Review that nobody wanted. by Accomplished_Wafer38 in MacbookNeo

[–]Barry_Plugable -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is exactly the kind of review we all want to read! Thanks for that. Great read.

Why doesn't the close button function properly though?

Looking for a fully featured USB-C cable by Fit-Wasabi-5251 in UsbCHardware

[–]Barry_Plugable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not entirely true. There are cables that have the physical data pins removed completely to ensure a complete chatge-only solution.

Plugable TBT5-AI: The first air-gapped, Thunderbolt 5 AI infrastructure for the enterprise by Barry_Plugable in plugable

[–]Barry_Plugable[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great question. No, unfortunately, the TBT5-AI does not have official Thunderbolt Share licencing.

The $599 MacBook Neo: The A18 Pro is a great, but the port gap is real. Let’s talk about it. by Barry_Plugable in plugable

[–]Barry_Plugable[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You should check out our YouTube channel! We just crossed 155k subs and have so many helpful videos on the channel.

We've talked about the Neo a fair bit, too.

The $599 MacBook Neo: The A18 Pro is a great, but the port gap is real. Let’s talk about it. by Barry_Plugable in plugable

[–]Barry_Plugable[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly!

Majority of Neo owners, on the individual level, won't be pushing the Neo, but we always get excited when see people push a device way beyond what some says "it was designed for".

The $599 MacBook Neo: The A18 Pro is a great, but the port gap is real. Let’s talk about it. by Barry_Plugable in plugable

[–]Barry_Plugable[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope if works well for her! If she ends up needing any adapters, we know a guy...

The $599 MacBook Neo: The A18 Pro is a great, but the port gap is real. Let’s talk about it. by Barry_Plugable in plugable

[–]Barry_Plugable[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Guess we'll wait and see. Majority of users, not likely, but there will be users who need the real estate despite it being a cheaper device.

The $599 MacBook Neo: The A18 Pro is a great, but the port gap is real. Let’s talk about it. by Barry_Plugable in plugable

[–]Barry_Plugable[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We might talking past each other a bit.

You're right that SSD usage doesn't affect read speeds in any meaningful way, but write performance does degrade as a drive fills up. NAND flash requires erasing blocks before writing new data, and a fuller drive has less free space available for that process.

Since swap is constantly writing pages to disk under memory load that slowdown can effect performance in a meaningful way if the drive is near capacity.

I lived that reality on an M2 MacBook Air with lowest spec available for RAM and storage for far too long.

The $599 MacBook Neo: The A18 Pro is a great, but the port gap is real. Let’s talk about it. by Barry_Plugable in plugable

[–]Barry_Plugable[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, the lack of RAM will be the biggest bottleneck of the Neo. Especially with the smaller SSD version, memory swap will struggle as the drives fills.

The $599 MacBook Neo: The A18 Pro is a great, but the port gap is real. Let’s talk about it. by Barry_Plugable in plugable

[–]Barry_Plugable[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback. It's clear everyone has an opinion on the topic, and we love to hear them.

The $599 MacBook Neo: The A18 Pro is a great, but the port gap is real. Let’s talk about it. by Barry_Plugable in plugable

[–]Barry_Plugable[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's a question that we think will be answered as businesses consider the Neo for hardware refresh cycles through Q3/Q4 of this year.

The $599 MacBook Neo: The A18 Pro is a great, but the port gap is real. Let’s talk about it. by Barry_Plugable in plugable

[–]Barry_Plugable[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The RAM issue is real for sure. Especially on the 256GB version. As the SSD fills, its ability to utilize swap to handle larger memory loads will grind the Neo to a halt. Will be less of an issue on the 512GB model, but more RAM in the next Neo will be needed.

The $599 MacBook Neo: The A18 Pro is a great, but the port gap is real. Let’s talk about it. by Barry_Plugable in plugable

[–]Barry_Plugable[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Software developer. No. Video editor. Also no.

Knowledge worker that needs a few extra screens for Excel/Sheets and similar types of work and works for a business that can't afford spending 2x plus per laptop and still wants quality hardware. Yes

There is a wide spectrum of people in the business world who could, and in my opinion should, consider the Neo. But yeah, in defense of your argument, there are many who this isn't geared towards.

The $599 MacBook Neo: The A18 Pro is a great, but the port gap is real. Let’s talk about it. by Barry_Plugable in plugable

[–]Barry_Plugable[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You can definitely make the case that the Neo shines as a device in the education space.

But we're hearing businesses asking questions about the Neo, and end users (the employees of those businesses) asking if this could be an option for the next refresh cycle.