The Apple MacBook Neo’s $599 starting price is a “shock” to the Windows PC industry, according to an Asus executive.
Hsu said he believes all the PC players—including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD—take the MacBook Neo threat seriously. “In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product,” he added, given that rumors about the MacBook Neo have been making the rounds for at least a year.
Despite the competitive threat, Hsu argued that the MacBook Neo could have limited appeal. He pointed to the laptop’s 8GB of “unified memory,” or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can’t upgrade it.
I can’t speak for Macs. But in the Linux world, 8GB is fine. In Windows it’s awful because of all that bloat. I’m guessing Macs fair better for OS efficiency.
Macs don’t have copilot so that’s like 4GB saved right there
Ha ha ha. True!
8GB of ram on Macs is fine for work and medium photo/video editing, as long as you have plenty of SSD space and don’t use Apple Intelligence.
People forget that MacOS is UNIX at its core.
I’m running Mint on an 8GB laptop and I’m surprised by just how much can be running at one time. Right now I’m running Firefox with 10 open tabs, Waterfox with 8 tabs, Thunderbird, Keepass, Calibre, Signal, a Whatsapp client, Syncthing, Libreoffice Writer with 2 open docs & Calc with 2 open small spreadsheets, a couple of terminals and Gedit, and didn’t even notice it until came across these comments. A friend who uses Windows 11 says 32GB is recommended now.
Microsoft must be thrilled with age verification being required at the OS level. What a great way to lock people into their Microslop garbage.
Right now I’m running Firefox with 10 open tabs,
Oh…I guess I’m the only one who opens firefox, and literally thousands of tabs.
One day I closed one window and it said “Are you sure you want to close 158 tabs?”
I said yes. It was one window. I had 23 more windows.
When I get to 20 or so I have to start closing some tabs to keep track of things. How do you find the tab you’re looking for when you have that many open?
Tab search.
Tab groups.
Color coding.
I use sideberry addon on Firefox and workspaces in Vivaldi.
Zen (firefox (gecko) derivative, No AI, focus on decluttered interface) has bloody excellent tab management these days, workspaces, folders, horizontal tab lists (like sideberry), essentials (tab icons pinned to the top), auto unload, all built in, and everything disappears when reading a page.
Literally thousands? Have you tried bookmarking things after they’ve sat unused for awhile?
I typically just periodically save my browser windows with a tab manager extension. I just say because thousands sounds like way too much to keep track of…
I rarely have more than 10 tabs open on my phone, and rarely more than 5 in my PC. How do people have so many tabs?
Get Sideberry for your sanity.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/
https://github.com/mbnuqw/sidebery
I literally have over a thousand tabs open in one window.
8Gb ram. Mint. 10+ year old pc.
on my work PC at the moment (lovely little AMD 5700u mini-pc with 16Gb ram) I have a debloated LTSC build on W11 and two profiles of firefox running with a total of 25 tabs, a couple of them are more complex web apps but most are static pages, plus a couple of file browser, an old dumb custom invoicing app we use (~2003 application so its very light) and a VNC viewer with another machine running.
7.9gb of ram use.
it’s not that bad really, I mean it’s a lot for just mostly websites but we know they arent as light as they used to be, 8gb would be too little since I need some dedicated for Vram as I run 3 displays but I certainly dont need much more than 16.
I did have 32gb in this machine at first since I was doing some light photoshop and basic CAD/CAM, but it very rarely exceeded 16gb, so I cut it back and it’s been absolutely fine.
If you give windows more ram, it will use more ram as a baseline of course, unused ram is wasted ram.
I’m running Arch on a Macbook Air with 2GB of RAM. Its limited, but it does what I want it to.
in the Linux world, 8GB is fine
So I presume you’re saying that the entire system shouldn’t slow down when Firefox starts swapping?
Sure, but that’s a bad excuse. 16 GB is a standard even in low end nowadays.
I do agree that 8GB is low. But it does fair better on Macs than Windows. This reviewer is editing his 4k videos on one. https://youtu.be/pCRtNeAP1dQ
It’s basically iOS at that point.
