> macOS 15 uses ~5GB on startup without any app open

Sort of? Mac very aggressively caches things into RAM. It should be using all of your RAM on startup. That's why they've changed the Activity Monitor to say "memory pressure" instead of something like "memory usage."

I'm typing this on an 8 GB MacBook Air and it works just fine. I've got ChatGPT, VSCode, XCode, Blender, and PrusaSlicer minimized and I'm not feeling any lag. If I open any of them it'll take half a second or so as they're loaded from swap, but when they're not in the foreground they're not using up any memory.

> A18 Pro chip (2 performance cores + 4 efficiency cores) whereas the macbook air has the M5 chip

i don't see the m5 air on geekbench yet, but here are some related numbers for context (sorted by multi ascending):

    | device                      | cpu                                             | single core score | multi core score |
    |:----------------------------|:------------------------------------------------|------------------:|-----------------:|
    | iPhone 16 Pro Max           | Apple A18 Pro                                   |              3428 |             8531 |
    | iPhone 16 Pro               | Apple A18 Pro                                   |              3445 |             8624 |
    | MacBook Air (15-inch, 2025) | Apple M4 @ 4.4 GHz (10 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores) |              3708 |            14698 |
    | MacBook Air (13-inch, 2025) | Apple M4 @ 4.4 GHz (10 CPU cores, 8 GPU cores)  |              3696 |            14729 |
    | MacBook Air (13-inch, 2025) | Apple M4 @ 4.4 GHz (10 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores) |              3696 |            14729 |
    | MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2025) | Apple M5 @ 4.6 GHz (10 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores) |              4228 |            17464 |

https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

Modern pcs use the ram given to them. Its not like a fixed quantity it requires.

> macOS 15 uses ~5GB on startup without any app open. I'd be swapping all the time on 8GB of RAM.

I have an older 8GB MacBook I use for testing. It’s actually fine for normal use with a web browser, Visual Studio Code, Slack, and Spotify running. You’d think it would be an unusable mess from the way some people talk about RAM, but modern OSes are good and swapping lesser used things to the SSD is fast.

Your OS may show 5GB used, but that doesn’t mean all 5GB need to be active in RAM all the time. Letting the OS swap rarely used things out to the SSD is fine.

Thats not how OS RAM usage works. I can’t find one definitive source. But on no modern operating system can you just blindly look at RAM usage by the OS and subtract that from the amount of physical RAM and say that is what is available for applications.

This is a Mac Chromebook. You use it for cloud stuff and every now and then you can run a real application in a pinch.

You can also develop locally which is significant.

If you're concerned about the amount of RAM, this isn't the laptop for you. Grandma doesn't need 16GB to browse Facebook and look at family photos.

I'm actually glad they restricted the memory, because it will create market pressure for devs to stop wasting system resources on bloated electron apps and NextJS. With RAM prices skyrocketing these days people need to be more conscious of how much system resources they're taking up.

> ...instinct would be to use the socket towards the rear of the machine as my charging port...it's closest to the corner...charging in the other port...feels slightly weird...I suspect most users will...

Ah, but, as I recall some vintage of 2016-2018 Macbook Pro users will remember that using the "backmost, corner" USB-C port for charging could cause the MBP to overheat and fans to sound like a helicopter.

Thus, the (admittedly probably vanishingly tiny minority of) MBP veterans with "back charging USB port PTSD" who learned to use the foremost USB port for charging, will know full well to stay away from using that backmost USB port, if all they need is power!

From Daring Fireball:

It was, I am reliably informed by Apple product marketing folks, a significant engineering achievement to get a second USB port at all on the MacBook Neo while basing it on the A18 Pro SoC.

But yes, even just two dots above the USB3 and two dots above the USB2 wouldn't be rude.

You don't have a problem with no keyboard backlighting?

Reading the list of QoL they scrapped I guess Jobs was right all along that to hit a base level of features Apple just needs a certain price point.

