Meanwhile, a thought about the Macbook Neo:
The Neo uses an A18 Pro SOC, the 2024 iPhone Pro cpu—the iPhone 17 Pro runs on the A19 Pro. (The Neo soaks up their stockpile of high-end phone rejects.)
Apple's about to ramp up for the 2026 iPhones, which will release in September on the A20Pro.
Phones outsell laptops by a huge margin so I think the current Neo will be quietly replaced by an A19 Pro model in September, to use up the reject stockpile once as iPhone 17 sales tapers off.
/1
Implication: if you want a Macbook Neo this year, maybe wait until September—unless you expect the coming supply chain shock to hit Apple, too. Which is not impossible if TSMC can't meet their chip delivery dates.
If that happens, prices will shoot up and scarcity economics will take over, so buy now and be prepared to run it for the next decade.
/2
I don't need a Macbook Neo. My current "cheap mobile writing machine" niche is filled by a M3 Macbook Air. But my newest iPad and iPhone are two generation old Pro models.
I suspect … no new iPad for me in 2026/27, but *maybe* a spec-bumped Neo in Sept/Oct, which will cover a lot of the iPad use cases (and is cheaper).
Then aim to run it forever.
(I'm overdue for a complete re-think of what I do with my herd of computers, and therefore what I actually need.)
/3 (end)
There is an entire world beyond the limits of the Apple ecosystem.
I don't know what your needs are, but maybe it is time to test the free software waters. If you start replacing your current applications with open source ones, the change to Linux can be pretty seamless.
And the sense of freedom is priceless.
But to each his own.
I saw that coming. A real pity.
I'm a bit surprised a writer has such a hard dependency with MacOS, but things happen and we can't always choose. Tell George R.R. Martin.
About the distro, I'm fully on the systemd and wayland wagon from some years ago, and I happen to love both.
Wayland solved the annoying tearing issues I had with XWindows, and systemd made my boot times an order of magnitude faster. Last time I had a compatibility issue was about two years ago.
I understand that some tinkery oriented people with a vocation of sysadmins can have issues with them, but as a mere user, there is no chance I am even testing any distro without both in the near future.
The good thing about having choices is we can choose.
@jgg @cstross It's probably possible to use a different tool if the absolute need arises, but converting a primary process like that tends to not be cheap, if only in mental energy. (Though probably in reduced output too which readily translates to actual money.)
As for systemd, I don't mind the core system, the unit files work pretty well from the user end. It's all the extra shit like resolved I can do without, and it's run by a plonker with what seems like an "it works on my laptop" approach
@cstross @jgg There is plenty to moan about in Linux land, certainly if you run Ubuntu. Which I do, here too the changeover cost is high and it hasn't sucked quite bad enough yet. Mostly.
Yeah systemd is shitting on "the UNIX philosophy", but the core system does work and offers some quite nice upsides over /etc/init.d scripts from a sysadmin pov.
Flip side is that it's a lot less simple and transparent so if something does go to shit it's more work to figure out WTF this time. Mixed blessing.
(Oh, I know. Only nudging a bit. No sense baiting someone who doesn't have a clue.)
@cstross Mmmh. Don’t want a Neo, but I may have to ponder a new Air after all.
The 2020 M1 doesn’t actually feel slow yet, which makes an impressive change from intel era macs, but it is getting on a bit and the thought of running it for another 5-10 years is a bit um.
I'm personally on team "cheap used laptop from ebay but with Linux", for whatever that's worth.
@woozle Yeah, BTDT.
I flipped back and forth between Mac and Linux every couple of years, getting annoyed with either the fragile never-quite-right project nature of Linux or the slick but rigid somebody-had-a-meeting-and-decided-you-can't-do-that nature of the Mac.
I now have both: A personal Mac and Linux on the work Thinkpad. :-)
@wtfwtf_ok No. The key factor is the availability of those reject iPhone 17 Pro systems-on-chips. If the 18 Pro moves to a new chipset, (a) the Neo's CPU/RAM/Storage is obsolete and starts tapering off, and (b) why not try and upsell some waverers?
Apple did this before with the first unibody Macbook Pro/Macbook circa 2007/08. New model after 9 months! (They deleted Firewire and replaced the port with another USB-C, and deleted the user-replacable battery, strengthening hte case. I had one.)
@cstross the ‘reject’ binned chips are there all along. They don’t need to stop making the 17pro to free-up chips that were never going into in the first place.
I do understand that apple sometimes does a fast follow-up on products (m3 macbook pros launched the same year as the m2, and further back the iPad 4 came out like 6 months after iPad 3) but I don’t think that’s the plan with the Neo, I think this model will be with us through Christmas. I have no inside knowledge though.
@cstross Taiwan is dependent on natural gas for electrical generation. Reports vary about their stockpile, but I haven't seen anything that suggests they might have more than 20 days. And like the rest of East Asia they're supplied from the Persian Gulf.
All by itself, that hit on Qatar's LNG facilities makes me think Apple will not escape the supply shock.
The other part of this is that no one who isn't Apple wants to see "it's a phone" laptops. Other parties may encourage the Neo to fail.
@cstross Those exist, but that's not where MS wants to be competing; they want to keep competing in their incumbent space, where there's all that software and accumulated supply chain breadth and the possibility of making a performance argument.
