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Posted by bcye 6 hours ago

Big Data on the Cheapest MacBook(duckdb.org)
233 points | 198 commentspage 3
TacticalCoder 4 hours ago|
I'm interested by one (not for big data) but only 8 GB or RAM is kinda really sad.

My good old LG Gram (from 2017? 2015? don't even remember) already had 24 GB of RAM. That was 10 years ago.

A decade later I cannot see myself being a laptop with 1/3rd the mem.

maratc 4 hours ago|
Did your LG Gram cost $450 (to make for $600 in today's money) in 2015-17?

If it didn't, Apple has other laptops today with more RAM.

BoredPositron 5 hours ago||
Queue the endless blog posts about running tech on the potato macbook and being stunned it’s functional with massive trade-offs. Groundbreaking stuff.
Schiendelman 5 hours ago||
That usage is "Cue", not "queue".
LeifCarrotson 5 hours ago||
Cue the queue of blogs! Trigger the formation of a line of posts to be published sequentially.
butILoveLife 3 hours ago||
[flagged]
fnord77 3 hours ago||
this has a phone CPU/memory
pella 3 hours ago||
other test:

2025-09-08 : "Big Data on the Move: DuckDB on the Framework Laptop 13"

"TL;DR: We put DuckDB through its paces on a 12-core ultrabook with 128 GB RAM, running TPC-H queries up to SF10,000."

https://duckdb.org/2025/09/08/duckdb-on-the-framework-laptop...

irenetusuq 5 hours ago||
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shablulman 5 hours ago||
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Aniakshay 4 hours ago||
[flagged]
Jeffrin-dev 5 hours ago||
[flagged]
post-it 5 hours ago|
Did you use AI to write a one-paragraph comment?
SteveNuts 5 hours ago|||
> MacBook Neo's NVMe being slower than the Air/Pro isn't just a benchmark footnote — it compounds with file count in a non-linear way.

The “isn’t just” part is a dead giveaway almost always.

Schiendelman 5 hours ago||||
It's probably worse than that - he probably used AI to look for things to comment on and automatically create comments. He's not even here.
4ggr0 5 hours ago||||
it really is the stereotypical form of "it's not just this, it's actually that", and even an em-dash!
_joel 5 hours ago|||
Account was created 3 days ago, probably one of those bloody clawdbots.
opentokix 5 hours ago||
Mind blown, if you need to handle "big" data on the move - the macbook neo is not the right choice. - Who would have guessed that outcome?
g947o 5 hours ago|
It occurs to me that there is near zero overlap between people who use a Macbook Neo and people who run DuckDB locally.

It would be a surprise if more than 0.1% of Macbook Neo users have even heard of DuckDB.

Which means that this article is probably just riding the hype.

hrmtst93837 5 hours ago||
Trying DuckDB on lower-end Macbooks does show you dont need much muscle for moderate-size analytics. Long term it isnt cost-effective compared to budget laptops but its super simple for self-contained pipelines. The thing is 8GB RAM leaves you stuck once your data actually grows past the marketing demo.
NetMageSCW 3 hours ago|||
Can’t give up and admit that 8GB of RAM is enough, can you?
g947o 1 hour ago|||
I think you completely missed the point.

People buy Macbook Neo because they "just need a laptop" or are budget conscious.

I imagine a student would get their hands wet with Postgre before looking at DuckDB or similar.

It would be a surprise if they do heavy workloads with DuckDB. In which case it's definitely worth investing in a more powerful computer.

hermanzegerman 5 hours ago|
That's an awesome idea to get a bricked MacBook Neo really fast because those idiots soldered the SSD inside
windowsrookie 5 hours ago||
Apple has been soldering the SSD into MacBooks for over 10 years now, and most 10 year old MacBooks still have a working SSD.
hermanzegerman 4 hours ago||
Not if you're powerusing it like in the Article and relying heavily on Swap.

Also there are countless reports of bricked M1 8GB MacBook Airs that are bricked because the SSD used up it's write cycles

https://youtu.be/0qbrLiGY4Cg?si=mjKn2oLjqAb36hPU

havaloc 3 hours ago||
That's not what the video insinuates.
hermanzegerman 4 minutes ago||
Yes you're right. I meaned a different video, but I can't find it right now. I've looked it up, and back then MacOS had a bug which exacerbated that issue. Here is an article

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/23/m1-mac-users-report-exc...

lachlan_gray 5 hours ago|||
Not sure about the ssd in particular but the neo is apparently pretty modular

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k7Lv7f-5CQ

sam345 4 hours ago||
Fantastic tear down. Thank you. Amazing for Apple. I hope this is the trend going forward but probably not. But still a gazillion screws? I just replaced the keyboard for my old hp elitebook with two screws.
hermanzegerman 3 hours ago||
I don't care about a gazillion screws, if it's serviceable in the End.

If Apple would build their laptops serviceable like ThinkPads I would buy one today.

MBCook 2 hours ago||
It seems like they’re starting to learn the cost of being too integrated.

They’ve slowly been moving towards making it easier to repair individual broken parts. I’m very happy to see that a new keyboard doesn’t require replacing the entire top case. That was just crazy.

k4rnaj1k 5 hours ago||
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