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MacBook Neo is going to sell like crazy. In the education market, educators, students, aides... nothing close at this price point. With memory and SSD prices
by roody15 6mo ago
MacBook Neo is going to sell like crazy. In the education market, educators, students, aides... nothing close at this price point. With memory and SSD prices so high I don't see how Dell, Asus and others are going to be able to compete. Unless the build quality is significantly worse than a M1 macbook air not sure budget PC makers will be able to compete.
- ActorNightly 6mo agoITs going to sell like crazy not because of specs, but because its apple, and its a cheap. Cause god forbid you pull out a chromebook in a starbucks and be seen as a peasant. If you know what you are doing and don't want to spend a lot of money, its really not that hard to buy a refurbished thinkpad, swap in more ram, and install your linux disro of choice, for a lower price and get very similar usable performance.
- raw_anon_1111 6mo agoAnd run what on the Chromebook exactly?
- ActorNightly 6mo agoWeb browser and youtube. You know, what people mostly do on macbooks.
- raw_anon_1111 6mo agoBut that’s all you can do on Chromebooks.
- ActorNightly 6mo agoAre you sure about that?
- hodgehog11 6mo agoYou can do more if you have a lot more RAM. Otherwise you really are that restricted. In the country I live in, there is no comparable Chromebook spec-wise on par with the Neo at a similar price point. You're basically stuck with 4GB RAM.
- ActorNightly 6mo agoJustifying having 8gb as a good amount, while downplaying 4gb as not enough is pretty hilarious. Chromebooks run fine with 4gb of ram, especially if you install linux and use zram+swap. You can get a regular laptop and have even more ram with Linux. Not sure why you are stuck on the Chromebook.
- emilbratt 6mo agoIn 2012, that would be true! :)
- hodgehog11 6mo agoAside from gaming, I can do basically everything on Mac that I can on Linux or Windows. That's a hell of a lot more than a Chromebook. Take it from someone who has owned both a Chromebook and a Macbook; suggesting that they are in the same league is silly. Also, used != new. I'm surprised people need to be reminded of this.
- overfeed 6mo ago> That's a hell of a lot more than a Chromebook. It appears most people - even on Hacker News(!) - are unaware that Chromebooks have a one-click Linux VM (currently Debian Trixie is the default). It is well-integrated into the Chrome desktop/launcher, and any Linux app can even be pinned onto the taskbar, next to your browser. Any Linux package you can `apt get` or `curl | sh` can run on Chromebooks made in the last 5ish years.
- ewoodrich 6mo agoYep, I've been using ChromeOS/ built-in Debian VM for light VS Code, web dev and terminal stuff on a 150 dollar Lenovo ARM Chromebook with 4GB RAM for the last 2 years as my couch PC. I just disabled Android apps because that pushed it over the line. Gets about 10 hours battery life, touchpad is way better than my $799 Lenovo Ideapad (ChromeOS is weirdly good with even cheap touchpad hardware) and does an incredible job of suspending idle tabs without being noticeable. No rooting, jailbreaking, etc required and unlike my M1 Macbook I can actually install apps without the ridiculous click app->can't open unverified app->settings->security->open anyway->click app second time-> open anyway song and dance. Would I recommend it as your primary development device? Certainly not, and Neo would be a much better experience for sure but it also costs 4x as much so shrug. I bought it entirely because I wanted the cheapest modern ARM Chromebook I could find with good battery life since my m1 Macbook is pretty much always tied to a dock and but pleasantly surprised by how much it could actually do beyond just web browsing.
- raw_anon_1111 6mo agoYes because normal people want to run Linux just like normal people would rather “build such a system quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.” Instead of using iCloud
- gigatexal 6mo agoThe Chromebook would be slow and run worse software. So… but also yeah nobody wants to look like a peasant.
- assaddayinh 6mo ago[dead]
- mountainriver 6mo agoMacBooks are a far superior product, not just a status symbol
- ActorNightly 6mo ago[flagged]
- MrDrMcCoy 6mo agoOnly if what you want to do fits neatly within the walled garden. I personally like my freedom to tinker, and get great performance, functionality, and stability with Linux.
