Discussion
First MacBook Neo Benchmarks Are In: Here's How It Compares to the M1 MacBook Air
signa11: linux on this would be *soo* cool !
spacedcowboy: Not a bad single-core result for a $600 laptop...
LeonM: I don't think that it would take that much.It is my understanding that the A18 CPU is pretty well understood already. AFAIK it doesn't have the new architecture that is keeping the Asahi team from supporting the M4 and M5 for example.But I guess we'll have to wait for devs to get their hands on a Neo device
aa-jv: I've been holding back to find a suitable machine for a bit of XCode development, web browsing and mail, and I'm pretty close to concluding this'd be good enough, but I'm pretty sure I'd be better off with something heftier, since I mostly just want to develop JUCE stuff on MacOS .. anyone got opinions on this so far? How does the A18 versus Mx architecture factor into things, will we need to write slightly different code for each, or can we write ARM assembly that will be fine in both environments?
frizlab: If you want to use Xcode (lowercase c) and generally do any dev stuff, don’t take the Neo. It’s not what it has been made for.Also no, there won’t be any need for different code depending on A* vs M* chips (unless doing very specific code, but if you’re wondering whether to take the Neo, that won’t be your case).
eklavya: I was thinking the same but then I looked at what I could get for 70000 INR on Amazon and it would be crazy to buy this over the alternatives. What is the draw for this device given the price?
blell: Those laptops look very good on paper, now buy one and tell us how it goes.
jmkni: If Asahi runs well on this I'd be very tempted to get one as a dedicated Linux machine
mfro: Just get an M1 macbook air. Way cheaper, and you get can 16GB of memory.
jmkni: You could probably pick up a better spec used Air for the same moneyI imagine XCode will run on this ok but it might be a bit painful
Synaesthesia: M4 is basically an upgraded version of the A18.M1 was A14, albeit upscaled.
Synaesthesia: People say things like "don't expect to do hardcore content creation on these" (Ars Technica)We used to do hardcore content creation on Intel processors and spinning hard drives that were way shittier. Heck even my M1 still 100% suffices for everything I wanna do.
thenthenthen: Agree, i bought a second hand one about a year ago, 16gb, 500gb for about 200usd. Super machine
notfried: The Neo is incredibly executed by Apple, and one they must have been planning for for years: to be able to create a machine this good at this price. I wouldn't be surprised if it dramatically reshapes the laptop industry.Spec-wise, this is as good as an M1-M2 Air, which is already an over-powered device for most non-professionals. All the "compromises" they made, like no center stage in the camera, less ports, only one monitor support, "just WiFi 6E", and others, are all non-issues for a typical average consumers.And the price is the best it could be. At $499 for students, in a year's time when Gen2 is released, you will find a new Gen1 at possibly $399, and a refurbished Gen1 at even less. I don't see why anyone who wants an "entry-level/starter laptop" would buy anything but a Neo. We already are in a world in which average people don't need specific Windows-only apps. They are either cross-platform or web-based.Good thing for Dell, HP and alike that they're being enamored with datacenter demand. I expect them to shift-away from the consumer laptop market and focus more on the enterprise.
ido: If you've tried some of those cheap PC laptops the build quality is no where near macbooks (even for laptops twice the price). Macs tend to live a long time and retain their resale value like crazy compared to PCs too.
eklavya: I bought a macbook pro m1 pro. Its value is 25% in 4/5 years. I bought a second hand dell latitude 7/8 years ago, it was 3/4 years old then. Still running as a server today. A cheap acer bought in 2017 runs almalinux and is surprisingly fast and capable today, I had upgraded ram and put in nvme SSD long back.
UqWBcuFx6NV4r: If you are satisfied with the build quality and general longevity of an Acer computer then you are wasting your time trying to understand a huge comparative advantage of the Neo. I’d just accept that you aren’t the market and move on.
timpera: I'm excited to see how well it runs Windows 11 ARM64. This could be a great value.
tosh: Incredible when you consider that the next one or two generations of the macbook neo will probably come w/ 16gb+ ram and support 5k displays.A few more generations and we might see < 1kg, 120hz oled and multi day battery life.But I'm most excited about the near future because if the macbook neo becomes a huge success it will hopefully encourage app devs to waste less ram.
mitchell_h: I'm sold. My wife is a teacher(refuses to use a chromebook because they suck, or an Ipad because data input sucks). She'll be getting one of these. Kids probably will too. I'm having a really hard time finding another laptop on the market the hits the "i use gmail, and gdocs, and some other webapps all day" demographic so well.
eklavya: Yeah, I guess so. I was just wondering when people said it's great value, is it because they believe that the build quality (all metal) is the most important factor here. But then I can get an HP omnibook 5 oled for the same price with "almost" a metal body.I started thinking, ok I was going to buy an iPad maybe, why not neo? It makes so much sense since my wife could do much more with it. Then I started looking at what the market has to offer for the price and it stopped making sense. The marketing does seem great on this. I am sure it makes a lot of sense to some people who wanted a cheap macOS laptop and got it.
