This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I feel the specs are fine for the use case that the device is aimed at (media consumption, some office usage).. you know, the things that a huge chunk of the population use a device for.. if that doesn’t suit, there are more powerful options.
I don’t think it is productive arguing that an ultra cheap/low end device isn’t powerful enough, or specced high enough for activities/use cases that it wasn’t designed for.
the newer A series chips have 12GB of ram, so that bodes well for the next generation of the neo.
8gb is plenty for your average non-technical user, and macos is pretty good at memory and process management and swap as long as you are using mostly first party apps, which the average non-tech savvy user will, likely just the default browser and maybe the built in office suite.. that’s pretty much it.
its really a case of If you ask whether 8gb is enough.. you probably arent the target for this machine.
The failure rates of these will be the determining factor. The components inside are cheap, all soldered on, and will not be repairable at all (waiting on the iFixIt score).
Its pretty much just their phone platform with a big screen and keyboard, so maybe it'll be okay. It's not built like a phone though, so I'm expecting some interesting testing outcomes. It's either going to be cheap enough that they have a new planned obsolescence hit on their hands, or people are going to be pissed at it sucking so hard.
I’m also waiting for the full iFixit review, but teardowns from other channels are now being shared and so far it looks like it’s very solidly built and repair-friendly. None of the typical ‘cover everything in excessive glue and tape’ anti-repair shenanigans we’ve come to expect from Apple.
Wow. Modern laptop "repairability" is pretty rough in general, but that does actually seem better than I expected.
Repair friendly means CHEAP components repair, which Apple just does not do.
As an example, in a machine like this if your WiFi module tanks...that's a full logic board replacement. Might as well buy a new one.
According to this, Apple is basically making an insurance vertical as part of their business, and they are pricing repairs to be exactly 1/3 the retail cost of the machine for pretty much everything except screens.
This is pretty scam my when you consider their past of quoting customers for repairs that are above and beyond the scope of the actual hardware failures, and what maximizes profits for their AppleCare and RMA process. There are dozens of breakdowns in this, so I won't write a novel, but it's very obvious they've baked in the costs to make it more cost-effective to just keep buying new units as a replacement in the face of simple hardware failures.
I mean modern smartphone SOC compute power is insane. That wont be a bottleneck for a long time. If i had to make a guess they dont even have to go the hardware failure route for planned obsolescence. That measily 8GB of shared ram for both CPU and GPU will take care of that. Just add a bit more shiny UI bloat with every update and this thing will get slow af at some point in the future. Takes care of all the entry level M1 Airs too...
Every failure I’ve gotten from an Apple product is the inevitable demise of the battery either through degradation to the point of uselessness or expanding and causing something else to come undone. So the components just need to keep outlasting those events.
Always the keyboard for me, for some reason. Almost never battery problems.
Your experience is not singular. Looks like we've got some haters here.
I'm going to wager this is mostly an attempt to get more people into the Apple ecosystem. The more integrated the user is, the harder it is for them to get out.
Given the ram apocalypse, I think you’ll see many entry level pcs with 8gb as well.
Apple is either just that good or just that lucky that they are shipping an 8gb machine right after ram prices went parabolic.
At any other time this would be a harder item to sell.
I mean, you already see many entry level PCs with 8GB as well.
But you're going to continue seeing it, too.
This from the company that started the netbook trend with the $400 eeePC in 2007...
My, how far we’ve fallen where a $600 potato with 8GB of RAM is considered a great deal.
Here’s a $720 laptop with 16GB of DDR5 and a RTX 4060 (out of stock of course):
