MacBook your heart desires.
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.
TBF my friends who were getting business degrees struggled with their 8 gigs pc. When they need to run something like SPSS next to a chrome instance, their ram got tight pretty fast.
It's definitely a product for the middle class, not the poor ("broke students" vs "mom bought me this laptop").
The distinction is a lot of (most?) Apple products are _expensive_ for middle class buyers, while this represents good value.
If it's well designed and robust, it might be a great machine to buy second hand in 3-5 years.
Second hand apple products are fantastic deals! Just bought a second 2016 iPhone for 50€. Apple still push security updates 10 years after release! I wonder what's their business rationale, while being delighted buy the cheap, light, small and perfectly usable device compatible with my bank and all communication apps. Only downside are the unsolicited disapproving comments IRL.
I'm very keen to buy a 50€ macbook Neo in 10 years.
> 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.
Just imagine what Apple would do to the market if they also offered a full Linux support, but not Windows... They'd probably own some 70% of Linux market outright and also double its overall size overnight.
They already cannibalized a lot of Linux users, developers mainly when they released MacOS X around year 2000.
Suddenly you could have a Unix, with pretty much the same CLI as Linux but without all the supported hardware/driver issues. Laptop sleep in particular was pretty finicky.
If MacOS didn't pick a Unix/BSD base, I'm pretty sure all the tech companies running Mac would be on Linux.
They seem to be trying hard to annoy developers lately though.
<cough> xattr...
BeOS, anyone?
Clearly not
> They already cannibalized a lot of Linux users, developers mainly when they released MacOS X around year 2000.
FoxTrot comic from 2002:
* https://archive.is/https://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2002/02/...
Apple wants to make money with services, however, and buying more devices in their ecosystem. Full Linux support would counteract the lock-in.
I thought about it , but cloud is getting way more expensive since they don't own the infrastructure, while they themselves have long term components contracts that actually help to increase their margin on their hardware. So they're most likely gonna make more money off of hardware going forward. And nothing stops them from offering integration with other devices, effectively all they lose is potential income from AppStore on macOS, which doesn't sell much anyway. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me!
If apple came out with their own linux distro, with open drivers and a mainline kernel... A girl can dream!
The memory that XNU and Darwin are technically open-source projects is a curse that brings one only suffering.
I would call them open access. Apple doesn't accept contributions.
Does not accepting contributions make you not open source? I would assume if the license allows you to fork it, that makes it open source (as opposed to "shared source" licenses that basically say "look don't touch")
I feel like Apple wouldn't want to make full Linux work on their hardware, but they could enable their Darwin kernel to emulate Linux syscalls and provide a way to boot into a mode that basically loads the kernel and whatever Linux shell you want
This path is already taken and it didn't sell Apple hardware in masses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux
MkLinux was first released in 1996, and discontinued in 2002.
I would argue that things have changed significantly since then.
Yeah liquid glass suckss
You really overestimate how many people care about Linux …
Do I? What in my comment suggests that?
Don't need to imagine, it did not take off, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux
> Reception was mixed, focusing on the difficult installation process and the significant performance costs of the Mach kernel. Reviewers noted its potential as a "Unix killer", but that it required users to abandon the user-friendly Macintosh experience for a pure Linux environment.
1996 is not now. This comparision makes little to no sense.
I'm sure if Apple provided support for installing your own OS on their M series laptops it would be incredibly popular. And I don't need to guess at this using weird 1996 research on microkernels because Asahi Linux exists and clearly there is interest in it.
Indeed, Apple from 1996 would not released Tahoe, most likely.
We don't need research because QNX, L4 and many others on embedded space do exist as well.
Do you forget what Apple in '96 was? Or are you saying that Tahoe is too polished for the Apple of '96?
Apple was not a bastion of quality in the 90's. They couldn't modernize the Mac OS, and that continued with little more than window dressing over what was released in the 80's. The Mac line up was a horrible mess of barely different models that needed a Ph.D to figure out what was different. The company was bleeding money and seriously close to bankruptcy.
The Apple of the mid 90's wishes it could release something like Tahoe.
Yes the 1996 Apple was on the edge of bankruptcy, yet Mac OS 8 was definitely much more polished than Tahoe.
Ya ok, unless you looked at it wrong, then it crashed.
OS 8 was a platinum theme over System 7. Which was a slightly better System 6, which wasn't significantly different than System 4.
System 7 was good for the time, OS 8 and 9 were not, and Apples inability to improve the OS were really starting to show. Windows 95 was a more stable OS than OS 8. Tahoe is better.
How many Tahoe related radar issues do you want?
Yeah - an OS that crashed every time you launched Netscape and you as an end user had to manually allocate memory to apps?
Not to mention that the OS itself was still mostly 68K emulated code even on PPC Macs and holding the mouse down over the menu caused all apps to stop running.
At least you could read the text and resize windows.
Apple circa 1996 would be charging for its updates and licensing out the software to Power Computing and UMAX. They were making a lot of "interesting" decisions.
They still are doing lots of interesting decisions, the difference is that now the piggy bank is full to care of them going badly.
Rip Blackberry Phone + QNX, you were so promising for such a short time.
> difficult installation process and the significant performance costs
So it was a failure in implementation.
And the Apple that delivered Tahoe will do better?
All they would need is to provide complete DTBs and some drivers, no need to write a new OS from scratch.
My daughter just ordered one of these. She’s a student (not stem) and her ancient 8Gb MacBook Air with an intel processor was still serving well but the battery has become unuseable and her keyboard is becoming flaky.
The Neo is such a perfect replacement and easier than fixing the Air.
The keyboard issue was probably caused by the battery, which can be replaced, and the keyboard would have likely returned to normal after the battery replacement.
In fact, depending on the model, the battery replacement may well have also entailed replacing the whole top cover (including the keyboard).
Interesting I will look at replacing the battery if that’s a possibility. Thanks!
The Intel MacBook Air battery was very easy to swap, just opening the bottom lid. Amazon has kits for about 40 bucks with the two necessary screwdrivers included.
Don't buy lithium-ion batteries on Amazon.
Especially not very large ones like in a laptop.
Just did this on a 2017 MacBook Air. Battery was cheap ($50?) and it was simple to do. Machine is working just fine now.
For what it's worth, if anyone comes back to read this, the battery just died :\
Didn't even last a month.
Why'd the battery be related to the keyboard issue?
Batteries swell
come on now, let the poor girl have a new laptop to replace her (at least) 5 year old one. what are we doing here.
Caring for the planet
recycle it.
[flagged]
I don't think you actually tried it.
> Given Apple's historically very premium pricing, launching such an affordable product is certainly a shock to the entire market
No? Apple has been delivering way cheaper laptops ever since M1, this one is just even cheaper. I thought PC execs were asleep at the wheel but not this bad.
> Apple has been delivering way cheaper laptops ever since M1
I wouldn’t "way cheaper".
A baseline Neo with 256GB SSD is $599 vs the first M1 MacBook Air with 256GB SSD was $999 ($1,251.09 in 2026 dollars)
A Neo with 512GB SSD is $699 vs the M1 MacBook Air with 512GB SSD was $1249--that's $1,568.38 in 2026 dollars.
So this is a big deal; the Neo is the first Apple Silicon MacBook where the starting price is less than $999.
Apple sold the the base model M1 Macbook Air through Walmart for $600 between when they stopped selling it directly up to early this year. It looks like this computer is about as performant as that one, so I guess they started to have trouble sourcing components and came up with the Neo as their replacement.
That was a late run for the US only. This is a mainstream product for the world.
I know that Walmart and Costco sold discounted M1 MacBook Airs, which why I used introductory prices.
> so I guess they started to have trouble sourcing components and came up with the Neo as their replacement.
There’s no indication Apple had any issues with getting components; they’re have problems with sourcing more expensive components.
Apple tends to be very deliberate with products; this isn’t a replacement for something else.
In fact, there was an article stating unlike some other laptop manufacturers, Apple’s prices aren’t expected to rise because their buying power and having contracts in place [1].
A low-cost MacBook using an iPhone process has been rumored for at least a year.
[1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/10/apple-holds-edge-laptop...
>Apple sold the the base model M1 Macbook Air through Walmart for $600 between when they stopped selling it directly up to early this year.
I took advantage of this after the fact. I bought a pristine open box M1 from VIPoutlet (Walmart's closeout brand, as I understand it) on Walmart last month for ~$350 as a backup computer.[1] The Neo reinforced the wisdom of my purchase, as M1 has slightly better specs for less money.
[1] If the M4 Pro MacBook I am typing this on needs repair, I will use the M1 with a bootable clone of the M4's drive made with SuperDuper!.
It's pretty obvious to me that the Walmart Wonder sold better than they expected, and they wanted to make it widely available.
I’m sure Apple has wanted to create a low-cost Mac laptop (the base Mac mini was already $499) for a long time, regardless of what previous models have done.
They waited until they could do it in alignment with Apple’s brand, going back to Steve Jobs saying during the netbook hysteria: “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk. [1]”
And to their credit the Mac Neo is not a piece of junk.
[1]: https:http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/blogs/21bits-read-m...
This product effectively cuts the entry price for a new model Mac laptop in half. The cheapest current-generation MacBook has been $999 or above for a very long time, even back to the iBook days.
Yes, Apple has offered discounted prices by continuing to sell older models or offer straight discount sales via third party retailers. But I expect that will continue here too. This is $599 MSRP at Apple but will probably be $499 via the usual retailers by the end of 2026.
That's a bit different than continuing to sell a 5-year-old model at a discount.
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 still remember how Apple fans run around singing praises what their 8GB M1 absolutely kicked ass of Intel Macs with 16GB (and even more). Only to quietly replace them with a model with more RAM next year or some even way earlier than that.
I can open even 500 apps on any laptop. This is what swap for. But with only 8GB you are getting into the swap territory very fast because you need almost half of it for the OS and video memory.
Eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272996
It did/does absolutely kick ass and 16GB is better. They’re not at odds with each other :D
More RAM is better. But doesn’t negate that it’s still very usable. Did you even bother to watch the video for responsiveness before commenting? Also it was a couple years after the transition to arm that Apple bumped the minimum RAM they shipped their laptops with.
> But doesn’t negate that it’s still very usable.
As a glorified terminal? Sure.
> Did you even bother to watch the video for responsiveness before commenting?
I did, now what?
> Also it was a couple years after the transition to arm t
Hello, we are talking about Neo with the same 8GB.
It’s hard to take you seriously or at face value if you did watch the video and called it a glorified terminal.
What in the video is remotely glorified terminal like? What terminal are you using that gives you local 4K editing capabilities and the ability to run locally run Lightroom for 50MP files?
It's hard to take you seriously when you measure the performance of a computer by performing a very specific single tasks. The thing what dividies a smartphone and a proper computer is an ability to actually multi-task without dropping the context and not waiting ages for the programs to reload.
And yes nowadays your terminal is capable of rendering HTML5 pages and encoding MPEG.
EDIT: to give you an improper analogy:
You are pointing at a sport bike and say "this is very good vehicle because it is very fast".
