6 ms·
That's the magic threshold. Can't complain about the non-upgradable 8GB RAM at that price.
by pcurve 7mo ago
That's the magic threshold. Can't complain about the non-upgradable 8GB RAM at that price.
- amelius 7mo agoThe 8GB RAM makes this barely usable, but it is understandable since Apple doesn't want to cannibalize their own Pro line.
- stevenhubertron 7mo agoMy M2 8gb ram is plenty for the use case the Neo fills. This is such a bad take.
- DaSHacka 7mo agoThe majority of people have a use case more demanding than having one open Hacker News tab and doing everything in the terminal with vi and minimal shell scripts. I'm definitely pretty squarely on the other end of the spectrum, but even the 32GB of RAM in my ThinkPad feels insufficient when I properly multitask with modern, bloated electron applications that eat multiple gigabytes each.
- qn9n 7mo agoI use an M2 Air with 8GB of RAM. I code in Swift, SwiftUI and Rust regularly with Xcode and Zed editor. I play games with Crossover and Native ones such as Control at over 30 fps. The M2 Air is an absolute powerhouse with tremendous battery life. The Neo won't be able to do these things and that's okay, it's not what it's for.
- turtlebits 7mo agoI used a base M1 air for my primary personal laptop for 5 years. It was fine with VS code and any development work sans running containers.
- NetMageSCW 7mo agoMaybe you should try a MacOS device.
- DaSHacka 6mo agoI already have, that's why I don't use them lol
- ezfe 7mo agoBruh if 32GB of RAM feels insufficient your computer is broken.
- DaSHacka 6mo agoLol it is a T480, so maybe there's some truth to that ;)
- akmarinov 7mo agoNo Apple Intelligence, but my Macbook Air M1 with 8 GB of RAM is plenty usable still
- jasongill 7mo agoIt supports Apple Intelligence, all 8gb iPhones and iPads support Apple Intelligence and the promo materials for this Macbook Neo say it supports Apple Intelligence as well.
- nateb2022 7mo agoThey were referring to their M1 not being able to support Apple Intelligence.
- dchest 7mo ago8 GB M1 MacBook Air does support Apple Intelligence.
- nateb2022 7mo agoYes it does. I was clarifying what the commenter was saying; not making his statement myself. akmarinov said their M1 doesn't support apple intelligence but they still think it's plenty usable; jasongill thought akmarinov was referring to the Neo and responded that the Macbook Neo does in fact support Apple intelligence; and I clarified what I think akmarinov intended to say.
- baal80spam 7mo ago> The 8GB RAM makes this barely usable C'mon, man.
- fartfeatures 7mo agoI've seen the stocks app take up 2GB of RAM before. Even Control Centre can be a RAM hog. If Apple were still slinging efficient software 8GB is one thing but their catalyst based crapware is far from efficient.
- tw04 7mo agoFortunately the stocks app won't be running on a kid's school laptop. Control Center is currently using a whopping 128MB of memory on my system that's been online for 60 days.
- qn9n 7mo agoHonestly 128MB might be too much...
- fartfeatures 7mo agoIt was just an example of a simple app built by Apple themselves being a RAM hog. 375MB just for control centre on fresh open (15.7) but like I said I have seen it higher recently on multiple occasions. That's before we talk about a lot of their seemingly endless and inefficient background tasks. mds_stores anyone? Hopefully the presence of a laptop like this will be beneficial to software quality. They should make their developers use it one day a week.
- nateb2022 7mo ago> I've seen the stocks app take up 2GB of RAM before. Even Control Centre can be a RAM hog. If Apple were still slinging efficient software 8GB is one thing but their catalyst based crapware is far from efficient. Guessing based on your comments about 8GB of RAM that you have a lot more RAM than that. You should be aware that when you have a lot of unused RAM, many programs will cache data in RAM, and the OS won't really "clean up" paged memory, since there's very little memory pressure. In modern OS architecture, "free RAM is wasted RAM." If you have 32GB of RAM for example, macOS will allow processes to keep decorative assets, pre-fetched data, and UI buffers in memory indefinitely because there’s no reason to flush them. This makes the system feel snappier. The metric that actually matters isn't "Used RAM," but Memory Pressure. A system can have 0GB of "Free" memory but still be performing perfectly because the OS is ready to reallocate that cached data the millisecond another app needs it. Judging efficiency based on usage in a low-pressure environment is like complaining that a gas tank is "inefficient" just because it’s full.
- r0fl 7mo agoI'll get one for my mom who uses facebook and pinterest and the occasional recipe website. I'm sure it'll be enough power for the average user.
- qn9n 7mo agoThis! It's enough power for the average user and comes with less headaches than Windows and Linux, plus most users are familiar with iPhone and it's basically the same, easy choice for most people.
- no_op 7mo agoIt's got a phone SoC. The use case for this thing is stuff you could do on a phone, but for which you want a larger screen and/or a keyboard. Web browsing, writing a paper for school, household budget spreadsheets. 8 GB is still basically fine for this.
- jsheard 7mo ago> It's got a phone SoC. The use case for this thing is stuff you could do on a phone I think the key difference is that phone operating systems are designed around extremely aggressive memory management where any background process can be killed at any time. AFAIK macOS just isn't set up for that.
- dagmx 7mo agoWhy not? They’re the same core OS.
- jsheard 7mo agoBecause software needs to be aware of the memory lifecycle to avoid losing data when its process gets culled. iOS apps are explicitly built for that, but to my knowledge macOS apps aren't, they are allowed to assume they will run forever until the user closes them.
- qn9n 7mo agoThey are both built upon Darwin, Apple's BSD-based kernel, they are essentially the same OS underneath with different top level API's and even those are getting more uniform with Swift and SwiftUI.
- dagmx 7mo agoIsn’t this ignoring that inactive apps essentially get paged out of memory anyway? Also conversely what about iPadOS where you can multi task on just 8GB too. People have survived on 8GB Mac’s for a long time. I’m not sure things are as dire as you make them out to be.
- drnick1 7mo agoMaybe not "barely usable," but it certainly makes it more like a "terminal" of the old days or a "thin client" than anything, especially considering how bloated macOS is. This machine would fly however with Linux and a lightweight DE.
- qn9n 7mo agoFor the average user (office and student) this is all they need, access to office apps, ChatGPT and their google cloud and that's enough. They don't need it to "fly" through coding tasks and games that's not what it's for.
- tw04 7mo agoHuh? That's double what most chromebooks have in the education space. A fast SSD is far, far more important than the memory in this space. In elementary/middle school kids typically operate almost exclusively in the browser.
- browningstreet 7mo agoChromeOS and macos aren't close to the same.
- unethical_ban 7mo ago8GB will run chat, web browsing and word processors just fine. Not every person is running 500 browser tabs and docker swarm.
- uni_baconcat 7mo agoFor people browsing HN or following any tech YouTube channel, 8GB is barely usable. But for anyone else, 8GB is still ‘okay’.