Posts tagged with "MacBook Neo"

The MacBook Neo Takes on Retro Gaming→

I love when my interests collide, and today, thanks to Russ Crandall, that’s exactly what happened. You see, Crandall runs Retro Game Corps, a YouTube channel covering the world of videogame emulation, handheld consoles, mini PCs, and more. It’s an excellent channel that we’ve covered multiple times on NPC: Next Portable Console, and yesterday, Crandall made a video exploring the MacBook Neo’s emulation capabilities.

It turns out that the Neo pulls its weight with more than productivity apps. It’s also does quite well with game emulation, some Steam titles, and streaming, with a couple of caveats.

Seeing is believing when it comes to emulation, so it’s worth seeing how your favorite systems fare before diving into emulation on the Neo yourself, but I was surprised to see how well the Neo did even on systems as recent as the Nintendo Switch 1. Beyond the GameCube, it’s hit or miss what will run well, but older systems like NES, Game Boy, GBA, SNES, PS1, PSP, 3DS, PS2, Dreamcast, and Saturn games all ran well and in most cases at upscaled resolutions and with shaders applied.

Probably the biggest limitation Crandall ran into is when he tried running games from more recent systems on external storage over the Neo’s USB-C 2 port, while using the USB-C 3 port for a capture card. Games from more recent systems are larger, so for anyone who wants to stream their gameplay, the Neo’s 256GB or optional 512GB internal storage could be a limitation.

That said, I was pleased to see how well the MacBook Neo handled emulation. Paired with lighter-weight Steam games, streaming on services like GeForce NOW, thanks to the Neo’s Wi-Fi 6E, and the App Store’s own catalog of native games, the Neo offers a lot of options for your downtime too.

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ETA Prime Answers the Question: What if the MacBook Neo Had Thermo-Electric Cooling?→

By all accounts, the MacBook Neo is a great budget laptop. However, because it has no active cooling system, the A18 Pro thermally throttles pretty quickly, degrading performance of games and other applications.

Thanks to how easy it is to take the Neo apart, you’ve probably already seen videos of users adding a thermal pad to transfer some of the heat from the Neo’s chip to its aluminum chassis. The result is a meaningful boost in performance.

ETA Prime decided to take things further with an external liquid-cooled solution that attaches magnetically to the Neo to see if even more performance could be squeezed out of the computer. The first step was to add a custom copper plate and thermal pad layer that transfers heat from the A18 Pro to the Neo’s case, which like other thermal pad solutions made a meaningful difference in game performance. Next, ETA Prime attached a thermal-electric cooling device typically used for gaming on mobile phones to the bottom of the Neo to push the A18 Pro’s operating temperature consistently below the throttling temperature.

The results were substantial. It’s worth watching the full video, but a game like No Man’s Sky, which throttled quickly and ran at around 30fps on the Neo, ran at around 60fps with ETA Prime’s mod. While a thermal-electric cooling device goes beyond what a typical user would be willing to do, it does make you wonder what the Neo would be capable of with a more robust built-in cooling system.

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“This Is Not The Computer For You”→

I loved this essay by Sam Henri Gold on the MacBook Neo but, really, about where the “wrong” computer in your life can take you:

There is a certain kind of computer review that is really a permission slip. It tells you what you’re allowed to want. It locates you in a taxonomy — student, creative, professional, power user — and assigns you a product. It is helpful. It is responsible. It has very little interest in what you might become.

The MacBook Neo has attracted a lot of these reviews.

The consensus is reasonable: $599, A18 Pro, 8GB RAM, stripped-down I/O. A Chromebook killer, a first laptop, a sensible machine for sensible tasks. “If you are thinking about Xcode or Final Cut, this is not the computer for you.” The people saying this are not wrong. It is also not the point.

Nobody starts in the right place. You don’t begin with the correct tool and work sensibly within its constraints until you organically graduate to a more capable one. That is not how obsession works. Obsession works by taking whatever is available and pressing on it until it either breaks or reveals something. The machine’s limits become a map of the territory. You learn what computing actually costs by paying too much of it on hardware that can barely afford it.

(The MacBook Neo is a lovely computer that feels futuristic despite its specs. I was about to return mine, then decided to keep it because there’s something special about it. You can listen to the latest episode of Connected to hear my take on it.)

Sam’s story resonated with me because I’ve been there, not as a kid, but as a 24-year-old who needed to get work done from a hospital bed and chose to do so with an iPad. I stuck with it after that, despite a lot of people telling me it was the wrong computer for me.

Sometimes the “wrong” computer is the right obsession for you. You never know where that can take you. Go read Sam’s full story if you need a reminder of why specs don’t ultimately dictate someone’s creativity.

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MacBook Neo Review Roundup

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The MacBook Neo reviews are in and by all accounts, Apple’s new budget Mac is impressive, packing a lot of bang for the buck. The laptop, which comes in a 256GB configuration with no Touch ID and a 512GB version with Touch ID, is Apple’s most affordable laptop ever as well as one of its most fun, thanks to several color options.

I think the review that caught my eye first was Tyler Stalman’s. Tyler is the sort of person the MacBook Pro was built for because he works with video and high-resolution RAW photos for a living. It’s a fun video because it demonstrates just how capable the laptop is, even after Tyler had opened every app, scrolled around in his photo library, and launched a 4K project in Final Cut Pro, while every other app was still running. Amazingly, the Neo handled it all well.

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Apple Takes the Wraps Off the MacBook Neo

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple today revealed a brand-new Mac called the MacBook Neo. The new computer has a 13” screen and an A18 Pro chipset, and it starts at $599. Let’s dig into the details.

The fanless Neo comes in silver, indigo, blush, and citrus colors, which extend to the keyboard in lighter shades. The screen is a 2408 × 1506 Liquid Retina display with a modest 500 nits of brightness and an anti-reflective coating. The A18 Pro chip that powers the Neo has six CPU cores, five GPU cores, and a 16-core Neural Engine. As for memory, the only option is 8GB.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Other features include:

  • a 1080p FaceTime camera
  • dual beamforming microphones
  • side-firing speakers
  • Touch ID in the 512GB model
  • two USB-C ports (one USB-C 3 10Gbps port and the other USB-C 2 (480Mbps)
  • Wi-Fi 6e
  • Bluetooth 6
  • a headphone jack

According to Apple, the Neo can deliver up to 16 hours of battery life, but it does not include MagSafe charging. Apple claims superior performance to Intel Core Ultra 5 PCs but offers no comparisons to any other device in its own product lineup, so further testing will be needed to see how the Neo stacks up to iPads and other Macs.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

In terms of configurations, there are just two options. The first is a MacBook Neo with 256GB of SSD storage and no Touch ID for $599. The other configuration has 512GB of storage and Touch ID and costs $699. Education customers can purchase the Neo for $100 less. The new MacBook Neo can be preordered today. Deliveries and in-store availability begin March 11.