(www.jdhodges.com)
Having an OS eat up >75% of your memory on a fresh boot is not ideal. You're gambling on macOS experiencing zero bloat for the lifetime of this product. If the OS memory footprint grows even just a few percent, users of this model will lose a significant portion of available memory for applications.
This model might trigger planned obsolescence legislation in some jurisdictions.
Reality is, the iphone 16 sharing the same chipset is perfectly functional for many more years to come, running similar workloads (for the same target audience): mainly web browsing.
If the iphone 16 can have the usual 3-6 years of useful life, then the macbook neo has the same -- FOR ITS INTENDED PURPOSE.
And I wrote this because I did actually get the macbook neo and I'm using it daily for the intended purpose (mostly web browsing) and it's just fine.
(if anybody is wondering: i have a large machine with 16c/32t and 128gb memory that i use remotely via ssh to do the "heavy stuff")
> This model might trigger planned obsolescence legislation in some jurisdictions.
That legislation is at least ten years late but apple is absolutely not the worst offender. There is the entire market of cheap android phones (and tablets) that barely last a year or two, and have essentially no guaranteed software upgrade. That should have triggered the legislation in the first place.
then i welcome it
Real life?
My macbook neo with 8gb memory is faster and snappier than my shit-tier thinkpad X13G1 even when the X13 is not swapping at all.
I have 8c/16t Ryzen 7 along with 32GB ram over there, running GNU/Linux.
And somehow my macbook neo running a phone chip is much more usable (and battery lasts longer, and suspend actually works).
It remains in perfect condition and as delightful to use as the day I bought it (Apple software snafus notwithstanding). I fully expect to get at least 10 years use out of it. Honestly, I feel like it could probably carry him all the way through school - but I’d be embarrassed to say that out loud since that’s another 9 years.
I'm not sure I'll need another computer anytime soon. Even though the kids jumped on it once when I left it on the couch for a few minutes, bending the case on one side of the keyboard. It bent back mostly flat. Gives it a bit of personality.
Never before has $1099 (or whatever) of hardware gone so far for me.
Using a macbook air, even a recent one, before this Docker was definitely usable but noticably slower. Probably still worth it but a noticable tradeoff using it as a dev machine Vs a pro. Now that tradeoff has basically gone away.
A few years ago in an old job I got a monster-specced Dell laptop, and it would still roar if I opened anything. I had to pull all the nerf tricks through the BIOS to at least keep it somewhat tolerable in low-load scenarios (i.e. most of the workday).
All the i7/i9 Macbook pros that I used back in the day were obnoxiously load. Even when not under particularly heavy load.
But Apple's fanless machines do b) and then they just charge you the premium. There are a few fanless PC laptops that do the same thing, but most people don't want that, because they'd rather save a significant amount of money by getting the same performance out of a less expensive CPU with a fan.
I have used both airs and the max versions of macbooks, and the airs are embarrassingly on par for too many things. I understand it may be hard to believe, but one can do actual, serious work on a macbook air.
Of course one could say that ~having~ using the fan is always optional anyway (like the older 13" macbook pro was mostly an air with a fan) and in these types of tasks you may barely hear it. But still I prefer the peace of not ever hearing a fan for my to-go laptop.
5W Phone CPUs of today are faster than 105W workstation CPUs of ten or fifteen years ago. It's not a matter of whether it can do real work, of course it can. The question is, in the instances when you still have to wait for the machine, would you rather wait noticeably longer or pay significantly more money in order to avoid white noise? That's the trade off, and most people pick saving time and money over silence, so that's what most vendors offer.
It's not that they can't figure out how to do it. They do make them. There are AMD chips with TDP configurable down to ~15W and fanless laptops that have them. They're just not as popular when you give people the choice.
Happy to see Gerbil Scheme occupies 4GB RAM use on the Neo while building.
My Thinkpads seem to only use the fan occasionally but then my work load is very light.
I can't stand Apple, but it's the truth. I used one sporadically to build my stuff for Mac. Going back to my Windows workstation after that always felt like travelling 15 years back in time. I recommended M1 Air to everyone whose workflow was compatible with a Mac. Most of the people who acted on that recommendation still use it and don't really think about upgrading.
