Apple makes a lot of its money on services like Apple Music, Apple TV+, and iCloud. With that in mind, getting more people into the ecosystem, even with thinner margins on entry-level hardware, can pay off in the long run.
If Apple built a $299 "Neo" desktop PC, Windows would have a real problem
- Thread starter Julio Franco
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acrossthestars
Posts: 274 +262
Putting aside the fact that Windows already has a "real problem"―it's f*cking terrible and everyone hates it―macOS is probably not going to go full "budget". The reason Apple made the Neo was to repurpose binned iPhone 16 SoCs; it was not to create a new, cheaper segment of their current offerings.
In order to create a Mac Mini Neo, Apple would either have to purposefully bin perfectly good chips or deliberately order too many A19s (not A19 Pros, because those are already promised to the Macbook Neo 2 that is expected to follow the Neo 1, when the supply of A18 chips finally runs out) and find them not good enough, even for a budget laptop. It's possible that Apple might pursue this venture, now that there is an engineer at the helm instead of a supply chain guy (because a person who understands supply chain logistics doesn't "play the odds", on the availability of their product segments), but only time will tell.
I wouldn't hold my breath, though.
In order to create a Mac Mini Neo, Apple would either have to purposefully bin perfectly good chips or deliberately order too many A19s (not A19 Pros, because those are already promised to the Macbook Neo 2 that is expected to follow the Neo 1, when the supply of A18 chips finally runs out) and find them not good enough, even for a budget laptop. It's possible that Apple might pursue this venture, now that there is an engineer at the helm instead of a supply chain guy (because a person who understands supply chain logistics doesn't "play the odds", on the availability of their product segments), but only time will tell.
I wouldn't hold my breath, though.
disinfect8280
Posts: 99 +48
DEMinSoCal
Posts: 36 +37
You seem like technical type person, given your choice of apps and setting up Windows 11 VM, etc. You think it's MAGIC that all that fits in a few GB that is leftover from the macOS footprint in that tiny 8GB RAM? Since you're technically-inclined, check your swap activity to the drive so you can see that in actuality, all that stuff isn't running at the same time, it's being swapped in and out from your SSD which also has a finite write lifetime. You're basically killing your SSD faster. You also probably know unlike your Windows laptop, the SSD in any MacBook is permanent. Good luck.
You instantly destroyed your argument.
If you make it the same price... then what is the point? Might as well get the laptop, no one is going to pay the same for less.
Let's estimate the costs of the screen at $40, battery/charging electronics at $20, keyboard at $10 and touchpad another $10. That's $80 in costs lowered and it should then be at least that much cheaper.
Yeah, I pulled those estimates out of my *** - they're probably on the high side compared to the actual costs, but desktops also have much lower warranty rates which also translates to cost savings.
It's not like Apple has never made products aimed at lower segments before (iPhone SE comes to mind). They could do what they're doing with the 16E, sort of. Instead of sticking new innards in an old exterior they could stick new innards into another product line.
And no not the MacMini, it's way too big. The Apple 4k TV box however... that should fit an iPhone (Neo) chip and the cooling it needs just fine.
Already has most of the needed cutouts in its fancy aluminum shell. Power, HDMI, Ethernet and plenty of space to add some USB ports.
All they need to do is design a custom PCB that fits in the existing Apple 4k TV shell and hosts the iPhone/Neo chip. Drill some additional holes for USB ports and TA-DA! Apple Neo Desktop.
Close to no (re-)tooling costs so it'd be an extremely low investment deal for them. Heck putting the factory that makes them to work a bit more prolly nets them additional economy of scale costs savings that could improve the margin on the Apple 4k TV box itself.
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And like I stated in a previous post, it'd be the perfect way into Apples walled garden at minimum costs if they couple it to their Developer Program/Membership. Either make it exclusively available to developers or give them a discount.
Heck if they can knock off say ~100-150 compared to the Neo laptop they can probably sell it to schools easily as well to "Get 'em young" which has been a very successful strategy for Microsoft.
DEMinSoCal
Posts: 36 +37
A couple of issues against using an A19 Pro chip in a desktop comes to mind, namely, where does Ethernet and HDMI come from? Does an A19 Pro support either or would we have to go the route of USB adapters/converters? The A19 Pro does support DisplayPort over USB-C (10Gbps) so to some extent one could drive an external monitor via USB. But Ethernet? Gotta remember, it's still a phone chip...the M-series chips handle Ethernet for current products plus support Thunderbolt.
Did you even read the article?
At ~$500, the M4 Mac Mini already exists and outclasses this in both performance and efficiency. It’s not hypothetical, it’s on shelves, and it’s solid.
Turn this into a Mac Mini form factor with a few proper USB ports for KB/M around the suggested price and it would sell like crazy. That’s the real missed opportunity you seem to grasp.
And before the usual “but SSD wear” crowd shows up....please do some homework. macOS swap management is not the same as the old school thrashing Windows horrible swap file scenario people love to fearmonger about. Modern SSDs and Apple’s memory handling aren’t burning drives out left and right. That argument is outdated.
