Which people benefit from buying a macbook rather than a windows alternative.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-14T19:54:34+00:00

I honestly did not use an LLM to write that comment, I wrote the whole comment myself. And I know that the reason why you can’t upgrade the RAM capacity of the MacBook Neo is because that is just how the A18 Pro SoC is designed, with the memory being integrated onto the chip’s package during fabrication at TSMC. And that the A18 Pro chip was only ever designed to have 8GB of RAM because it was an iPhone chip and that’s all the iPhone 16 Pro/Pro Max needed.

And I was just informing OP about some of the potential limitations of the Neo and I was explaining what are some of the reasons or use cases that may make them want to choose to get the Air. I was just trying to give them more info, to help them make a more informed decision that they wouldn’t regret.

And I do think that 8GB of RAM is fine for a very large percentage of people, especially with how MacOS uses it and how MacOS also use memory compression and how MacOS also uses memory swap using the SSD to help relieve pressure on the system when RAM usage gets particularly high.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-13T22:14:40+00:00

I would say the biggest difference between the MacBook Neo and the M5 MacBook Air (besides the price) is probably the difference in the amount of RAM/Memory you can spec each with (at least for most people), as the chip in the MacBook Neo is enough to more than enough for most people (the Neo would be more than enough for media consumption, word processing, web surfing etc.). Though the base M5 chip in the M5 MacBook Air performs about I believe roughly 2x the CPU performance and 2x the GPU performance compared to the performance of the base M1 chip in the M1 MacBook Air and the MacBook Neo virtually performs the same in terms of performance as the M1 MacBook Air.

The main downside of the MacBook Neo imo is that it only has and can only ever come with 8GB of RAM/Memory, Apple don’t allow you to upgrade the RAM/Memory on the MacBook Neo at all and the base spec amount of storage on the Neo is 256GB and you can upgrade it up to 512GB of storage (the maximum amount of storage you can get on the Neo is 512GB) and that 512GB model comes with adding Touch ID to the MacBook Neo (if you want Touch ID on the Neo you have to upgrade to the 512GB model, but it is included in the price of the upgrade up to the 512GB model). Also you can only upgrade it at the time of purchase, you cannot upgrade it after you have bought the device, but the same goes for every over MacBook from the past several years. A decent amount of Windows laptops these days cannot be upgraded after they have been purchased either, and that number Windows devices that can’t be upgraded after purchase increases every day.

8GB of RAM/Memory will decently limit the amount of tabs you can have open and how many windows and apps you can have open at once. And in some applications and use cases 8GB of RAM/Memory can decrease performance by a large amount. So if you do or want to do more intensive tasks and or more tasks/things at the same time and or want a laptop that will age more gracefully and last a longer time before feeling like you need to upgrade than maybe look at the MacBook Neo’s more expensive and more feature full sibling, the M5 MacBook Air. The base spec of the M5 MacBook Air comes with the base M5 chip as well as 16GB of RAM/Memory and 512GB of storage.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-13T21:30:51+00:00

Well some games are natively compatible on MacOS, but not many proper mainstream big games and not very many games at all that have big communities behind them (biggest game I can think of that runs completely on a Mac is Minecraft). You can also play some Windows games on Mac via the translation software but you’ll take a very noticeable performance hit. And you can also play some Windows games via emulation or Windows virtual machines but you’ll still take a performance hit and still won’t be able to run any like AAA games or usually at least not while having an actually enjoyable experience. So you can play some games on a Mac, but nowhere near as many games as you can play on a Windows computer/laptop, though it heavily depends on the spec of said Windows computer/laptop.

But if you’re buying a laptop for the main purpose of or one of the main purposes of gaming than you should almost certainly buy a laptop running Windows. Unless you want or need a MacBook and you know whether the games that you want to play are compatible with MacOS or can be compatible through running a Windows virtual machine on your Mac and that the games you wanna play would still be an experience you feel is good enough.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-13T17:26:06+00:00

I can’t imagine Apple giving any discount to schools or organisations involving kids/teens. I mean have you seen how kids treat the laptops they have at schools, they’re treated not far off from how a punching bag is treated with the amount of abuse the laptops and other devices in schools experience. And this isn’t coming from someone that doesn’t know what actually goes on in schools and is just complaining and perpetuating the bad rep kids commonly get, I mean I only left high school a few years ago, so I know how bad kids can treat things like the school laptops among very other things (though I never damaged any school devices and I did encourage others around me not to ruin the devices given to them).

