I'd love to be proven wrong. But to me it feels regressive. I guess the only positive spin on it I can think of is that this is designed for kids in schools.
I do all of my development on cloud servers. I just want a cheap laptop with a good battery life and, crucially, a keyboard and track pad that aren't complete trash.
I'd strongly prefer to have Linux over Mac - but this seems like the best option (and I kind of hate Apple tbh).
I don't think a better product exists at this price point, though I haven't tried it yet.
At the time of our writing, it is a new product and was announced about a week ago, to be released on March 11. By Thursday of last week, Costco had essentially sold out of preorders for both models. (I think a few of the pink color remain.)
So I think there is incredible demand — especially when memory prices are skyrocketing, everyone stores most of their data in the cloud, most LLM inference is also on remote machines, and the chip can handle most if not all typical office and web tasks (pretty much anything except running local models and demanding video editing).
I'm interested in one myself for law work on the couch, and I'm eager to read the first reviews.
If you’re looking to a corporation to save you from corporate lock-in I’m not sure what to say.
The second reason is of course kids. Yes I thought multiple times if I should get my kids some kind of computer. But the issue is that I don’t want a Chromebook or a windows device under my care. Used would be the way to go here but I love the fact that there is finally a good value entry level machine that also looks fun.
The 11" MacBook Air was 11.8" x 7.56" the neo is 11.71" x 8.12".
MacBook Air: 1.08 kg (2.38 lbs)
MacBook Neo: 1.23 kg (2.70 lbs)It really is too bad they never upgraded that 1366x768 LCD in the 11" MacBooks otherwise I think they could be great linux devices today.
It'll blow the doors off everything else in that price range, in a machine that feels like a macbook, which retain value better than anything else.
Personally I'm still waiting for a return of the 12" MacBook or 11" MacBook Air with an M-series chip in it. The current MacBook Air model just doesn't have the same feeling of super portable grab-ability that my old 11" MacBook Air had. Unfortunately, the age of the netbook is long past and hardly any manufacturer makes laptops with screens less than 13" unless you go all the way down to some kind of weird handheld thing without a keyboard. I liked how the 11" MacBook Air had just enough width and depth for the keyboard and a usable trackpad and no more.
It's extremely close in physical size, just with a 2" bigger display.
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macbook...
Would be interesting to see these specs in a mini body with 16gb ram but I have a feeling there isn’t really a market for that.
what do we need more memory for on our machines. Video files are already at a resolutions where any increase barely matters. Audio or any other multimedia as well. You won't be gaming on a macbook so that goes out of the window, and a lot of games actually work fine with 8GB. You can edit video or music with that much RAM.
Only thing that needs more ram is running Facebook, which is more of a problem with the sad state of webdev, not the MacBook.
I edit for a living and 8gb is not sufficient at all unless you’re always doing proxies, doing reduced resolution playback, and not running any major effects. Playback starts dropping frames at the drop of a hat. Every video editor should have at least 16gb of ram - it’s been that way for years.
If you rarely edit you can get away with it. If you do it with any regularity you end up working around the constraints and taking significantly longer to do your work and deal with slideshow playback.
These days code is nothing, content = memory.
People aren’t generally running ChatGPT locally.
People also tend to just leave a lot of tabs open all the time. Even when they are paused I just see people’s computers slow to a crawl because of this constantly.
I agree it should be enough and it even often is, but unless we’re going to get everybody to change their habits and get websites to be more efficient with tam usage (like how at work every single HubSpot tab I have uses 300-400MB which is ridiculous) 8 will become an issue, especially on macOS and windows. The way things are going it’s going to become a real problem in 5 years, which is relevant when we’re talking about ewaste. I just don’t see an 8gb mac neo lasting 8-10 years.
This has been my experience. I understand why other people disagree with me, but this is just what I’ve witnessed around me.
People have been begging for MacOS on the iPad... and here it is, but in different clothing. The Neo is just a test bed before committing MacOS to the iPad.