Can’t wait to read about those 720p screens with 350 nits of brightness
I know the market is fucked due to many reason but can’t wait for these to come out to do a solid low power proxmox mini pc running my homelab for my house. That arc on U7 or U9 series 3 will be long term overkill for emulators and jellyfin. Might get a second one for steam, done with the whole eGPU, I’m fine with decent 1080p, just want to play.
Seems they don’t understand the seeking points of the Neo and why it’s a bigger deal:
- Physical support services included
- It’s not Windows
- Great battery life
Just having a price point that matches is bullshit. That’s how we ended up with eMachines, bruh.
Theyre very repairable too
Hey look! We rediscovered netbooks!
Might have to dust off my EeePC.
I still have my original 7" EEE PC somewhere in storage (batteries removed). It was the 900mhz model which I imported from Asia. That little thing was so cool, with a little utility I could undervolt and downclock it to 700mhz. That way the fan would never run and the battery time was very long. I absolutely loved that little machine.
Ive got 2 different models that i cant remember the models for collecting dust, ive been thinking of using the carcass of one and upgrade it with a better screen and some sbc
Hah, I did exactly the same. Mine arrived with a broken fan, but it didn’t matter because it never kicked in anyway. I used it as a Gameboy emulator for quite a while, it was actually small enough to hold like a handheld with QWAS acting as a Dpad.
Learning how to type with that tiny keyboard was a fun challenge.
Ah yes because the bloat from Windows 11 won’t make these struggle to do even basic tasks. So much background shit going on from the get-go that you still have to wait seconds for a single click to register or open the start menu.
Say what you want about Apple, there’s a good deal to say, but at least their OS isn’t a corporate bloatware/spyware/adware/malware infested mess that runs badly for the sake of the bloatware.
At least the OS can be swapped. If the battery life is abysmal compared to the Neo for similar specs then there’s no redemption possible.
The only way I’d favor this over a Neo is similar battery life and user-replaceable RAM (ideally LPCAMM2).
Not that I’m defending windows or disagreeing, but there is a difference - windows run almost every PC hardware and still supports decades old legacy apps
True, but that’s not what causes them to run slow and shitty.
Did Intel somehow manage to close the yawning performance-per-watt gap with Apple Silicon, or is this just this year’s latest potato?
Man, what is even happening at Intel? Apple and AMD have made them look absolutely pathetic, not to mention their own processors grenading for fun.
Their recent release has them pretty competitive with AMD and Apple to an extent again. It’s not an absolute disaster that was pre 16th gen (if that’s what they’re called) .
They had been operating on the same premise for a long time. Use dirty tactics along side with superior tech to heavily punish the competition. Then coast along for as long as possible, maximizing profits and doing little else. Rinse and repeat.
However this hinges on them getting the superior tech at the right moment, just as the competition is surging again after years of Intel coasting. This backfired in the past when Prescott had a new 90nm process that had way more leakage than expected. This raised the amount of energy the chip required to operate, which in turn raised the heat. This limited the clockspeed, which made them slow and energy hungry. Desktops were slow and noisy and laptops were impossible due to the power requirements. And the Netburst architecture they had needed high clockspeeds which also wasn’t possible. It failed hard and allowed AMD to surge with their Athlon64 chips absolutely destroying anything Intel had at that time. Intel needed to go back to their P6 design (pre-netburst), which had been kept alive in the company for their Pentium M series.
It backfired again recently when Intel failed to make the expected jumps in process node. The chip design was perfectly fine, but pretty ordinary as compared to AMDs lineup. Especially on the high end AMD had more performance on the table. As the new process node failed and AMD had TSMC make their high end chips, AMD took the lead once again. This failure was compounded by a large scale production error where oxidation of one of the internal cpu layers wasn’t caught by QA. This made a small (but significant) percentage of chips fail after a few years. Intel figured out a workaround where changing some of the power regulation allowed for the oxidation to not occur or get worse. But chips that already failed or were about to, still failed. This led to consumers being annoyed and weary of buying Intel again and enterprise customers forcing Intel to replace a lot of chips at no costs.
Another big part is the whole GPU thing, where Intel has had integrated GPUs for a long time, but no dedicated product. The performance, compatibility and features were poor, basically enough to connect a monitor for office work but not much more. They even released a couple of products with AMD integrated GPUs, combined with Intel cpus because their on-board graphics were so poor. They tried to fix this multiple times, but failed each time. Recently with their Arcmage and later Battlemage products they are finally in a position to sell products. But the performance is still poor and compatibility is hampering them quite a bit. Even when selling them at a loss, it’s hard to be competitive. And then when the AI boom hit, they were left out in the cold. Nvidia won that race, selling so many chips for AI. AMD did significantly worse, but still good as compared to Intel. Intel has been selling some AI products, but it’s nothing compared to the others.