Is it fast? Sure. Does it allows to move 1 kilogram of cargo very fast? Surely. Does it allows to move 1 tonne of cargo very fast? Hell no. You need a 1 thousand trips to move 1 kilogram each time or you need a cargo truck - totally different vehicle.
This laptop is nowhere near the "moving cargo" territory despite being hyped as such.
Again, in the video (that you clearly didn’t watch) they’re multi tasking without loading times as they switch.
And yes you can encode an mpeg from your console. Don’t be facetious, because that’s NOT what is shown in the video. They show editing the video and photos interactively with live views of the changes taking place. Can you do that in your terminal?
Anyway, enjoy raging about the product with your arbitrary goalpost for what constitutes being usable. It seems like that’s really what you want to do rather than talk seriously about the product.
Terminal is not necessary CLI/TUI only text terminal. And by the way you do have a terminal in your pocket, maybe you even typing your responses on it.
But again you are again comparing a single task in a demo (when was the last time someone bashed pre-release Apple products?), totally ignoring what 5 years ago very similar M1 with 8GB showed where this configuration did work - and where it did not. But you don't need common sense, you need to argue in the favour of your beloved company?
> Again, in the video (that you clearly didn’t watch)
Except I did but you need to claim what I didn't, right?
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?
Affinity Photo [1/2] / Affinity
I’m not sure about affinity performance but I regularly edit 36MP photos on a similarly specced device without slowdown in Lightroom and Photoshop.
This is typically with multiple 48MP photos (3 - maybe 10) loaded staged between RAW and somewhere in the editing process.
The additional 5K monitor doesn't help. macOS WindowServer is a pile.
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
I wonder how long those flash chips can survive with the OS swapping 24/7.
Very long. It was already a concern when the 8GB M1s came out.
Maybe other manufacturers will actually stop making crappy hardware that feels like its taped together?
Hardware is hard, and Apple's scale lets them make things that are nice while still maintaining their margins.
A decade ago, but still relevant: https://beneinstein.com/no-you-cant-manufacture-that-like-ap...
Let me rephrase what I said: I do not expect everyone to be able to do Apple style quality hardware. But the build quality of a Thinkpad from 20 years ago I think is still doable.
Your lips to God's ears. I loved my old T40.
Seiko could make Grand Seiko...
More importantly, they need to find an alternative to Windows. A $10,000 computer wouldn't fix that dogshit.
There's really nothing in between. If ChromeOS would have been an alternative, maybe more Chromebooks would have been sold.
It comes down to Microsoft not doubling down on "let's make Windows as annoying as possible" (with ads, with telemetry that can't be turned off).
Depends what you want to do. ChromeOS is pretty great at certain things.
600 is a bargain for a MacBook, but I can't see the public windows users switching en masse. Most people who buy cheap windows laptops do so because 1) they need to replace a broken laptop and want to pay the lowest amount possible 2) they don't want to learn some new thing
600 might seem budget, but it's out of budget for most people. And my guess is PC manufacturers will retaliate against this by cutting prices just a little to drop under that 600 price point for mid range ryzens, with more ram and space.
Any family members I've helped shop for computers only care about how much space it has, how cheap it is, and will it struggle to run things like the last one. As it sits the MacBook is more money for less gigabytes
The thing about "switching" is you just need to capture the next generation. Kids who have an iPhone 17e. Then go off to college.
Also, there are plenty of users such as myself that won't be "switching" but will instead be augmenting my AMD desktop with a laptop. I've not purchased a new Mac since year 2000-ish but I do play to purchase a Neo.
The last time certain family members asked me for a computer recommendation, I gave them a detailed breakdown of which MacBook they could get to meet their lightweight needs for the next decade. They thanked me, agreed, went to Best Buy, and came back with the laptop that the salesperson convinced them was better "because he knows computers". It was an utter piece of crap and they've had nothing but problems with it.[0]
Had this existed when they were shopping, I would've just asked what color they wanted it in, ordered it for them, and been done with it.
[0] OTOH, that got me out of all future tech support duties. "Hey, why can't I connect our new printer to it?" "I'm not sure. Does that Best Buy expert still work there? He might have some suggestions." (Phrased more politely IRL because I'm not a monster, but the intent was there.)
I told my (now 88) father that if he bought another desktop PC he was on his own.
Tough love works.
He loves his 24" iMac, it just works and I can fix things remotely if necessary (it hasn't been).
This is the way.
My dad the other month, in need of a computer with webcam and ideally portable, bought some $400-500 HP 17" laptop. He was so proud of it, proud of buying a piece of hardware without asking me, and rather than tell him the truth, I nodded and said "yeah this is neat".
The monitor is awful. Like, the horrible way it changes color and brightness depending on exact viewing angle is sickening; I am shocked California hasn't declared it illegal. It feels cheap, keyboard is cheap, who knows what the battery life is.
If the Apple Neo were available then, and he had asked what to buy, I would have instantly told him to get one.
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.lenovo.com/us/en/c/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/
[1]https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/say-hello-to-macbook-...
> You're comparing a $1254-minimum laptop[0]
No, I'm not: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/th...
And I still stand behind the fact that, for that price, you've got a very competent device that is better specced for light use and friendlier for mom and pop (look, it has a HDMI, you can straight up connect it to the telly! Look, it has USB A ports, so that old camera, hard drive with the family pictures, old weird ergo mouse just works out of the box !).
Again, we’re not comparing a brand new Mac price to an old PC price. Yes, old will be cheaper. Old MacBooks are cheaper than new ones, too.
But for giggles, let’s look at the old PC.
Despite being heavier, wider, taller, thicker, slower, dimmer, lower resolution, hotter, older, and having less battery life, it is, indeed, $20 cheaper.
Put another way, there’s no way on earth I’d pick that over a MacBook Neo to save $20 at the cost of having a worse laptop in almost every way.
That's a valid opinion to hold. I think both machines are Pareto-optimal though. The ThinkPad will likely have a longer useful life because of its heavy build, extra I/O (each port gets less use), and upgradeable parts. The Neo clearly wins on power efficiency, battery life, resolution...
TBH, if I imagined I was the median casual user, I would also take the $20 marginal cost for the Neo. "Worse in almost every way" just depends on how you weight each individual parameter, which for me, is quite atypical.
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.
Here it’s because the old PC they picked is worse in every way than the brand new PC, except for RAM, which the Mac largely mitigates by having ludicrously fast flash hanging off the CPU. Of course an older, worse PC is going to be cheaper than a new Mac. (Except in this case, buying the boat anchor saves you a whopping $20. It’s not even better specs for the same price: it’s worse than the Apple gear that costs the same.)
If we want to compare new vs used, then how much would you have to spend to buy a brand new PC laptop as powerful as last year’s MacBook Pro?
Except you've only tried the expensive apple computers, not the macbook neo.
> that thing has no IO and not even enough RAM for nowadays light web browsing.
You can literally open up every app (50+) on it and simultaneously edit 4k video without issues. It handles all of the pro apps really well. So it objectively can handle light web browsing just fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-VOt9559Gk
LOL I had the exact same experience. Somehow it was a goddamned HP too (oh how I detest HP everything).
And to think I'd explicitly mentioned to him that Apple would probably be releasing the kind of cheap beautiful laptop he was looking for in a month :(
you might be underestimating how much lifting the apple logo on the lid will do for this laptop. If it advertises the whole apple ecosystem thing well, then those people who already have iPhones, AirPods etc they would be very very compelled to go with this versus an Acer or a Lenovo
> 600 might seem budget, but it's out of budget for most people.
Out of budget for my parents but I'll pay the difference myself. It's just painful to see them use their pile of shit $300 laptop that can barely open a text editor, sounds like a jet engine and has about 45 minutes of battery life.
The only haptic feedback they get if the entire fucking thing creaking as soon as you lightly touch it.
They've been through at least 5 of them since I bought my 2015 mbp, which is still working fine in every aspects
The funny thing is that it would do the same for double the price.
You need to spend a ridiculous amount of time on research because the producer itself is selling very different product (very different quality) from a year to another.
I wish a "brand" would be consistant but it's not 99% of the time.
And it's even more painful for me to do the remote tech support for my (80+ years old) parents so paying the difference is a kind of preservation of my mental health...
You need to think about the tech support you do for your parents and decide if it would really be less by moving them to another platform, where "there's no start button" and "where did the top of the window go" and "how do I install this obscure app Ive used for twenty years"
Most of the support questions I field from my folks and in-laws are actually phone things these days. 90% of what I have to deal with is "this thing came up on my phone during the week and I clicked on it, am I hacked? No I don't remember what it said"
Good point!
At least the build-in remote desktop on Macs makes it very easy to provide help. I don't know if Windows has something similar build in.
Phones are more of a problem as I can't have a look at their screen remotely.
That's an important point - the been through 5 of them. The cost or running a $600 mac is probably similar to running $300 pc laptops that pack up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
They will just be confused about everything if you give them a mac.
"It's a real Mac" - I get that!
I remember a whole slew of inexpensive netbooks and the like that were technically Windows XP or Windows 7 machines, but came with a dumbed-down "starter" OS, not enough RAM, only a 32-bit CPU in an era were 64 bits were already becoming standard - the sum of which amounted to a barely usable imitation of a real Windows machine and as a result most of these became garage sale fodder pretty quickly.
I thought I was so clever for buying one of those things for like $190 and putting Lubuntu on it to make it usable. It worked - but the joke was still on me when it died a year later.
I put macOS on one of those, back in the good old hackintosh days. My wife used it as her daily driver for years.
Oh i had one of those! The acer aspire one d250, with 1gb ram and 160gb of spinning rust.
Once i got Debian, fluxbox and emacs on it i was able to do java development (with ant and the j2me toolkit).
It was no big issue at all really, once you got linux on it.
I must say, however: the web was much lighter back in the day and electron was still to be conceived. That’s very relevant.
I used have a netbook as a second personal device around 2013 and loved it. Very easy to carry around and work on the go, and it could do everything except development work (web browsing, Word, Excel). I actually miss the form factor.
This is pretty much a repackaged M1 air from 2020, so it’s a competent machine
It's a repackaged iPhone 16. Also a competent machine.
Microsoft will respond to this by furiously adding more garbage to Windows.
"We need to put Copilot into more places!" - Satya Nadella most likely
I've yet to meet anyone who wants AI added to anything. If they released a version of windows+office tomorrow that was "guaranteed free of AI" it would be their top seller
But, then all Microsoft's top managers, who apparently have bonuses based on how much AI is shoved down our throats, wouldn't get those bonuses. Nobody's cares whether or not something is a top seller because their incentives are obviously aligned toward cramming AI.
Needs more javascript for native functions in the OS.
idk, Gnome is full of javascript and is snappy! Don't think it's the language itself, the bloat must come from elsewhere
Was my first thought also when I saw it. I honestly planned to ditch Macbooks before they released M1, but this hardware is just so much better than anything Intel or AMD can offer at least for laptops. For people that are not too demanding I've recommended Airs for a while, but this basically has the potential to destroy the entire midrange PC market. Some people will be reluctant to switch, but I don't think the OS is as important today as it was before. So much happens on the web anyway.
edit: also on a tangent, Apple's pricing has become weird. It actually feels like it's a really good bang got the buck. Regular iPads are under 400 now, and they're just better than the competition. MacBook Pro is about the same price as it ever was, but it's just so much better than it was etc.
