The Apple MacBook Neo’s $599 starting price is a “shock” to the Windows PC industry, according to an Asus executive.
Hsu said he believes all the PC players—including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD—take the MacBook Neo threat seriously. “In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product,” he added, given that rumors about the MacBook Neo have been making the rounds for at least a year.
Despite the competitive threat, Hsu argued that the MacBook Neo could have limited appeal. He pointed to the laptop’s 8GB of “unified memory,” or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can’t upgrade it.
This is as believable as “air pods are for rich people”
Well good, maybe it’ll incentivise y’all fuckers to sell actually usable machine instead of Bordeline e-waste Celerons with a 4GB of RAM in the ultra-budget segment
Borderline?
Honestly, I’m just surprised this is the first time someone has dared to put a phone SOC in a laptop chassis.
It seemed kind of obvious to me that a laptop experience on phone hardware (but like… with a bigger screen, keyboard and mouse/trackpad) was sort of perfect for most use cases. I just assumed that it would come in the form of a phone docked in to a hollowed out laptop. The core issue was just that the software was awful with such a set up. Apple just kind of bypassed that by having their whole OS and everything on it switch over to ARM and just running a non-mobile OS on a phone SOC.
It seems like Google is kind of edging that way by merging chrome OS in to android. And windows was maybe flailing that direction with windows on arm… but… I think that was mostly just them trying to copy Apple without really thinking to hard about it.
Honestly, I’m just surprised this is the first time someone has dared to put a phone SOC in a laptop chassis.
I’m probably missing something fundamental, but isn’t this just a Chromebook?
There are some Snapdragon laptops but they’re not exactly the same as the snapdragon phone SoCs and they tend to be expensive
Apple was the only one with the vertical to pull it off
8GB of unupgradable ram is unforgivable in today’s software landscape. Even if the OS is memory efficient, running multiple software still takes ram. I get it’s a $600 laptop, but that’s still an inexcusably low amount of ram for anything but grandma and similar.
100% of my job is word processors, medium sized spreadsheets, and cloud software. This laptop is perfect for me and, I’d argue, 90% of my colleagues, as a work computer.
I have zero issue with soldered on ram for a device used for the above purpose.
My home PC though, not an ideal fit.
Maybe Asus should invest more into linux and start shipping it on their laptops by default? Maybe add an improved software compatibility layer for windows apps to get more people in?
He pointed to the laptop’s 8GB of “unified memory,” or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can’t upgrade it.
Yes, because Asus laptops all have non-soldered RAM…
A few do have non-soldered RAM, the most expensive workstation laptop and a couple of gaming laptops; all of which are >$2000.
Yes, because Asus laptops all have non-soldered RAM…
I think what that poster was communicating is that shipping a laptop with 8GB of RAM would be okay if it was socketed (allowing for an upgrade by the user) or if the shipped unit with soldered RAM was greater than 8GB (16GB?, 32GB?,64GB? soldered).
I’m suspicious.
I’m seeing social media FLOODED with Neo content. Definitely not organic.
Tinfoil hat aside, that could also be due to how disruptive it is in the tech world.
Maybe it’s just a literal bomb to everyone involved in decision making and now making the waves in the news.It could be.
But I don’t see any other PC/laptop reviews by this author. He writes mostly about cybersecurity. And his Neo articles seem a bit…biased. Compare to his other articles, which are well-researched. Example:
https://www.csoonline.com/article/563017/wannacry-explained-a-perfect-ransomware-storm.html
My guess is either someone is posting articles in his name, or he’s taking a free Neo in return for a positive review.
Maybe just a bit of both.
My guess is either someone is posting articles in his name, or he’s taking a free Neo in return for a positive review.
And a bit of both for that as well.
It’s also quite unexpected, given that it’s Apple, and they’ve traditionally made more expensive machines, with worse hardware. In my country, for example, it is nearly unheard of for a new Apple computer to cost less than four digits/US$800+.
Particularly at a time when it’s more typical to hear of new computer prices going up instead, due to shortages.