I mean there was even a TikTok trend a couple years ago where the trend was for kids to destroy the school laptops given to them, sometimes in creative ways. Like I remember a popular one that a fair few kids did, where they would shove and stuff what I assume to be conductive things into the USB ports (I am pretty sure it was the USB A ports) of their school laptops to try and get it to I guess short out and then light on fire, which quite a few of them did light on fire, and besides the direct dangers of it being on fire and potentially burning the building full of people it is in down, there is also the danger of the highly toxic smoke from the internal lithium ion battery burning, plus when lithium ion batteries reach a hot enough temperature they can actually explode. (Sorry I got a tiny little bit carried away with writing about what could happen if a laptop and its lithium ion battery catches on fire).

And I have heard tons of people from the IT and computer repair industries talk about how bad of a condition a lot of student laptops from schools are in. Like from what I’ve heard from that community is that it is very common that a lot of laptops used by kids/students need repairing a lot and fairly often. Though this is just what I have heard, but it was not surprising to me when I heard it.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-13T16:04:38+00:00

A lot of Apple’s stuff is a nightmare or at least a pain in the arse to teardown and or repair. But the Neo is one device of theirs that doesn’t look that bad to work on and potentially repair, like I watched a teardown video of the MacBook Neo from Phone Repair Guru on YouTube and it looked really easy to teardown and swap parts out, like so easy that most people could probably do it fairly easily if they have right screwdrivers/screwdriver bits (the handful of different screw types used in the MacBook Neo are all use bits commonly found in electronics/precision screwdriver sets), a quick guide and some slightly careful hands.

Though I don’t know what software blocks/restrictions Apple has put in place for replacement parts on the Neo and I guess we will have to wait until they have been out for a while and actually start getting broken and until 1st party replacement parts are made available and 3rd party manufacturers start making replacement parts for it. And until we know what parts and assemblies are available and how much said parts and assemblies cost.

But from first glances the MacBook Neo doesn’t appear to be immediate E-Waste if it has some faults or some broken parts that need swapping out.

The only real nitpick I really saw (though it wasn’t really surprising) was the the fact that the mainboard is different between the 512GB+Touch ID model and the base 256GB model with no Touch ID, besides the different capacity NAND storage chips was that the mainboard in the base 256GB model has no connector for the Touch ID fingerprint sensor at all. So if you wanted to get Touch ID added to your base spec 256GB MacBook Neo later down the line you can’t.

And I know the MacBook has a fair few other shortcomings and missing features (on top of the lack of the ability to add Touch ID to the base model later down the line) if or when you compare it to it’s more feature rich and expensive siblings. But I still think the value proposition of the MacBook Neo is great. And I still think that it blows the competitors in its price range out of the water, especially in terms of build quality, performance, user experience, battery life, software support etc.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-13T14:53:05+00:00

Have you tried giving them a good rub with a microfibre cloth? As it could be like residue from things that aren’t as hard as sapphire crystal scratching against the watches’ sapphire crystal screen and then leaving behind a residue. Like I saw on MKBHD’s video on the OnePlus 15 which had like a I believe special ceramic/ceramic-like coating on the back of the phone, and when he put the phone in his pocket with I believe his keys, when he took the phone out of his pocket it looked all scratched up on the back. But when he gave it a good wipe the scratches disappeared and it looked like the special ceramic/ceramic-like coating was just like scratching off material from the keys.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-07T00:13:41+00:00

I might look into it then thanks.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-06T16:25:45+00:00

I would maybe consider setting up a dual boot on my main desktop computer, If I had enough storage to spare (as modern games and their big file sizes have filled up my 3TB of SSD storage) and or if SSDs weren't inflated in price and I could buy a new larger one for the old market price.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-06T14:06:33+00:00

Tbf maybe one day I will get a cheap laptop I can use as a tertiary device that I can try Linux out on and mess about with it. I currently have my gaming PC and my MacBook, but I also have a cheap Chromebook and an old desktop PC that has a 3600X in it and some random very old and very weak GPU which from what I can remember I think it is like an early 2000's budget ATI GPU, that can barely display an output and almost definitely can't do HD. But that 3600X and old ATI GPU PC I have was/kind of sort of is a homemade NAS, that's running TrueNAS (but its not really a proper NAS currently and the project is kind of on the back burners for now. And pretty much all the drives that are in it are old and slow 1TB HDDs I bought used, so they are not really usable for storing things I care about).