All these PC can't compete reviews are based on US prices, outside it is ridiculous expensive for a 8 GB laptop.
Note that 8GB of ram on a Mac plays out a lot more different than 8GB on a PC.
I work professionally on a Macbook Air 16GB now and I have quite a few docker images and services running bare metal, + browser, vscode etc. on top. Not a problem until I start loading up some LLMs.
The paging works wonderfully well; an advantage of everything being fused.
If anything, I'm much more bound by the CPU limitations and the eco-cores than the memory.
On a PC, I wouldn't think about less than 32GB for a dev pc.
If I had a fulltime gig programming C, I'd even say I could work on this A14 8GB device. Why not? It's as powerful as a 10 year old powerful machine; probably. Or in that ballpark.
> The paging works wonderfully well; an advantage of everything being fused.
I think it's more of a combination of 1) lower baseline usage by macOS and 2) your swap is guaranteed to be on a fast SSD (1.5+ GB/s read/write).
Also when you buy a budget PC they cut back on everything, while you get roughly the same SoC across the board for Mac (give or take a few cores). There are absolutely horrid CPUs, GPUs, and SSDs still being released today! If you cut your budget too much you can get a slow E-core only CPU with a no name SSD that's barely faster than a HDD.
Hopefully the MacBook Neo puts pressure on manufacturers to do better.
PC work just fine with 16 GB, that is coping with Apple limitations.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255765423?sortBy=rank
Why on Earth do I need a 32 GB PC?!?
Turbo C also worked just fine with 640 KB in MS-DOS, but then again MS-DOS wasn't full of Electron crap.
There are lots of reviews on YouTube of people demoing the performance of the Neo in typical non-power-user usage scenarios (multiple apps, lots of browser tabs, etc.) It works perfectly fine for typical consumer usage.
I can't be the only one who remembers the celebration 18 months ago when Apple finally stopped selling Macs with 8GB of memory... only for 8GB to suddenly be excused again when the Neo arrived. Perhaps it's not the same people but the general vibe is giving me whiplash.
The 8 GB and lack of expandability are due to the design of the Neo chip. This is a pre-built A18 Pro chip with 8 GB of RAM built in.
I imagine the next version will have the A19 Pro chip - which has 12 GB of RAM.
Because people can’t differentiate between the cheapest MacBook available, then or now, and what they may need? For some reason they think it’s okay to expect Apple to give them stuff for free.
8GB is aweful. If you don't do a single task.
But nice for Apple. Millions of replacement on the Neo 16GB release next year I guess.
My money is on 12GB in the second gen since that's what the A19 Pro has, and it would still conveniently differentiate from the other MacBooks with at least 16GB.
That one I would find more acceptable.
You guess wrong.
I've had an 8GB M1 since they came out and had almost no problems with memory shortage. The only thing is Firefox sometimes gets in a loop and takes up 20GB+ doing nothing much and you have to close it but that's not really the laptop's fault. You can have programs use >8GB because it swaps to the SSD very well.
Almost no problem seems that there is indeed a problem.
I love Firefox but my 32GB MBP and 64GB desktop have both had it run out of memory.
Learn to use bookmarks instead of leaving tabs open.
So, they are using Firefox wrong is your excuse?
Eastern europe here. At mobile operator that offers laptops for 2 year no interest loans. The only laptops that are cheaper than Neo are essentially atom garbage with crappy screens. And those that cost about the same are also 8gb ones.
You should compare it with the much higher price it will have in europe.
That is literally what I am doing. It's 699€ here.
I am perfectly fine with many of the technological restrictions on this device, and think it represents a great balance.
However, I think that two will bring sour tastes to people’s metaphorical mouths much more than expected: the RAM and drive space.
There should have been a 16Gb option. Nosebleed the price if you have to, or include a SODIMM slot if needed, but the option should have been there to expand the memory to 16Gb either on spec or at a later date. Because each version of MacOS gets weightier and more demanding of hardware - Windows isn’t the only resource hog out there - and at 8Gb the pain will begin to be felt long before the 7-year usability cycle comes to an end.
There should have been a 1Tb option. Not because people use that much drive space - many don’t - but because 1Tb is the level which provides enough cells in parallel to properly saturate the PCIe bus, ensuring maximum performance. Not always at that 1Tb level, and not on every machine. But typically 1Tb or above, rather than below. Even if it required a hairdryer to unstick the original due to the constrained space not permitting a lock-down screw, the drive should have been either replaceable or with the size as (again) a nosebleed-price option at provisioning.
Because while I see every other compromise as acceptable, it is those two which make me hesitate on getting this as a long-term secondary/casual system.
Other than that, this is a laptop which can only goose Apple’s further adoption among students and casual users.
Anyone who knows what any of that means, or even to looks at those specs, are not in the market for this and should know better.
Why do you think the cheapest MacBook available should be one that costs more to support power users. Apple has the MacBook Air for those users.
> Anyone who knows what any of that means, or even to looks at those specs, are not in the market for this and should know better.
Why? I am a power user, and if I didn’t already have a copious stable of second-hand machines (a side effect of also being in the hardware end of IT), I would gladly pick one of these machines up as a “vacation/personal device”.
I mean, as a power user I am going to need high specs… for my work.
In my off time and on my vacation time, all I need is something that can connect to the Internet, let me do basic eMail and web surfing, and lets me connect remotely to my iron back in my office to keep a light touch on things.
And in that regard, this machine is perfect.
My issue with the device is in term of long-term ownership, where 8Gb RAM and 512Gb of storage isn’t going to get me all the way out to 7-8 years of usage in a comfortable manner. Even with light duties, imma gonna see the seams stretch uncomfortably so somewhere in the 4-6 year stage.
16GB is going to leap you into the air category. They intentionally make this an entry premium laptop. The retina itself and MacOSX’s mandate of font conformity make this premium over other budget laptop in that price range.
“I’ll just say it: I think I’m done with iPads. Why bother when Apple is now making a crackerjack Mac laptop that starts at just $600?”
I’m curious to see this machine in person, but I’d bet the an iPad is still the best large device in Apple’s ecosystem for anything that benefits from viewing in portrait mode.
Portrait or landscape - if your use is dominated by looking at the screen and/or situations where it can't set it down (to use the KB), then the iPad is better.
Assuming the software you need supports iPad, etc.
Am I the only person who manually rotates a laptop screen to portrait, then holds it like a book to use thus?
Quite possibly!
That sounds interesting, I might give it a go, but how do you rotate the screen, I can't see an option for it for the built in MacBook screen?
It's a setting in Settings:
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/rotate-the-image-on...
I believe that is only applicable for external displays, and I don't see the rotation option on my M1 MacBook Air, even if I Ctrl+Command click
Doesn't the Option key work for this?
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255072447?sortBy=rank
FWIW, it's easier to rotate the view in something like Acrobat, and then you don't have issues w/ the cursor direction.
Cheers, opening System Settings and then Option clicking Displays, did the trick and showed the rotation option for the built in display. It's mostly PDFs I'd be reading so might try the PDF reader option, as yeah, navigation using the trackpad after the screen rotates is challenging.
Edit: Just tried rotation in the built in MacOS Preview app, (Command+R or Command+L) and works really well. You do have to set the View to Single Page, and rotate each page separately (it does remember which pages were rotated), but other than that it's great.
No, you’re not the only person. I use it to read news, blogs & hckrnews. Probably more than 2h per day. Often in an IKEA bamboo Bergenes, which I have several laying around the house, upside down with a usb-c cord charging it till 80%.
Nope
I had a similar view, then I realized I was not the target user. My kids love playing Minecraft on the iPad. Great little device for entertainment.
Looks like the PC laptop market is going to have to stop being bad on purpose. I hope this causes significant pain for vendors like Dell, Microsoft and Asus.
I don't see any way they can get out of this situation without seriously improving the UX of their products. Windows itself is likely implicated here too.
> The Neo charges faster if you plug it into a more powerful power adapter, in either USB-C port.
The fact that the "usb 2" port works for (fast) charging is a big win. That means you can charge and use the fast usb port at the same time.
USB-C PD (power delivery) has been a standard for over a decade now. I first used it on a Nexus 4 or 5, and later on a Chromebook Pixel in 2016. It would be surprising for apple to not use that standard, particularly when both ports are probably run from the same controller.
I think that makes it a non-standard implementation though (I agree it's certainly more practical for the user), sounds like it's usb-c pd but with nerfed data, an odd choice that feels like it would actually have cost more to develop than just adding two identical usb-c 3.x ports...
I suspect the limitation is that the SOC doesn't have the IO bandwidth to support two ports at usb 3 speeds (remembering that the SOC was designed for iphones which physically only have one port).
Ah, that's a good point, it would make sense (and be a small but real gotcha of using a phone CPU in a laptop).
Does this mean it is now possible to run OS X on an ipad? Those also tend to use phone processors.
Technically possible yes. It will have been for years at this point. But Apple hasn't released a build for ipad.
Why would it be non-standard? USB-PD is almost completely decoupled from the rest of USB, and USB-C connector doesn't imply 'super speed' lanes are available. The only thing it really changes from an implementation perspective is that you don't have to route high speed lanes to the port, and don't need them to be available on your USB controller.
Doesn't seem to be very Apple-like to have two identical looking ports with different function, though.
I'm not sure exactly what the USB specs require, but there are a lot of phones out there that only support USB 2.0 data speed but do implement the current fast charging protocols. It's absolutely a mainstream thing.
> That means you can charge and use the fast usb port at the same time.
For some use cases, you can do that with a single USB port, too. For example, a single USB cable connected to a monitor can both send video and charge the laptop.
Sure, but it's certainly convenient to have two ports
The legacy PC makers are lucky that Ubuntu doesn’t work on this, or else they’d face even more competition. By now, everyone hates Windows. And I’d wager some people hate it enough to be willing to switch to whatever works and is halfway ad-free.
>The legacy PC makers are lucky that Ubuntu doesn’t work on this
If Linux would be able to be installed and fully working on this out of the box, then the laptop wouldn't cost 600 dollars. Apple profits from monetizing people tied to its iOS+MacOS ecosystem. If you're not gonna be a MacOS/iOS user, you're worthless to them and selling you a laptop for only 600 dollars is not good for business anymore.
That’s never been true for Apple, and while possibly they are getting closer, it still isn’t true for Apple. They don’t sell anything at a loss.
>They don’t sell anything at a loss.
How's your reading comprehension? Where did I say they sell at a loss? I said they want to monetize people inside their ecosystem.
I've used an MacAir with 8GB ram starting at 700€ for years, writing and testing compilers. This was until the macOS and butterfly keyboard desasters, which made me go back to 450€ ThinkPad Ryzen laptops with Fedora, upgraded to 64GB RAM.
