The Apple MacBook Neo's $599 starting price is a "shock" to the Windows PC industry, according to an Asus executive.

Hsu said he believes all the PC players—including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD—take the MacBook Neo threat seriously. "In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product," he added, given that rumors about the MacBook Neo have been making the rounds for at least a year.

Despite the competitive threat, Hsu argued that the MacBook Neo could have limited appeal. He pointed to the laptop's 8GB of "unified memory," or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can't upgrade it.

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[–] 167 points 8 months ago (47 children)

I can't speak for Macs. But in the Linux world, 8GB is fine. In Windows it's awful because of all that bloat. I'm guessing Macs fair better for OS efficiency.

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  • [–] 69 points 8 months ago*

    8GB of ram on Macs is fine for work and medium photo/video editing, as long as you have plenty of SSD space and don’t use Apple Intelligence.

    People forget that MacOS is UNIX at its core.

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  • [–] 137 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Macs don't have copilot so that's like 4GB saved right there

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  • [–] [S] 32 points 8 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (14 children)

    I'm running Mint on an 8GB laptop and I'm surprised by just how much can be running at one time. Right now I'm running Firefox with 10 open tabs, Waterfox with 8 tabs, Thunderbird, Keepass, Calibre, Signal, a Whatsapp client, Syncthing, Libreoffice Writer with 2 open docs & Calc with 2 open small spreadsheets, a couple of terminals and Gedit, and didn't even notice it until came across these comments. A friend who uses Windows 11 says 32GB is recommended now.

    Microsoft must be thrilled with age verification being required at the OS level. What a great way to lock people into their Microslop garbage.

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  • [–] 35 points 8 months ago (11 children)

    Right now I’m running Firefox with 10 open tabs,

    Oh......I guess I'm the only one who opens firefox, and literally thousands of tabs.

    One day I closed one window and it said "Are you sure you want to close 158 tabs?"

    I said yes. It was one window. I had 23 more windows.

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  • [–] [S] 13 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    When I get to 20 or so I have to start closing some tabs to keep track of things. How do you find the tab you're looking for when you have that many open?

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Zen (firefox (gecko) derivative, No AI, focus on decluttered interface) has bloody excellent tab management these days, workspaces, folders, horizontal tab lists (like sideberry), essentials (tab icons pinned to the top), auto unload, all built in, and everything disappears when reading a page.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago

    Literally thousands? Have you tried bookmarking things after they've sat unused for awhile?

    I typically just periodically save my browser windows with a tab manager extension. I just say because thousands sounds like way too much to keep track of...

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    on my work PC at the moment (lovely little AMD 5700u mini-pc with 16Gb ram) I have a debloated LTSC build on W11 and two profiles of firefox running with a total of 25 tabs, a couple of them are more complex web apps but most are static pages, plus a couple of file browser, an old dumb custom invoicing app we use (~2003 application so its very light) and a VNC viewer with another machine running.

    7.9gb of ram use.

    it's not that bad really, I mean it's a lot for just mostly websites but we know they arent as light as they used to be, 8gb would be too little since I need some dedicated for Vram as I run 3 displays but I certainly dont need much more than 16.

    I did have 32gb in this machine at first since I was doing some light photoshop and basic CAD/CAM, but it very rarely exceeded 16gb, so I cut it back and it's been absolutely fine.

    If you give windows more ram, it will use more ram as a baseline of course, unused ram is wasted ram.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (8 children)

    I use mainly Linux but Mac is more efficient with RAM than Linux is also. By a significant amount.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    What?