Dude, the difference between you and Apple is Windows 11. They don’t have a crappy copilot or Edge hoarding 4GB in the background just to show the weather.
Exactly. They should start installing Linux Mint and call it a day.
Fuck Microsoft.
yet
As I always say:
…Most people need an iPad with a better keyboard, and a touchpad.
That’s all they use their computers for. They don’t want to mess with filesystems or specs or any concepts like that, they just want to add text to their kid’s picture or send an email or read a PDF or scroll YouTube, or do things like banking or streaming that are honestly better supported as iOS apps anyway.
And that’s basically what the Neo is.
Laptop makers are up shit creek if they insist on staying with Windows, as Microsoft stupendously bungled that experience.
To be quite honest if IPads could just run Mac OS apps on it, it would be a dynamite device and I wouldn’t have even bought my MacBook. I bought an IPad for note taking, and basic work tasks I can do via SSH. The lack of desktop app support was the only thing that thing couldn’t do handily.
Iirc the general assumption in tech spaces was that ios and macos are going to merge in two or three major versions, so I would imagine that apple is aware of this want in their consumer base as well.
Eh, but will they? There’s a whole lot of OSX legacy Apple would have to throw away.
I mean, I guess they could; they’ve done it before with architecture transitions. But this is different in that stuff on existing devices would stop working, whereas Intel or PPC Macs keep chugging along as-is.
I always thought of it going the other way, leave osx relatively untouched and make phones run on it, rather than taking ios as the standard.
I don’t buy that. No way they “open up” iOS to be more OSX-like, as that would spoil their cash cow (the App Store).
I hate to sound so cynical, but I just don’t see any incentive for Apple to do that.
The tech spaces have been saying that since 10.7 was released in 2011.
In Europe the price it’s not that appealing, it’s €699 and because they “care about environment 😉” the €99 charger (which is almost mandatory for a new user) is sold separately.
At €798 for 256g/8g it’s not as good as the $599 they’re selling in the US.
If someone is price sensitive, can get 3-4 refurbished ThinkPads with better specs for that price and run Linux much easier without hoping on some volunteer wizard to reverse engineer the proprietary components
because they “care about environment 😉” the €99 charger (which is almost mandatory for a new user) is sold separately.
It’s because they’re required by law to offer it without a power supply. See Article 3a, section 10.
Apple’s first-party power supply isn’t “almost mandatory”, and doesn’t cost 99€. The 20W model shipped with the Macbook Neo in other markets costs 25€ on Apple’s German store, and a generic 8€ power supply from Amazon will work. The power supply most people already have for their phone will usually also work.
It’s because they’re required by law to offer it without a power supply. See Article 3a, section 10.
the problem is not that, but that they are still including the price of the charger in the deal
How much cheaper do you think it should be for not including a 20W power supply? I’d be surprised if Apple’s cost for that part is more than 5€.
it should be cheaper with the full price of the charger
in my european country, apple’s website says the 1 meter 60 watt usb-c charger cable costs 25 EUR, and the 30 watt usb c charger adapter costs 45 EUR. these are the most budget options I could find on apple’s site
so, the devife should be 70 EUR cheaper, to be exact
Like any other manufacturer, Apple marks up the devices in their store. Don’t believe me? Go price out chargers on Dell or HP’s website and see how overpriced those are.
When’s the last time you bought a laptop from any other manufacturer and had to specifically opt in to buying the charger
A year from now when Dell starts doing it on their home line of laptops.
one caveat: the us price is without vat
I also hate that they no longer ship chargers, but it’s a USB-C charger. Don’t most people have at least one by now? The Neo in particular doesn’t require a very powerful one.
Now the fact that if you get an M5 Max 16" MBP which takes like a 100ish watt charger (can charge with slightly less, but with 20-30 it’ll be hopeless), you still get no charger, is utter bullshit because most people don’t have such a powerful USB-C charger around unless they’ve had a Macbook Pro made in the last decade already.
