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Comment by ggreer | Hacker News Reader

It looks like it's still bigger than the logic board on the 12" MacBook from 2015.[1]

I really wish Apple would resurrect that form factor, as every other MacBook since has seemed bulky in comparison. Thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher[2], I still haven't gotten a newer mac. With a modern M series chip, it wouldn't have such rough tradeoffs in battery life and performance. I'd definitely buy it.

1. See step 11 on https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+MacBook+2015+Teardown...

2. https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

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The Neo actually has similar dimensions to the 12” overall, though not as tapered. That’s possible because it has a much slimmer bezel. The Neo is about a third heavier though.

If you account for the taper, the Neo has about 50% more volume than the 12”

I sometimes travel with backpack only (cheap European airlines) and that is a big difference.

You do get a keyboard that you can actually use though :)

Very true. In a way this is demonstrating the tradeoff between cost, repairability and size/weight.

The Neo is getting a lot of praise because it's all modular and screwed together. That should make it very easy to repair and also for Apple to do iterative upgrades, but that makes it bigger and heavier and size/weight does matter to people. Hence this thread.

What version of MacOS are you running on yours? I have a 2017, 16GB, 1.7ghz and it's DOG slow on Ventura, even with reduce motion and reduce transparency. I have considered downgrading just to see if there's improvement.

I'm on Sequoia (v15.7.4). I have the original 2015 model (1.1Ghz Core M-5Y31, 8GB of RAM). It's a little slow, but fine for what I use it for (web browser, syncing music/photos to/from my phone, simple coding tasks). My main gripe is the battery only has 60% of its original capacity. Apple won't replace the battery, and doing it yourself is pretty tricky. At some point it'll break or no longer get security updates, and then I'll probably get a MacBook Air.

If you're using OpenCore Patcher, it's important to install the root patches to enable graphics acceleration. Otherwise it'll be ridiculously slow.

I just helped a friend replace her eleven year old 11" Macbook Air with a new M4 Air.

her review: “this thing is HUGE :( :P ”

By dimensions, assuming the 2015 ("eleven year old") version, the 13" M4 MBA is 0.17" wider, 0.9" deeper, and 0.32 lbs heavier. Where it's harder to compare is thickness. The M4 is 0.44" thick where the Intel one was tapered (0.11"-0.68").

Kind of hard to see that as "HUGE" in comparison. Bigger? Yes, but not really huge.

It's sort of ironic that at the time, there were many complaints that Apple made its devices thin at the expense of more important features. Now that M series MacBooks are thicker again, there are complaints that they are too thick.

I owned an i9 MBP with a discrete GPU. It absolutely was too thin. The CPU and GPU ran hot, it throttled like crazy. It would drain battery while USB-C docked while idling. Worst laptop I've ever owned.

The M1 Max I replaced it with was the opposite. I don't think I heard the fans for the first month. But it was much larger.

Based on the fanless Air, I strongly suspect an M1 Max in the old chassis would have been totally fine for non synthetic workloads and an M1 Pro would probably have been fine in all scenarios.

But I think they over corrected on the chassis design when they were shipping borderline faulty products and haven't walked it back yet.

I speculate they gave themselves a lot of thermal engineering margin to bump up TDP with the M-series MBP design (or perhaps they underestimated how good the M-series chips were going to be) The battery being at the TSA limit of 100Wh is quite nice as well. Another benefit is that it now differentiates the "Pro" line from the rest of the laptop lineup quite significantly. For most people the Air has enough power now and its plenty thin and light. The pro line is for "true" pros with actually intense workflows.

I'm a dev and the MBP line is definitely overkill for me. The 15" MBA handles everything I can throw at it.

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