Base model used to mean glorified toy with severely compromised fundamentals. The Macbook Neo is not that. It is an excellent screen, excellent keyboard, and excellent silicon, encased in an excellent chassis.
As a remote work terminal / casual computing system, the compromises are IMHO almost entirely psychological.
MacBooks are still unbeaten hardware-wise. Yes 8GB of RAM is embarrassing, no question about it.
I'll buy a Neo just for travel. I will remote to my machines with it.
Though I'm flabbergasted why has nobody else made as thin and lightweight laptop like Apple... for decades. And that includes no fan, or just a very quiet one.
I have no love for Apple at all. But the Neo is a game-changer and a well-deserved kick in the nuts of, well, every other hardware company really.
An interesting perspective the designers of the Tesla Model S had was "battery bucks". The oft-cited example was some fancy wheel bearing which had a expensive per-unit cost which no normal OEM would even consider, because being half a percent more efficient didn't matter. Whereas for Tesla, half a percent efficiency reduced the need for hundreds of dollars of batteries.
I wonder if there's some opportunity for Apple to think about "RAM bucks" and turn memory efficiency into an economic opportunity. I find it difficult to believe that modern operating systems actually need to consume so much.
Point me at a laptop as small and quiet. Hell, let's forget weight. I'll gladly lug around 2.5kg machine if it almost never turns its fan on and is as compact.
Actually let's not care about compactness either. Can go up to 17". Just show me a truly quiet laptop.
You are misjudging me here. I'm moving back to Linux after using Macs for 7 years. My desktop Mac is soon going to be history. macOS makes too many choices for me that I dislike. We're not just talking stylistically or philosophically; those I can mostly get over if needed. We're talking objectively and technologically.
I want a good travel machine however. People look at you funny on meetups when your laptop starts blasting jet engines. Nobody is saying it out loud but you're becoming the odd one out and that has a social and career cost. (That's not even touching the fact that noisy machines stress me out and break my focus.)
I'll get a Neo for travel even if I hate giving Apple money. Because everyone else is two decades behind.
Point me at a laptop with a touch and pen support and detachable keyboard, within the 13" range and 260+ppi resolution, that can virtually run modern software and mid-tier games at workable speeds.
That's the bar my personal laptop clears, and no mac does. Should I be claiming that it has unbeatable hardware ?
PS: We've been in this for a very long time. Even during the PowerPC days, it was a meme to take a mac, adjust for exactly the same hardware specs and tout that the mac was unbeatable for the price. Thing is, having different hardware specs and tradeoffs is exactly the point of the PC market. I still feel great for the people that exactly fit the "one size fits all" offering, but getting a machine that perfectly fits one's needs is extremely valuable IMHO.
Sure but that's only a theoretical, as in, a non-existing argument. You don't get to tell me what I want in a laptop; I already stated it and stand by it.
"Unbeatable" comes from "satisfies all my hardware requirements". If you want to be difficult and try to grill me to append "...according to what I deem an important criteria" at the end of each sentence then that's a separate conversation, and one I'll refuse to have.
"the Neo is competitive for basic office and media stuff" can be a better way to put it. I'd say the Surface Pro is a more competent but pricier jack of all trade.
There's so many ways to express the same points with not much more words. Especially when the article is about a machine that is a completely different league from the Neo.
Not really, I tend to avoid computer appliances, other than phones and tablets.
I certainly am not paying 800 euros for a travel laptop, when a 350 euros Asus 1215B, that could be upgraded, was able to survive about a decade, with 8GB in 2011!
It's not enough to be a primary workstation for anyone who reads Hacker News. But for me, a laptop is a secondary device for remote work. I have a base model M1 with 16GB of RAM, and honestly only got the RAM upgrade because I wasn't price sensitive. I'm typing this reply in a tab-infested Firefox right now, and even with a bunch of other programs open, active/wired memory is slightly less than 9GB.
As a remote work terminal / casual computing system, the compromises are IMHO almost entirely psychological.