My wife is using a fancy new air for 2500€, which is way better. But I still think of the good old MacAir times, they'll try to bring up again.
I never have problems with butterfly keyboard. It felt good. Not sure why you guys have such big hate against it.
The missing camera light seems pretty serious. Any sandbox escape can turn on the camera and record without you noticing. Or your school or employer could. If you're in full screen mode the menu bar is hidden too. It's a very strange move for privacy centered Apple.
The indicators are controlled along with sensor access at a very low level within a secure “exclave” from the main kernel; this is how the on-screen indicators have worked on iPhones for a few years. The indicator is rendered within the display controller at the firmware level, so can’t be affected by anything in _either_ user mode or kernel mode. [1][2]
1: https://randomaugustine.medium.com/on-apple-exclaves-d683a2c...
2: https://asahilinux.org/2021/08/progress-report-august-2021/#...
Ah this is what I missed: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/03/12/macbook-neo-on-...
It's not just the menu bar icon (which can definitely be spoofed), but an on screen dot where the system is controlling pixels directly bypassing any OS level drawing on the screen.
Related: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1in0681/iphone_16_m...
This won’t happen, but I would love an Apple implementation of the Samsung Dex - phone soc that can dock into a laptop or desktop enclosure.
I do not really understand why the Walmart $599 M1 MBA comparison is so lost in the MSM. The Neo is the same price (without edu discount). The Neo CPU benchmarks slightly better until the 4W performance limit factors in more real-world cases (then the M1 wins handily). So much is given up with the Neo: Worse screen, Worse keyboard, No TouchId, Worse Trackpad, etc. Yet Apple is praised for the Neo. No longer matters of course as it appears that the Walmart M1 is history, and we now have the Neo -- worse in almost every way vs. M1 MBA. The only real beneficiary is undoubtedly Apple's margin. I guess the MSM and Apple fanbois hatred of Walmart and the "losers who shop there" influences this, but even so. Neo only benefits Apple vs. Walmarts M1 MBA deal.
Edit / Link: https://www.macworld.com/article/2986234/walmart-m1-macbook-...
>(then the M1 wins handily).
How do you came to this conclusion when both are passingly cooled and A19 Pro is faster. Not to mention AV1 and other newer codec hardware accelerator and NPU / GPU improvements.
Also remember M1 MBA is may be Walmart and US only. Around the world most dont even get a chance to buy M1 at $599. The display dont have P3 but is actually brighter than M1 400 nits. Not sure how Keyboard is worse. Neo also have 1080P webcam rather than 720P.
And if Walmart is selling M1 at $599, I am sure they will also sell Neo at lower than RSP may be even same as educational discount $499. And this point surely Neo would win?
What a lot of people dont talk about, and may be wait until iFixit to confirm. Neo is basically the iPhone 17 of MacBook. It is perhaps the easiest to repair and cheapest MacBook for Apple to services.
"...handily...". Apple set the power limit for the A19 at 4 watts. The M1 does not have this limit. So in all tests using processes that tax the CPU, the M1 wins. Apple ignored the greater thermal cooling available with the new case. The A19 would beat the M1 if Apple did not do this. But no one really cares cause... it is Apple. The other points re: Walmart are valid. However, it goes to the point that Apple could sell the M1 at this price point, but chose not to. Seems likely the Walmart M1 at $599 had lower margins (My Guess), so the Neo was born.
This is most likely for battery life. The Neo has a smaller and cheaper battery, so if you didn't limit the power somewhat you'd burn through it too fast.
Neo has ~5 more years of support, is not US specific from a specific store,comes at $100 off for students (which is a primary target for the product), and many of the things you say are worse often are a balance of tradeoffs in many ways (e.g. the screen on the Neo is definitely brighter).
I had an M1 MacBook Air and just set a Neo up for my niece. If I had to pick between the two for myself I'd choose the Neo again.
Even cheaper if you buy from Walmart's refurb outlet, they are $380.
I never even knew Walmart sold refurbs: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Restored-Apple-MacBook-Air-Laptop...
They are also selling them on eBay too and people with photo reviews show that some of these are straight returns, almost brand new, like less than 10 battery cycles
The Walmart M1 only exists in one country.
For me the longer software support would play a role in my decisions. The M1 MBA will probably lose support in 4-5 years whereas the Neo has a longer road ahead.
Combine that with the enormously improved single core performance (which matters more in the real world than sustained load for an entry level notebook), fun colors and 499 price tag for students and I can see the interest.
The screen is good compared to the MBA (only loses P3 colors) but the bummer seems to be ports and the "normal" trackpad.
Why compare the M1 MBA discounted at Walmart but not give the same edu discount to the Neo? The target audience for Neo is likely people who would be able to use the edu discount.
I know many people who would not care about the differences you have outlined and gladly pay $499 for the Neo.
> “Once or twice a day I need to manually bump the display brightness up or down.”
This is a daily, albeit minor, annoyance on my MacBook Air too.
> Because the Neo’s only camera-in-use indicator is in the menu bar, that seems obviously possible to circumvent via software.
Not as obvious as the author implies. Apple has some docs out, IIRC, explaining how it is implemented. Worth a read...
I can’t find where Apple really explains how it works.
https://randomaugustine.medium.com/on-apple-exclaves-d683a2c...
https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/03/m4-ipad-pro-security-feature-...
What's shocking is that this is a shock to the PC Industry.
> "I’d consider paying double the price of the Neo for a MacBook with similar specs (but more RAM and better I/O) that weighed 2.0 pounds or less. I’d buy such a MacBook not to replace my 14-inch MacBook Pro, but to replace my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro as my “carry around the house” secondary computer."
> "As it stands, I might buy a Neo for that same purpose, 2.7-pound weight be damned."
The wonders of the closed ecosystem / walled-garden, where you don't have to face competition on equal terms, because you already locked-in your customers...
Not Asus, but I have a crappy Lenovo plastic laptop that was around that price range when new, and it's horrible. The hinges have so much resistance that the garbage display panel flexes when you try to open the lid. The junk trackpad is the size of a credit card, and requires some amount of force to actually pick up the fact that your finger is moving on it. The SDCard reader has failed twice (I'm on my third). It's just a piece of garbage and is even then it's about middle of the road when it comes to PC laptop quality. And outside of specific defects, (and this is what's endemic throughout the PC laptop ecosystem) the build quality just subjectively feels like it's barely held together with tape and glue. Like what you'd expect from a toy from an old cracker jack box. These OEMs have been shipping absolute trash for years, and it's about time the industry got a shock.
It's remarkable to me that this shows what an iPhone chip has been capable of, and a reminder about how strongly Apple works to keep phone, tablet, and laptop in separate segments. Even though they share the same chips.
Going to be signficiantly harder for Qualcomm X2 Elite to make a splash, given the price here. I have high hopes for the X2 Elite Extreme (even if it is going to be cursed with incredible difficulty trying to get each of these non-ACPI / DeviceTree systems running Linux). But this raises the bar signficiantly.
People keep calling this "a phone chip" when M1 was literally "a phone chip" to begin with, based on A14. It's entirely reasonable that in 4 generations of "phone chips", the A18 reaches the speed that M1 did during its "one-generation" rework.
The M1 was beefed up in quite a number of ways. More cores, much bigger GPU, double the memory bandwidth, more clocks, more power, a massive io subsystem that just didn't exist period with thunderbolt, pcie, etc.
You are correct that the architecture was indeed the same, but it was quite a different chip. "Literally a phone chip to begin with, based on", to me, misleads from how different the m1 was. But yes, they appear to share the same architecture.
> A decade ago, Apple began switching from trackpads with mechanical clicking mechanisms to Magic Trackpads, where clicks are simulated via haptic feedback (in Apple’s parlance, the Taptic Engine).... The Neo’s trackpad is mechanical. It actually clicks, even when the machine is powered off.
I wonder if the real clicks on mechanical trackpad will actually feel better than the simulated clicks on the Magic Trackpad.
Why do you need to wonder about this? We've had mechanical trackpads for ages to compare them to. They feel worse. Getting even click pressure across a large surface is nearly impossible.
I used to have a 2011 MBP and a M1 air at the same time. I actually preferred the mechanical trackpad of the MBP. Unfortunately that laptop died.
I cannot believe I am saying this, but I am honestly thinking about getting one. So my iPad Pro is nice and I love my Mac Studio, but my MacBook Pro is out of support and installing Fedora Linux on it will be a hassle due to the touchbar from what I can tell. So I am actually in a marked for a laptop to just write on when I am on the go... The neo fits that spec perfectly....
> The biggest shortcoming of the decade-ago MacBook “One”, aside from the baffling decision to include just one USB-C port that was also its only means of charging, was the shitty performance of Intel’s Core M chips.
MMMMMMM.....I don't know. I think the biggest shortcomings of that laptop were super common keyboard (dustgate), SSD, USB-C port, display, battery, and CPU (popcorning) failure.
I know this is being marketed for students and such but honestly even if you are a developer who works primarily with web dev stuff you will be able to do all of it on this device. Or if you are a product manager in a tech company, this is perfect device.
IMO there is a small subset of Mac users today(gamers, local LLM users, editors, mobile devs) for which this won't be the best option
If the Neo had been the next 12" macbook (2.0 lb), it would be the first apple product I would have lined up for.
The article sums up why quite well:
"The biggest shortcoming of the decade-ago MacBook “One”, aside from the baffling decision to include just one USB-C port that was also its only means of charging, was the shitty performance of Intel’s Core M chips. Those chips were small enough and low-power enough to fit in the MacBook’s thin and fan-less enclosure, but they were slow as balls. It was a huge compromise for a laptop that carried a somewhat premium price. Today, performance, performance-per-watt, and physical chip size are all solved problems with Apple Silicon. I’d consider paying double the price of the Neo for a MacBook with similar specs (but more RAM and better I/O) that weighed 2.0 pounds or less. I’d buy such a MacBook not to replace my 14-inch MacBook Pro, but to replace my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro as my “carry around the house” secondary computer.5"
Given that the 12” MacBook cost $1300 back then, that new MacBook would be triple the cost, or around $1800 today. Still worth it?
Yes.
Considering it'd be running an M series chip, plus battery life, it would have more horsepower than the 12" Macbook. Add to that more ram, and the 2lb or less alternative to iPad is real.
This feels like the first time Apple’s walled garden approach has paid off in the desktop arena.
With a cheaper Windows alternative to the MacBook Neo, your options are inferior battery life with AMD 64, or Windows Arm’s inferior compatibility.
I doubt Microsoft is holding developers hands when transitioning to Arm the way that Apple does. Not to mention they’ve been using their own chips.
I think what you're describing is vertical integration rather than the walled garden specifically. The walled garden is the App Store restrictions, iMessage lock-in, that kind of thing. What made the Neo possible is that Apple controls the silicon, the OS, the firmware, and the industrial design as a single unit. They could put a phone chip in a laptop form factor and have it feel coherent because there's no seam between the hardware and software teams.