Also, let's not forget that Apple isn't using cheap NAND chips and I doubt they're using QLC NAND which is absolute garbage.
DEMinSoCal
Posts: 36 +37
How do you know they aren't using cheap NAND? I'm not arguing that they are or aren't but your post reads that you know for a fact.
DEMinSoCal
Posts: 36 +37
Is it outdated? Where's your research that says otherwise? All SSD's have a certain write endurance. Unless the laws of physics have changed, only a certain amount of data can fit into whatever is leftover from the OS and other things in physical RAM, so as you open more and more apps, existing stuff gets written to the disk which would not happen in a system with adequate memory.
Per Google: "SSDs have a limited write lifespan because the NAND flash cells degrade every time data is written or erased. This is measured in Terabytes Written (TBW) or Drive Writes Per Day (DWPD), indicating the endurance before the cells become unreliable. However, for most users, this limit is not reached for many years." Many years in normal circumstances, but maybe not when your OS is constantly swapping to SSD.
Comparing macOS and Windows swapfile, Gemini says: "macOS utilizes swap (or “backing store”) more aggressively and dynamically than Windows, focusing on keeping RAM available for active tasks rather than waiting for it to fill completely. macOS employs advanced memory compression and "opportunistic swapping" to move inactive data to SSDs earlier, while Windows typically fills RAM more fully before relying heavily on its pagefile." macOS has more aggressive use of swapfile than Windows it says.
But I'd like to read where you got your information from...
XP437
Posts: 27 +24
Apparently I am also a part of the minority because I need at least 32, preferably 64gigs of ram and a dedicated gpu for all of my design programs
Because it would be very not Apple to use such cheap **** in their devices.
The fear of SSD degradation has largely been overblown.
For instance, I have a 1 TB Samsung 980 SSD. I've had it for nearly three years and let me tell you, I abuse the crap out of it—I'm not at all careful of how I write stuff to it. That's with using it as an OS drive with the swap file and the disk where I keep my test Hyper-V VM disk images on.
With that being said, according to Crystal Disk Info, I'm down to 83% life. Not bad for a three year old SSD that's been thrashed for nearly three years.
At this rate, it'll last me another three years until I really have to worry about things.
You definitely are.
Majority of people (I'd say 80%) can make do with 8GB without feeling limited most of the time.
Small subset (the ~20%) that actually do more than the usual browser things and relatively simple tasks will need more, but 16GB serves the fast majority of those.
So you'd be in a subset of a subset and shouldn't be surprised if the entry level product isn't aimed at you.
About the Virtual Memory System
Guidelines for improving the performance of memory-related code.
developer.apple.com
macOS uses memory pressure instead of “free RAM,” so it fills unused memory with cache and frees it instantly when needed. Windows does similar things, but shows it in a way that is completely different.
Unified memory means CPU and GPU share the same pool, so there’s no duplication like you get with separate VRAM and system RAM on most Windows PCs.
On top of that, Apple controls the whole stack, so memory behavior is tightly optimized. Windows has to support tons of hardware and legacy software, which adds overhead and background noise.
macOS is also more aggressive with compression and swap, and the swap file isn’t some SSD killer on modern Macs, it’s designed for it.
It’s not magic.
I will toss this in here just for some reading material.
Windows 11 wants to run like a MacBook Neo, starting with memory efficiency
Microsoft is improving Windows 11 performance by reducing memory usage, aiming to make 8GB RAM laptops more usable amid rising hardware costs.
www.digitaltrends.com
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Burty117
Posts: 5,955 +5,030
Yep, I bet this SSD doesn't die before I do, I've seen the sort of writes you need to do to kill an SSD, I know my examples are of enterprise SAN disks, but you need petabytes of writes to actually kill an SSD.
Even some mega cheap chinese SSD's I've bought second hand off ebay that are seven years old, I used them as read cache drives, it took about two years for those drives to drop whopping 1%.
My current home server has a 3.2TB PCI-E NVMe Samsung drive that was ripped out of a server from some datacenter, had been power cycled 21 times in four years, 521TB written to it, life is at 93% with 100% available spare still.
Tell me, do you experience SSD's dying regularly around you?
Yeah, it's a tiny 256GB SSD, why would I store anything important on it? That's what Cloud Services and NAS's are for.
DP to HDMI converter nets them one 4k 60Hz port.
Fpga or more dedicated chip to convert the signaling for phone screens to HDMI nets them.. whatever the maximum resolution that can do on a second port, seems like WQHD 60hz is possible at least.
Ethernet will likely have to come from the USB bandwidth. Or leave it absent in true Apple style to sell more dongles.
Most people who buy a MacBook Neo aren’t going to be connecting it via Ethernet, they’re going to be connecting via Wi-Fi.
Comment was on a as per the article theoretical mini desktop.
In which case there's always good points to be made for running an ethernet cable.
WiFi has two benefits
1) Not having to run/hide a cable
2) You can move around
#2 is irrelevant for a desktop.
#1 is only relevant if you CBA or can't because the landlord (or partner) forbids it.
If that's not the case I would always recommend being arsed and running a cable, latency and reliability being the main reasons and speed as secondary.
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