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.
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…
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.
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.
Yeah sidebery is the goat. I too have thousands of tabs open.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
or what amounts to its RAM
You can criticize the amount of RAM, but it’s still RAM. Clown.
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?
I’m suspicious.
I’m seeing social media FLOODED with Neo content. Definitely not organic.
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:
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.
Just make some decent SD Elite laptops, preferably with Linux OOTB, I’ve been waiting…
They’ve had Mac minis for over a decade.
I find this hard to believe.
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
“We can’t believe Apple aren’t fucking consumers harder! Apple?! have been fucking everyone so hard, for so long and people have just been bending over and taking it, and so we’re very shocked to see them decide not to go maximum fuck-you with this product”
This is attractive to me simply because finding a quality 13" laptop is very difficult. 15.6" is huge.
I switched to Macbooks specifically for the 11" Air. I do wish they’d bring that form factor back.