The distinction matters because it changes what the lesson is for the rest of the industry. You don't need a walled garden to compete here. You need to own enough of the stack that you can make aggressive tradeoffs (like shipping 8GB and an A18 Pro) without everything falling apart at the integration boundaries. Microsoft can't do that because they don't make the hardware. Dell and Lenovo can't do that because they don't make the OS. Qualcomm can't do that because they don't control the software ecosystem.
The one company that could theoretically pull this off is Google with ChromeOS on their own Tensor chips, and the fact that they haven't is probably the more interesting question than why Asus is shocked.
>The one company that could theoretically pull this off is Google with ChromeOS on their own Tensor chips, and the fact that they haven't is probably the more interesting question than why Asus is shocked.
Successful Chromebook’s have always been the throwaway $200 models. Higher end ones like the Pixelbook served more as flagship devices to prove they could do more but were never really marketed.
I don’t think Google’s gonna make a souped up Chromebook because they know their place. They’re entirely internet dependent devices with little brand recognition and no serious software. The Neo serves somewhere in between that. They have the brand recognition and MacOS.
> no serious software.
What software do you want to be considered serious? With the addition of Linux/Crostini, there's 3D modeling, CAD, and NLE video editing and compilers and everything else.
All the professional software that’s capable of running in the MacBook Neo, you know Final Cut etc.
What's the etc? Davinci Resolve is available on Linux and is an industry standard for video editing. Blender's no slouch either these days. I'll give you Ableton though.
> 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!
I still can't get over how this thing is priced the same as the 2013 Macbook Air... when looking at JPY prices.
I wonder how much of the Neo pricing wow factor is Apple taking advantage of the strong dollar vs much else that's changed on the ground (obv the processor pick is a "real thing")
Welcome to being old. Inflation is cumulatively 40% since 2013.
Well the Macbook Air pricing in USD was always around $1000 right?
2013 MBA pricing in USD was $1100
2013 MBA pricing in JPY was 110k JPY
2026 Macbook Neo pricing in JPY is ~100k JPY
2026 Macbook Neo pricing in USD is $600
2026 Macbook Air pricing in JPY is ~140k JPY
2026 Macbook Air pricing in USD is ..~$1100
So depending on the currency either the Neo is a massively cheaper thing or filling a gap in a product line that inflation created.
I wonder how much of Apple's costs are USD-denominated. The fact that the MBA hasn't changed pricing at all makes me guess that not that much, but I don't know how manufacturing contracts work
I dunno, I find it interesting, but JPY inflation is a recent phenomenon
Apple has a different relationship with the Paradox of Choice than most companies. The price stability makes it a bad idea generally to buy the old model right when the new one comes out. And not chasing inflation numbers I think is also part of that.
They also have some of the highest margins on consumer electronics in the business. Higher IIRC than Nokia had, before smartphones killed them. So absorbing a 3% bump in the dollar isn't that big a deal for them.
> because the key caps are brand new, it feels even better than the keyboard on my own now-four-years-old MacBook Pro, the most-used key caps on which are now a little slick
Honestly, I have a hard time typing on a new Apple laptop; it doesn't feel right until the keycaps are a bit worn.
not having a led indicator for camera, and not having an ambient light sensor, this means they are using the camera as a light sensor
yeah, I expect they use the camera as a make-shift ambient light-sensor, just with a lower frequency than a illumination sensor would be used (due to power consumption impact), and with overall lower accuracy (lower dynamic range, reduced FoV, very bad accuracy in low-light/bright conditions,...).
This pretty much matches the described experience in the article that Gruber had, as he mentions he had to adjust brightness up and down at least twice every day...
What'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.
If you ever try a mac laptop - there is simply no way back. I've got top tier Lenovo and Dell - the build quality is just incomparable. And that is sad. They may have edge on separate components - e.g. a gorgeous screen,but not the combination of it all.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
Closer and closer to the desktop and mobile devices running the same OS...
One other thing, how repairable is this thing going to be? I'm guessing it's going to end up with an extremely low repairability score, considering they seem to solder both RAM and storage these days. Looking at the MacBook Pro (repairability score 4/10) it seems crazy difficult even to swap the battery: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+14-Inch+Late+2023+(...
My kids (ages 10, 14) have never used a Windows computer. They were introduced to computing with iPhone and iPad, and they use Chromebooks at school. At home I have Win, Linux and MacOS computers, but they've only used the MacOS ones (not interested in the others). I am trying to get them to use Linux, but unless they want to do hacking-type stuff (that's not them), then it's hard to sell them on it.
When we buy them personal laptops (not there yet), it'll be a MacBook Neo (or its successor). I expect that unless they're forced to at work, they'll never touch a Windows computer in their life.
The problem is, I just want to plug in a monitor, mouse and keyboard into my phone.
But it cannot be done because it only allows AppStore content with a 30% cut for Apple.
Technically it's not challenging as you can see with this new MacBook.
Windows is such an offensive, defect-ridden pile of shit now that every PC maker should be blaming Microsoft for their inability to compete with the Neo.
I bought my parents Asus laptops years ago, and can't wait to replace them with a Neo.
Microsoft has spurned and scorned users. Now it's time for computer makers to push back and reject its shit. I'd love to see a consortium of computer makers come together to refine a Linux distro that's consumer-friendly enough to oust Windows and compete with Mac OS.
>I'd love to see a consortium of computer makers come together to refine a Linux distro that's consumer-friendly enough to oust Windows and compete with Mac OS.
System 76 already has Pop!_OS. Lenovo.com/linux will redirect you to a list of linux compatible lenovo laptops that's a mile long.
That's cool, but they need to mount a marketing campaign to announce the arrival of a "new OS" to the everyday user. They need to go on the offensive against Microsoft and educate consumers.
Dell has been pushing Linux for like 20 years? I don't remember which distro, probably fedora or ubuntu...
They have a very limited set of choices. I would have bought more if you were not too limited in term of choice in their inventory.
At some point the XPS 13 dev edition was the almost perfect laptop. Then they ruined it with the following generations of it.
I got an xps long time back that had the option to pay extra for ubuntu. I'm not going to pay to plug in a usb and I also get the joy of erasing a windows install from the face of this earth.
It's an option for maybe 2 SKUs... hardly pushing anything.
I count 4 desktops and 11 laptops. Sorry, try harder next time.
That you couldn't actual order; at least as a UK SME.
I'm curious but could not find any information if virtualization is possible on the Neo. Not that 8GB is that promising to start with, but running a slimmed down VM has its uses.
likewise - surprised someone hasn't tried to run docker on it yet and reported success/failure.
This was always going to be the case. Apple has perfected the art of finding slots for different use cases and consumer buckets just as well as they have perfected the hardware and software. This is a no brained for most home use and particularly education. Only issue for home use is photos and able to process an entire photo database at once and doing ML operations on them. Of course apple’s photos is the one black mark in their software stack, or may be something I don’t like.
I grabbed a Neo w/ the edu discount for my niece. Very pleased with it on day 1.
So far I think the only thing I can add to the conversation about it is the only real disappointment is that the only upgrade option is to go to 512G w/ touch ID for $100. That's not to say the 8 GB option was bad by any means, it actually works even better than I was expecting, but it still leaves a big gap on the way up to the base model Air at $1100 and the splash could have been twice as large.
The 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.
> When I wrote last week that the MacBook Neo is the first product from Apple with an A-series chip sporting more than one USB port — addressing complaints that the Neo’s second USB-C port only supports USB 2.0 speeds — a few readers pointed to the Apple Silicon developer transition kits.
A12Z is really M0 (or you could say M1 is A14X or A14Z depending on GPU bin), so I would not characterize it as "(iPhone) A-series."
"Of course, it's not that it cannot do all the work, but considering user experience and those hardware limitations, the experience, I think, differs significantly from mainstream products..."
I worked in retail for a decade, a lot of that was selling computers. The vast majority of what people buy computers for could be done a toaster. You don't exactly need top end specs to browse the internet, reply to emails, and write the occasional document.
the average user could probably do most of their computing on a $150 cell phone and a raspberry pi 4.
gaming is a different beast, but there are xboxes, ps5s, steam boxen, etc.
Exactly. That's why the comment was seemed arranged to me.
For the most part, there's gamers/editors and a few other groups who need a lot of horsepower. They're generally gonna have decent hardware. Then there's everyone else, who wouldn't notice a difference regardless of hardware (to a point). There just isn't a whole lot of middle ground.
electron...
This is imho great MB for traveling, you want to edit some pictures, read/write and edit some code without being afraid of you 3K MB Pro getting damaged or stolen? Great!
I want to do more travel and photography, with occasional light work on my own project. And this feels like better option than iPad, because i can use Xcode and android Studio. And for +- the same price.
> The A9, in 2015, benchmarked comparably to a two-year-old MacBook Air from 2013. More impressively, it outperformed the then-new no-adjective 12-inch MacBook in single-core performance (by a factor of roughly 1.1×) and was only 3 percent slower in multi-core.
Too bad that performance is (still) locked in the walled garden and cannot be used as a small Linux server.
"I wish Apple would make a MacBook that’s akin to the iPhone Air — crazy thin and surprisingly performant."
I think a lot of us wish that! I'm struggling to pick either the Neo or the new iPad Air 13", the former for having MacOS, or the latter for light weight and light usage purposes. And come this fall pair whichever choice with an M5 mini at home.
> And there’s the whole thing with the second USB-C port only supporting USB 2 speeds. That stinks. But if Apple could sell a one-port MacBook a decade ago, they can sell one with a shitty second port today.
This is the kind of reasoning behind why I can not take any Apple product review seriously, or any Apple fan seriously.
My only problem with the Neo is that the base config has a good price, but if I want 512GB storage it reaches into the usable PC category. Usable for me: 16GB/512GB, Arc/RDNA 3.5 GPU Different tradeoffs obiously: light, good screen & touchpad versus Linux compatibility and backlit keyboard.
> my personal workstation remains a 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro
I was surprised that a guy who shills Apple for a living still uses a 5 year old MacBook. It goes to show how the longevity of laptops has increased over time. I'm also on a M1 Macbook and find it hard to justify an upgrade.
I used both my thinkpads for 8+ years, generating $$$ for me. Build quality matters a lot when it comes to longevity, thinkpads were great at it decades ago. I would expect the same from MacBooks nowadays (I also had an M1 Pro Max from a former employer).
More of a testament to Apple device longevity.
I don't know... I used to upgrade MacBooks more frequently in the past even when they were functioning perfectly fine. There was usually a compelling reason like a markedly better screen, a big jump in performance, or noticeably improved battery life. Nowadays I have a hard time finding a compelling reason. Maybe I'm just getting old.
Someone didn’t read the “There is something rotten in Cupertino” article that caused Apple not only to not make an executive available for his post WWDC podcast for the first time in a decade or how he continuously criticizes Tim Cook kissing Trump’s ass.
He has also been a continuous critic of Apple’s App Store policies and its handling of regulators
Well "shilling" is a bit strong but his livelihood is tethered to Apple.