My M1 air (I think 8GB?) had similar issues My M2 24gb was amazing - especially since it allowed dual monitors. I recently upgraded to the M4 32GB and it is my "do everything" computer and is absolutely awesome.
My personal experience with the m-series is that get as memory as possible. I do feel the M1 had issues based on the couple I owned.
EDIT: Even on 32GB my memory pressure is constantly in the yellow, but have not seen it go to red
More importantly you shouldn't be experiencing audio stalls, so complain in the feedback app if you do.
The memory limit is probably in my head now, it does pretty well as long as I'm not obsessing over activity monitor.
Yet considering the price I've paid for it like $0.5 per day and used it daily for 10-16 hours a day. Pretty much like phones I use except I use them much less and drop them often unlike a macbook.
OpenBSD 7.1, 2022-04-21 -- https://www.openbsd.org/71.html
R/AsahiLinux posting from around that time, only one comment -- https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/u8rb2o/openbsd_...
No temptation to open Youtube or other distractions.
Just an emacs session with code and notes. Forcing myself to read the man-pages first before googling anything.
I bought a 2019 Intel MBP and that was by far the worst laptop I've ever had. After just a year of use it was constantly overheating and running out of memory and disk space, barely able to open a terminal. It was so bad that I hesitated to buy the Apple silicon versions, but the good reviews convinced me and it has been going strong ever since.
Unfortunately the display in my M1 has failed and a replacement is £500-700. Very frustrating.
Absolutely untrue. Your 2020 CV makes you completely unemployable in 2026.
I understand these are the limitations of this option, but can you really do more than just run a simple word editor? Even my Firefox session here uses over 16GB of RAM.
You're supposed to use the USB-2 port for charging and save the USB-3 port for external accessories, not the other way around
It only supports 10Gb/s compared to 40 that USB-4 is theoretically capable of, but that's more than enough for anyone in the $600 laptop market.
Transferring a about a dozen GB of data over USB3 is a crapshoot depending on the drive you have. Even amongst name-brands with similar advertised speeds, some thumb drives are basically useless with my 2024 MBP and I've had similar issues with a previous 2015 MBP model. The transfer speeds will be so slow as to be considered unusable.
On the 2024 MBP, using ANY microsd card adapter with any microsdcard causes the card to immediately overheat, and the card will never be properly usable by the OS. Only full-size SDCards work.
I've seen some posts about this elsewhere, but it seems to me like one of the few peripherals on this expensive piece of kit being incompatible with the vast majority of the hardware it's supposed to work with would be kind of a big deal.
I used a macbook air all throughout school, I never once owned a dongle or even plugged the thing in to an external monitor. My requirements were something that could run photoshop/illustrator and chrome. If I ever transfered something over USB it was a 300kb docx file or something else that would have copied instantly at 2.0 speeds.
I think there's a huge problem of tech enthusiasts projecting their own requirements on to a device that is designed for a very different person, and then declaring it unfit for use. Apple prioritized things that actually matter to students like battery life, lightness, price, and hinges that don't snap after the first year. Rather than tons of super fast IO and 32gb ram.
It's not tons of super fast IO. It's pretty basic IO.
If you want a separate display or super fast data transfers, more usb ports or more than 8MB of RAM buy one of the more expensive laptops.
Yes, but it is uncommon for a $600 PC to have a beautiful screen, great trackpad, metal case, and top notch build quality. Also, the neo performs really really well.
I doubt there's many Neo buyers that really needed multiple Thunderbolt ports but decided to pick up the $600 entry level machine instead.
It’s not functionally useless, it supports a mouse, keyboard, printer or even an iPhone (non pro) perfectly fine at full speed. It also probably has enough speed for the average cheap terrible quality USB drive that the buyer of a $600 PC might have.
This is a Silicon Valley tech geek take not a real world one.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Labels would be nice, I guess, but their absence is hardly a dealbreaker.
Let's not use this cope to mislead anyone into thinking this is a unique Mac innovation (it isn't) that trumps this abomination of human factors (it doesn't).
In the unlikely case that this feature exists thanks to Microsoft, I would like to say that is great, because it is much more user friendly than only having tiny labels. But since I’ve never seen this feature work before, it seems to me that it must be broken, if it exists at all.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/u...
