Comment on Asus Co-CEO: MacBook Neo Is a 'Shock' to the PC Industry
GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
For Windows if 8 gb of RAM is not enough that’s an own-goal. Because it is. Or it should be. Windows 11 is not so dramatically better than Windows Vista SP3 to require a 10x better computer to use comfortably. Actually, in many ways Windows 11 is a massive downgrade from what came before it.
I’m glad the MacBook neo is only 8gb. That means they have to support it as a usable low-end target. That means we aren’t jumping the gun on saying “actually you need 12 gigs of RAM” as if that should be normal for a usable computer.
I’m glad the MacBook neo is only 8gb. That means they have to support it as a usable low-end target.
This is huge. Apple has traditionally supported its laptops for at least 5 major OS versions and 2 more years of security updates, so they’re essentially telling us that the MacOS version they release in 2034 will not require more than 8GB of RAM to function is gonna be a good thing for all users, who will mostly presumably have much more memory available.
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
XP used to just have ram sitting there empty waiting for something. Then over vista and 8 and 10 they started more and more preloading because hey if the ram is empty it’s wasted. Like database servers, they always suck down all the RAM possible. Problem is windows doesn’t release it when the cache or whatever isn’t useful and something else wants it.
It’s been a while but I think macOS is considerably better at both parts of that equation.
There’s no reason that computers need to be so powerful other than MBAs saying “optimization is too expensive, just push the feature.”
Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
MacOS is significantly better than windows when using their first party apps, but many third party apps are ram hogs and things get forced to swap more often.
Swap isn’t terrible though, a lot of current gen mac hardware has very fast SSDs and very low latency controllers so it’s pretty transparent in normal use.
I think if you are on a website like this, this computer isn’t for you, but it is for a lot of people who use nothing but a web browser with one tab open 90% of the time.
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
They do typically have good hardware that works well together. It’s a ton of work replicating that level of hardware compatibility. Apple catches a lot of negative feedback and some of it deserved but they won’t be caught dead shipping a wifi chip as shitty as the one in my Surface.
Probably. I’m in the minority on an iPhone.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
I’m a die hard Apple apologist in anti-Apple tech spaces because I love playing devil’s advocate.
I’ve more or less never had WiFi issues on Macs. Bluetooth range was a bit shit on a 2011 Air I once had though. In an environment with dozens of other bluetooth devices in the same room. WiFi still worked fine, despite having probably 50-60 laptops using WiFi in the same room at any given time.
I had one of these famous 8 gig M1 Airs. I managed to hit 20 gigs of swap usage at some point when running several different applications and a lot of docker containers and it still ran just fine.
People often say their devices are shitty, but they’re actually excellent. Their business practices are shitty, but when the M1 came out, it performed better with 8 gigs than any equivalently priced PC laptop with 16, even if it had to swap more often.
GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Vista called it SuperFetch, and preloading pages into memory is not a bad technique. macOS and Linux do it, too, because it’s a simple technique for speeding up access to data that would otherwise have to be fetched from disk. You can see that Linux does it as you check the output of
freeand read out the buff/cache column. Freeing unused pages from memory is very fast, because you can just overwrite dirty pages.CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Yeah, conceptually it’s good, but the free up is important and seems to be a secondary concern. Perhaps it’s the third party devs.
Wasn’t super fetch what they called the high speed usb flash drives you could use as swap? That reminds me of a time I was optimistic about technology. Vista RC and Office 2007 on my MacBook Pro.