“care about environment 😉”
Most definitely something they’re doing for improved profit margins, but at the same time, slightly smaller boxes = more boxes per load of cargo = a bunch of CO2 saved on transport. Also they get to manufacture fewer chargers, as repeat customers won’t buy multiple chargers anymore. I do think the impact is significantly more pronounced with phones which get replaced more often and where the charger would take up a bigger percentage of the total box size.
Got an L440, upgraded it to 16 GB and to i7, now it’s a beast. Had to “reset” its battery, otherwise it didn’t last for more than 20-30 minutes. Maybe will swap the screen to a 1080p IPS one and upgrade the WiFi/Bluetooth to modern standards.
The perfect time for a relatively cheap Apple laptop when Microsoft is forcing people to buy new hardware just to use their latest version of their operating system. I wonder what the percentage of Microsoft folks who go to the MacBook will be. I wonder what the percentage of users who go the UNIX/Linux route would be. I’m not an apple fan myself so would go linux, but a good business move from Apple though.
That would be interesting to watch.
If I ever had to buy a personal laptop again, it’d definitely make the list.
Obnoxious hardware prices are what kept me off mac for so long. Now all prices are obnoxious maybe it would even out.
Great move if they can capitalize on it
He pointed to the laptop’s 8GB of “unified memory,” or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can’t upgrade it.
Given the price of RAM, you’d need to sell a kidney to upgrade it in a Windows laptop these days, so that’s not much of a difference, although 8MB is a little skimpy, I’ll give him that one.
[…] although 8MB is a little skimpy
Have we already downgraded to this???
/s, and sorry for being pedantic
No one needs more than 640k
or what amounts to its RAM
You can criticize the amount of RAM, but it’s still RAM. Clown.
They’re hinting at the fact that those 8GB are shared between the CPU and GPU. So it’s not dedicated, which you’d expect if someone said “RAM.”
Don’t most integrated graphics setups use system RAM for graphics?
RAM is RAM. If you take issue with it being unified say so, but it’s still RAM.
He sounds like he’s grasping.
The neo is going to eat his lunch, and he knows it.
If you take issue with it being unified say so, but it’s still RAM.
He did say so. 8GB unified when a Linux laptop has 8GB of ram and an Nvidia 5050 with 8 GB of VRAM is 16GB of Ram despite not being marketed as a 16 GB laptop.
Sounds more like you’re looking for reasons to hate on the article.
I take issue Hsus statement, but not the article.
This model has absolutely short-circuited the brains of the ardent Apple haters, perhaps including yourself, and I’m here for it.
Lemmings that focus on the RAM spec are telling on themselves. 256gb storage is the real travesty here.
Is it, though?
It is not a lot, but it is not that hard to extend storage. For example with an external SSD/HDD or a NAS.
Even if tethering any portable device to an external drive wasn’t wildly inconvenient, you would be giving up your only usb port on this thing
Still doable, but you can’t have external RAM. Hence, lack of RAM is a bigger issue.
More than 8GB of RAM is unnecessary, and getting around that limitation does not require any action by the user.
Setting up a NAS + tailscale solution is doable but not worth the hassle for whatever niche use-case that would resolve.
I honestly dont care about the 8gb of ram, that is plenty for the target audience given MacOS’s pretty good memory management, and optimisation of the first party apps the majority of users will use. I would have liked to see the base price be $499, but that would probably have needed something to be cut down to outside of apples standards, like the display or chassis quality.
I’m a little disappointed by the limited USB, its just one usb 3.0 (not 3.1 as far as I know) and one 2.0, I know that’s a limitation of the platform, there arent really any spare PCIE lanes on a phone SOC. They could have put in a USB Hub chip to get two USB 3.0 ports with shared bandwidth, but I suspect that was difficult to do with reliable video and power throughput and someone decided saving a dollar was more important. That’s plenty for your average user, but a pair of usb 3.1 would have been preferred of course.
However… how many average PC users even use USB now? maybe just a thumb drive very rarely or to use an external display. I’m surprised it even has a headphone jack and an SD reader honestly.