The whole data center power supply problem gets a lot worse if they have to back up a couple-three fab generations to be able to keep making chips, too. Which is looking increasingly likely as an outcome.
@cstross @graydon Windows on ARM famously sucks though - there's basically no reason not to use a user-friendly linux distro instead (which: been there done that over a decade ago on a chromebook I'd picked for passive cooling)
I do legit want an 8-10" tablet with 16GB of RAM and no particular care whether it's x64 or ARM, mind [so long as I confirm one particular piece of software's latest version builds okay on ARM: not buying a 16GB pi5 just to check that though] - I'm aware I have an odd balance of requirements by most people's standards
@graydon @cstross oh, Apple is super fucked, make zero mistake there. They do not make any of their own parts no matter how much they claim otherwise. For example, that soldered on memory isn't DRAM, it's HBM bonded to the die. They don't make HBM or have solid contracts, and are fighting the grift for those parts and backend. Storage, same story. They're screwed.
Neo itself, that's a separate discussion. (Hi. I am very much the expert there.) It's not a good idea for many reasons.
@rootwyrm @graydon @cstross I would challenge your assumptions:
— Apple doesn't sell “loss leaders”. It’s why even a simple USB cable can cost $20 and the VisionPro is $3500. The Neo is profitable.
— Apple is not cannibalizing, they’re pulling new users in. Services are a huge profit center. Neo customers will subscribe.
— MacBooks are known to be more durable than PCs. You can still see 10-year old iPhones or MacBooks in use. RAM? Cores? Only nerds care.
The Neo is a game-changer.
@cstross @j404 @graydon folks, you are trying to 'explain' to somebody who has shipped north of 100k systems since 1991. I do not know how the sausage is made; I'm the sausage maker.
The Neo is not cheap. That LCD is not cheap. High contrast, high resolution IPS 60Hz 13" panel plus integration, that's a $90+ BOM by itself not including tooling and hinges which by themselves are likely ~$10-20. That's EASILY a $50 BOM keyboard. Fusing post-hoc costs backend, it is extremely not free. etc.
@j404 @rootwyrm @graydon @cstross
MacBook 5.2 (Jan 2009) 17 years
iMac 21.5 inch, mid-2011 15 years.
😁 It's reliable kit.
(I have older Macs (IIci onwards, I think) but they're not in use and will need the power supply electrolytic capacitors re-forming (or more likely replacing) before applying power to avoid an explosion.)
@truh @j404 @rootwyrm @graydon @cstross Nah.
It's cutting it close for us nerds. I'm not in the market for a Neo either, though it'll probably actually do 90% of what I want.
But my wife's been running a base config (ie, 8 GB) Air for a few years now and it's *fine*. Even with the obligatory 50 tabs open, it does ok.
She would have absolutely been in the market for a Neo. $600 takes away the main pain point for a lot of people looking at Macs.
And it comes in yellow, too. ;-)
@rootwyrm @graydon @cstross
Don’t forget, it’s 100 dollarpounds cheaper for education, and it’s more repairable. I think Apple are banking on schools replacing fleets of crappy Chromebooks with these.
Can you honestly say that after 3 years of MacOS you’d consider switching to Windows, if you don’t play a lot of games or need certain Windows-only applications?
I’ve been a Windows user all my life and an IT professional for half of it (3.11 to date) and I can honestly say that if it wasn’t required at work, I would be happy never using Windows again. I certainly don’t have it on any personal devices.
My £800 16GB RAM HP work machine is dogshit slow just to get to the desktop and load OneDrive. We’re talking minutes. It’s less than 40 seconds on my Air.
If my mother breaks her (hand-me-down) M1 Air, she’d be more than happy with a Neo.
@philsuth @cstross I see numbers that put Taiwan's primary electrical generation at 90%+ natural gas. Australia can't double what it sends to Taiwan without shorting someone else, which won't fly when they're all going to be massively short, too.
Taiwan is already likely to be into "change of government" levels of public dissatisfaction, just from the probable period of electricity rationing. Industrial production will take a hit. East Asia as a whole may decarbonize hard in response to this.
@cstross @ArtofAlexCanEmed While I don’t exactly have a great track record in predictions, I can’t think of a time when Apple ever gave a product line a spec bump within a year of launch—at least not without a demi-product launch to go with it (like the product Red iPhones)—and *especially* not with computers, which they’ve taken heat for updating too rarely.
The Neo is aimed at the education market; I’d expect a big marketing push in July/August and a spec bump this time next year.
@thearcanecomposer @ArtofAlexCanEmed It happened circa 2008 with the first unibody Macbook Pro 13". It was superseded about six months later by the unibody Macbook 13", which lost the firewire port and removable battery, but gained an extra USB port and a longer battery life. (I had one: I was there.) That's why i'm guessing this is a possibility for the Neo.
The Neo exists partly because Apple can use it to sell the stockpile of reject SOCs from high-end iPhones. Which get an annual bump.
Charlie Stross
Curioso 🍉 🇺🇦 (jgg)
Tubemeister
Woozle Hypertwin
Fazal Majid
sbszine
Ray Greenwell
Graydon
Philippa Cowderoy
RootWyrm 🇺🇦
j404
Chuckles
Cadbury Moose
truh
Ross Burton
Jon Wilson
Tim Bray
Gareth 🏴
Penny
Phil Sutherland
Complexity of systems 🏳️⚧️
genehack
The Arcane Composer
vxo