That is not remotely in the same category as the Neo.
The Neo costs a $100 more, needs a $30 dongle to connect to 90% of the stuff people have, has half the RAM, half the storage, slower storage. Has considerably worse I/O. But has a better screen and build quality comparable to a MacBook Pro from 2007.
It's different compromises. Personally I'd rather have more RAM, storage and IO than a prettier case and better screen.
It doesn’t have 8gigs of ram to cheat the consumer. It’s because this company can do 10000 hours of user testing to see what people need to do their normal people things.
NT has a far better VMM than macOS does and handles OOM significantly better than macOS (and Linux, for that matter).
Look no further than the various Mac subreddits for applications such as TextEdit, Calculator, Safari, and other first and third party applications leaking like a sieve to the point of OOM for multiple versions of macOS at this point.
Not to mention, Macs are sharing that precious memory with the CPU; on those 8GiB machines, leaving 7.5GiB or less (depending on what you're doing) for the kernel to use for non-graphics services.
That's one of my great frustrations with Windows. NT is a fine kernel. The userspace on top of that is fucking terrible though.
When people compare "operating systems" they're not comparing the kernel. They're at the most technical comparing the userspace tools shipped with that kernel, and at their most general the "ethos" of the developers that build the ecosystem. The terrible experience on windows of every programing having an installer that pokes around god knows where in the registry is just as much an experience of the Windows operating system as piping curl into bash is on Linux.
All of them handle OOM the same way: paging to disk with subsequent thrashing. How can any OS be better than any other in that respect?
If your computing experience leaves much to be desired it’s more-often-than-not the fault of the fact more and more applications are eschewing (admittedly neglected) efficient native platforms and using Electron/WebViews.
…looking at you, Balena Etcher. No-one needs a 200MB front-end for `dd`.
Completely agree. In my current role, I work with a lot more "normal" computer users, and it's helped me have a better understanding of many consumer technologies from different perspectives
I have seen the survey results and work studies for our large enterprise of Mac users, most (not all, but most) have zero change in satisfaction or perceived or objective work performance with 8GB vs 16GB MacBooks. Most users are swapping between outlook, teams and chrome, anything more than an M2 8GB MacBook Pro would be a waste for these users. Disk performance is similar, anything in the M line is more than good enough for 75%+ of our users. Mac screens and keyboards have very high customer satisfaction in our org. Just like 16 GB of RAM, it does not translate to a measurable increase in work performance, but subjectively people report higher satisfaction.
As for cost, the MacBook has a lower total cost of ownership in our organization than a Windows PC at a similar purchase price because: 1) longer OS support timeline from apple means they can be used longer and 2) at the end of their lifespan with us, they have much higher resale value than comparable windows hardware.
Just a different perspective as to why 8GB MacBooks make sense for some users.
Same thing with the USB A ports. Not really selling point imo.
And yeah, USB A? I got a cheapo C-to-A hub for my dwindling number of legacy devices. There’s no remaining upside to A.
It's a weird choice to pair with a budget laptop since monitors that support that are usually several dollars extra...
Hubs are mostly only relevant for docking or increasing the number of ports, given that USB-A to -C adapters are so cheap (assuming they're not bundled with the peripheral in the first place) you can reasonably leave them permanently attached to larger form factor USB-A peripherals.
As for full-sized HDMI, assuming you're not talking about the hellish mini or micro HDMI as alternatives, I'll take USB-C, or even mini DisplayPort, over full HDMI, as both have decent connectors and provide more and better inexpensive options for display connectivity (though admittedly finding good active DisplayPort-to-HDMI dongles can be harder than it should be because chroma subsampling is a thing that's not frequently touched upon in product descriptions).