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Comment by headcanon | Hacker News Reader

My wife bought a Neo and has been very happy with it. I was wary of the 8gb memory limit but she is running claude code doing web development with a reasonable number of tabs open and no noticeable lag, so I'd say its definitely getting a lot of mileage out of it.

It honestly seems good enough that it might cannibalize Macbook Air sales.

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It might be more likely that it cannibalizes used Macbook Air sales.

which seem to be out of stock in any case, so probably not a loss for apple.

https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/mac

After years of incremental upgrades to the Airs, a new entry level M5 Air gives you double the RAM, double the storage, and double the CPU and GPU performance of an M1 Air.

Hopefully used Airs will come up for sale more frequently, as they remain a step up from the Neo.

At double the price.

Sure.

Used M1 Airs are selling for roughly half the price of a new Neo.

I'm in no way Apple fan, but M5 air with 512GB SSD and 32GB RAM costs $1500. Compared to M1 and 256GB and 16GB at $1200.

Adjusted for inflation it pretty much the same.

A refurbished M1 16GB RAM 256GB storage MacBook Air sells for $400 right now.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/356717541241

What's your point?

My M1 Air display just failed on me after 5 and half years of daily 10-16 hours of use. Considered how non repairable some parts in MacBooks are I'd rather recommend people buy more expensive new one. E.g you can find very good offers on new M2 M3 etc.

I wouldn't recommend any hardware, let alone a more expensive version of something, if my experience with it was a catastrophic failure like that in early age.

I am running Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex and Docker Desktop on a last generation Intel Air, that admittedly has 12 GB RAM. One has to be a bit careful with more apps. But I look forward to an upgrade. Maybe a Neo, but more likely a second hand M.

Whatever you do, do not try one out before you’re ready to buy.

How on Earth did you find a wife who codes? Asking for a friend.

I can top that (he said bitterly). My wife is still gorgeous after 30+ years of marriage and is a 10x programmer. But she was happy when given the choice not to work when we married, and hasn’t touched a compiler in decades.

I did well in business, but the family joke is that I’d be a billionaire if I could have monetized her.

GP expressly said the wife does not code: she uses claude.

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