    I use OSX for work and Linux on my personal laptop, that hasn't been my experience at all

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    There are some advantages macOS can have but it depends on usage patterns and user knowledge:

    • You don’t have to configure swap on macOS, while on Linux you can get into a situation where e.g. at install time you set up some default 2 GB swap but then it’s not enough and you don’t know that’s a thing that can be changed.
    • You don’t have to configure compression for RAM or swap on macOS; on Linux you often have to know you can set up zram/zswap if you want it. Compression can make a huge difference for users that switch between memory heavy applications as long as they don’t literally switch every 5 seconds.
    • On macOS, applications generally use the same frameworks e.g. for UI (because there is not much choice), and they can be loaded once and shared between all of them. Linux can share libraries too but users can run into situations where their applications use multiple different versions of Qt, GTK, etc. at the same time, and then you have stuff like snap on top that comes with its own copies of even basic system libraries. Containers also do this. As a Linux user you can avoid library bloat to some extent but “normal” users are not aware of it in the first place.
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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    Dynamic swap and zswap aren't really the same as efficient ram usage it's just good ways to mitigate when you run out. But when your using actual swap it's in my experience more noticable on OSX than Linux, which at least for me remains responsive until you're using a lot of swap.

    Linux can share libraries too but users can run into situations where their applications use multiple different versions of Qt, GTK, etc. at the same time

    Maybe Arch & Flatpak users hit this, but avoiding multiple versions of the same library is what distros exist for and avoiding loading different frameworks is what Desktop Environments are for. Although the ability to restore apps after closing them is pretty sweet and built in to OSX in a way that lets me safely kill apps to reduce the memory I'm using.

    I think the main reason my Linux setup consumes less memory is probably because I used Kate for most file editing instead of vscode, which is probably an unfair advantage to Linux.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Dynamic swap and zswap aren't really the same as efficient ram usage it's just good ways to mitigate when you run out.

    I disagree. If the OS automatically identifies unneeded pages and compresses them or swaps them out, it’s certainly using the physical memory more efficiently than if it wasn’t doing these things.

    avoiding multiple versions of the same library is what distros exist for

    But they can’t if the applications they want to ship don’t all use the same version. E.g. Ubuntu ships GTK 2, 3, and 4. Arch even still ships GTK 1 in addition to these three.

    avoiding loading different frameworks is what Desktop Environments are for

    What happens is you run KDE but then you still want to run Firefox so you still need GTK.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    To clarify, some versions of Linux are lighter weight with resources, and macOS does tend to take up more RAM at rest to make things pull up snappier, if you have it to spare. But their compression algorithm is better, and if you are using near the limit, it will be more efficient with the use of the RAM you have available before lagging. With Windows and Linux, it feels more like if you're out of RAM you're out if RAM. It's less likely to happen at all on Linux though.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    What compression algorithm? The osx kernel is largely open source so they aren't doing some secret compression, do they hardware offload it or something?

    OSX enables zswap by default, but on a laptop that regular uses it, I'm not convinced it's a trade-off that's worth it, although swapping is different on OSX (IMO worse on modern desktops as it swaps whole apps) so I could be wrong.

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  • [+] -18 points 8 months ago (12 children)

    MacOS is like 6 gb of ram doing nothing

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    It can also do things and still use the same 6 gigs.

    MacOS caches a lot. That memory is freed when it's needed for other things.

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    No I keep seeing this "caches a lot" thing keeps getting repeated. Memory break downs already accounts for that. They shows the different break downs of ram usage. In use vs cached.

    This is 6gb of inuse memory while the laptop is chilling. Cached memory is typically like 80% of whatever the ram is on your device. If you hit that 8gb your app is getting killed before the kernel kills a system process.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Okay I don't think you've actually used MacOS lol

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Ive got a stack of them right next to me. I work on them regularly. I know older versions of macOS are lean but Tahoe and Seqouia are noticeably heavier. Its not a problem because the devices running them have 16gb+ of ram. But I'm worried 8gb will impose contains on usage. I know it'll do basic stuff like run a browser but i think people are overestimating how capable this device will be.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    Okay, fair, I haven't used Tahoe or Sequoia myself. But I think we'll see how these fare when people actually start using them. I'm very much not the target audience, I'm looking at the M5 or M5 Pro models myself.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Ok I finally remembered to check a Mac. Just after a fresh imaging it was using 5.8gb of ram. Latest version of Tahoe. Not quite the 8gb I claimed but after usage I can see it beinf 6/7gb with nothing major open.

