- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.today
- apple@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.today
- apple@lemmy.zip
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Something I’m still curious about: can these new ARM Apple devices run arbitrary software? Or do you have to install things via the App Store only?
Could Apple someday decide that you’re not allowed to install whatever software you want and only install their approved software?
this laptop running Asahi would be a great entry level machine
They really said ‘Cheap’ and $600 in the same sentence.
They sell 4 wheels for $700. People buy it.
Apple Mac Pro Wheels Kit - Apple https://share.google/FCOp7IY3rKkfeIOth
“Adds improved mobility to your Mac Pro”
That’s absolutely ridiculous. Easy to see how Apple got to where it is now if people actually pay this amount for this crap.
Easy to see how America got to where it is today too… Grifting is the only American culture.
As an IT person that’s worked at schools for 20 years I can say this has no place here for us. Too underpowered for adobe products or composer products that our arts/graphics/music labs are interested in and too expensive to replace the Chromebooks that the students use. This is for the wealthy to give to their 4 year olds instead of a MacBook pro like they usually would have. Or a really good porn machine 😁
That’s odd, because it is similar in performance to the M1 Air which is still pretty banging at basic introductory media production.
If you are running a proper production lab you aren’t using $600 computers anyway, or you are economizing guerilla-film style. If you wanted to introduce 1080p NLE or basic DAW to incoming noobs, probably an okay device… but a lab should be using desktops anyway or your curriculum is badly broken. Definitely get minis if you’re doing macs.
This basic laptop in a premium case with great battery life is for folks doing lots of admin or studying and running office, with Pixelmator or Affinity or other mid range production apps. It WILL run photoshop fine if you don’t work on large files.
RIP to the mid range Chromebook and windows laptop market.
funny joke
Why would anyone get a Chromebook for $600 over this
they wouldnt. they’d get a 200 dollar chromebook
Maybe in 2019. In 2026 8Gb of ram alone costs $150
sure a stick of ram, but this is not that. i can find chromebooks well under 300 dollars american, i dont know what to tell you.
But it’s 8 gigs of RAM on a Mac so It will perform like a Chromebook with 4 gigs of RAM.
Utter bullshit disinformation. SoC, look it up.
I think you’re mixing things up here. Mac’s are actually VERY performant, both objectively and relative to the on board ram.
There are many critiques that can be made of macOS. But saying it runs inefficiently is not one of them.
i absolutely hate apple and i endorse this message.
8GB RAM? No.
You are not the target audience
If you know what ‘8GB RAM’ means you’renot the target audience for this machine.
Question, what is the used market for Macs like?
I can’t check the prices for the USA, but I really wonder if getting an used M1 Air wouldn’t end up being better bang for your buck?Just checked eBay. ~200-250 for used M1 Air 8gb RAM and ~300-350 for used M1 with 16gb RAM.
Probably, so I would guess the core audience to be businesses or schools who need a few hundred a year, but had no need for the computational power of more expensive models.
If this is the regular price, schools can probably get them for $550 or less on a bulk contract. They seem to give 10% discount on any large school purchase.
Yeah it def would be. The laptop has a pretty slim target markt
Just bought a PC laptop for $399. It does everything I need a laptop to do.
Don’t want to pay $200 more for street cred.
Street cred and spying on you
If the PC is running Windows, the spying is worse. Linux is a good choice, though.
This is basically Apple’s version of a Chromebook. It’s an iPhone in the shape of a laptop.
But it runs full macOS.
Why would anyone buy a new laptop when the second hand market is so available? It’s all just novelty. I wouldn’t touch this, all I can think about is what it’ll look like in the second hand market in about 3 years.
Used Macs carry a pretty big inflated premium for about 6 years while supported.
I have six or more 10+yr-old refurb Macs running all different distros of linux, testing for permacomputing viability then selling very cheap. They run mostly great, though the laptops all struggle with sleep and battery management compared with macOS. Some, the cameras or mics need a lot of terminal futzing around to get working adequately.
Get a lenovo 480 if you are shopping for a used laptop. A 2015 MacBook pro running Debian derivatives or Fedora is very pleasant if you’re not picky about battery life. Zorin is pretty for that mac aesthetic.
I buy new because my service requires up to date production software, and output on time-is-money schedules. Business expenses amortize quickly, due to tax, equipment turnover is expected.
For the target audiences, people just buying a low cost laptop for browsing as well as students, it’s unlikely the common person wouldn’t go directly to Apple to get the newest product. There will definitely be some who opt to get older second hand tech instead, but the vast majority would rather get something they have assurance is brand new and in fully working condition.
Personally, if I needed a laptop, I’d weigh my options both in first party offerings as well as the second hand market, and I’d probably come to the conclusion to just buy two broken laptops and combine them, but it’s rare to find someone who’s willing to splice two computers together for university or high school they’re going to in a month or so, and even if it’s more common, it’s still rare to find someone willing to dive head first into the second hand market when they don’t know how to check for fake listings, horrible deals and genuine bargains, which is why most opt for buying directly from manufacturers or from consumer electronics stores.
Reputable second hand sellers guarantee that the device works properly before shipping. If I needed a laptop, I would get a low grade one on eBay for cheap. I would probably get a used Dell Precision 5570 Laptop with an i9/A2000.
you’re right, and I’d personally pick from a one, but realisticaly, if someone only just needs a laptop and doesn’t really know what to get, where to get it, why to get that specific one, etc, then I don’t think they’d even know second hand sellers can be reputable in the first place.
