Windows PC makers typically haven't had to compete with Apple on the low end, but that changes with the Neo, says S.Y. Hsu. The memory shortage might complicate things, though.

The Apple MacBook Neo’s $599 starting price is a “shock” to the Windows PC industry, according to an Asus executive.

Hsu said he believes all the PC players—including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD—take the MacBook Neo threat seriously. “In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product,” he added, given that rumors about the MacBook Neo have been making the rounds for at least a year.

Despite the competitive threat, Hsu argued that the MacBook Neo could have limited appeal. He pointed to the laptop’s 8GB of “unified memory,” or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can’t upgrade it.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    11·
    19 hours ago

    Despite the hits Asahi took losing two of it’s most prominent devs (one of whom is basically a wizard, as far as I can tell), I expect it to attract more attention than the more expensive devices because it’ll have a much wider potential audience. On top of that, lots of groundwork that was laid deconstructing the M1 and M2 chips means the team isn’t starting from zero, despite differences in the chip.

    It’ll take some time, but it’s basically guaranteed to happen and I think sooner is more likely than later.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      I daily drive my personal Macbook air M2 running Asahi (only booted into OSX twice in the time I’ve owned it). I really like the experience of Linux (Fedora) on Apple hardware.

      However, its still got some growing pains before most folks would be happy with it as their primary. One of those limitations abslutely applies to the Neo. Asahi Linux on 8GB of RAM is VERY cramped. I’ve got 24GB of RAM and even I run into limitations sometimes. The other issue is the current maturity level of power management. Asahi does not have full use of the low standby power states. This means that even with “sleep” your battery will exhaust itself in less than a day if its not plugged in. The alternative is to power down the unit entirely, which works fine to save the battery, but means having to open all your applications back up when you power it back up. Since Mac hardware doesn’t use ACPI, hibernation is also not available, which would also be a fine way to address this.

      None of this is criticism agianst the Asahi team. They’ve done AMAZING things so far and what exists today is fully usable to me. Improvements also come early and often. The team is amazing!

      However, Macbook Neo probably won’t be a good use case for Asahi Linux for the forseeable future.

    • scala@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      Thatd be nice. Finding a “cheap” used or new laptop light weight travel laptop is a pain. And if you do find one they are so cheaply made the keyboard and screen hinges suck. Hoping if apple comes through with these cheap laptops the build quality stays the same. And I won’t use macOS shit sucks ass.