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    That’s not true at all.

    I constantly have Illustrator, Photoshop, Sibelius, Scrivener, and about 100 browser tabs open on my 10 year old MacBook with 8gb of RAM without issue.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    That is pretty surprising to me. I noticed a significant bump in resource requirements for Sequoia and again for Tahoe. I've got a stack of macs next to me I'll see if I can find one still running sequoia and reassess my opinion.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    Oh, if it matters, I also run Memory Clean 2 to monitor RAM usage and do Extreme Clean from time to time.

    I forgot about this because it’s basically muscle memory at this point, but maybe this is making a difference?

    As of right now with just Sibelius, Scrivener, and about 40 browser tabs (no Adobe), I have 2.01 GB free.

    e: I downvoted my original comment since it’s now occurred to me that this app may be why my machine isn’t struggling.

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  • [–] 44 points 8 months ago (30 children)

    He pointed to the laptop’s 8GB of “unified memory,” or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can’t upgrade it.

    Given the price of RAM, you'd need to sell a kidney to upgrade it in a Windows laptop these days, so that's not much of a difference, although 8MB is a little skimpy, I'll give him that one.

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  • [–] -3 points 8 months ago (20 children)

    My phone has more RAM than that. I can't imagine running a computer with that little memory considering how poorly optimized software tends to be at this point.

    I'm not sure what the overhead for Mac OS is, but that has to be basically rock bottom to be even considered functional unless you're running one of the lighter Linux builds.

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    I got a free, going to be recycled, dell with 8gb of ram from work. I threw in an nvme and installed Linux. It's not the lightest Linux install, but it is Arch, so definitely on the lighter side. I idle at under 1gb and under normal use don't break 2. I do some coding which uses more but nothing super crazy. MacOS probably uses a little more ram, but it's not Windows. I'd wager than the vast majority of people don't come close to using all of that RAM, and power users are going to get hardware for the task, and this isn't it.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Under 1GB on a modern build is pretty light. I run CachyOS and I'm pretty sure I idle at significantly more than that. Though I honestly haven't checked, and don't really want to close everything out to find out haha. I do know I'm currently using more than 8GB and not doing anything super heavy, but I do have multiple programs running. And multitasking is always going to be a killer for a system with low RAM limits. There is a reason my laptop has 32 and my desktop has 64.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    I did just check and I was wrong. I idle at 1.6GB. I may have been thinking of a single app I had open when I looked the other day. I did just open Firefox and it took about a gig. Opening about 20 tabs and navigating to different sites did Bum it up to about 5gb. So yea, 8 is on the lower end, but it's usable and I'd bet most people would be fine. Throw in things like swap and high speed storage, I feel most people wouldn't notice. Definitely not enough for high usage though.

    I miss when 4gb was good enough.

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  • [–] 24 points 8 months ago (8 children)

    I mean, at its heart, Mac OS is a heavily re-tooled fork of the BSD platform, so it's not inconceivable that it's light enough to run on 8G. I doubt it would run well on 8G, but it could do it.

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  • [–] 40 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

    My M1 MacBook Air idles at 1.03GB, my XPS 13 running Gnome on Vanilla OS idles at 2.4GB

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    GNOME on immutable distros = very bloated. Try antiX instead, as it uses a lighter DE.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    It runs fine, unless you load up on chrome tabs, or try to run pro apps. Itdoes basic photo editing and admin apps and phone holiday video editing just fine for average users. I have a lot of clients with 8GB M1 machines.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    I know it was lighter than windows the last time I used Mac, but that has been quite a few years now. Hopefully it is a decent machine. Computing just keeps getting more expensive, so having more budget options is definitely good as long as they are reasonably functional.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    MacOS' kernel is derived from Mach, though with with some BSD code, and is Apple's own work since then. Its API is compatible with FreeBSD, but it's not FreeBSD. And the FreeBSD userland tools don't have effect on systemwide memory management.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    Just to play devil’s advocate: a smartphone is definitely a computer and has no trouble competing with older laptop CPUs in benchmarks. I see this as a difference without a distinction beyond form factor.

