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I was watching this video and it’s pretty impressive what can be done on this spec machine.

https://youtu.be/d-VOt9559Gk?si=tYlDstnaxtQWoJ88

He opens 50+ apps at once while working in Final Cut and Lightroom. Obviously anyone doing those full time would benefit from more resources but I think this is going to be enough for a big chunk of the population, and will be more appealing than the windows alternatives.



I still remember how Apple fans run around singing praises what their 8GB M1 absolutely kicked ass of Intel Macs with 16GB (and even more). Only to quietly replace them with a model with more RAM next year or some even way earlier than that.

I can open even 500 apps on any laptop. This is what swap for. But with only 8GB you are getting into the swap territory very fast because you need almost half of it for the OS and video memory.

Eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272996


It did/does absolutely kick ass and 16GB is better. They’re not at odds with each other :D


More RAM is better. But doesn’t negate that it’s still very usable. Did you even bother to watch the video for responsiveness before commenting? Also it was a couple years after the transition to arm that Apple bumped the minimum RAM they shipped their laptops with.


> But doesn’t negate that it’s still very usable.

As a glorified terminal? Sure.

> Did you even bother to watch the video for responsiveness before commenting?

I did, now what?

> Also it was a couple years after the transition to arm t

Hello, we are talking about Neo with the same 8GB.


It’s hard to take you seriously or at face value if you did watch the video and called it a glorified terminal.

What in the video is remotely glorified terminal like? What terminal are you using that gives you local 4K editing capabilities and the ability to run locally run Lightroom for 50MP files?


It's hard to take you seriously when you measure the performance of a computer by performing a very specific single tasks. The thing what dividies a smartphone and a proper computer is an ability to actually multi-task without dropping the context and not waiting ages for the programs to reload.

And yes nowadays your terminal is capable of rendering HTML5 pages and encoding MPEG.

EDIT: to give you an improper analogy:

You are pointing at a sport bike and say "this is very good vehicle because it is very fast".

Is it fast? Sure. Does it allows to move 1 kilogram of cargo very fast? Surely. Does it allows to move 1 tonne of cargo very fast? Hell no. You need a 1 thousand trips to move 1 kilogram each time or you need a cargo truck - totally different vehicle.

This laptop is nowhere near the "moving cargo" territory despite being hyped as such.


Again, in the video (that you clearly didn’t watch) they’re multi tasking without loading times as they switch.

And yes you can encode an mpeg from your console. Don’t be facetious, because that’s NOT what is shown in the video. They show editing the video and photos interactively with live views of the changes taking place. Can you do that in your terminal?

Anyway, enjoy raging about the product with your arbitrary goalpost for what constitutes being usable. It seems like that’s really what you want to do rather than talk seriously about the product.


Terminal is not necessary CLI/TUI only text terminal. And by the way you do have a terminal in your pocket, maybe you even typing your responses on it.

But again you are again comparing a single task in a demo (when was the last time someone bashed pre-release Apple products?), totally ignoring what 5 years ago very similar M1 with 8GB showed where this configuration did work - and where it did not. But you don't need common sense, you need to argue in the favour of your beloved company?

> Again, in the video (that you clearly didn’t watch)

Except I did but you need to claim what I didn't, right?


And here I am on my M2 w/ 24GB RAM and a couple of RAW 48MP photos will bog the system down.

And if Time Machine kicks in, there goes any form of performance since Apple can't seem to figure out what a 'background task' is.


What are you editing with?


Affinity Photo [1/2] / Affinity


I’m not sure about affinity performance but I regularly edit 36MP photos on a similarly specced device without slowdown in Lightroom and Photoshop.


This is typically with multiple 48MP photos (3 - maybe 10) loaded staged between RAW and somewhere in the editing process.

The additional 5K monitor doesn't help. macOS WindowServer is a pile.


Is swapping more efficient on Apple machines thana Wintel running Linux?


macOS employs some memory compression which does reduce pressure slightly.

But I think a lot is also down to things like the dispatch library and scheduler being able to work together and being able to make assumptions about the hardware to have a smoother experience under pressure.


> macOS employs some memory compression

So do Windows and Linux


I wonder how long those flash chips can survive with the OS swapping 24/7.


Very long. It was already a concern when the 8GB M1s came out.




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