Yes, because if Gruber doesn’t say nice things about Apple, they may go out of business and he won’t have anything to write about…
Is he your uncle or something? I was just saying that it's surprising someone whose livelihood revolves around Apple uses a 5 year old MacBook. And yeah, if he was not an Apple enthusiast, Apple wouldn't suffer but his blog would.
No I am saying it’s dumb to call someone a shill when he has a very public spat with Apple, he constantly criticizes its CEO, its App Store policies, the latest OS, etc.
Exactly what would you like him to criticize? That the latest Apple Watch doesn’t run Linux?
Why exactly would he need to buy a new Mac just to maintain a blog? He buys a new iPhone every year and he gets review units of everything.
"I’ll just say it: I think I’m done with iPads. Why bother when Apple is now making a crackerjack Mac laptop that starts at just $600?"
So, Gruber, you're telling me that you didn't have a laptop before because of the price and you had to settle for an iPad?
So the force touch stuff has also been available on Apple laptop trackpads?
Damned if i ever noticed, and all my laptops since like 2013 have been Apple.
I knew I had it on one of my previous iPhones but there it was an annoyance because I never knew what was going to happen on a touch.
It is also a critical part of watchOS.
I am still sad that they stopped putting it into iPhone, I think the tech is great and the watch really proves what can be done with it when it is a fundamental part of the hardware and the OS can be built around it. But we never had a situation that every compatible iPhone had force touch so everything that could be done with it had to work in other ways.
I think the iPad made that even more complicated since I doubt we would have ever gotten it on a screen that large, if it would have even worked.
As far as it being on the trackpad, it is honestly pretty wild when you realize it. It does an incredible job of faking feeling like it is actually moving. Was similar with the fake home button that some iPhone’s had for a little while.
I remember being totally flummoxed when I was trying to figure out why my trackpad wasn't clicking when the machine was off. I had no idea it wasn't a mechanical lever anymore!
> I am still sad that they stopped putting it into iPhone
Well I'm not, because i only managed to register a force touch when i meant a normal touch :)
> 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.
You don’t have to if the software you need needs Windows.
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.
Why couldn't they just've called it Macbook, instead of Macbook Neo?
"- yeah I have a macbook" "- what, an air?" "- no a macbook" "- ..?" "- the one in colors, not the one-port 12 inch one from 2015 but you know it just released!"
This already happened in 2015, they probably don't want for it to happen again.
To stop comparison to the old 12” 1 port MacBook?
If you were to align the MacBook line with iPhone line logically this would be an ‘e’ class device, the Air would just become the MacBook, pro remains pro, and there would be a nice gap for a new ultra light MacBook Air, a modern Apple silicon version of the 12” MacBook - expensive, small and fast, analogous to iPhone Air.
Also new names are fun. This name is a fun name. Nice to see some playfulness from Apple.
It might be helpful to have a modifier on all the models. It's a bit awkward (not that the naming geniuses at Apple have ever cared about how awkward it's to talk about their products, witness "Apple Watch Edition" and Max Macs) to talk about iPads, because one of them lacks a modifier. "Which iPad" "The iPad iPad", etc.
Because it's the new Macbook.
So in a couple of years we will have de MacBook Neo Neo?
I think they got just cheaper marketing since jobs died. No focus or brand protection.
It's as if people forgot about the MacBook One (anagram: Neo) from 2015 (which I daily drove for a year and loved). I suspect the Neo will sell about the same, and be forgotten in as many years.
That thing started at $1300 and had a dog slow Intel processor. I bet that the Neo outsells it by at least 20x
Very obvious next step is to release 15" or 16" variant. It would put nail in coffin on cheap PC market. But would also cannibalize their own air/pro sales.
Sadly, "nail in coffin" is an exaggeration. Though the press would be throwing that phrase around. With plenty of dire-sounding quotes from cheap PC manufacturers.
Limiting cannibalization wouldn't be hard. Just load up a Neo, a 13" Air, and a 15" Air on the Apple web store's Compare page - a 15" or 16" Neo would be the "obviously lesser" laptop by 90% of the metrics.
My bet is that Apple has prototypes of the larger variant, and is waiting to see how the situation develops.
> 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.
Interesting metrics, though I'd add that if you count storage and memory as metrics, it'd be hard to find a worse PC laptop. And I don't see why we should artificially exclude ARM PC laptops from the comparison.
https://www.bestbuy.com/product/asus-vivobook-14-wuxga-lapto...
2x the RAM and 2x the storage isn't meaningless to a lot of people.
The PC has a single-core geekbench around 2100 single / 10,000 multicore. The Neo is apparently in the range of 3600 / 9,000 multicore.
No arguments on the Mac's screen being way nicer though. However, the low-end computer market - unlike most of us on HN - has never cared about pixel density, color accuracy, or really any screen specs other than size (Looks like the Asus has the Mac by an inch on that spec).
Bottom line, for a high-end Chromebook replacement (literally everything is done in the cloud, so storage doesn't matter, and only running a browser, so RAM isn't a big deal), as long as it's for someone who will take care of such a delicate device, the Neo is pretty great. For everyone else, it's debatable.
> And certainly not software quality.
This is most definitely only a little true in that Windows has jumped the shark lately with ads and various enshittification, and thus ties with Mac OS. Tahoe is without a doubt the worst Mac OS ever released. It's both poor quality and poorly designed.
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 majority of consumers will choose the laptop with the better display. People make purchasing decisions based on feels and the Neo has great feels.
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.
Consumers don't read spec sheets. My mother doesn't even know the difference between RAM and SSD - it's all just "memory" right? But she knows that when she goes to the Apple Store the computers are built to an impressive standard.
Quality speaks for itself, and the way that people buy computers is through their eyes and fingertips, not their heads.
Go to the Apple Store and just observe how people make their buying decisions. They don't just look at the spec sheet, they lift, type on, caress the computers. They want to know how it will feel to own one.
People already in the Apple Store have already chosen to probably buy an Apple computer, and they all have approximately equally great displays to the layperson (myself included -- I can't tell an important difference between my M1 MacBook Air's screen and the one on the nicest MacBook Pro in the Apple Store).
Go into a non-Apple space though, where money is not "no object," and see how many people would choose a 16-17" 1920x1080 screen over a 13" MacBook Neo purely because of the big screen, nevermind that the Mac has roughly 4x the number of pixels. I guarantee you, it's more than you think.
My only point was that yes, the MacBook Neo wins on quality construction and aesthetics (but I'll argue NOT on durability since plastic laptops can take a lot more incidental bumps than Macs will), cool factor/perceived eliteness, and screen quality. I am sure there are plenty of people who care about those things, but I think most of those people are already buying a Mac today.
I suspect we'll actually see a modest cannibalization of those casual but cheap Mac users from the MacBook Air, since most people don't really understand how to evaluate RAM and storage size, but a lot of them will have a bad experience after filling the disk.
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.
>And I don't see why we should artificially exclude ARM PC laptops from the comparison.
As an ARM enthusiast who has tried a lot of WinARM, I think at this point I really struggle to believe MS has a single care in the world for improving quality of life for WinARM users. They sure do market it, and the laptops do work most of the time. I've just never had any other computers shit the bed when it comes to graphics drivers like a Qualcomm powered PC. Website with too many video/gifs playing? Screen whites out/all the video boxes go pink and explorer resets. Open up the gif search in Discord? Basically a coin flip chance its going to kill the graphics driver and reset explorer again. I had a Dell Inspiron with the Qualcomm 8CX Gen2 that could reliably be crashed just by quickly scrolling twitter on a video posting heavy day.
I would rather take a Mediatek powered Chromebook any other day until the Neo showed up and started to approach the sub $500 ARM chromebook price point.
That's sad to hear. I continue to hold out hope for more efficient ARM CPUs outside of the increasingly controlling Apple walled garden (and for those computers to be good).
I also am not a huge fan of the 256GB storage, but if someone doesn’t already know what ram is, they really won’t care and won’t notice much. I’m a tech guy. I bought an M1 air with 256GB storage and 8GB RAM. I was able to do development and mobile development fine. I never encountered RAM related slowdowns. I have an iCloud subscription because I don’t want to manage my own NAS. This is a heavier use case than what, say, a normal college student will do with it, and it worked just fine for me. This is by far the best laptop I have seen in this bracket. If I was just heading to college today, and I didn’t have the money for a Pro or Air, I would 100% get this far before a windows laptop.
Some more discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47332009
If 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
Sure, but the screen/keyboard aren't necessary
Rather than just looking at Apple's motivations as to address ~new customers, I'd like to point out Mr. Gruber surprised himself:
> I am in no way arguing that the MacBook Neo is an iPad killer, but it’s a splendid iPad alternative for people like me, who don’t draw with a Pencil, do type with a keyboard, and just want a small, simple, highly portable and highly capable computer to use around the house.
My wife and I prefer iPads around the house as she is a pencil centric artist and loosely speaking I prefer touch to keyboards. But his framing points out Apple is expansively addressing broad market work/school/home computing needs/preferences and thus also brings up a question I think is under discussed...
What is Apple's user experience roadmap for Apple TV mass market home computing? And for home computing in general?
We are overdue for a leap up there, where Apple, as with the Neo, exploits their ability to profitably deliver higher end hardware which enables features at prices below any comparable competition.
I know folks are fond of pointing to Apple struggling to deliver Siri/AI advances but I view that like their Apple Maps fiasco: an ongoing priority roadmap that they will keep working at until it is better than good enough.
I believe Apple will soon accelerate the power ramp up in Apple TV both because they could now ~ Neo that device into very $/performance competitive vs game consoles but also because they likely predict an ever increasing demand for home compute by consumers.
Not just speech i/o and AI conversation but also active realtime cheap private application of compute, such as personalizing your sports game feed, for example:
a) continually show me where the ball is by [dynamic method] b) rewind to when player X had the ball c) freeze there and show me what might have happened if they had passed to Y d) dress all the players in tutus e) change to my cooking show but warp me back to this game if someone scores f) etc etc etc.
Their 5+ year planning and commitment to the Apple Watch and Vision Pro show that they are ardent bettors on personal computing continuing to evolve very rapidly if they can concoct a profitable multi-year course from niche to ubiquitous. [not just for a product but for their synergistic products]
Remember they build elaborate fake homes as test centers, and not just to film product promos. I would be very surprised to learn their current 5 year outlook ignores robotics. Look around the edges of their public activities and imagine how what you notice might also fit together with something new but hidden.
They are ambitious. Very Ambitious. What's next?
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
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.
It‘s capable enough not to be viewed as a Thin Client. Nor do I think many people want one.
Why would it be the end of traditional home PCs? If you can buy this much compute power for $600, who would pay a subscription for another computer?
Because AI needs so much more power and in particular RAM.
It's good but it's no Asus eee901
Nor an Asus C101:
RK3399 6-core ARM v8, Mali-T864 GPU, 1.9lb aluminum body, 10" IPS multitouch display, USB-C, compact chicklet-style keyboard -- or since it's a 2-in-1, flip it around and use your own portable ergo/ortholinear. coreboot/libreboot support...