I was very surprised to hear how reasonable (to some degree lol) the iPhone and macbook was priced.
Very hard to deny that they are very interestingly priced.
Dude, the difference between you and Apple is Windows 11. They don’t have a crappy copilot or Edge hoarding 4GB in the background just to show the weather.
That’s a big difference but not all. The sub-$1000 ultrabook sector has SO MUCH garbage, like Intel Celerons that stutter when you scroll down a web page designed in 2022+. Manufacturers are happy because they can sell rubbish and uncle John with no idea about computers will say “I want a laptop with 1 TB so it’s faster, and it must have free office 365 and an antivirus”…
So when someone puts a phone processor in a laptop and builds a chassis that isn’t a $5 extruded plastic shell, they panic because it still manages to be better in both benchmarks and real world use despite the paltry amount of RAM.
Exactly. They should start installing Linux Mint and call it a day.
Fuck Microsoft.
Indeed. PC manufacturers should just invest in the Linux ecosystem.
What, like Asus did back in 2007?
Unfortunately, these particular devices were kinda shit lol
EEEs were amazing! Not because of their performance or specs, but because they were a fully working compute for dirt cheap at only $199! Remember, these were released 5 years before the first Raspberry Pi. The original model of EEE with its 7" screen 512MB RAM and 4GB of slow SSD storage were plenty of compute for small tasks or portable applications. The cheapest fully functional laptop you could buy at retail those days would still cost you $800-$900 for a pretty horrible machine.
Linux was part of the secret sauce that made them successful because it meant they didn’t have to pay for an OEM Windows XP license.
Eh, I gather the Linux based ones were actually pretty cool. But 99% of netbooks ended up being underpowered mini laptops running XP, so were doomed to failure.
yet
He also described the MacBook Neo as a “content consumption” device, similar to an iPad. “This is different from the use case of a mainstream notebook," which can handle more compute-intensive tasks, Hsu said.
I don’t know what Windows have out of the box but is MacBook really content consuming device ?
Free build in OS offline office apps Word = Pages, Excel=Numbers, Power Point = Keynote, Notes, Calendar, Email, Reminders, PDF viewer = Preview, movie editor = iMovie, Journal, Password Manager = Keychain, Maps app ( yes you can download parts of map to use offline), Garage band where you can connect your midi devices and record them.
It has a mobile SOC which thermally throttles pretty aggressively, memory capped at 8gb, and a pair of confusing USB-C ports one of which is limited to USB 2.0 speeds.
It’s actually a bit faster than the M1 and most M1 owners are still not upgrading because there’s no real need. So you could reasonably do productivity things that aren’t heavy ass 3D modelling or video editing. But with 8 gigs of RAM it’ll swap a lot, wearing down the SSD eventually.
I wouldnt have said content consumption but it is going to be a hit with students who will basically use a browser for everything. They have cloud office suites by default and apple has student subscriptions to offer.
That price still sounds like a ripoff for what you apparently get. Such is Apple.
Not too sure on that. In single-thread cinebench it beats high-end desktop CPUs from AMD and Intel. Now the Ryzen 9950X3D will absolutely DEMOLISH it in anything that can use all of its threads, but it literally lost in single-thread to Apple’s phone SoC. And that CPU costs the same as the entire Macbook Neo.
You can spend 3k on a gaming laptop with a Core Ultra 9 288V right now that is in every other way better performing than the Macbook Neo, but still loses heavily in single thread performance.
Now I’m not saying this makes it the best deal ever, it’s literally just one metric I’m talking about, but for the average user, single thread performance means the computer is more responsive overall, and a lot of applications aren’t optimized to make proper use of 6 threads, let alone 16 or 32, so it might feel snappier than a significantly more expensive laptop from another manufacturer, especially if it’s running Windows.
Shilling much lately?
It does seem still very impressive against other top laptop CPUs.
Although I heard from Jeff Geerling’s review that the neo often noticably throttles after a few seconds.
It also has pretty terrible IO.
