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Comment by NoLinkToMe | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that it's the same weight, less wide and less tall than the Air model, though it is a bit thicker.

Seems like an amazing entry-level offer for kids and students. But to be honest for myself I also don't really much added value of an Air or Pro anymore.

I think the memory of 8gb is the biggest limit for a device you want to use another 6-8 years, except for the most casual of users. Those who have multiple apps and tens of tabs open will enjoy an experience difference with 16gb Air/Pro. And the battery life is significantly (but not radically) better on the Air/Pro.

Really great to see.

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8GB of "unified" memory. That means it's also shared by the GPU. I realize these things aren't meant to be gaming rigs, or CAD workstations, but I do agree that this isn't very forward thinking.

I use a MacBook Air with 8 GB of memory and it's fine. If I've got a browser and VSCode and Blender and PrusaSlicer and Claude and XCode all open it gets a little slow, but Mac is very good at memory management these days.

Someone using just a browser and Word would have absolutely no problem.

I’ve used a computer with 4 gigs for the last 15 years and it still does emails, recipes, and YouTube. I.e. 100% of my computer needs.

What's so special about this Mac memory management? It uses the SSD better and makes swapping faster? It predicts what I'm gonna use or stop using and it swaps in/out accordingly?

I'm not sure. I think it does swap more aggressively. I think the disk is also just really fast and has a higher speed connection to memory.

Qualitatively I'm running way more things in the background than I could on Linux and Windows machines with double the RAM, with far fewer hiccups.

I haven't tried a modern Surface or other high-end Windows laptop so maybe their swapping is comparable, but given the shocked reactions of non-Mac users at 8 GB of memory, I don't think so.

All of that is a yes, plus compressed memory is a big component of macOS.

It's mostly for people who need to edit some documents, a few photos here and there and other things like that. 8GB of RAM is going to be enough for the average user.

it is quite forward thinking, but for Apple, they are thinking you will need to upgrade.

Assuming nothing really bad comes out of the reviews, this looks like the best computer for like 99% of users. I really can't imagine buying some plastic-fantastic Acer unit when this is on the market.

This isn't for anyone to use for 6 to 8 years.

This is for people who want the cheapest MacBook possible, with the edu discount it's only 499$.

You drop it being silly, cool that's only 500$.

Uhm but you do realize that $500 is actually a lot of money for people that aren't living in SF and hop between startups every second tuesday, right?

There is no "only". It's $500.

When compared to the rest of the line up it is only, the Air is now $999 for the base model, that's 1k, 500 is cheap in comparison and for the quality it beats out a lot of laptops in this price range.

That is a correct statement, but "whoopsie, dropped it, but no biggie, it's just $500" is not.

It can be a decent sized purchase if you were buying it outright, but $500 is just not a lot of money in America for the vast majority of citizens.

Though I agree with you completely regarding the "oops I dropped it".

Keep in mind this is the same website where someone casually mentioned buying a $5,000 Lecia for their kid.

Would you rather junior drop a $500 laptop while they're not paying attention, which is what kids do, or drop a $2,000 laptop?

The second hand market on this is also going to be great. Maybe Junior upgrades to an M5 air when he starts college, he's going to sell his Neo for 300$ which is very accessible for most.

My first laptop was 350$, brought after working for 6.75$ an hour. It was objectively a piece of junk, but hey I got to do computer and it lasted about 3 years before randomly failing for one reason or another.

Neither.

I would like the bubble that is this website's "community" to pop, crash down back to earth and see them struggle living like normal people again.

I could use a laugh today, do you have a link to the leica comment? It wasn't that one review of the Fuji X Half, was it?

It was definitely the Fuji X Half review.

https://arslan.io/2025/06/14/fujifilm-x-half-is-it-the-perfe...

And I must make a correction, he doesn't explicitly mention trusting his kids with a 5k Leica. He's using a 10k M11 as a family camera and he lets his wife use it.

Still, I'd imagine a family with this type of money would have no issue giving the kids 500$ MacBook.

I should of brought up the thread where someone felt they needed to buy each daughters a Tesla...

The thing is you could use it for 6 to 8 years if all your doing is editing documents and other tasks like that. No one is buying this to play games on or code massive AI powered applications, it's literally the "Well I need a computer sometimes may as well get the one that matches my phone"

> This isn't for anyone to use for 6 to 8 years.

Why not? I would.

what are you talking about? my wife still uses an M1 macbook air with 8GB ram and loves it. Literally zero desire to upgrade. I noticed her mac _sometimes_ needs to page memory to disk, but she doesn’t even notice because of the SSD and the M1 chip is crazy fast for most tasks.

Don’t see why the same can’t be true for this machine…

That’s fine. But Apple has an upgrade path for most people. They’re probably selling this with a very low margin.

You start with a 500$ Neo, and after 2 or 3 years trade it in for an Air or Pro. That’s where they make real money.

I think 90% of people will be fine with just an iPad. Some will need a small bump for laptop OS but not necessarily the specs which is where the Neo comes in, then the Air is for medium workflows and Pro is for if you do anything long running and intensive. It's quite a good ladder actually small steps that just add what each tier needs.

From the marketing it’s obvious that this is built for students, so I doubt they intend for the useful life to be greater than 3-4 years.

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