Source…? I see this claim thrown around so much without any backing and my experience with mac os (and other darwin variants) is just terrible. My previous portable was a 2015 mac book pro with 16 (!) gigs of ram (mind-blowing for 2026 standards, I know) and the os just became terribly and unbearably sluggish with all the useless updates (that nb mostly removed features, e.g. ClearType was wiped off the face of the Earth in back in mac os Mojave) caking on, at some point I just gave up on trying to fix it with continuously reinstalling and balancing it. My current portable has quarter the amount of workmem and is just incredibly snappy esp. compared to that mac book. And I don't even use portables for anything too heavy, I have an actual PC for that.

Compared to Windows or Android, sure. Hopefully the Asahi folks will get around to supporting this device so we can run a proper lightweight OS on it.

I got the 8 GB version of the M1 Mac Book air for a freelance stuff where I had to ship stuff for iOS as well. Really wish I had gone for the 16 GB version, since I had no idea just how bad the memory situation would eventually get. That said, it’s at least a good little computer for me being on the move!

Same with the iPad Air m1, handles everything you throw at it, does video editing, office, etc. Connected to an external display and keyboard feels like a full laptop, on the couch is the best consumption device. And with Claude it can handle your coding sessions.

And you forgot the best part: it is completely silent.

a bit of an aside but what's amazing is that Docker's recent beta VM for Mac (I think released a couple of months ago now) has dramatically improved the performance you get out of your CPU.

Using a macbook air, even a recent one, before this Docker was definitely usable but noticably slower. Probably still worth it but a noticable tradeoff using it as a dev machine Vs a pro. Now that tradeoff has basically gone away.

Entry-spec M1 Air is the best computer ever made.

I can't stand Apple, but it's the truth. I used one sporadically to build my stuff for Mac. Going back to my Windows workstation after that always felt like travelling 15 years back in time. I recommended M1 Air to everyone whose workflow was compatible with a Mac. Most of the people who acted on that recommendation still use it and don't really think about upgrading.

I had a ton of issues with my Macbook pro M1 16GB, memory pressure would be in the yellow always and into red frequently which caused sound stutter and all sorts of issues.

My M1 air (I think 8GB?) had similar issues My M2 24gb was amazing - especially since it allowed dual monitors. I recently upgraded to the M4 32GB and it is my "do everything" computer and is absolutely awesome.

My personal experience with the m-series is that get as memory as possible. I do feel the M1 had issues based on the couple I owned.

EDIT: Even on 32GB my memory pressure is constantly in the yellow, but have not seen it go to red

My concern with the Neo is that it may have the same "feels impossible for the price" quality early on, but the 8GB ceiling gives it much less room to become the kind of absurd long-lived machine your Air turned into

TIL you can run OpenBSD on apple silicon. With how much effort has gone into Asahi Linux, I'm surprised.

It has no graphics acceleration, right? Doesn’t windowing feel sluggish?

I have m1 pro mbp with 32gig ram too. I've never thought to upgrade my laptop and still.

Have you tried the screen zoom in accessibility settings? The responsiveness is great with the trackpad gestures.

Ram is massively more expensive in 2026 than it was in 2020. And the tasks the average person does hasn't changed in that time. I think it could be a good thing that Apple is setting a baseline that your apps should run with 8gb, there isn't a good reason you couldn't work with that amount.

>making decent dongles a necessity

I used a macbook air all throughout school, I never once owned a dongle or even plugged the thing in to an external monitor. My requirements were something that could run photoshop/illustrator and chrome. If I ever transfered something over USB it was a 300kb docx file or something else that would have copied instantly at 2.0 speeds.

I think there's a huge problem of tech enthusiasts projecting their own requirements on to a device that is designed for a very different person, and then declaring it unfit for use. Apple prioritized things that actually matter to students like battery life, lightness, price, and hinges that don't snap after the first year. Rather than tons of super fast IO and 32gb ram.

