this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026

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MacBook Neo review: Apple puts every $600 Windows PC to shame (www.engadget.com)

submitted 3 days ago by cantankerous_cashew@lemmy.world to c/apple_enthusiast@lemmy.world

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[–] B0rax@feddit.org 24 points 3 days ago

People… if you are doing demanding things, this laptop is not for you. But there are plenty of people who this laptop is perfect for.

Stop complaining. If you need more power, get the MacBook Air. If you need even more, get the MacBook Pro.

No one is telling you to buy this machine. It is great that Apple starts making an affordable option. And sure, that means it is not as powerful as the other models, that is no surprise.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 26 points 3 days ago

Yeah that's because it's Windows

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 23 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Ditching Intel.

In many ways this is similar to an M1 MacBook performance wise. Apple set a baseline with the M1 that is still relevant today.

[–] tophneal@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

According to ~~tomsguide~~ (I think, I'd have to look it up again) its performance is slightly better than an m1.

It was macrumors

[–] RedMari@reddthat.com 12 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I got an m1 pro knowing it would be a little overpowered for my use case ( mostly web browsing and photo editing), and it's still over powered for me. Battery is still phenomenal. I couldn't imagine paying so much to upgrade it to the m5 pro for marginal improvement.

[–] prettybunnys@piefed.social 7 points 3 days ago

The m1s were wildly over engineered.

The performance the m1 pros put out was not quite mirrored in later models.

The m1 was a massive step up

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

yep the only reason i upgraded my m1 air was to get a 15" screen.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Ohhh ... 8GB is max RAM.

[–] yggstyle@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Its worth noting that everyone commenting on memory forgets they aren't losing 8+ gigs to their operating system so it can track them harder (now with AI!)

Most laptops with considerably older chipsets run flawlessly for moderate use on Linux with 8 gigs. OS makes a massive difference and that's before we discuss hardware.

[–] djdarren@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago

I have my dad's old 8gb M1 mini at home, being used as my Home Assistant machine. 4Gb of the RAM is allocated to UTM for running HAOS, while the other 4Gb is for macOS (Tahoe, annoyingly) to do with as it pleases, including running a modest LLM in Ollama so I can use speech commands. It works perfectly well.

The same setup under Asahi kept falling over, because only macOS seems to get access to a bunch of the shit that it needs to (presumably) swap memory to the SSD.

So yeah, I wouldn't be at all worried about 8Gb in the Neo. Not for its intended market, anyway.

That said, say a kid gets one to use at school, after a couple of years they're going to want to upgrade to something with more RAM, which is kinda what Apple are betting on, so they can sell more units. But yeah, as an entry level laptop, this Neo looks like a decent bet.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I've got a Celeron laptop with 12GB RAM & it uses it.

And no, I was interested in these Macbooks bcs Asahi might one day reverse-engineer the drivers. I don't have much interest in macOS or Windows.

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Right right. I'm using a ten year old Linux laptop and it works perfectly. It has always been true that Windows abuses RAM... Apple didn't do anything amazing. And they didn't need to.

[–] vga@sopuli.xyz 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

If only it would run Linux, properly, like most x86 laptops do.

[–] Mongostein@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 days ago

I’ve got two old Intel Macs running Linux no problem.

[–] detren@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

MacBook hardware and performance on Linux would be so good.

[+] fourish@lemmy.world -8 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Not really any point. Mac OS takes all of the best parts of a Unix OS and wraps them in the only GUI interface that truly doesn’t suck.

[–] nobody_1677@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

MacOS is UNIX, but is not the best implementation of UNIX.

The UNIX tools it ships are extremely old. For example, it comes with GNU Screen, which I was using but was having same strange issues with. It turned out it uses a version from 2006... so I had to brew install a modern version.

