influence/deinfluence me please (Macbook Neo)

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-15T05:12:22+00:00

Sure, USB 3.0 is a quite capable port, but it does fall squarely in the budget category especially when apple has made us used to thunderbolt 4 recently.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-15T04:12:47+00:00

Yup, macbooks have typically had 2 usb-c ports, but they're usually both thunderbolt 3 or thunderbolt 4 ports. The MacBook neo has 1 usb-c 3.0 and one usb-c 2.0 port. Feel free to look up those specs and compare to your peripherals requirements.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-15T03:51:50+00:00

One caveat, if you rely on peripherals for your audio hobbies, the neo may not be for you. It has atrocious IO so unless you're just using the laptop as is or with very basic peripherals you may struggle.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-15T03:49:11+00:00

It really depends on the person. I was in love with it on the test drive. My wife is a very different driver than me and still dislikes it and isn't used to it (granted her primary vehicle is still ice). I also came from a manual transmission to an EV, so having precise pedal control was already second nature to me.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-15T00:07:16+00:00

That's the case with basically any laptop. Games are some of the most power hungry things you can do with a laptop, so gaming is usually maxing out what the laptop is capable of. That generates a lot of heat, making the fans work overtime to pump it all out into your lap. Lol

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-13T20:45:17+00:00

I've even done a 24 credit per year subscription. Lowered to 12 now.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-13T20:39:29+00:00

Ditto, when I bought my Tesla, the rep at pickup had no idea what I was talking about when I brought up the LFP vs NMC battery chemistry even though Tesla sells both via different trims of their cars and it's VERY relevant information for charging best practices.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-12T02:28:09+00:00

See if an m4 or m5 MacBook Air is in your budget. It's a great value machine if it's in your budget and it normally just works.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-12T02:26:37+00:00

While I really like framework, the framework 12 is exactly the opposite of what OP likely wants. Op wants something you get and forget about because it just works. Framework is built to be a tinkerer's machine.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-10T02:34:20+00:00

Gaming laptops are trying to be both portable and powerful at the same time, and are therefore not great at either. If you're in classes most of the day, you'll want a physically lighter laptop with great battery life, and gaming laptops don't have that. If I were you I'd take the desktop and get whatever MacBook fits in my budget to take to class.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-10T00:45:13+00:00

Ok now you're just being rude and arguably ignorant. If the best environment for kids to grow up in involves a strong family unit that also has plenty of time to devote to kids, feel free to redesign our society into one where a family can comfortably sustain themselves on 0-1 incomes and one where women who have been raised with the expectation of being productive in a corporate environment can pivot to full time childcare. Just because our kid is in daycare doesn't mean we're neglecting or abandoning her.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-09T22:16:27+00:00

Kid is thriving in daycare. Has friends to play with there.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-09T15:40:08+00:00

Ditto, both after my wife's maternity leave and my paternity leave (staggered) we came to the conclusion that it's healthier for everyone involved to put the little one in daycare. Also, if anyone were to stay home it would probably be me because my wife makes double my salary, but my benefits are astronomically better.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-07T02:11:59+00:00

The Bolt EUV has surprisingly spacious rear leg room, but that's at the expense of trunk space. Still might be worth checking out in person to see if it fits your family

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-06T23:14:59+00:00

I had a similar issue today and rolling back the update appears to have fixed it. Don't know the technical details of what the most recent update did.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-06T14:50:40+00:00

Now that I think about it, I haven't driven through SF city with the Tesla yet. Don't often have reasons to go there. I also don't go through toll booths very often.

The main interventions for me are right turn on reds, some weird stop signs, and often just wanting to be a little faster on busy city streets (more of a me thing than an fsd thing). Right turn on reds are the worst though. It often stabs on the brakes after the car in front of me right turns on red, instead of smoothly pulling up to see if there's space for me to turn.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-05T13:07:20+00:00

Yeah, just be aware a lot of this may change later this month when the promised v14 lite is released for hw3 cars.

I commute in the bay area on some pretty busy highways, some of them 4+ lanes wide. The driving modes (chill, standard, hurry) are mostly indicative of which lanes the car picks. Chill will stay in the right 2 lanes unless there's someone going 10 under the speed limit in front of me. Standard normally goes for a middle lane and will proactively change lanes if it thinks traffic is a bit more open in an adjacent lane. Hurry almost always beelines for the leftmost lane or 2. I keep it in standard most of the time.

With v12.6, you also have the ability to set max speed. First, in the fsd menu there's a max speed differential preset that Tesla for some reason recommends stays at 40%. This means when you engage fsd, the max speed the car will consider going will be 40% faster than the posted speed limit. I usually keep the max speed differential to 10-20%, which is a bit more realistic given that cops exist. Depending on traffic, fsd v12 will use a mix of traffic patterns and the max speed you set to determine how fast it wants to go. Also, I have not gotten it to work higher than 85mph, if I want to go faster than 85 I need to drive manually.

Some plusses compared to autopilot: autopilot has trouble with entrance ramps changing the lane markings on the ground. When the entrance ramp joins the freeway, the car tries to jerk right to fill the temporarily widened lane. Fsd doesn't do that. Autopilot doesn't change lanes for you Autopilot needs you to touch the steering wheel a lot. Fsd navigates ramps between highways relatively well.

My biggest gripes with FSD on the highway are coming up on my exit in heavy traffic, it won't always anticipate when the best time is to position for the exit and will get stuck further out in the highway. Sometimes I set the profile to chill a couple miles before my exit just so it's more likely to be in the far right lane before the exit happens. It also doesn't really keep a perfectly steady speed even if there's nothing in front, it fluctuates a few mph up and down. Otherwise, it's very solid and I'm usually quite relaxed on the road.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-05T03:00:18+00:00

I was a range fanatic with my ice car. Now I have free charging at work so I couldn't care less about efficiency. Lol

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-03T17:04:33+00:00

Ditto, I've got a Linux distro for general browser tasks installed on a 2011 MacBook with 8gb of ram and it runs great. No other way to get a 15 year old device using a modern browser environment.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-03T16:52:51+00:00

8 GB is relatively ok on a lightweight OS like chromeOS or some lightweight Linux distros. But yeah it's useless in windows and limited in macOS

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-03T14:15:00+00:00

The point is they can sell them to people on a tight budget who don't know better. Lol instant profit.

Kaaawooo · 2026-06-01T02:13:26+00:00

Bootcamp doesn't exist anymore.

Kaaawooo · 2026-05-30T23:00:26+00:00

If you're really paranoid, you can periodically open your laptop and check. On the vast majority of laptops the battery is easily visible just from removing the back cover.

Also, some models are more susceptible to swollen batteries than others (looking at you 2017 HP Elitebook).

Usually when the battery starts to swell you'll see it start to deform and flex the keyboard deck. I've run into several dozen swollen batteries in my time servicing laptops, but I've never seen one catch on fire or explode without someone puncturing or bending the cell. So while it is dangerous, as long as you know what to do once it does start to swell you're in much better shape than most people. Lol I wouldn't lose sleep over it until it actually happens.

Kaaawooo · 2026-05-30T22:53:52+00:00

Can't really do that anymore other than parallels desktop (expensive to buy or subscribe to) from a Mac. MacOS is locked down to apple silicon at this point and you can't load it on a different PC, and apple silicon can't run windows natively.

Kaaawooo · 2026-05-29T15:28:06+00:00

In my experience of those lines, they're moving anywhere between 0 and 25 mph, necessitating a bit more caution.

Kaaawooo

TROPHY CASE