I think the biggest attraction is the build quality, screen, etc. Most cheap laptops seem to cheap out on those a lot in my experience, and Apple did not. If you’re not stressing the CPU or GPU, it’ll still feel almost as high quality as any other MacBook.
For reference
They’ve had Mac minis for over a decade.
I find this hard to believe.
Computer people (like me) buy Mac minis, frequently as an extra device. Regular people who don’t care about computers beyond wanting a nice one buy laptops. I believe it completely.
I would assume most computer people would just assemble their own devices…
But that’s the difference between real computer people and you.
Username checks out.
Computer people might own several devices, some of them (particularly laptops) prebuilt, and don’t usually gatekeep.
But that’s the difference between real computer people and you.
Ah yes, tech nerds not at all known to gatekeep lmao
Tbf many of us can be real assholes online but all the fellow nerds I know irl are very inclusive and just excited when someone else shares a hobby
Just make some decent SD Elite laptops, preferably with Linux OOTB, I’ve been waiting…
The perfect time for a relatively cheap Apple laptop when Microsoft is forcing people to buy new hardware just to use their latest version of their operating system. I wonder what the percentage of Microsoft folks who go to the MacBook will be. I wonder what the percentage of users who go the UNIX/Linux route would be. I’m not an apple fan myself so would go linux, but a good business move from Apple though.
Apple user share is beneficial for Linux user share.
That would be interesting to watch.
If I ever had to buy a personal laptop again, it’d definitely make the list.
Obnoxious hardware prices are what kept me off mac for so long. Now all prices are obnoxious maybe it would even out.
Great move if they can capitalize on it
They were making a lot on build quality, convenience, brand, ecosystem, cultism, software quality, but not so much on power.
Now power became more expensive for suppliers, and for things listed before it you have to restructure marketing and everything. Apple doesn’t have that problem. They also have rid themselves of the legacy problem by two softer changes (dropping 32 bit Intel, then moving to ARM) instead of one hard change.
But can the MacBook neo have Linux installed
Despite the hits Asahi took losing two of it’s most prominent devs (one of whom is basically a wizard, as far as I can tell), I expect it to attract more attention than the more expensive devices because it’ll have a much wider potential audience. On top of that, lots of groundwork that was laid deconstructing the M1 and M2 chips means the team isn’t starting from zero, despite differences in the chip.
It’ll take some time, but it’s basically guaranteed to happen and I think sooner is more likely than later.
I daily drive my personal Macbook air M2 running Asahi (only booted into OSX twice in the time I’ve owned it). I really like the experience of Linux (Fedora) on Apple hardware.
However, its still got some growing pains before most folks would be happy with it as their primary. One of those limitations abslutely applies to the Neo. Asahi Linux on 8GB of RAM is VERY cramped. I’ve got 24GB of RAM and even I run into limitations sometimes. The other issue is the current maturity level of power management. Asahi does not have full use of the low standby power states. This means that even with “sleep” your battery will exhaust itself in less than a day if its not plugged in. The alternative is to power down the unit entirely, which works fine to save the battery, but means having to open all your applications back up when you power it back up. Since Mac hardware doesn’t use ACPI, hibernation is also not available, which would also be a fine way to address this.
None of this is criticism agianst the Asahi team. They’ve done AMAZING things so far and what exists today is fully usable to me. Improvements also come early and often. The team is amazing!
However, Macbook Neo probably won’t be a good use case for Asahi Linux for the forseeable future.
Thatd be nice. Finding a “cheap” used or new laptop light weight travel laptop is a pain. And if you do find one they are so cheaply made the keyboard and screen hinges suck. Hoping if apple comes through with these cheap laptops the build quality stays the same. And I won’t use macOS shit sucks ass.
Unless Apply does some weird bootloader locking shenanigans like what happens with Android devices.
The industry problem is mainly that RAM makers do not want to piss off Apple, who has already had long term contracts set prior to rampocalypse. But 8gb linux native is a better product for systems that need to be offered at 8gb for affordability.