My mother for instance, she bought an Acer Aspire Go for around $550 AUD from one of our large consumer electronics stores (not sure but I think it was Officeworks),so she can do all her important stuff on, think appointments, setting up debit cards, tracking orders, etc. She didn’t want anything used or refurbished, since her view of such is that, if she bought one used or refurbished, it’ll be barely held together, half broken, probably someone bit part of the corner off, and so on.
if I were her, I would’ve just gotten a cheap refurb Thinkpad, but seeming that its at least somewhat common for non-tech literate people to think it’s scary to get into the second hand market, most would simply rather choose large consumer electronics store chains. Maybe this issue is just because of the tangibility, where you can walk into a store and physically hold the laptops and assess them, rather than the online only nature of the second hand market, unless there is a rare physical store for refurb and used tech.
Older ThinkPads are unbeatable, especially those that still have the CPU sockets in them, and can be upgraded. I put an i7-4702MQ into my L440, now it performs really well with Manjaro, at the cost of sometimes draining the CPU in 30-60 minutes under very high loads (battery might need some rebuilding).
I wouldn’t touch this, all I can think about is what it’ll look like in the second hand market in about 3 years.
That’s pretty sad, tbh.
Why is it sad?
Maybe this person mistreates their laptop.
To be honest, I never learned how to treat devices carefully.
Same price as the cheapest iPhone I think. It tells you something.
deleted by creator
$899 was education price, $1099 is retail.
Don’t need to lie to make a point.
Or maybe it will come with some subscription model to get you more power, from the cloud of course.
$600 MacBook in 2026 is absolutely insane to me. Around 2007/08 when I started using MacBooks as a student the entry level ones used to be 1200€.
Consider that this is an iPhone 16 in a MacBook shell, though. This gives you performance comparable a 5 years old used MacBook M1. It’s usable, but it’s designed to act as a gateway drug, you’ll immediately hit storage and memory limits and want to buy a more expensive one.
8gb of RAM in 2026 where most modern apps are made in electron and a basic text editor takes half gig to show a blank page is less than ideal
I have a 2015 13" Macbook Air with 4gb ram, and a new battery running, Mint with i3 wm and except for a few very unoptimised webpages I don’t experience any significant lagg when browsing. streaming 1920x1080 video without issues(the screen resolution is 1440x900 so no need for more) sure I only use it for writing on the go and minor surfing, anything heavier like video editing or Blender I do on my main desktop or my lenovo legion. This whole - anything less than 16gb ram is garbage in current year. Does not take into account that a lot of consumers and middle managers actually don’t do anything heavy on their computers.
This is meant to tackle the chromebook market.
To be honest it is not as big of deal. I have a MacBook M1 with 8 GB of memory and my swap is regularly 20 GB but I don’t have any problems when actually working with the system. It’s handling the low memory situation very gracefully.
For browsing, office and some media it’s totally fine.
I just wished Apple would revert that shitty Liquid Ass UI. It made the operating system unusable.
This thing can run iPad apps right? So at least that is an option when the desktop version is shite. This laptop is aimed at college and high school kids who just need a browser and take notes. It’s probably fine for that. I mean I’m using an iPhone 14 for the last 4 years and it works just fine. It’s a Chromebook alternative it’s not for power users.
Just look at how many crappy Chromebooks get sold to schools. The Neo is the perfect replacement for that market.
Powered by A18 Pro
Completing the MacBook Neo experience is macOS Tahoe
Woah, this is new! A version of Mac OSX running on a iPhone/iPad CPU.
Not new, the Apple Silicon Developer Transition Kit had an A12. And of course the M-series is based on the A-series, so in a way they’ve always been iPhone/iPad chips.
They’re clearly going for the same thing on all devices at some point. There’s a lot of money to be made locking shit down and keeping your users hostage.
So a glorified tablet?
It’s a Chromebook alternative.
If its the full macOS, I don’t think we can say that. That’s what makes this so interesting as it is a first of its kind.
Now, if it performs like a dog compared to an equivalent spec M3 or M4 Macbook Air, then we probably could call it a glorified tablet.
Performance wise it’s an interesting one. I think from a price and energy standpoint it sits squarely against windows ultrabooks with a Snapdragon X, for example, a Galaxy Book 4 Edge.
Based purely on benchmarks, the A18 Pro is weaker than that, plus you have only 8GB of RAM.
However - I have a Surface Pro X with the original SQ1, with roughly 40% of the performance of these… And even at that level, the problem is Windows on ARM, not the performance. It only lets you down for things it’s clearly not meant to do, like video editing.
Another alternative I see for that price is a windows laptop with an i5-1334U, which theoretically gives you a raw performance within 2% of the A18 Pro.
Given that at this price Linux compatibility is an absolute lottery, would I sacrifice half the RAM for having an OS that isn’t Windows? Yeah there’s not much to think. W11 will probably eat half the RAM on telemetry alone, and Apple’s BS is easier to put up with than MicroSlop’s…
I’m not sure we can use the “Windows x86 vs Windows ARM” analog for this new unit from Apple. MacOS Tahoe is a native ARM OS on both the high end and now this low end unit. With Windows its a completely different CPU architecture.
Apple has to know this is going to cannibalize its low end (8GB/256GB SSD) Macbook Air line. So will Apple discontinue the low config Air or is there some other differentiator that still makes the low config Air compelling?
I’m not mad about this, especially with Google pushing Gemini so hard on all their devices. I pulled up the Chromebook site to see their current offerings, and the prominent advertisement for Gemini is pretty disgusting after fresh news of another death.