It will warn you if you're charging over the slower to charge port, though.
https://superuser.com/questions/1022542/windows-10-display-a...
But yes, labeling should have been better. One of the USPs of MacBooks is that all USB ports are the same. Unlike other computers where you have to look where you are plugging it in. The Neo breaks that tradition.
> NOTE: USB4® Version 2.0, USB4® Version 1.0, USB 3.2, SuperSpeed Plus, Enhanced SuperSpeed and SuperSpeed+ are defined in the USB specifications however these terms are not intended to be used in product names, messaging, packaging or any other consumer-facing content.
USB-IF’s recommended name for this port is now just “USB 10Gbps”
Not that I would expect an average consumer to understand that as a label, but at least it takes up less space and allows relative comparisons better than USB 3.0 SuperSpeed+ or whatever the old equivalent was.
https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_data_performance...
surströmming
Sometimes I question whether some users have that ability
Oh wait https://i.imgur.com/7HWgxZ1.png
I don't know the details of Apple's silicon designs, but I assume the USB port bandwidth is because this is using the chip from iPhone 16 Pro, a phone which of course had a single USB-3 port. They've done what they can with it to hit the price point.
The alternative was to not include a second USB port for charging, in which case people would be bitching about it not being able to use peripherals while charging like the last time they made a single port laptop.
I wish once you bought an Apple computer it was truly yours for as long as you wanted it instead of it being dictated by Apple.
Still Great computers though.
As a reasonable alternative, you can stick Linux on it and it'll run nicely, although with a different set of software to what you got the laptop with. 2026 is the year of the Linux Desktop!1! (in all seriousness though, it is actually quite good by now).
They didn't say that. In fact they said the total opposite
> As a reasonable alternative, you can stick Linux on it and it'll run nicely
Somewhat true for Intel
Not so true for Apple Silicon (Asahi are only upto M2 I think?)
> After that you essentially have to chuck it as you don’t get any updates from Apple and slowly you descend into incompatibility unless you world exists in browser.
But I don't think the lines were particularly far apart.
> Not so true for Apple Silicon (Asahi are only upto M2 I think?)
M1 was six years ago, M2 was four, both within the seven years OP was talking about.
You can run Linux inside a VM on any Apple Silicon Mac already, even if there is no progress on native Linux on Apple Silicon.
Thinking I’ll try and install Linux on it at some point.
Does this mean the Neo/Air aren't useful for lightweight gaming at all? Lightweight as in indie-ish games, not as in session length.
It honestly seems good enough that it might cannibalize Macbook Air sales.
Hopefully used Airs will come up for sale more frequently, as they remain a step up from the Neo.
Adjusted for inflation it pretty much the same.
Used M1 Airs are selling for roughly half the price of a new Neo.
I did well in business, but the family joke is that I’d be a billionaire if I could have monetized her.
I'm pretty sure it's a "when", not "if".
Also, the Neo is just cheap enough that it's a product I'd consider buying that I don't need. I'm not in the market for a new laptop and certainly not an Air. So I'm a demographic considering this product that is not going to cannibalize their existing sales. There's gotta be at least a dozen people like me!
Love this
Open a few news web pages, and run Discord, Slack, VS Code, etc, and you'll quickly run out of RAM.
It is noticeably faster, but Chrome is the new Internet Explorer in more ways than one, and many web pages don't work in WebKit browsers.
I use Safari as my main browser, I open Chrome only when I encounter a web site that doesn’t work in Safari. It happens maybe once or twice per year, and half of the time, it turns out that it doesn’t work in Chrome either.
But, webkit is much better than chrome in memory usage. If only we could force slack and vs code to use the engine better suited for the job.
On the PC/Linux side I keep an old thermally-constrained i5 Sony Vaio ultrabook with a lowly 4 GB from 2015 around for the same reason.
The main dev box is a Ryzen 9950X3D/128 GB monster, so it's a bit of a difference :)
That said, my sister this morning asked if she should buy a Macbook Neo. I pointed her to a refurb M2 Macbook Air with 16GB of RAM for the same price. I feel like that's the right call? Slower single-core performance but better multi-core and I think for 90% of normal people use cases the RAM is the limit before the CPU.