This cheap laptop is not for people with external displays. Almost everyone buying this would have no desire for an external display, they wouldn’t even feel this as a limitation.

If you want a separate display or super fast data transfers, more usb ports or more than 8MB of RAM buy one of the more expensive laptops.

> On a $600 PC

Yes, but it is uncommon for a $600 PC to have a beautiful screen, great trackpad, metal case, and top notch build quality. Also, the neo performs really really well.

A multi-port USB-C hub is about ten dollars on Amazon. If a Neo owner really needs additional ports they're a few bucks. For a vast majority of Neo owners the lack of ports is a non-issue and for the others that occasionally need the extra ports they're cheap.

I doubt there's many Neo buyers that really needed multiple Thunderbolt ports but decided to pick up the $600 entry level machine instead.

If they can maintain the same price tag for A19 based Macbook Neo with 12GB of RAM, I genuinely do not know how other companies can compete.

The assortment of cheap USB sticks I have do not surpass 400mbit/sec. Not even the ones labeled USB3.0 or High Speed.

"genuinely" is an AI tell now as well as doing things in physical world that don't make sense like walking to the car wash to wash your car if it's close, or maybe not using USB ports in the way they were designed...

Yep. For me it was a perfect gift to replace moms 10+ year old Intel based MacBook Air.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

The computer pops up a warning if you plug a fast device into the slow port, which is a lot more informative for the average user than a tiny label that most users wouldn’t even read.

Labels would be nice, I guess, but their absence is hardly a dealbreaker.

You get a message on screen that you should be using the other port.

But yes, labeling should have been better. One of the USPs of MacBooks is that all USB ports are the same. Unlike other computers where you have to look where you are plugging it in. The Neo breaks that tradition.

Do you think those same users know the difference between usb3, usb4, and thunderbolt (or even that all three exist)? More over, do you think they know how to tell cables apart for the three?

Apple should show users an alert when they plug a USB-3 device into the USB-2 port because they are visually identical

Oh wait https://i.imgur.com/7HWgxZ1.png

I don't know the details of Apple's silicon designs, but I assume the USB port bandwidth is because this is using the chip from iPhone 16 Pro, a phone which of course had a single USB-3 port. They've done what they can with it to hit the price point.

The alternative was to not include a second USB port for charging, in which case people would be bitching about it not being able to use peripherals while charging like the last time they made a single port laptop.

This is why standardising in USB c the connector was a mistake.

> Stuff doesn't just 'stop working'

They didn't say that. In fact they said the total opposite

> As a reasonable alternative, you can stick Linux on it and it'll run nicely

Somewhat true for Intel

Not so true for Apple Silicon (Asahi are only upto M2 I think?)

After years of incremental upgrades to the Airs, a new entry level M5 Air gives you double the RAM, double the storage, and double the CPU and GPU performance of an M1 Air.

Hopefully used Airs will come up for sale more frequently, as they remain a step up from the Neo.

which seem to be out of stock in any case, so probably not a loss for apple.

https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/mac

Whatever you do, do not try one out before you’re ready to buy.

GP expressly said the wife does not code: she uses claude.

I can top that (he said bitterly). My wife is still gorgeous after 30+ years of marriage and is a 10x programmer. But she was happy when given the choice not to work when we married, and hasn’t touched a compiler in decades.

I did well in business, but the family joke is that I’d be a billionaire if I could have monetized her.

Ironically these are all text-based applications where the actual content on screen is in the order of a few hundred bytes. They've managed to reach a bloat factor of one million.

Apple is no stranger to using a web browser for basic OS functionality. Several pages in the settings app are actually WebKit, source: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/inspecting-web-views-in-ma...

Web browsers come preinstalled and come embedded throughout the os.

But, webkit is much better than chrome in memory usage. If only we could force slack and vs code to use the engine better suited for the job.

because they decided that running elasticsearch on your machine is a great idea!

GitHub, GitHub…where else have I seen that name recently?