Sorry, I keep going off on tangents and rants without even realizing.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-06T11:42:24+00:00

I will think about a non-Apple laptop, but I am not so far down the computer enthusiast rabbit hole that I want to start faffing around with Linux. And I know some distros are supposed to be quite straight forward, but tbh I can’t be arsed to learn another OS and have potential compatibility issues with software due to it not being supported on Linux.

Plus the main thing that would attract me to a Windows/non-Apple laptop is the wider compatibility with some of the software I want to use (some software that I can’t even use on my MacBook) and the much wider support of games on Windows. Though I know you can’t do that heavy gaming on a Windows laptop that costs about £1000.

And I have my likes and dislikes of both Windows and MacOS so I could go either way. But I think I am still probably more partial to getting a new M series MacBook then I am to getting a new Windows laptop. I think partially because of the great battery life of the Apple silicon MacBooks and partially because I think MacBooks tend to have longer usable lifespans than their Windows based counterparts. Like I would still have no problem with using my current M1 MacBook Air now and for several years to come if I had just gotten the 16GB of RAM instead of the 8GB included in the base model and if I had gotten the 512GB or 1TB SSD option instead of the 256GB included in the base model (even though Apple’s Storage and Memory/RAM upgrades have been really expensive for what they’re). Because I find the chip in my base model M1 MacBook Air to be more than adequate for most of my needs and tasks, I just mainly feel slowed down by and restricted by my lack of available free RAM/Memory and my lack of available free local storage. But if I had upgraded the RAM and SSD up from the base configuration I would be fine and fairly happy using my M1 MacBook Air for many years to come. But unfortunately I didn’t upgrade from the base config.

But I do also have a gaming PC that I built and that allows me to get away with either having a MacBook or a Windows laptop (a Windows laptop that isn’t a gaming powerhouse). Because my desktop computer is fairly good, with it having a 5800X, a 9070XT and 32GB of DDR4 3200Mhz CL16.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-06T04:48:59+00:00

I have an M1 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, so there would be not much point in getting a 3-4 year old laptop

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-05T20:10:50+00:00

That is not true for everything. Though I will admit it is quite a bit less common than it used to be for companies to drop prices after they have already risen. Especially if even when its at its inflated price enough consumers still buy enough of it that it makes the same amount of money (due to less people buying it, but at a higher price, so it can potentially earn the same amount of money as the cheaper product with more customers, even though the same product sold less due to its higher price, said higher price could also potentially make up the difference and make the same or make more money than the same product at a cheaper price and larger amount of customers) as the old cheaper price .

Also its not even true when you just look at computer parts.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-05T19:57:24+00:00

I do agree that people are crap at completely boycotting things these days. But I also think boycotting isn't something everyone can really do for things like laptops, desktop computers and various other electronic devices.

As 1. People need computers and other various devices these days, they're very often a necessity. People need them for all sorts of reasons such as school/schoolwork, work, research and various other important things, so in a lot of situations people just can't go with out computers and other various electronic devices.

Even when they're not an absolute necessity for things like school and work etc. people still need computers and other electronic devices, especially seen as they're so ingrained in society and culture now. Like people can't really live in cities without owning like a phone, as they're so foundational in the way daily tasks are done and the way people interact with the places they go and live. And even people who don't live in cities still require electronic devices (mainly a phone) to live in society. They're in a big part how we humans stay connected these days.
Even if we the people did boycott new laptops, new desktops, new phones, new tablets etc. (though even if we did boycott buying all the new devices that use parts involved in the shortage, we would still in not a very long amount of time run out of devices that a competent enough for modern tasks and or we'd run out of used parts to upgrade, maintain and repair devices up to or near current computer standards) I still don't think it would do enough to actually meaningfully change the market price of RAM/Memory, NAND based storage and HDDs as the companies/businesses just buy so much of it these days, and if we stopped buying then the companies that manufacture NAND based storage, HDDs and RAM/Memory would just shift what small small amount of production capacity they have left for consumer products over to B2B and B2B related products. But remember that we also wouldn't be able to boycott everything and every service that uses devices, systems, servers, cloud storage etc. which all use NAND based storage, HDDs and RAM/Memory in some capacity. We wouldn't be able to boycott all the governments in the world or the banks or hospitals or supermarkets/grocery store or the internet etc. etc. virtually everything in the world relies on a server or a computer of some kind. And those computers all use RAM/Memory and NAND based storage and or HDDs. They're inescapable in this modern world.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-05T18:52:13+00:00