Are others making the same calculation?
My mom still uses a 2019 Macbook Air with 8GB of RAM. The battery requires servicing, but she's unaware and still using it just fine. I asked her to go to the Apple Store and get the battery replaced along with her iPhone 12 Pro Max battery, and she'll easily get 10 years out of each device.
The reality is nobody is noticing differences between the M1 and anything afterwards, really - those that do will know enough to pick their laptop.
IMO developers should be forced to run on such computers, such that they would care a little bit about optimisation.
The uni-body pre force-touch trackpads clicked on a hinge from the top and you would need to press much harder in that area.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/apple-macbook-neo-re...
I feel like I end up stumbling on the charging cable at least one or two times. Plus, I wouldn't be able to re-use the old Macbook charger I have :(
I love the Neo as much as any other enthusiast, so yes, the subject matter is subjectively “cool”.
But this “article” is indigestible. Not only it regurgitates the same thing over and over (and it has links to other articles on the same page where they already did the same), on top of that the writing style, content, intentionality does not exist in the slightest. I feel like having been offered chocolate, but having received artificial cocoa flavored petrochemicals.
Apple fumbled the ball here. They should have called it the "M4 Mini", and this device the "MacBook mini".
Also, OP: Have you considered doing this professionally? I'd read this as the next AnandTech.
Pleasant experience and very impressed by hardware and polish except wow the keyboard/shortcut situation is absolutely cursed. Not different...actually cursed.
Who decided that sometimes its cmd+Q to close a window while other times its cmd+W and some apps support both but with different behaviours and knowing which of the three it is depends on knowing what's an OS window (but not all OS windows)? Or why is taking a screenshot of an area to clip it a FOUR key combo with one of them being a random number (the key 4). I can definitely memorize it and get used to it, but were the designers high as a kite when it was shortcut design day?
This kept my decades of muscle memory almost intact since I'm so used to Control being the primary modifier in Linux and Windows. And, weirdly enough, it helped me learn the new MacOS shortcuts since the patterns were now centered on Control instead of the Command key.
You can make the switch without having to use 3rd party software. The Keyboard section of Settings will let you adjust the modifier keys on a per keyboard basis. With different settings for internal, external, etc. if you wish. And it will let you remap Caps Lock if you prefer that to be something else.
For "document-based" apps (think almost anything where you open multiple files), the application can stay running even if there are no open windows. So you have both cmd+q and cmd+w available to you.
You can probably come up with some apps that don't cleanly fit these two, but that is what Apple has.
As to screen shot commands, it is a three-key chord because it is system-wide, and they did not want to step on any toes that the apps might have. And there are a few versions: shift-command-3 takes the entire screen shift-command-4 takes either a window or a section (press space bar to switch between them) shift-command-5 opens a more menu-based system that includes a timer
Why 3, 4, and 5 (and not 1 or 2)... I don't know. Maybe there was something in those spots at some point.
You know, you can change almost any shortcut you want with Karabiner (app). You don't even need to memorize them.
When I first switched to Mac after using Ubuntu for 4 years before that, I didn't expect this level of customization. It's misunderstood because Apple doesn't advertise this.
That's actually my other complaint. "Fixing" problems with the OS with mystery apps.
Connected an external mouse. Mouse wheel is inverted...weird? Google it. Yeah you can toggle it. Thank goodness. Apple knew people use mice. Oh but that inverts the trackpad too. WHAT? You're joking. I need to pick between a sane trackpad and sane mouse? I own both and need both to work to work in a not upside down manner.
Climb onto an AI and ask it what to do because this is insanity like surely not this can't be how it is. LLM goes yeah no that's just macos you need to install a mystery app to unfuck it.
Don't get me wrong my overall experience is positive and there has been the expected learning curve which is fine ofc, but also a fair bit of "what the actual F how are people OK with this".
@screenshot
Mac has always been kind of amazing for the granular options you get to take screenshots out of the box.
• Command - Shift - 3 | Takes a fullscreen pic of the entire display. Loads a preview in the bottom right corner. Click to expand, and from there edit, share, save, delete, etc.
• Command - Shift - 4 | Turns your mouse cursor into a crosshair. Drag to create a rectangular window. Takes a capture of the contents when done. Escape or right-click to cancel. Preview loads the same as above.