My guess is that if you plug a fast medium on the slow USB port the OS will give you a pop up letting you know. I have seen something similar in windows 11.

It basically is an iPhone or iPad, but with a keyboard. It’s really only the display that’s gonna consume significantly more power than its iPhone/iPad equivalent.

In case you didn't already know or haven't considered it, you can find right-angle usb-c MagSafe adaptors that basically allow the charging cable to disconnect from the device like MagSafe.

A potential example that comes to mind would be you have a Studio Display in your house that you use for remote work with a beefy MacBook Pro, and then maybe a family member has a MacBook Neo that they’d like to plug into a monitor occasionally.

I don't think that was the intent. If anything, 90%+ of these features here feel nice-to-have, and I bet OP agrees (or is neutrally sharing the comp).

I'll keep adding to the list:

* Only one external display

* No haptic trackpad

and there's nothing wrong with that.

Since it's just $100 to get 250 -> 500 GB and Touch ID, I think it's okay.

It means people who need the cheapest computer can get it, and people who want to upgrade pay a small amount and get all the upgrades in a package without jumping up to the MacBook Air, etc. for much more.

I would say "No keyboard backlighting" is a true show-stopper for a huge portion of the target audience (students).

I bet there are some paranoid people out there who will love that no touch-ID means no way for law enforcement to compel you to unlock the device.

I think different people will have one feature they feel should have been kept (other than the ram which is universal). For me not so much the Touch ID but the backlit keyboard.

Agree on the Touch ID. Love that feature for passwords etc.

Not terribly happy about the USB 2.0 port as well

The free rectangle area is a 16:10 screen, the space around the notch is a freebie.

The A-series has supported virtualization since long before the M-series existed. iOS disables it in early boot, though.

On the other hand, how much virtualization are you really going to be doing with 8GB of RAM?

The hardware support was there for a while. Given that this runs macOS, i would guess (no insider knowledge) that it would work just fine and not be disabled like it is in iOS (by policy, not by technical reasons)

* $500 = base model (250 GB SSD) (education)

* $600 = 500 GB + Touch ID (education)

* $1,000 = MacBook Air (500 GB SSD) (education)

fyi: "Gb" implies gigabit, used in network and RAM where 8 bits = 1 byte is not guaranteed. "GB" implies gigabyte.

Costs. gotta remember this thing is based on iPhone hardware...which doesnt have more than 1 usb port normally.

2010. https://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/12/backlit-keyboard-to-ret...

I think they mean not reflective like current models, not that it isn't illuminated like the MacBooks of yore

I thought they changed from glowing Apple to reflective Apple

Like Neo from the matrix, the other port is still useful for mice, printers, DACs, arduino projects, and little USB powered fans.

You're not the audience, obviously.

It just looks slightly nicer. Touch typists don’t look at the keyboard anyways. And if you care enough about looks, you’ll want RGB lighting.

The A18 Pro performs about on par with an M4 in terms of single threaded performance, and a little better than M1 in terms of multi threaded performance.

The MacBook Neo has one of the fastest processors on the market for single threaded tasks, which is what has the most impact on how "fast" a processor feels for day to day usage.

Netbooks had processors that were glacially slow.

It just means the phone is massively overpowered :)

I think I'd put a phone CPU running netbook-like costing $599 still in the "overpriced premium brand" bucket myself.

(Not sure if that's really an apt description though, but then I was out as soon as I read they're neutering one of the usb-c speeds.)

Of course it’s an iPhone chip, which is why it’s got just 8 gigs of RAM. I think it’s the same exact SoC that went into the 16 Pro Max.

The A18Pro is a very powerful CPU, besting even the M1 in single-core performance (about even in multicore). Saying its just a "phone CPU" is disingenuous.

I'm losing my mind. This is a BUDGET, entry-level laptop, and you're complaining about the lack of Thunderbolt daisy chaining?!

You get what a budget product is right?

That's an extremely niche use case and not even a remotely selling point for probably 99% of buyers, much less the "biggest" one.