Apple's MacBook Neo has been a huge hit, and it's still in high demand over a month after it launched. The MacBook Neo is just $599, and with PC makers raising prices because of global RAM shortages, the Neo's low price tag and Apple allure are even more appealing. MacBook Neo orders placed today on the online Apple Store won't reach customers until May, which means that it's sold out for the month of April, as 9to5Mac points out.
My concern lies squarely with the 8GB of RAM. MacOS has great swapping implementation, but swap is not magic.
Inevitably, the OS and applications will get heavier, requiring more swap and therefore more disk reads and writes.
8GB on phones isn’t bad as iOS and Android are designed to freeze and kill background apps quickly. As an app developer, it’s something you design around. But on a desktop, that’s not an option, apps should only be frozen and killed at the last moment to avoid locking up the OS.
I’d be more comfortable buying an older/used M1 Mac with 16GB of RAM. And given that Neo and M1 are roughly comparable, they should hopefully be supported for the same length of time.
The MacBook Neo is for people who use their computer for email and web browsing and not much else.
Which is the majority of people from personal experience.
8 GB is okay now for many use cases.
A better choice for sure.
I was concerned until I played with it. It’s not a MBP but it’s remarkably fast for what it is. Playing with a 150MB photo didn’t cause it to break a sweat. Video editing HD footage is probably fine too.