    8GB is 💯 barely serviceable. I see this is a product for a casual user only, with excellent build quality. I don’t think it ages well when pushed.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I mean… of course it’s for the causal users what kind of observation is that?

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    What appears to be common sense to you is hardly common sense to the consumer. I choose to be more inclusive thinking of a person who might not necessarily know what 8 GB means. That's a ton of Apple's customers.

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  • [+] -7 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    or what amounts to its RAM

    You can criticize the amount of RAM, but it’s still RAM. Clown.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    They’re hinting at the fact that those 8GB are shared between the CPU and GPU. So it’s not dedicated, which you’d expect if someone said “RAM.”

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    RAM is RAM. If you take issue with it being unified say so, but it’s still RAM.

    He sounds like he’s grasping.

    The neo is going to eat his lunch, and he knows it.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago

    If you take issue with it being unified say so, but it’s still RAM.

    He did say so. 8GB unified when a Linux laptop has 8GB of ram and an Nvidia 5050 with 8 GB of VRAM is 16GB of Ram despite not being marketed as a 16 GB laptop.

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  • [–] 39 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    The perfect time for a relatively cheap Apple laptop when Microsoft is forcing people to buy new hardware just to use their latest version of their operating system. I wonder what the percentage of Microsoft folks who go to the MacBook will be. I wonder what the percentage of users who go the UNIX/Linux route would be. I'm not an apple fan myself so would go linux, but a good business move from Apple though.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    That would be interesting to watch.

    If I ever had to buy a personal laptop again, it'd definitely make the list.

    Obnoxious hardware prices are what kept me off mac for so long. Now all prices are obnoxious maybe it would even out.

    Great move if they can capitalize on it

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    They were making a lot on build quality, convenience, brand, ecosystem, cultism, software quality, but not so much on power.

    Now power became more expensive for suppliers, and for things listed before it you have to restructure marketing and everything. Apple doesn't have that problem. They also have rid themselves of the legacy problem by two softer changes (dropping 32 bit Intel, then moving to ARM) instead of one hard change.

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  • [–] 68 points 7 months ago* (8 children)

    Dude, the difference between you and Apple is Windows 11. They don't have a crappy copilot or Edge hoarding 4GB in the background just to show the weather.

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  • [–] 40 points 7 months ago

    That's a big difference but not all. The sub-$1000 ultrabook sector has SO MUCH garbage, like Intel Celerons that stutter when you scroll down a web page designed in 2022+. Manufacturers are happy because they can sell rubbish and uncle John with no idea about computers will say "I want a laptop with 1 TB so it's faster, and it must have free office 365 and an antivirus"...

    So when someone puts a phone processor in a laptop and builds a chassis that isn't a $5 extruded plastic shell, they panic because it still manages to be better in both benchmarks and real world use despite the paltry amount of RAM.

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  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Indeed. PC manufacturers should just invest in the Linux ecosystem.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Unfortunately, these particular devices were kinda shit lol

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    EEEs were amazing! Not because of their performance or specs, but because they were a fully working compute for dirt cheap at only $199! Remember, these were released 5 years before the first Raspberry Pi. The original model of EEE with its 7" screen 512MB RAM and 4GB of slow SSD storage were plenty of compute for small tasks or portable applications. The cheapest fully functional laptop you could buy at retail those days would still cost you $800-$900 for a pretty horrible machine.

    Linux was part of the secret sauce that made them successful because it meant they didn't have to pay for an OEM Windows XP license.

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