- mountainriver 6mo agoI love linux, but I really love the feel and build of Macbooks, I haven't found any alternative that feels the same. Really wish there was!
- incanus77 6mo agoWhat school IT director does this?
- nextos 6mo agoIn the US, cheap ThinkPads like E14 sometimes sell for a bit less when you factor in all typical discounts. They are good machines that run Linux well and can be repaired. In EU, and I imagine other markets, there's nothing remotely close. I hope this puts some pressure on Lenovo and the rest of manufacturers to be more competitive.
- porphyra 6mo ago> and can be repaired The Macbook Neo is highly repairable too [1]. Not _quite_ as repairable as some Thinkpads with a 10/10 score, but still pretty respectable at a 6/10 with easily replaceable batteries and stuff. [1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-repairable-macbook-in-14-years https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...
- sourcegrift 6mo ago8 GB RAM and 6/10 "respectable" repairability.
- nar001 6mo agoRAM has no bearing on repairability? And yes, sure stuff is soldered to the motherboard, but everything is basically modular outside of it, you can replace every big part pretty easily, and no glue, even for the battery
- mylies43 6mo agoThe RAM being soldered is a hit against repair ability, you can't expand it or if the ram has issues you can't replace it, you will just be forced to throw out the entire machine. What else is modular here anyways? Can I swap out the CPU, the screen, the keyboard, ports...anything?
- colechristensen 6mo agoSoldering RAM isn't for compact size or cost or to keep you from upgrading, it's for speed. Soldered RAM can be physically closer with a faster bus than removable RAM.
- wolpoli 6mo agoPC makers are going to stop some of the artificial segmentation they used on the lower price devices, and that is going to hurt the sales of their higher-end lines. There is no reason they kept pushing 70 percent srgb panels on even the mid tier Thinkpads when the Neo has a good display.
- colechristensen 6mo agoI can't imagine the low end materials actually save that much cost anyway. There's a tremendous amount of Bill-of-Materials inflation where a part that cost $5 more translates to $50 retail price increase when the actual work and engineering cost is exactly the same. This is one of the terribly annoying facts of product design, the incredible premium you have to pay for good parts that don't actually cost very much at all.
- lovich 6mo agoThat sounds great and like capitalism is working for once in terms of increased competition causes companies to produce more for less
- simondotau 6mo agoI wonder if it’s less about price and more about supply chains. Are there enough manufacturing capacity to allow every laptop maker to secure enough supply? In advance of the neo’s release, Apple probably invested billions in ensuring the supply chain was ready.
- redox99 6mo agoAre there really 70 percent srgb laptops at $600?
- amelius 6mo agoApple is going to cannibalize their own laptop market.
- operatingthetan 6mo agoM1 macbook air has been available at Walmart priced at $600-650 for years (8gb, 256 ssd). Why did that not cannibalize Apple's laptop market?
- tshaddox 6mo agoI think this is actually the reason the Neo has 8 GB of RAM (non-upgradable). It’s their anti-cannibalization strategy. They’re relying on the huge portion of their existing laptop market who self-identifies as “tech-savvy” or “enthusiast” and thinks 8 GB of RAM is a non-starter. Those folks will keep buying Mac laptops at double (or triple, quadruple, …) the price.
- alwillis 6mo ago> I think this is actually the reason the Neo has 8 GB of RAM (non-upgradable). It’s their anti-cannibalization strategy. It has 8 GB of RAM because they wouldn’t be able to hit the price point of $599 with more; their target audience doesn't need more. It's also why the SSD is slower than a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air; it's the only device in the lineup other than the entry-level iPad with a sRGB display; the other devices have P3 Wide Color Displays. No Thunderbolt ports, only supports 1 external display and only at 4K. No Wi-Fi 7. These are some of the compromises they made to keep the price down. They're also using a binned A18 Pro with 5 GPU cores instead of the 6 core version in the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. There are lots of potential customer for which a Mac laptop was out of reach; it's a lot more affordable at $49.91 /month for 12 months for the $599 model. Its display is better than PC laptops in the same price range, but that display is a non-starter for graphic designers, video editors, etc. That's why cannibalization is a non-issue.