Bring out a refresh, Asus.
https://www.asus.com/us/laptops/for-home/chromebook/asus-chr...
RIP Microslop
I notice they are sold out at MicroCenter - I was hoping to go look at one in person today.
This does look great for its use case, but I'd love a version as a latter-day eMate.
I look forward to the insane amount of bloatware HP will add to hit a 599 price point.
When did $600 become budget?
When it lasts 5 to 10 years. I’m still using my 2020 MacBook Pro, and figure I’ll get another half decade out of it. That’s <$200/year. The Neo could be a <$100/year laptop, which puts it in the same class as $200 shitbooks that crap out after two or three years.
Would you be surprised if I told you that $600 is slightly under 11 days of the average rent [0]?
0 - https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/
Is that more rents are insane though, british perspective but 600 ~ £450, £450 is still around a third of an average rent, but I'd consider a budget laptop those in the £2-350 range. For the average user £400+ (so $500+) is decidely midrange purely on the virtue that its the middle of the range for general use laptops (being £150-1000 really, anything more than that and you're entering decent gaming/workstation specs).
Not to mention that it they are, naturally, going to convert $600 to £600.
Are you comparing 11 days of utility vs 5+ years worth?
I am comparing two things which cost the same. In a discussion about pricing.
If your point was that it's crazy that 11 days of rent costs the same as a mid-range laptop, I completely agree. That's where we're at though.
I tell anyone spending less than that not to waste their money, and to get refurb instead.
It's $370 in 2006 dollars.
For existing Mac owners.
anyone can buy it for $500 using the education store
Recently after another round of 30-40% inflation.
The perfect kid or mom device for news, homework and entertainment.
I miss deep technical dives on hw, folks just shillmaxn now.
Not really a comment on laptops, but I recently built a new desktop for the first time in nearly two decades. I'm sure that there has been some innovation in the space, but overall I was surprised that everything just seemed... the exact same?
PCI slots are from the 90s. DIMM from the 90s. SATA from the early 00s. LGA sockets from the mid 00s.
I woke up to see my other comment downvoted by some rando, but I honestly think this is the best line in the entire article and Gruber's wish is telling (I quote the line only here, but it is best read in context of the original passage):
"I wish Apple would make a MacBook that’s akin to the iPhone Air — crazy thin and surprisingly performant."
What this reflects is all those comments and users, myself included, over the years saying "I would get an iPad if only it could run MacOS", and the ensuing discussion to the effect of why Apple won't do it, the chips are just as powerful, etc. A tablet Mac is a lot of people's (both casual and tech) holy grail in portable computing, justified/sensible or not in terms of technology and UI form factor. Gruber's wish is precisely the expression of this not unpopular sentiment. And also the Tahoe iPad OS features is a clue that Apple knows this.
Soo has there been work to run hackintosh on an iPhone??
Impressive hardware for cheap. Too bad it is MacOS.
It’s really an iPad running MacOS instead of iOS; the question is whether people want that.
I’m not the target market since I require Linux compatibility but I realize that is not a necessity in the market.
I don't think it's a useful distinction. I wouldn't describe my car as "really a vacuum cleaner", despite them both having an electric motor.
The form factor is the defining characteristic, because that informs how people use it. The CPU does not.
The iPad has a touchscreen, supports Apple Pencil, etc. but the observation that the iPad has been Apple's "budget" computing platform for a while is spot on. It is interesting that they have reformulated it into a Mac laptop (and also that A-series iPhone chips offer M1-class performance.)
Fortunately/unfortunately for Apple, the M1 MacBook Air from 2020 is still a great laptop.
Really an iPad running MacOS instead of iOS, with a built-in keyboard and touchpad, without a touch screen, multiple ports.
In other words, indistinguishable from a laptop by virtually everyone. I don't even know what difference you might be referring to.
Imagine if future versions had a sim card slot for data-only connections. That would be killer - a main reason I've considered an iPad is for "ambient internet" wherever you go. Why has that phone feature not made its way to laptops?
esim has you covered.
No mention of no backlit in keyboard?
>we’re lucky it comes with a charger at all
Yup
I swear to god every time I go to Gruber's website he's narrowed the text another ten pixels.
I’m a bit confused about who this article is really for. The MacBook Neo starts at $600 so when I read:
“MacBook Neo is built on an iPhone chip—the A18 Pro. It’s far less capable of running intensive tasks than any of Apple’s M‑series chips or any moderately powered Intel or AMD processor.”
and that:
“It’s merely the right kind of performance for anybody who wants to browse the internet or stream video.”
...at this price point there are plenty of alternatives for laptops with better performance and specs.
For example, you can get a 15.6" Ryzen 7 5700U laptop with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD for less than the “unbeatable” price of the Neo:
https://www.amazon.com/NIAKUN-Computer-Processor-Graphics-Ke...
Or a 15.6" Intel Core i7‑1255U/12650H laptop with 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD in a similar price range:
https://www.amazon.com/HP-Laptop-High-Performance-i7-1255U-4...
Both of these offer:
* A more traditional laptop CPU
* 2–4× the memory
* 2-4× the storage (1TB vs 256GB base on the Neo)
Standard HDMI/USB‑C video out for external displays
So I can definitely see the appeal of the Neo for people who just want an inexpensive way into macOS, but the claim that “no other budget laptop can compete.” doesn't track.
Maybe it should have been "The least expensive Macbook yet, but that comes with significant downsides."
MKBHD said it best: If you're looking at the reviews of the product on tech youtube channels or tech news sites - it's not the laptop for you.
As for your comparisons: My aunt doesn't need a terabyte of storage or a Ryzen 7 5700U, she needs 15+ hours of battery life because the laptop is going to live next to her spot on the couch and she most likely can't remember to plug it in every night.
Also the first laptop is from a reputable brand called NIAKUN. They must have amazing customer service and unbeatable warranties, right? =) And they certainly will exist in 12 months when you go look for the brand on Amazon and won't be replaced by another random set of letters in all caps selling the exact same product?
The HP is on sale, it's MSRP is $699 and for some weird fucking reason has the numpad on it, making the whole keyboard wonky. Who wants that on a laptop?
And the final thing, as with all price-forward comparisons: build quality. We need an objective standard measurement for chassis and keyboard flex, the ability to open the lid with one finger, the amount of creaking and squeaking said laptop will do in normal use and how hot and loud it gets in your lap when doing light browsing.
Anyone doing accounts and data entry wants a numpad. My dad recently damaged his laptop keyboard. I gave him a spare usb keyboard, and he still went out and bought a new keyboard just for the numpad. There's a reason pc makers keep stuffing those lopsided monstrosities in there
Anyone doing data entry with a numpad will also want a proper one, not a squishy laptop one.
But they're clearly not the majority of the people - the rest of us have to live with a lopsided keyboard because a few people for some reason do data entry on a laptop keyboard.
Ah the classic NIAKUN, what we expect from brand name quality: awesome keyboard layout (love a number pad that smashes into the arrow keys), great resolution (1920x1080 so good for 2026!). I'm sure the speakers are state of the art for the form factor, gets amazing battery life (love me max 4-5 hrs on moderate usage), and of course can't forget the plastic body.
I'm sure a similar story can be said about the HP.
If you didn't detect the sarcasm, a laptop is much more than cpu, memory, and storage; it'd be short-sighted to only fixate on this trio. PC laptops compromise on pretty much everything and usually do everything poorly, including CPU (since apple silicon Macs are much better performance per watt).
Then there's the whole aspect of Apple support for both hardware AND software, something no PC vendor can provide.
I was about to say the same thing. How can people compare Apple to a NIAKUN throwaway laptop? I'm no Mac fanboy - I use Windows, Linux and Mac at home. I find MacOS somewhat annoying, but as a Internet browsing laptop, I'd much rather pay for the Mac Neo than "NIAKUN".
PS: I wrote this on my Macbook Air.
I wouldn't even let someone connect that thing to my home network, let alone pay money for one.
Single thread performance on the Neo (important to web browsing) is literally 2-3 times faster than those laptops
> ...at this price point there are plenty of alternatives for laptops with better performance and specs.
Laughable. Seriously, how long has it been since the M1 Air dropped? And we're still this clueless?
> For example, you can get a 15.6" Ryzen 7 5700U laptop with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD for less than the “unbeatable” price of the Neo:
Awesome spec dump. Now, what's the real life usage battery life of that laptop like? Oh? Yeah, thought so.
Nobody buys a list of specs, they buy a set of capabilities. And the Neo is capable of supporting normal usage for 12h+ on battery. Go ahead and link me some alternative laptops that can do that, with comparable performance of course — which is on par or better than the original M1 Air mind you.
Killer move by Apple, and I'm shocked there's still so much ignorance around.
https://www.staples.com/hp-omnibook-5-16-2k-laptop-copilot-p...
I own one. It lives long enough not to get bothered by charging.
Looked up more info on this laptop, my cursory thoughts:
plastic chassis: gross. keyboard with a numberpad: yuck no inverted-T for arrow keys: yuck limited size trackpad, not to mention a PC trackpad: yuck display looks good and is matte: nice fans: gross usb-c (charging) port is not the first port in the array: yuck supplied charger brick: yuck, why not something a bit more modern
But at least it seems to have comparable battery life to the neo.
> plastic chassis: gross.
I don't care, it holds, it is not slippery (a huge problem with my current phone with metal body). What exactly is better with metal?
> keyboard with a numberpad: yuck
I would prefer one without, but that's just a matter of preference here. The layout is good. In fact, it's the keyboard that mostly makes me feel good whenever I use this laptop.
> inverted-T for arrow keys: yuck
In theory I agree, but for some reason that did not feel problematic on this particular keyboard.
> limited size trackpad
?
> not to mention a PC trackpad
To each their own
> fans: gross
Never heard them, not even sure they are there.
> usb-c (charging) port is not the first port in the array
Sounds like a minor issue
> supplied charger brick: yuck, why not something a bit more modern
I prefer "bricks" on the wire to "bricks" on the plug like Apple does because it does not take 10 slots on a power strip.
Apple’s power adapters take up one slot.
The Windows ones sound good for running games. Wouldn't suit me as I don't game on them and want battery life for reading.
> It’s far less capable of running intensive tasks
The latest reviews are showing that's not really the case
I would ask the opposite. For years now for most of my family even a Raspberry Pi 3B+ 3ould be enough. 95% of people use their machine to run a web browser, that easily ran on hardware that was old 20 years ago.
Agreed, which is why a $600 price point on a "budget laptop" targeting users running a web browser seems quite over priced.
Well but that's the thing. It is priced like a phone for exactly the kind of person who would spend 600 bucks on a phone. I don't think this is a coincidence.
In terms of performance the raw compute people have in their pockets nowadays surpasses what they typically need by magnitudes for a while now. Granted: programmers and tech companies find new ways of wasting that compute on features that people ultimately do not need, so they may need that the compute so things feel snappy, but if I think about what my parents do on their devices you could easily enable them to do theirs tasks with far less. They are essentially doing the same as ca. 2006 with pictures and videos being higher fidelity & resolution and websites running hundred thousand lines of javascript being the main difference.