I’d suspect the next gen model to use the newer iPhone chip that should bump the memory up to 12gb and I think has a usb 3.1 controller, so they could break that out better.
I dont hate it. it’s filling in what used to be the mid range of laptops that has kinda died in the last 10 years and is full of spec bumped versions of bottom tier plastic garbage with awful screens and short battery life, and a couple of underspecced cut down versions of nicer metal case laptops that are just not very good either.
Yeah, I think the RAM argument is besides the point. Apps can be optimised for macs in a way that they can’t for PC, and the target audience for this is people at school/college who need to do their homework, and people sitting in offices
Is it going to run super-powerful software? No. Is it going to replace a leet coder’s desktop PC? No
But it’s not supposed to
And if you’ve got the CEO of one of the largest computer firms on the planet saying “this is a serious threat to our business” then that’s worth taking seriously
Especially if you look beyond this. Apple won’t be looking at this in isolation. They’ll be looking at getting in to schools. Chances are that the OS you use in school will be the one you’ll stick with as you get older - especially if it’s also the one that workplaces are starting to use. And if you’re using Apple computers, well, then it makes more sense to have an iPhone than an Android, doesn’t it? Fitness tracker? Well, the Apple Watch is right there
And so on
This is a smart move by Apple. Probably the smartest they’ve made in years
the recent gen mac mini and the iphone “e” range was probably a bit of a warning that they were going to push their entry level equipment a bit harder… I think it’s good for the industry to have some actual competition and disruption in what used to be the mid-range price brackets.
bring back the decently made, adequately specced mid range, we’ve lost it somewhere along the line.
I know their plan is just to get more people into their ecosystem, people will buy this laptop, or have it given to them buy a school or even a business, then they’re stuck in the apple ecosystem and will be more likely to upgrade to their higher end models, buy their phones, cloud services etc.
wicked smart.
I have to use MacBook for work, I guess it depends on the load but I doubt 8GB is enough unless you are just browsing, in which case far cheaper devices can fill that nieche.
On my desktop I have more USB shit plugged into my system than I can count. Literally. Like if I were to guess, maybe 20 different things, roughly?
But yeah, maybe I’m not really an “average” PC user lol
The person this is targeted at is my 18 year old niece who just left for college. 2 USB ports is PLENTY for her.
My sister got her an iPad when she left but had this been out I guarantee she’d have gotten her this instead.
Its still a Mac
Exactly which means superior build quality and a great experience. Parents will be snapping these up in the fall for back to school.
Lol
I hope the kool aid tastes good at least
Foxconn has never been known for quality.
Exploiting child labor? Sure.
Inhumane long hours? Absolutely!
Build quality? Hahahaha. Hahaha. What a tool you are.
Knowing apple, at that price point, performance is going to suuuuuck.
See for yourself:
Lawl you don’t know anything about Apple and the performance kicks the ass of similarly priced Windows machines. Keep spreading BS tho, I’m sure it makes you feel smug
I’m suspicious.
I’m seeing social media FLOODED with Neo content. Definitely not organic.
Tinfoil hat aside, that could also be due to how disruptive it is in the tech world.
Maybe it’s just a literal bomb to everyone involved in decision making and now making the waves in the news.It could be.
But I don’t see any other PC/laptop reviews by this author. He writes mostly about cybersecurity. And his Neo articles seem a bit…biased. Compare to his other articles, which are well-researched. Example:
https://www.csoonline.com/article/563017/wannacry-explained-a-perfect-ransomware-storm.html
My guess is either someone is posting articles in his name, or he’s taking a free Neo in return for a positive review.
Maybe just a bit of both.
My guess is either someone is posting articles in his name, or he’s taking a free Neo in return for a positive review.
And a bit of both for that as well.
It’s also quite unexpected, given that it’s Apple, and they’ve traditionally made more expensive machines, with worse hardware. In my country, for example, it is nearly unheard of for a new Apple computer to cost less than four digits/US$800+.