- labcomputer 6mo ago> It's also why the SSD is slower than a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air; It's actually not that much slower, at least if you compare machines with the same amount of storage. The M2 and M3 MacBook Air with 256GB comes in at 1700 MB/s[1], while the Neo with 256GB is... drumroll... 1700 MB/s[2]. Yes, Air and Pro machines with more storage are faster. I have not seen any benchmark of the Neo with 512GB, so maybe it lags behind the Air and Pro there. But I've not seen anyone publish a benchmark which actually demonstrates that. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/1gvovdt/the_ultimate_guide_to_mac_ssd_speeds/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/1gvovdt/the_ultimate_g... [2] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-neo-has-up-to-8-slower-ssd-speeds-compared-to-new-macbook-pro.2478979/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-neo-has-up-to-8...
- devwastaken 6mo agoMac doesnt run their spyware, they wont use it.
- auggierose 6mo agoI don't know. Both of my macs are over 7 years old, and have at least 32GB of RAM. Certainly would not buy an 8GB one now.
- Gigachad 6mo agoGoing to guess you aren’t a student
- fpaf 6mo agoI have a teenager at home. Between freaking electron-powered Discord and Chrome, she's basically at the limit of her 12GB RAM (on windows 11)
- sspiff 6mo agoI haven't bought an 8GB laptop since probably 2012 when I got a Sony Vaio that they upgrade to 12GB for free because of a delivery delay. I wouldn't buy an 8GB device in 2026, but this device isn't targeted at either of us. For a lot of people who are looking at sub $800 laptops, the option to get an Apple will probably be enough to convince them. And apart from the limited memory, it really isn't a bad buy. I also fully expect most budget devices to ship with 8GB of memory until the end of the DDR5 crisis anyway.
- pants2 6mo agoYou might be surprised, with NVMe swap 8GB is surprisingly capable. ~1.6GB/s Read/Write.
- teaearlgraycold 6mo agoApple has a great zram implementation as well.
- serf 6mo agothe slowest DDR4 is capable of 12.6GB/s~ish per channel . nowhere near the same performance.
- lubujackson 6mo agoThis is Apple's "Nintendo moment" when they realize they can package old hardware and win on polish and ecosystem.
- kzrdude 6mo agoApple have historically moved forward minimum requirements for macOS and apps a bit aggressively. They need to slow that down now if they want us to take the macbook neo seriously.
- josephg 6mo agoGood. So many software developers have gotten so lazy with RAM usage in the past few decades. I hope the Neo is a kick in the pants to get everyone in the Apple ecosystem to take memory usage seriously. More efficient software benefits everyone.
- dawnerd 6mo agoIt's really quite bad. 'Telegram Lite' is using 1.16GB with just a single chat vs Signal using 193MB. Somehow vscode (including their renderers) manages to come in pretty low compared to even Apples native apps.
- m-schuetz 6mo ago> Somehow vscode (including their renderers) manages to come in pretty low compared to even Apples native apps. Because the issue isn't electron, it's not freeing resources which you can do in any language/platform.
- josephg 6mo ago> vs Signal using 193MB That’s still an order of magnitude worse than it should be. You don’t need 200mb of ram for a chat app.
- p_ing 6mo ago> So many software developers have gotten so lazy with RAM usage in the past few decades. Fewer developers want to write ASM or C, today. Slower to market, slower to roll out features, etc. While that may seem like a good thing, and probably could be, the market doesn't like it. Developer choose heavy weight frameworks or don't make use of modern features in said frameworks to improve performance. And in some cases, performance can be 'good enough'. If I pretended to be a developer, if my app performs well enough, it's not my problem what else is running on your system. Besides, the OS governs it all regardless. That said, macOS has a terrible memory leak _somewhere_ that impacts even OOTB apps and this hasn't been corrected for the last two major releases.