The thing with laptops in my experience is a) they last ~6 years (macs at any rate) so that's ~$100/year or 27c a day and b) people spend a lot of time on them, hours a day often. Is it really worth cutting back much on that when it's like 1/10th the cost of getting a cup of coffee?
I would take 8x worse specs for the computer to be built by Apple because it's guaranteed to be 2x faster and a 10x better user experience. Raw specs are meaningless.
> It’s far less capable of running intensive tasks than any of Apple’s M‑series chips or any moderately powered Intel or AMD processor.”
This is false. The A18 Pro has much better single core performance than the M1 and slightly better multi core performance. Most people would see no noticeable benefit to a faster CPU. Especially with a fanless design, the additional cores of a comparable M-series chip would give you better burst performance for some workloads, but possibly not much improvement in sustained performance.
> The A18 Pro has much better single core performance than the M1 and slightly better multi core performance.
For the first few minutes of sustained use. Then it drops like a rock: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/apple-macbook-neo-re...
> In extended single-core benchmarks, performance drops to the 3.7-to-3.5 GHz range within a minute or so, and they drop to the 2.9-to-3.2 GHz range after about five minutes. Both the M1 Air and the new M5 Air (4.46 GHz) are able to sustain their peak clock speeds indefinitely in single-core mode.
That's a fair point above sustained multicore, but this is probably the right tradeoff for this class of device. Few people are regularly maxing out all of their cores for more than a few minutes at a time, and the people who are doing that probably weren't going to buy Apple's budget $600 MacBook anyway. The increase in single core performance over the M1 is much more valuable to most users.
That's probably true, although once again it's the sustained _single core_ performance that suffers. Statements like "the A18 Pro has much better single core performance than the M1" without this context still aren't true.
The A18's sustained single core performance is about the same as the M1's and the "burst" performance is quite a bit better. So I'd say it clearly has better single core performance overall.
I wonder if the new displays with A19 processors have better heat dissipation. (and if they can be modified to run full iOS instead of the displayOS variant)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/new-apple-studio-displa...
Your amazon links are broken. But I think you're missing the point of this thing. This isn't for people that really even care about performance. It's for people that want a laptop that works with their iPhone, does all the things their school needs them to do in a browser, and doesn't come with a complete dogsh*t OS, and isn't of dubious quality like an HP or a "NIAKUN", whatever that is.
Now the color options, that's a tragedy.
>Your amazon links are broken.
Thanks. Fixed.
>This isn't for people that really even care about performance. It's for people that want a laptop that works with their iPhone
That was my conclusion to my comment in my original. The title of "no other budget laptop can compete" is not just sensationalized, it is factually wrong. It should have been "the least expensive macbook yet comes with a catch"
No that title is perfectly correct. You just can’t see past your technical blinders to what compete really means.
> Now the color options, that's a tragedy.
Maybe they need to bring back psychedelic iMacs.
https://www.slashgear.com/1706745/rare-apple-imac-designs-fl...
"No other budget laptop can compete on offering MacOS" is certainly a correct statement, but it's not a particularly interesting one. If they're missing the point, it's because it was exaggerated to the point of not being recognizable.
And for their kids sick and tired of trying to help them fix Window's incompetence. You're into Dell for at least $800 for anything approaching an actually usable laptop. This is definitely my mom's next laptop.
Total cost of ownership.
I’d give my entire family these ahead of Windows laptops any day.
> Total cost of ownership.
Mister Gates, is that you ?
> 15.6"
eww
The target customer for this wants a laptop that will live in a dedicated space and rarely/never travel, except to the couch. 15 inches is perfect for that.
Except for the bit that immediately killed it for us in the office: only one external display. Even if you close the lid.
I dream of the day I can kick windows into the next bin, but this is the one thing that the Neo fails hard on, all other compromises would've made this a great remote dev machine.
does the ~$400 consumer PC market -- which is what theyre aiming at -- need multiple external displays?
my mom might need a 2nd monitor, but probably not. that's who they're chasing.
my crappy business dell work computer can only do one too, but it comes with a docking station to do real multi-monitor
So what $599 Windows laptop are you using with multiple external displays?
Any shitty dell can support two external displays with a docking station. And I truly mean it when I say that for a second the Neo got me excited to drop Dell.
MacBook Neo with 512 gigabytes of storage configuration costs 1,200,000 KRW (Approx. 810 USD for reference) in my nation.
I can get ThinkPad E14 with a decent lunar lake CPU and 16 gigabytes of memory, at a slightly lower price.
So I'm not as hyped as others...
That's interesting. In my country ThinkPad E14 16/512 is 37% more expensive and comes with garbage 60% srgb screen. It's actually more expensive than MacBook air M4 16/512.
It't true that the ThinkPad display kind of sucks. Though I can upgrade to a 2K OLED panel for additional 80 USD. That makes the E14 30 bucks more expensive than the Neo.
This is going to be against a lot of the comments and opinion posted on HN here.
The best selling Macbook in history, as percentage of total MacBook sold is the 11" $899 MacBook Air. That was when Apple learned people are willing to give up on performance and features just to get a Mac, or just to use OSX.
And despite the declining state of macOS, as Gruber said it is still zillions times better than Windows.
Apple Mac has always been more expensive than PC. But they are also better built. No Laptop has decent trackpad until M$ pull R&D into their surface book. PC Speaker was appalling until YouTuber start to state the obvious how MacBook speakers were better. But none of these matters, at the end of the day most consumer dont understand spec. They see that is the cheapest MacBook, it looks good and works, just like the MacBook Air 11", if they could afford to buy a $500 laptop, they will spend extra $100 on Apple. Even if the spec on paper is arguably worse.
And if we are really talking about spec and compare. If you even want some after sales services, you would at least have to look at Dell, HP or ASUS. And not some random Chinese brand.
These 1920 * 1080 15" screen is not a decent screen. Even ignoring P3 colour, you will have to find a screen with 200PPI+, let alone Apple do it with 220PPI.
If you want to use Amazon as comparison, they have been selling M4 MacBook Air at $200 discount sometimes $250 for most of the time. I have no idea why, but I would not be surprised the $699 model be selling at $599, same as EDU price. Then at this point the MacBook Neo is extremely competitively priced. You get better screen, faster CPU for less storage and less ram.
And let's fast forward a year. A Neo with A19 Pro as used in iPhone 17 Air and Pro with 12GB RAM, Double the SSD Speed. WiFI 7. Assuming that is true, I dont even see anything on the PC roadmap that is competitive, especially when they are all facing DRAM pricing pressure. ( Although I also think Apple will bump A19 Pro version by additional $100 )
Forgetting all that for a second, not a single review look into the actual Neo hardware. We will have to wait for iFixit for detail teardown. But is should be the easiest to fix Mac, and designed to be simple to manufacture as they said in the interview. The chassis is likely heavier due to this process but could see further refinement. The mechanical trackpad is work of genius, I am not sure if this is Apple only innovation or something that is on the market already. That trackpad alone is 150g, that is nearly one tenth of the weight of whole Neo.
The Neo is, as far as I am aware perhaps the first Apple product that was designed and engineered to be as practical and cost effective as possible. True to their words this isn't some cost reduction exercise using old design and components. This makes Neo the most boring Apple product on paper, but sometimes boring is good. And I agree with MKBHD, this is perhaps the most disruptive Apple product since the original iPhone.
There are roughly 1.5 - 2 billions Windows PC in use today. And Apple has at best 150 to 200M Mac user. So there is plenty of room to grow. I would be happy if they could double that in 5 years time.
I am really liking everything this New Apple is coming through so far. Molly Anderson as Industrial Engineer. John Ternus on Hardware Engineering. Not sure if Steve Lemay is great but my gut feeling is he would restore a lot of Apple HID.
The only thing missing is software ( And may be Services lead ). I know Craig Federighi is popular on HN and internet but I haven't liked a single software engineering direction since he took charge. Stop adding features and Resume driven development and start fixing bugs.
May be lastly, Tim Cook has never been any good at picking person. But all these new selection seems to be great. This cant be a coincidence. I am wondering if there are some additional changes in the background at Apple we dont see.
I have been giving Tim Cook's Apple plenty benefits of doubt but losing faith steadily for 10 years. This is the first time ever since Steve Jobs passed away I am excited to see changes in direction. The name Neo is just great. Truly something new.
Here’s a teardown:
https://youtu.be/5k7Lv7f-5CQ
Pretty much everything I expected from the Quick Look of it on Dave2D. Only surprises were the keyboard.
I dont think there has ever been a MacBook that has been designed with this level of practicality. I think we need to go back to Powerbook era and I dont think we have that either.
Would have been perfect if they come with A19 Pro 12GB DRAM and double the SSD speed next year.
I wonder if this will get RISC-V adoption on the roadmap of competitors. We had a thread in the last 24 hours over how slow as molasses it is, but honestly x86 isn’t the way to go. I like that the AMD x64 literature tries to push down on the legacy cruft but some of it is evident in the ISA which is harder to ignore, like default behaviours of registers and other things that are left over for backwards compat and as such everything around it suffers in a thousand broken windows sort of way.
nb I haven’t delved too deep into RISCV but I am under a general impression it did away with all this. My concern is the layers that are added will turn it into a CISCV over time.
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maybe Apple is "subsidizing" this ?
nudge/"help" people to join the party?
trying to ride something around the windows-bullshitization , recent memory-prices etc..
There's no point taking any Mac opinion from John Gruber, he's basically just Apple PR. He can't be objective
Would it kill this guy to make his site responsive? It’s like one prompt.
He wasn't referring to the build quality which is about average, or the ipad level performance.
He was referring to the supply chain. The shock is that Apple was able to build something like this with current component costs.
Planning beyond the next quarter? That’s a rare level of foresight for most.
“Average” build quality? All the reviews I’ve seen rage about the build quality of the Neo
Yes, compared to other Apples, which fall apart if you look at them funny.
The Apple Neo is only slightly better than an HP or Dell for the same price. But HP and Dell don't need to maintain a service center in every major city and shopping center. They make cheap devices that just work.
> 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.
My old x86 "PC" laptop with the $0 Debian certainly compares positively to Apple in terms of software quality.
As much as I like the form factor and price point of the MB Neo, I just can't accept a computer that needs to phone home when reinstalling the (one approved) OS.
Bought yet another second hand 11" MBA instead. Now looking at SMT soldering equipmemt for doing ipgrades and repairs.
While 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, it'll get 12GB of RAM, and it will need it.
And the other elephant in the room that John doesn't bring up is the fact that you can definitely find in-warranty MacBook Air options for ~$700 and they'll be much better buys.
You'll get more RAM, keep your Touch ID, better trackpad, better screen, better battery life, better speakers, better mics, I think even a better webcam? Maybe.
That reminds me: the small battery in the Neo means that high screen brightness or more than light usage will more quickly deplete it compared to other Mac systems.
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.
> 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 had to switch was the storage. Sluggishness wasn't on the top 10 issues I had with that device.
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.