Particularly at a time when it’s more typical to hear of new computer prices going up instead, due to shortages.
I was very surprised to hear how reasonable (to some degree lol) the iPhone and macbook was priced.
Very hard to deny that they are very interestingly priced.
Maybe Asus should invest more into linux and start shipping it on their laptops by default? Maybe add an improved software compatibility layer for windows apps to get more people in?
They’ve had Mac minis for over a decade.
I find this hard to believe.
He pointed to the laptop’s 8GB of “unified memory,” or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can’t upgrade it.
Yes, because Asus laptops all have non-soldered RAM…
A few do have non-soldered RAM, the most expensive workstation laptop and a couple of gaming laptops; all of which are >$2000.
Yes, because Asus laptops all have non-soldered RAM…
I think what that poster was communicating is that shipping a laptop with 8GB of RAM would be okay if it was socketed (allowing for an upgrade by the user) or if the shipped unit with soldered RAM was greater than 8GB (16GB?, 32GB?,64GB? soldered).
Fair enough. Although Asus sells at least one laptop with 8 GB of soldered RAM, too.
Granted, it’s “only” a Chromebook, but still.
Soldered RAM is almost always a bad thing, no matter the size. Maybe when it’s the most the mainboard can support it’s not too bad but even then you’re out of luck if it ends up dying.
As far as I understand Apple is partly doing it because of the higher memory bandwidth, which is necessary for the way macOS manages memory. I still don’t like it but at least they’re doing it for a reason.
Fair enough. Although Asus sells at least one laptop with 8 GB of soldered RAM, too.
Granted, it’s “only” a Chromebook, but still.
Chromebooks with low RAM are fine for many use cases. I’ve got a chromebook with only 4GB of RAM and its perfectly fine for web browsing or watching streaming which is the only things I use it for.
Soldered RAM is almost always a bad thing, no matter the size. Maybe when it’s the most the mainboard can support it’s not too bad but even then you’re out of luck if it ends up dying.
I used to think that too, but then I realized that the way I use computers (and it sounds like you do too) is to keep a unit a long time, take care of it, and use it to its limits (and perhaps beyond). There are millions of users that don’t do what we do. They may be young kids that end up breaking the unit before 2 years pass. They may be a fashionista that has to change out their unit when the new fall color comes out (so they may not even own it a year). They may be an older person that only uses it to check facebook to keep up with their kids.
In all of these cases soldered RAM is just fine because the user will never reach the point they need to upgrade it. What they get in return for this is cost savings and likely a smaller (thinner?) unit, that is probably a bit more structurally sound (because it doesn’t have to have a door or clips to have the RAM sockets accessible.
For users like you and me, soldered RAM is a bad thing. For most common users they don’t care. They don’t even know what soldered RAM is.
For most common users they don’t care. They don’t even know what soldered RAM is.
They should, because when it’s time to sell the laptop one with soldered RAM is gonna be worth a lot less (at least to me).
Chromebooks with low RAM are fine for many use cases. I’ve got a chromebook with only 4GB of RAM and its perfectly fine for web browsing or watching streaming which is the only things I use it for.
Fair, but there’s still the potential of it becoming a paperweight if the RAM chips give out or Google forces AI shit into ChromeOS.
For most common users they don’t care. They don’t even know what soldered RAM is.
They should, because when it’s time to sell the laptop one with soldered RAM is gonna be worth a lot less (at least to me).
There’s an irony that the most valuable laptops for resale right now are the ones with soldered RAM. Why? Because the socketed units have their RAM stripped for resale separately from the unit. Even corporate fleets are doing this now and the bulk resale laptops are arriving without SSDs and RAM. Which units still have both? Units where both are soldered and not removable.
Chromebooks with low RAM are fine for many use cases. I’ve got a chromebook with only 4GB of RAM and its perfectly fine for web browsing or watching streaming which is the only things I use it for.
Fair, but there’s still the potential of it becoming a paperweight if the RAM chips give out or Google forces AI shit into ChromeOS.