- todotask2 6mo agoAs someone who has been working in IT support for years, for most people a Windows laptop in the $400 range is cheaper if you add on-site IT support, parts replacement, and a longer warranty period. I wonder where Apple stands here.
- DaiPlusPlus 6mo ago> parts replacement For a $400 laptop?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- herbst 6mo agoYou throw a $400 thing away when a small component breaks? Like you buy a new phone when the cable breaks?
- nxobject 6mo agoI'm glad Apple's caring about the education market again – people forget how it (and DTP) sustained Apple through the lean years of the 90s, until they came out with iMac and iBook.
- pxmpxm 6mo agoMy 13 year old mac desktop is sitting here with 14.82gb used with nothing but messages and firefox. Really dount that 8gb will cut it.
- fooker 6mo agoMacos will try and keep available memory used. Launch a few more applications and you'll see everything sort of still keeps working at an acceptable responsiveness.
- smallerize 6mo agoBrowsers use available RAM for cache, but they don't require that much. Firefox officially supports running on Macs down to 512MB of RAM. It will just be slower.
- nottorp 6mo agoTry opening a google spreadsheet in 512 Mb ram.
- smallerize 6mo agoInteresting, what happens?
- nottorp 6mo agoWhatever happens will take a while, since the one google docs spreadsheet that I keep open - which isn't complex - uses 399 Mb just for its own tab.
- yunnpp 6mo agoThis is really not the right comparison to make. An OS will use memory liberally. Give it more and it'll use more. Give it less and it'll swap to disk. So the real question is how long a given workload takes to complete, or whether you can multi-task without shitting out to/from disk every time you switch windows. "My OS uses X amount of RAM" is an entirely meaningless and irrelevant statement.
- jonp888 6mo agoIronically probably one of my biggest reasons against buying one is it's obvious desirability. I've already once in my life been in a situation where I can say with certainty the only reason my laptop wasn't stolen is that it wasn't a MacBook(despite having equal or above retail purchase value). I wouldn't be surprised if there's more that I never knew about.
- throwaway27448 6mo agoHow easy is it to flip a macbook tied to an apple id? i'd imagine you'd have to sell it for parts. Granted, selling this one for parts might literally be easier.
- croes 6mo agoUnless the screen cracks again because of crumbles.
- avidphantasm 6mo agoI think the major reason for the aggressive price point of the Neo, and for not raising RAM and SSD upgrade prices in the MBP much, is that Apple is willing to give up some hardware margin to have more devices to sell services to. Unless I am mistaken, services have been key to Apple’s recent revenue growth. This isn’t a bad thing at this point, but could auger poorly if they foolishly chase recurring revenue at the expense of hardware quality (their software quality has already slipped in recent years).
- koakuma-chan 6mo agoServices? I am not paying for any Apple services.
- keiferski 6mo agoServices make up about 24% of apple’s revenue.
- philistine 6mo agoMost of the services revenue is stuff you don’t have a choice not paying. The Google default deal? That’s a massive chunk of services. App Store junk fees? The other massive part of it. The rest of their services are a much smaller part.
- koakuma-chan 6mo agoInteresting. I didn't know that what the default search engine is on iOS is part of "services."
- GeekyBear 6mo ago> Apple is willing to give up some hardware margin Did they give up a large chunk of margin, or have they been able to offset some of the higher costs of commodity chips by replacing high margin components with their own in house designs? Designing and manufacturing your own components (CPU/GPU, Cellular modem, WiFi/Bluetooth, etc.) isn't free, but it's cheaper than paying someone else a markup at Apple's scale.
- pjmlp 6mo agoNot in many countries outside US, or similar salary levels, unless it comes bundled with some offer like a cable TV contract.
- kristianp 6mo agoI wonder how long before Apple has to raise the price of them due to RAM and nand flash shortages? Especially at the $499 price with student discount.