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>"~1.5-2GB of available application memory (after macOS overhead)." Having an OS eat up >75% of your memory on a fresh boot is not ideal. You're gambling on m
by beloch 5mo ago
>"~1.5-2GB of available application memory (after macOS overhead)."
Having an OS eat up >75% of your memory on a fresh boot is not ideal. You're gambling on macOS experiencing zero bloat for the lifetime of this product. If the OS memory footprint grows even just a few percent, users of this model will lose a significant portion of available memory for applications.
This model might trigger planned obsolescence legislation in some jurisdictions.
- throawayonthe 5mo agoi think it's a fair concern, but quite frankly right now macos has best-in-class (desktop) memory/swap management
- zozbot234 5mo agoCompared to Windows or Android, sure. Hopefully the Asahi folks will get around to supporting this device so we can run a proper lightweight OS on it.
- Retr0id 5mo agoUnfortunately Linux is pretty damn bad under memory pressure, I think you'd get an objectively better experience on macOS. I say this as someone running Asahi right now.
- ahartmetz 5mo agoBut then, you don't usually run into memory pressure with 8 GB and Linux unless you do a few specific things (for me with 32-128 GB depending on machine it's C++ builds using all cores and of course local LLMs). I guess a bunch of Electron apps would also do it for 8 GB.
- kergonath 5mo ago> you don't usually run into memory pressure with 8 GB and Linux unless you do a few specific things Like using Chrome…
- ahartmetz 5mo agoUse Firefox then
- kergonath 5mo agoFair enough, Firefox is a bit better. But not that much, a lot of the bloat comes from unoptimised web pages running megabytes of JavaScript. Also, Firefox is close to a rounding error nowadays.
- ahartmetz 5mo agoWhat does it matter how many other people use Firefox if it's the better browser for your situation? FWIW I've never really considered Chrome: First it looked ugly (weird UI and bad font rendering on Linux), then Google gave itself permission to be evil and then they limited ad blockers. They fixed the font rendering at some point.
- edelhans 5mo agoLinux is pretty bad at handling out of memory. In my old thinkpad T14 with Mint everything came to a halt when webpack gobbled up my 16GB of ram. Couldnt even move the cursor, stuff just got stuck hard
- remix2000 5mo agoSource…? I see this claim thrown around so much without any backing and my experience with mac os (and other darwin variants) is just terrible. My previous portable was a 2015 mac book pro with 16 (!) gigs of ram (mind-blowing for 2026 standards, I know) and the os just became terribly and unbearably sluggish with all the useless updates (that nb mostly removed features, e.g. ClearType was wiped off the face of the Earth in back in mac os Mojave) caking on, at some point I just gave up on trying to fix it with continuously reinstalling and balancing it. My current portable has quarter the amount of workmem and is just incredibly snappy esp. compared to that mac book. And I don't even use portables for anything too heavy, I have an actual PC for that.
- trvz 5mo agoI used a Mac mini M1 with 8GB of RAM for a while. It was fine; much better than Intel Macs or any other setup with low RAM.
- remix2000 5mo agoTwo accounts, both lowercase four random letter names respond to me within two minutes time apart, what do I make of it? :P Either way, I find it hard to believe memory management would vary so much between those two CPU architectures on a single-codebase OS.
- Rexxar 5mo ago> four random letter names So probably very old accounts
- grosswait 5mo agoOne is a four letter set of characters without a vowel, the other spells a word with 5 letters. And so what? I’ll add on that the change to Apple silicon was an amazing improvement, even in the same OS version. Maybe these anecdotes mean your experience in this regard is dated. (I say this as someone who came reluctantly to Mac, and looks forward to returning to Linux)
- 5mo ago
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- dudefeliciano 5mo ago> might trigger planned obsolescence legislation then i welcome it
- znpy 5mo agoI think this reasoning is just disconnected from reality. Reality is, the iphone 16 sharing the same chipset is perfectly functional for many more years to come, running similar workloads (for the same target audience): mainly web browsing. If the iphone 16 can have the usual 3-6 years of useful life, then the macbook neo has the same -- FOR ITS INTENDED PURPOSE. And I wrote this because I did actually get the macbook neo and I'm using it daily for the intended purpose (mostly web browsing) and it's just fine. (if anybody is wondering: i have a large machine with 16c/32t and 128gb memory that i use remotely via ssh to do the "heavy stuff") > This model might trigger planned obsolescence legislation in some jurisdictions. That legislation is at least ten years late but apple is absolutely not the worst offender. There is the entire market of cheap android phones (and tablets) that barely last a year or two, and have essentially no guaranteed software upgrade. That should have triggered the legislation in the first place.