And I'm personally not the biggest fan of MacOS. It's certainly better than Windows thanks to Apple mostly treating the user with basic respect (no ads), but the desktop/window manager is just super quirky. No other desktop, whether it be Windows or any desktop on Linux behaves quite like it. They tend to only adopt the nicer features while keeping a UX that feels closer to Windows. For example, MacOS quirky/unique in doing

Requiring a click to activate a window (with no option to change this behavior)
Fullscreening a window moves it to its own space
Closing an app's window does not close the app itself for the majority of apps
- Perhaps not the biggest deal if the goal is app startup speed for heavily used apps, but unnecessary for rarely used apps and clutters the dock)
- Also can be quite annoying since it will drag you to the last space you used the app on
Minimized windows show on dock as previews
- Not that of an idea, but strange since you now have two ways to bring the app back: clicking on the app icon itself or the minimized preview

[–] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I have lots of problems with the GUI from a productivity standpoint. Its situational for many people. The problem with MacOS is, like windows, you have very few options to change it.

I would like to see a dock that does not dynamically asjust the position of icons. Fix the positions for muscle memory.

The app switching logic should be switching between windows not apps.

It needs proper tiling and snapping support.

The common UI elements forced on apps take up too much screen space.

Its not that any other OS is inheritly better, its that MacOS is more locked down in terms of the ability to adjust or improve it.

[–] detren@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Honestly compared to windows it’s a lot more customisable. There’s a vibrant community of developers that make really great apps for macOS, and nowadays a lot of it is foss too. I just recently installed DockDoor, which enables your desired windows not app switching and A LOT more. There’s another app that adds basically hyprland style window management, and there are other alternatives as well, like rectangle, or Loop, which add more normal window snapping.

Also I don’t know if it’s a setting I changed but I don’t have dynamically adjusting icon positions. It behaves the same way as windows.

Overall imo there’s a ton more easy customisation compared to windows, and a lot of it adds big new features in my experience. Of course it doesn’t compare to Linux, but it’s a lot better than windows.

[–] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago

Thanks for the tips. Will look into it.

[–] vandsjov@feddit.dk 1 points 3 days ago

Agree, many more options on Mac than on Windows. However, the Windows way of handling apps/windows is much better by default. Might be 30+ years of Windows use but most other DEs work the same way - just macOS and GNOME (of the majors) that works differently (of the ones I’ve used).

[–] qupada@fedia.io 3 points 3 days ago

That's a big part of the problem though... it's Unix. The BSD-based underpinnings of Mac OS are just different enough to be a colossal pain in the arse for interoperability with GNU-based systems.

At a surface level things seem similar enough, but that people seem to think developing on Mac and deploying on Linux is this simple process really confuses me, because every time it's come up in my career nothing has ever worked properly. Every occasion a bunch of time wasted finding the one little difference that breaks on one platform (and I'm going to be blunt here; it was always on the Mac).

For my money too, the Mac UI features some of the most incomprehensible and borderline unpleasant design decisions. Window management is downright infuriating. File management feels barely functional. Apple's stubborn insistence in hiding the options they'd clearly prefer you didn't use (to make using it actually pleasant) in "accessibility" menus is baffling.

Some of this stuff harks back to last century. I hated the way things worked back then in Mac OS 6 on a Mac classic, and a lot of it they still haven't fixed.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

what if i want to use all my screen for windowed app

[–] detren@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

Turn on Hide Dock in settings.

[–] elucubra@sopuli.xyz 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The only Apple product I own at present is an M1 8Gb ipad. I'm 70/20/10% Linux/win/apple user.

I got an aftermarket keyboard cover, and pen, and mostly use it as a light laptop for when I don't want to lug my chunky R7 gaming laptop (a mistake buy. I don't really need all the specs on the move). I don't see how this is really better. The lack of a 16gb option makes this a non starter for me.

[–] some_designer_dude@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This is like standing over a Toyota Prius and stating, “the lack of a V6 engine is a non-starter for me.”

8GB on a Mac is like 16GB on a Windows machine. Not literally, but for people looking for an everyday laptop that isn’t a piece of shit, this fits that bill to a T and then some.

[–] b34k@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Meh, 8GB is still a bit under. All I run on my Air is discord and Firefox, and it’s constantly choking on the lack of RAM. About once a week I have to force quit and then restore Firefox to get the system functional again.

[–] some_designer_dude@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’ve recently fired Firefox for Chrome for its abysmal stability on MacOS

[–] b34k@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Unfortunately I don’t want to sacrifice ublock origin…