• Command - Shift - 5 | Brings up a rectangular section that can be moved around and resized.
But any shortcut can be remapped:
Go to System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Screenshots
Open Finder. cmd+Q. Does it quit anything? Nope nothing happens.
Open apple TV. cmd+w -> minimizes window. Open Safari. same keys - cmd+w. Closes current window? Nope. Closes tab. Open Apps. Cmd+w. Does it close window? Close Tab? Nope...third option...does fucking nothing.
That's 3 different apps made by apple and preinstalled by apple...three different behaviours
It is true that Finder is always running, you can’t quit it or kill it.
Command Q quits the currently active application.
Command W closes the current window without quitting the active application.
Open Finder. cmd+Q. Does it quit anything? Nope nothing happens.
>Command W closes the current window
Open apple TV. cmd+w -> minimizes window. Open Safari. same keys - cmd+w. Closes current window? Nope. Closes tab. Open Apps. Cmd+w. Does it close window? Close Tab? Nope...third option...does fucking nothing.
That's 3 different apps made by apple and preinstalled by apple...three different behaviours
>standard behavior
It isn't and its a tribute to human adaptability to chaos that mac crowd thinks this is standardization
You can’t quit finder - it’s a fundamental part of the hi that always has to run.
> Safari
Multiple tabs in a window are intended to be treated the same as multiple windows. This has been the case since macOS made tabbed interface components a standard part of the OS.
> Open Apps
What do you mean? Which apps?
That's what google told me after I set out to discover what rules are behind the inconsistency. The solution to inconsistent shortcuts is apparently memorizing which parts of the software that is PREINSTALLED is considered part of the OS and which parts are not.
>Which apps?
Not apps small a...Apps big A...the thing apple macs ship with on the dock and literally entitled "Apps". That baked into the default install window just behaves differently from both finder style built in OS things and Safari also built in but different built in not part of OS. Why? I don't fuckin know. Neither Q nor W make it go away. OK so hit esc. Does that make the window go away? It turns it into a smaller window that now performs a different function?!?!? Spotlight. OK so now i need to memorize what is an preinstalled OS window, preinstalled not os window, preinstalled not os window not app window but some sort of launcher I guess?
So a new user is basically guessing which of THREE keys combos may or may not make the window go away or possible do nothing or do something else entirely (close tab).
I feel like I'm being gaslight by all the hn users telling me yeah that makes sense
As an outsider it boggles my mind that apple crowd doesn't notice how all over the place macos shortcuts are.
The review is very fair - it’s an amazing bit of kit for the money.
> Could one actually work like this, typing and everything? After my “heart-rate discovery” I decided I had to try it. I thought I’d have to build something myself, but actually one can just buy “walking desks”, and so I did. And after minor modifications, I discovered that I could walk and type perfectly well with it, even for a couple of hours. I was embarrassed I hadn’t figured out such a simple solution 20 years ago. But starting last fall—whenever the weather’s been good—I’ve tried to spend a couple of hours of each day walking outside like this
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod...
https://quantifiedself.com/blog/stephen-wolfram-finds-workin...
Why is Rust Analyzer running and taking 2GB? I don't even write in Rust. Each Electron app takes 300-400MB and for some reason Ghostty takes 400 MB... ok I take it back, I couldn't use 8GB.
> tl;dw Copper shim mod (using laptop bottom as heatsink) leads to 2x performance over stock.
[Laughs]
“Oh my Claude, who touched settings.json? Alright…Who touched my LLM!?”
Hmm, I have a very different understanding of how Apple uses forcing functions. Prematurely slowing iPhones with older batteries regardless of charge level as a forcing function to upgrade is what I take away. When the 12GB Neo's are out, I expect another bit of bloat in Liquid Glass or other to motivate the upgrade.
Hate to defend Apple here, but there are so many more garbage laptops out there for the same price tag that can as well just go directly into landfill. Apple at least have the volume to make sure Mac software actually works on said 8GB.
If Apple manage to decrease market share of other e-waste manufacturers it's good on me. At least these laptops will live 5-7 years as we browser machines.
We'll be able to have six browser tabs open instead of four?