These sell for $149 USD brand new. A general user would not spend a second of time troubleshooting a failed one. They’d just buy whatever the current model is for $149 which would probably be 4x as fast and with more storage anyway, then pitch the old one in ewaste.
For Windows if 8 gb of RAM is not enough that’s an own-goal. Because it is. Or it should be. Windows 11 is not so dramatically better than Windows Vista SP3 to require a 10x better computer to use comfortably. Actually, in many ways Windows 11 is a massive downgrade from what came before it.
I’m glad the MacBook neo is only 8gb. That means they have to support it as a usable low-end target. That means we aren’t jumping the gun on saying “actually you need 12 gigs of RAM” as if that should be normal for a usable computer.
XP used to just have ram sitting there empty waiting for something. Then over vista and 8 and 10 they started more and more preloading because hey if the ram is empty it’s wasted. Like database servers, they always suck down all the RAM possible. Problem is windows doesn’t release it when the cache or whatever isn’t useful and something else wants it.
It’s been a while but I think macOS is considerably better at both parts of that equation.
There’s no reason that computers need to be so powerful other than MBAs saying “optimization is too expensive, just push the feature.”
MacOS is significantly better than windows when using their first party apps, but many third party apps are ram hogs and things get forced to swap more often.
Swap isn’t terrible though, a lot of current gen mac hardware has very fast SSDs and very low latency controllers so it’s pretty transparent in normal use.
I think if you are on a website like this, this computer isn’t for you, but it is for a lot of people who use nothing but a web browser with one tab open 90% of the time.
Swap isn’t terrible though, a lot of current gen mac hardware has very fast SSDs and very low latency controllers so it’s pretty transparent in normal use.
They do typically have good hardware that works well together. It’s a ton of work replicating that level of hardware compatibility. Apple catches a lot of negative feedback and some of it deserved but they won’t be caught dead shipping a wifi chip as shitty as the one in my Surface.
I think if you are on a website like this, this computer isn’t for you
Probably. I’m in the minority on an iPhone.
I’m a die hard Apple apologist in anti-Apple tech spaces because I love playing devil’s advocate.
I’ve more or less never had WiFi issues on Macs. Bluetooth range was a bit shit on a 2011 Air I once had though. In an environment with dozens of other bluetooth devices in the same room. WiFi still worked fine, despite having probably 50-60 laptops using WiFi in the same room at any given time.
I’ve also had one of these famous 8 gig M1 Airs. I managed to hit 20 gigs of swap usage at some point when running several different applications and a lot of docker containers and it still ran just fine.
People often say their devices are shitty, but they’re actually excellent. Their business practices are shitty, but when the M1 came out, it performed better with 8 gigs than any equivalently priced PC laptop with 16, even if it had to swap more often.
Vista called it SuperFetch, and preloading pages into memory is not a bad technique. macOS and Linux do it, too, because it’s a simple technique for speeding up access to data that would otherwise have to be fetched from disk. You can see that Linux does it as you check the output of
freeand read out the buff/cache column. Freeing unused pages from memory is very fast, because you can just overwrite dirty pages.Yeah, conceptually it’s good, but the free up is important and seems to be a secondary concern. Perhaps it’s the third party devs.
Wasn’t super fetch what they called the high speed usb flash drives you could use as swap? That reminds me of a time I was optimistic about technology. Vista RC and Office 2007 on my MacBook Pro.
I’m glad the MacBook neo is only 8gb. That means they have to support it as a usable low-end target.
This is huge. Apple has traditionally supported its laptops for at least 5 major OS versions and 2 more years of security updates, so they’re essentially telling us that the MacOS version they release in 2034 will not require more than 8GB of RAM to function is gonna be a good thing for all users, who will mostly presumably have much more memory available.
It really is not appealing a mac air with 16gb RAM was $999 AUD and the NEO is $899 AUD. It’s a step backwards…
If you know what RAM is, this product isn’t for you. It’s for your kid or grandma
Which Air is that? I just looked at the current m5 Air, entry level everything is $1099 USD, i am guessing the one you saw was an older model.
I said was.