loloquwowndueo: Back in the day, ability to run MacOS would have been a plus, but with the trainwreck that Tahoe is said to be, I’m not so sure.
baal80spam: It might be because of me being relatively new to the Apple ecosystem (I got my first developer Mac in 2020), but to this day I have no idea what is it that it's SO bad about Tahoe.
patapong: Agreed! For the longest time, I feel like for most "regular" people (mostly used for web browsing, communication and light gaming) the choice between windows and Mac has mostly come down to price. I feel like this is the first attempt by Apple to disrupt this segmentation and take a stab at the mass market as well.
xnx: Very true, but content creation used to mean 720i. Doing high quality compression of 4K with the latest codecs is still a beast.
throwaway27448: Content creation also used to mean writing novels by hand and stitching pixel art. You can do basically anything imaginable before 2010 in terms of creation (which is... basically anything worth mentioning?) before running into video as the bottleneck. Probably closer to 2020.
huxley: Haha. I edited tv shows back in the very early days of digital non-linear editing on a Mac Quadra 840AV with 80MB of RAM and 40/80MHz 68040 processor and a RAID made up of 4 x 9GB SCSI drives, with a coprocessor board that people wouldn’t consider sufficient for editing gifs with now. We did After Effects rendering with similar gear … my first job was restarting after effects after it would crash part way through a render (go back a few frames and start again).
whizzter: I bought an 16e last week with the same chipset, just tested and it handles realtime recording of 4k at 60fps with HEVC (camera is "48mp" so the source is 8k camera source material).Pretty sure most of the encoding/decoding of video is handled with special circuits these days.Now, add enough layers and it'll probably falter, but with dedicated encoding/decoding circuits combined with a modern GPU it will definetly be a usable experience with some lower res quick pre-renders at worst but probably realtime for most content creator usages.
evanjrowley: I like that they sell a version that lacks touch ID so I cannot be compelled to unlock my Mac by US law enforcement without a warrant.https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/compelled-biometri...
raw_anon_1111: You actually trust law enforcement not to use rubber hose decryption or a little less severe not to just hold you in contempt?
Aurornis: > I bought a second hand dell latitude 7/8 years ago, it was 3/4 years old then.If your needs are satisfied by 4 year old second hand machines and you’re still happy with them when they’re 10-12 years old, that’s great for you.I think you’re not the target audience. Your decade old Dell Latitude is not even close to the performance or usefulness of a MacBook Neo so the fact that you’re bringing it up is a good indicator that you don’t understand who the MacBook Neo is for.The MacBook Neo is a great value for anyone who wants a high quality, long battery life, fast laptop for a bargain price.
eklavya: I would invite you to read my comment again (take a wild guess what my main machine is from the list) and especially the comment I was replying to (like how the build quality is great for other laptops to still be running as a "server" and a capable laptop). My comment might start to make more sense than you think.
Aurornis: > But then I can get an HP omnibook 5 oled for the same price with "almost" a metal body.The bargain HP laptops don’t compare at all to MacBook build quality or battery life.That laptop is also 4lbs and has below average battery life.We recently got a higher end HP laptop for someone and the build quality on it is marginal at best.If you’re only looking at spec sheets and trying to treat this like a comparison table of simple points then you’re going to miss the reason why these products appeal to buyers.
jmkni: Can you run ARM Windows on the metal now on Apple Silicon macbooks?
xnx: No. Only through virtualization.
jmkni: Yeah I think no mission then of ARM Windows running well on this
adithyassekhar: Are you sure of that 25%? Where can i find one?
Aurornis: Touch ID is an optional feature.You don’t have to buy a specific model without it. Just don’t use it.
glhaynes: You can also just not choose to enroll any fingerprints in Touch ID. It’s totally optional even if you have the hardware.
aa-jv: Yup, thanks for the advice, definitely leaning towards something with just a little bit more power ..
haunter: The Walmart outlet on eBay is selling refurb M1s for $380, I think that's still a better deal not just because it's cheaper but you get Touch ID, a better screen, and dual Thunderbolt ports. Backlit keyboard too!
bluedays: You get a Macbook.
bengale: You can just not setup touch id, right?
joefourier: The first professional commercial 4K camera came out over 23 years ago, and the first smartphones and camcorders capable of 4K video were back in 2013.The Macbook Neo has a 2.5x higher multi-core Geekbench score compared to the i7-4960X's, the top consumer CPU of 2013 (which could handle 4K video editing in h264), and its single-core performance is 5x higher. Plus, I'm 99% sure the MacBook Neo has a dedicated video decoding ASIC anyway.
ttoinou: Using Parallels yes. Whats “on the metal” ?
lostmsu: The multicore score is worse than a $650 HP laptop: https://www.staples.com/hp-omnibook-5-16-2k-laptop-copilot-p...This HP laptop also has 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD and is an excellent machine overall. I'm speaking from experience. There's an even cheaper $570 model with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD and still slightly better than this Mac on multicore.
spacedcowboy: That $650 laptop has a real-world battery life of ~8 hours. Less, if you’re doing more than streaming you-tube or browsing the web. No thanks.
Yossarrian22: Do you have a link?