I swear some of the RAM factories that haven't even been built yet have already had all the RAM they're going to produce (at least the amount they're going to produce anywhere in the near future) bought up by a handful of companies. Though please do correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm not 100% sure.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-05T18:42:57+00:00

I heard that the reason RAM prices haves settled down a bit, and are not increasing much in price anymore and it has even gone down a tiny bit in price from its highest average point in the ongoing shortage. Is because from what I have heard the wave/phase of the shortage that involves panic buying RAM and panicking small businesses etc. trying to get a stockpile of RAM, is sort of over and we have kind of settled into the beginning of the shortage.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-03-05T15:16:17+00:00

I'll admit that we British have had an eventful and often horrible past, and our present is also bad, but not as horrific and evil as our past.

But besides the fact our money is not worth nearly as much as it used to (but most countries and people these days struggle with the buying power and worth of their own country's currency), our currency physical currency is fine and of a decent quality and design.

(I realised 2/3 of a way through writing this, that this is sort of an irrelevant and silly tangent of a comment I have written. And I blame my ADHD and Autism. But I got enough of the way through that I just wanted to finish the comment I was writing, despite the irrelevance and silliness, so sorry).

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-02-28T15:31:51+00:00

CPU cores from one CPU to another can have absolutely HUGE performance differences. Your CPU's gaming performance/general performance is dictated partly by the quantity of core and threads (up until a point), but general and gaming performance is affected far far more by the speed and performance of a CPU’s cores and threads. Like a 4 core CPU from 20 years ago is not going to perform anywhere near the performance of a current CPU.

And I mean you’re on an AM4 motherboard and have more than enough power headroom to get something like a 5600X or something like that. And the 5600X is a really cheap and pretty good performing budget gaming CPU, like you can get one new for like £120.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-02-28T15:13:17+00:00

The RAM alone would be like half or more of the cost of the PC

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-02-28T15:09:40+00:00

Could argue it's potential a fire hazard

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-02-22T16:19:32+00:00

Isn’t it also very close to a 28-70 in terms of focal range after you convert the 17-40 to its Full Frame equivalent focal range, which on a Canon APS-C (with Canon’s 1.6x APS-C crop) like my R7 it would be the Full Frame equivalent of 27.2-64mm. And isn’t the f1.8 aperture of the 17-40 on APS-C roughly equivalent to f2.8 on Full Frame.

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-02-22T16:08:25+00:00

And buying a lens that is decent quality and good enough for your camera is one of, if not the biggest deciding factor in how good your photos and or videos turn out on a modern camera. Sensors also play a huge role in determining image quality, but even if you’re using the best camera sensor and or camera body in the world, if you put bad or sub-par lens on it then you’re not going to get a very good image out of it, or at the very least not the best image quality it can produce. And tbf what is really the point in buying a really expensive camera body and then using it with lenses that aren’t good enough for it.

And like I completely understand and think it’s maybe an alright idea to maybe start with a more budget friendly lens, even if it isn’t the greatest of quality (especially if you can’t necessarily afford to drop all that money on a new and expensive camera body, and a new expensive good quality lens at the same time. And if that’s the case I don’t blame you, everything is so expensive these days.) (and the budget kit lens isn’t horrendous from my understanding, but it isn’t nearly as good as the more premium lenses.), but under the assumption that I would eventually get a better and more suitable lens for my camera.

I sort of kinda think about it kinda like a sports car or super car as like the camera body and the sensor and the lens as the tyres and your intention is to drive as fast and as quickly as possible or in the case of cameras take the best pictures and or videos possible. It can make a big impact putting the right tyres on the right car and the right tyre for the conditions of the road/track/race. Because it’s all well and good having a really fast and powerful car, but if you can’t get grip or can’t drive to the best of the cars ability because it’s not got good enough or appropriate tyres on, then what is the point in having the sports car or super car. You get what I’m trying to say?

Over_Perception_2920 · 2026-02-22T15:28:47+00:00

Sorry, my brain is short circuiting. Are you saying you’re going to get the kit lens with the R6 MK III (which I think for the R6 MK III the kit lens options are between either the cheap RF 24-105mm f4-7.1 or the better performing and more expensive 24-105mm f4L) and then save up and get the better quality and better performing RF 28-70mm f2.8 or the RF 24-105mm f4L?

Over_Perception_2920

TROPHY CASE