I bought the MacBook Neo and it sucks

I bought the MacBook Neo and it sucks(alexandmanu.com)

20 points by leksje 126 days ago | 25 comments

Retr0id 126 days ago |

Used hardware is always going to be a better deal than something brand new. You can get a used M1 MacBook Pro for a similar price to a new Neo, and that will blow it out of the water on all axes except bursted single-core CPU perf. And it'll have a much better screen and trackpad than a similarly priced thinkpad.

The main place the Neo makes sense is for buying a whole classroom full of machines, or for someone who really wants to unbox something new and shiny. It's a chromebook killer.

fragmede 126 days ago | |

When framed that way, it makes a lot more sense. Apple got its start in education with the Apple II going to schools and hooking students for life. Looking at market penetration of Chromebooks in education, it makes a lot of sense for Apple to introduce a laptop for that arena to compete there.

cortesoft 126 days ago |

I don't understand why installing 47 distros and it surviving two operating systems they didn't mean to install has anything to do with the hardware.

It seems like the main complaint is that it is slow. I am not sure what all the other bits are about.

Retr0id 123 days ago | |

A few days late but I've since learned that 47 is just Sonnet 4.6's favourite "random" number.

aksss 126 days ago | |

Had a similar initial reaction, but I guess it's the idea that a 10yo computer for a third of the cost runs circles around the Neo in terms of flexibility and horsepower, which says something about the Neo's character, for sure. I'm certain the Neo was not intended to compete for those prizes, but for me it seems like a very practical benchmark to understand what lane it's in when otherwise not paying attention to Neo's or paleos.

jmkni 126 days ago |

I saw a post on a subreddit earlier where someone was considering getting rid of their 2019 Macbook Pro with an i9 and 32GB of ram, and so many of the comments were egging the poster on and saying it was an upgrade.

Terrible idea. It's cool that Apple are entering the budget space, but the hype around the Neo is nuts.

edit: found it https://old.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/1s2tdrm/is_the_...

plorkyeran 126 days ago | |

That specific Macbook Pro model is famously bad to the extent that people have tried to suggest Apple made that generation intentionally bad to make the m1 look more revolutionary. The Neo's still not going to be better performance when plugged in, but it's a more reasonable comparison than the stats suggests.

dlcarrier 126 days ago | |

Was that the old or new keyboard? If it was the old one, I'd take the downgrade of everything else, to get a keyboard that doesn't jam up if you accidentally breathe on it.

jmkni 126 days ago | | |

It is the butterlfy I think but they had pretty much fixed it by that point, and OP wasn't complaining about the keyboard

bogwog 126 days ago |

It really must suck if it doesn't even come with a shift key.

aksss 126 days ago |

I wonder if the target market for this thing is like my aged parents who basically use their phones for everything, even when it's obviously a painful experience, but they don't want a full-blown computer.

Kind of like a more intentional version of an ipad w/keyboard? I'm not sure I fully understand what the diff is between ipad w/keyboard and the Neo.. price, I suppose.

fragmede 126 days ago | |

And macOS. The Neo's 8GiB of ram has been talked to death, but at the end of the day, iPadOS isn't macOS, which has a window manager with floating windows vs iPadOS' (hacky) side-by-side mode.

aksss 126 days ago | | |

Doesn't iPadOS have floating windows now? https://support.apple.com/en-us/125309

MeetingsBrowser 126 days ago |

> the keyboard actually feels pretty nice. apple did okay there.

I typed on a neo keyboard in store and coming from an M2 Air, the keyboard does not feel nice IMO.

Enough so that I would skip buying one for that reason alone. the keys feel more "squishy" than "clicky".

adamq_q 126 days ago |

this isn’t a real story. check the OP’s account history. day old account, slop blog. OP posting slop replies

Retr0id 126 days ago | |

I'm intrigued, unlike most slop they don't seem to be trying to sell anything, and it doesn't have most of the superficial tells. We'll find out if https://alexandmanu.com/photos/ ever exists.

Edit: I take it back, I clicked through to "all posts" which makes it much more obvious that it's slop.

awakeasleep 126 days ago |

https://web.archive.org/web/20260325183607/https://alexandma...

(archive because the site is down for me)

Summary: It's not as good as my old Thinkpad running Arch

everdrive 126 days ago | |

Thanks for the summary. Tech enthusiasts already know to how to get good performance out of older computers, how to reuse older computers, and how to do their own maintenance and repairs. The macbook neo is obviously not really for those tech enthusiasts, but is for regular people who might like a macbook, don't know tons about technology, and don't want to spend $1k.

thekevan 126 days ago | |

HN says your comment is 3 minutes old and the site is loading just fine for me. (But that was very thoughtful of you.)

marricks 126 days ago |

> i paid $599 for this disappointment. the thinkpad cost me $180 on ebay like seven years ago and i think it’s mocking me now.

The guy is comparing a $200 ebay thinkpad with linux compared to a macbook with a modern operating system.

They're not the target demographic, I can tell you right now schools and (non-tech) parent's aren't going to buy their kids ebay laptops with linux on them.

You might as well say the neo sucks because a 6 year old m1 ebay macbok is a better deal. It's apples to oranges.

ch_123 126 days ago | |

The Thinkpad also likely cost far more than $600 when new. Even a several-year-old flagship laptop is going to be superior in some respects than a brand new laptop designed and produced to cost as little as possible.

megamike 126 days ago |

is it not basically just an iPhone? (I have not had a mac since the classic mac)

leksje 126 days ago | |

Pretty much yeah - it shares the same chip as the iPhone so you're not wrong. Biggest difference is it runs desktop apps (when it feels like it) and has a keyboard, but the DNA is the same.

thinkingtoilet 126 days ago | |

I think this is a play to get more into schools and businesses.

opengrass 126 days ago | | |

The point is to get to "Macbooks with detatchable keyboards" then discontinue the iPad.