- close04 5mo agoThe Neo not only exposes functionality that would prove limiting on the iPhone too, but it’s mostly used that way. First thing that comes to mind is true multi-window multitasking. The apps are standard Mac apps that don’t assume a RAM limited system, not dedicated “made for Neo” apps like the iPhone has. Overall this limitation has the potential to be much more visible on the Neo and Apple must make real sure that the OS stays lean because we all know average app devs don’t care about this.
- jonhohle 5mo ago[dead]
- fauigerzigerk 5mo agoiOS takes a very different approach to managing app memory though. And the intended purpose of a phone isn't quite the same as that of a laptop either, especially not for people who don't have an extra 128GB memory machine lying around. I'm not sure the comparison makes a whole lot of sense.
- n_e 5mo agoThe figure is likely wrong. My Mac is currently using 9GB of RAM including 6.5GB of cached files with Safari and a few other apps opened. They likely forgot to subtract the cache from the used memory.
- petee 5mo agoThat's impressive on an 8GB system!
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- thechao 5mo ago90 would've been impressive. 9 out of 8 is rookie numbers.
- hirvi74 5mo agoMy Neo is currently sitting at 5.79 GB Used, 2.15 GB cached, thus 3.64 GB while Safari is open in the background and Activity Monitor is open in the foreground.
- whynotminot 5mo ago> This model might trigger planned obsolescence legislation in some jurisdictions. As opposed to years of garbage Windows laptops at the $600 price point, which you seem to expect will remain viable longer than the Neo ... ? If any legislation comes out of this, it will simply be because of Apple's high profile. They were content to let e-rot fill the shelves for years before the Neo.
- Jaepa 5mo agoThere could be an arguments that you can install a lighter OS on these machines. That's not as easy with MacOS.
- vlovich123 5mo agoAre you sure that’s not based on stale information? The M series of laptops by all accounts from the ASAHI developers were written specifically to make it easier to install alternative OSes and ASAHI is no more difficult to install than Linux on a Windows machine.
- philistine 5mo agoAsahi Linux is only able to be installed on an M2. They basically take 2 years per new chip, when Apple releases one yearly. At this point, they'll never catch up.
- kube-system 5mo ago
- zitterbewegung 5mo agoHN is completely out of touch with this laptop. No one cares about any of this analysis they just want a cheap Mac. This has sold so much that the A19 processor is having problems to being sourced . Also 8gb is good enough for the target market.
- Xmd5a 5mo agoI replaced my 10 years old macbook with a 10 years old macbook. 8 gigs. Good battery. A screen that is not broken. 80 bucks! I really don't see why I should upgrade. Need more compute? Rent a machine on vast.ai. Also I still use my old mac via screen sharing to run servers/databases/etc that tend to eat up RAM. 80 bucks!
- zitterbewegung 5mo agoYea Apple has been fighting themselves to upgrade to new Mac’s in so long that they had to start being competitive in price but even this isn’t an upgrade path for people and more a driver of sales in education.
- hirako2000 5mo agoM4 24gb screen broke after just 6 months. Back to m1, just 8gb*. It sometimes hang for a second or two, but you know what. I'm happy with it. That's when I have 38 tabs, two IDEs and try to grep some text on VS code.
- thenthenthen 5mo agoM1 air, 16gb, second hand, 200 bucks, 200+ tabs in brave, photoshop, illustrator and premiere and kicad and sublime and chrome with one tab watching a youtube live stream. Plus text edit, notes and prolly some more apps. Works fine, zero hitch.. maybe too good for my own good.
- mey 5mo agoWhen I spec'd a M1 air for my partner back in the day, even though she didn't really need it, I made sure to get the 16gb model for the longevity. Devices shouldn't be disposable toys. Apparently I had better foresight than expected...
- xhkkffbf 5mo agoNow that RAM is getting more expensive, I hope the OS builders will rethink how they use so much memory. An OS that's lighter weight lets us save money on RAM.
- Scubabear68 5mo agoI have been using an 8GB Macbook Air M1 for non-development work, and it has been fantastic. Macos really excels at managing memory very well.
- giancarlostoro 5mo agoHeck, on Windows it would be 4GB if you're lucky.
- pants2 5mo agoI used an M1 Air for developing iPhone Apps for years and it worked great. Not "wow" fast but I never had a complaint about it.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]