Asus co-CEO calls MacBook Neo a "shock" to the Windows PC industry

[Burty117]

I'm not sure why PC (or even phone, for that matter) manufacturers should feel threatened by Apple. This has a lot to do with the ecosystem.

I keep seeing this "Apple becoming a threat to PC and Android by lowering the price point", as if their products were universally better and thus if they were priced on par with other products, everyone would go the Apple route. Buying Apple is a choice, not a no-brainer.

When you buy Apple, you're gonna walk into an ecosystem that will ask you to buy instead of pirate, to spend more on hardware upgrades (if there are any).
Basically ,once you're in, you'll become an Apple tax payer.

Windows and Android give you some sort of freedom that Apple even makes you pay to give up.

Not on MacOS though, I've downloaded Signal, Steam, Plex, Battle.Net, Firefox, CrossOver, Microsoft Office etc... Right off the net, never interacted with the App Store.

I've been a Windows Laptop guy for my whole life, the Neo is my first Mac ever, it makes Windows laptops at it's price point look silly, just manufactured e-waste in comparison.

 

[Jack77]

When you buy Apple, you're gonna walk into an ecosystem that will ask you to buy instead of pirate, to spend more on hardware upgrades (if there are any).
Basically ,once you're in, you'll become an Apple tax payer.

For >80% of home computer users all that doesn't matter. They want a system that just works and keeps working, and that runs the apps they want/need. They comply with how Apple decides how they should use the system. They even very much appreciate the integration between their phone and their computer. And they don't think about hardware upgrades: the system should just last a for them acceptable time, after which they hope to easily migrate all their data/bookmarks/settings to a new system and be on their way for a new period.

 

[GoldenGoat]

Considering that it is in general slower than an M1, with some exceptions like browsing, it's not that great of a deal.

iphone A18 pro is slightly faster than m1 in a mac mini, and a good bit faster than M1 in other devices that don’t have a fan, based on benchmarks I’ve run. It’s very capable for most people in a software environment that isn’t bloat.

 

[Puiu]

iphone A18 pro is slightly faster than m1 in a mac mini, and a good bit faster than M1 in other devices that don’t have a fan, based on benchmarks I’ve run. It’s very capable for most people in a software environment that isn’t bloat.

I'm talking about benchmarks done by others. it seems like the throttling is lowering the results for anything that is more than just a short workload. Which is why I said it is good for general internet browsing.

 

[GoldenGoat]

I'm talking about benchmarks done by others. it seems like the throttling is lowering the results for anything that is more than just a short workload. Which is why I said it is good for general internet browsing.

The A18 pro won’t be throttling like the M1 in a fanless machine. Maybe that is what you were saying and I missed it. It’s designed to be a lower power chip. The M1 was designed to be used with a fan. Putting it in an ipad is a marketing trick to make people think they will get desktop performance, but they won’t. Both without a fan, the A18 pro is faster. The biggest issue with this laptop is that Apple doesn’t support Macs for that many years. Most people expect to keep a computer longer than that. And you can’t put linux on it when they cut off security updates. I guess at this price maybe that is ok. Usually you get what you pay for and this is a $600 machine. I think it’s better than other laptops in the price range, but maybe not when you consider lack of support/security updates.

 

[Puiu]

The A18 pro won’t be throttling like the M1 in a fanless machine. Maybe that is what you were saying and I missed it. It’s designed to be a lower power chip. The M1 was designed to be used with a fan. Putting it in an ipad is a marketing trick to make people think they will get desktop performance, but they won’t. Both without a fan, the A18 pro is faster. The biggest issue with this laptop is that Apple doesn’t support Macs for that many years. Most people expect to keep a computer longer than that. And you can’t put linux on it when they cut off security updates. I guess at this price maybe that is ok. Usually you get what you pay for and this is a $600 machine. I think it’s better than other laptops in the price range, but maybe not when you consider lack of support/security updates.

I don't think I missed anything when it comes to the A18Pro in the Neo laptops. It is behaving like a mobile SOC which downclocks hard during extended workloads. This has been confirmed.

 

[Burty117]

I don't think I missed anything when it comes to the A18Pro in the Neo laptops. It is behaving like a mobile SOC which downclocks hard during extended workloads. This has been confirmed.

100% can confirm the A18 Pro downclocks hard, it's pretty extreme, the cooling is basically some thermal goop onto a sticker... it hits 8 watts (it's max) for basically a few seconds then drops hard to 6 watts, then levels out over a minute to 4 watts and settles in there.

There's a few people out there that have done a super simple "stick a thermal pad on the sticker so it's touching the chassis" and that's improving the throttling massively, we're seeing around 20% more performance for putting a cheap thermal pad on the sticker.