Then there’s the whole ARM thing. People have been saying for years one could build pretty good chips with them. In the past companies like Qualcomm and Mediatek said as much, but weren’t taken seriously. Then Samsung made their own and also said as much. Again they weren’t taken seriously, they are good chips for phones and perhaps tablets, but for serious computing you need more power. Sure the performance per watt is good, but no way that scales right. But someone at Apple was listening after getting frustrated with Intel. They had moved from IBM to Intel in the past without much trouble. So they invested, designed some chips and blew people away with their results. Enough for Microsoft for example to also try again with Arm chips, having failed miserably with the software in the past. This might hurt Intel a lot in the future, as they were often the preferred supplier when it came to running Windows.
So yeah a lot of things going on, there’s also some shady financial stuff involved and more tech stuff. It’s an interesting, complicated and unfolding story. Like so many things today, we have no idea how the future will be in regards to Intel.
And the OS they chose is Fedora Linux, right? Right?
From a certain point of view, perhaps…
They don’t not run Linux, with a little help. And the setup process will probably be as long as booting into Windows for the first time anyway.
But in the meantime you pay somewhere around 60-90$ of that price in a M$ license you’re not even going to use…
Uh…. Well….
A $600 laptop with only 8GB of RAM was never an amazing deal by normal laptop standards.
Fucking thank you LOL. It’s an otherwise very powerful and high quality laptop that’s absolutely kneecapped with 8GB of unupgradeable RAM. Its insufficient for even the most basic of tasks, and has been for years. Give it 16GB and the Air is a dead product.
The next generation is supposed to have 12GB which will be a significant improvement, but most likely at a higher price, given the overwhelming demand.
It’s like you’ve never used an ARM Mac.
8GB M1 MacBook Air (an equivalent spec) can do all kinds of crazy things you wouldn’t expect it to.
It’s not “absolutely kneecapped” unless you’re doing pro stuff. It’s fine for home movie HD video editing or audio production that isn’t tons of tracks or any kind of basic administrative task you need. Even chrome with 20 tabs, if you must.
I have used them. That’s how I know. Despite what Apple will tell you, they’re not magic. 8GB is 8GB, regardless of what processor it runs on.
I’m forced to use one for work. It handles Xcode, simulator, Safari, teams, word and crappy corporate security suite simultaneously surprisingly well. Having only a 256GB SSD is far more annoying for development work than 8GB ram.
Would still get a minimum of 32gb for my personal machine, but it’s fine for normal users.
At least if there were two upgradable RAM slots the end user would have the choice to add a second 8GB card at a later point (or even just one slot for compactness), but that of course isn’t the way Apple does things.
Honor, ASUS, and HP are the first to ship laptops powered by Intel Wildcat Lake CPUs
Considering this is an article about shipping notebooks, the lack of product photos is astonishing.
Apple with some exceptions has the drivers and hardware sorted out pretty solidly, and they seem to have better memory management than windows; factor in the target market and the BOM cost and Apple is simply going to win this segment if they choose to continue to participate.
they seem to have better memory management than windows
Windows has RAM compression by default since quite some time.
And RAM compression is free? Or does it have to compete with other background processes that Windows 11 has?
And RAM compression is free?
Of course not but I’m not aware of a different impact on performance compared to macOS.
I said it at the time, Apple is making bank on the Neo, the BOM must be ~$250 at worst.
I mean they built it around chips that otherwise would have been trash so…
(chips with a defect but still quite usable just not up to snuff for what was attempting to be made)
Apple is selling far more powerful iPads for the same price and the only difference is the keyboard+touchpad. The cheap Neo doesn’t even come with touch ID.
the only difference is the keyboard+touchpad
Cool, now check how much an Apple case with keyboard + trackpad for the iPad costs.
Yeah but then look at how the knockoff Magic Keyboard cases, which provide nearly the same functionality (with the exception of pass through charging) cost less than a third of the price.
It’s absolutely insane what Apple charges for that thing.
I’ve had both a Logicrap keyboard case and the Apple one. They’re not even close.
The Logicrap one worked, sure, at least for a while; but the tactile feel of the keys on the Apple case is much nicer. The trackpads are incomparable. But the worst part is the build quality.
The Logicrap one came with a rubberized case for the iPad with a magnetically attached keyboard/trackpad. It both made the iPad feel heavy and bulky, and the rubber part around the ports/speakers started deforming almost immediately (and after a year or so it started tearing). Some key stopped responding after a year or two.
You get what you pay for.
I wanted a cantilever setup so I could use it in bed or on a couch, so I didn’t bother with the Logitech offering. My typecase one is working fine but I haven’t had it for long. When it breaks, if I’m still liking it, I may go for the Apple version. Depends on how long I get out of it.
Cool, now check how much an Apple case with keyboard + trackpad for the iPad costs.
How is retail price related to Apple’s cost of manufacturing of a simple keyboard without touch ID?
I just wish the m5 wasn’t stuck in macbooks.
I’d rather enjoy running real OS on an m5 with a decent keyboard and a non-overdriven-to-the-point-of-smearing display.
It’d also be nice if it didn’t weigh an unreasonable amount for a modern laptop. And didn’t pick up so much physical damage so easilly
Computing like it’s 2015 again, nice. But at least it’s like some random apple product
