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Initial NEO thoughts

Velli said:
USB 3 is 10gbps and USB 2 is 480mbps. What if they actually run on the same controller on the chip, and the USB2 port is a “daughter” to the USB3 - so if you run both maxed out, the USB2 port “steals” half a gigabit from the USB3? No one would notice outside of benchmarks. Just a completely unfounded theory.
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Well, if anybody has a Neo they can run System Report and find out how the USB ports are plumbed & when someone does a teardown we'll see what controller chips it has.

First, I don't think I've ever seen a full pinout of any Apple Silicon chip but it's likely that they all feature some USB 2 and/or 3 interfaces and/or spare PCIe lanes (that could run USB controllers) for internal peripherals (keyboards, trackpads, WiFi etc). The "extra" USB2 most likely comes from an internal hub.

Second, USB2 and USB3 are actually quite independent, with their own electrical standards. A USB3 or USBC connector has two quite separate sets of wires for USB3 and USB2. They don't share bandwidth. A "USB3" hub effectively contains a separate, parallel USB2 hub - you can connect a USB3 device and a USB2 device and they'd both get their full bandwidth (minus the overhead of a hub).
 
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I pushed my Neo a bit: I started a Linux UTM VM, ran Xcode compilation in the background and browsed with Firefox in the VM. And guess what? Everything still works good. I’m a devoted RAM hog (128 GB isn’t that much) and 12 GB would’ve have been nice, but this little rascal surprised me again.
 
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Velli said:
Second: we say A18Pro is “last year’s iPhone chip”. But actually, it’s more like 18 months old. Presumably it takes longer to ramp up a completely new design, than to do a spec bump.
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I don't think you need a "conspiracy theory" to say that Apple didn't want the Neo to be too powerful and cannibalise the market for M-series Macs. Or that they chose a chip of which they had ample supplies and/or could keep manufacturing without cutting into iPhone production. Whatever Apple says, the Neo was built down to a price.
 
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mk313 said:
Interesting theories. I do remember reading an article on here (I believe) that Apple's engineers performed a minor miracle to ge the second USB port into the chip, so I wonder if that is correct. It's not implausible.
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Wished Apple had marked the ports so that I would know which is faster.

I had to google it to find out it's the left one or the one closest to the hinge.

Glad I did because the migration assistant from my M2 MBA to Neo took less than 15 minutes which was fast using the USB-3 port.

IMG_4701.JPG
 
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I absolutely love mine. Silver base model, 499. Best value of any Apple device, ever... you could argue the M4 Mini but for a complete Apple package this is just insane.

my favorite things so far:
super low power consumption (can charge off tiny power banks)
form factor (smaller footprint and less 'sharp' than Air, same weight)
trackpad is amazing for not being Force Touch (I almost prefer it actually)
NO NOTCH IN THE SCREEN and I'm not even a notch hater but I'll admit this is nice
apparently, repairability (though I haven't tried opening it up yet)
white-on-white (silver) color for the first time in 16 years (it's honestly a beautiful machine)
single core speeds are not far off M4 so everything flies (feels faster than M1/M2 on simple tasks)
wider screen aspect ratio than Air/Pro makes video playback look great

Honestly it's a home run and enough computer for 80% of folks out there. Brilliant product and brilliant timing from Apple.
 
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mk313 said:
The trackpad is noticeably louder than the M2. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but it really jumped out at me on first usage.
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I started using Use trackpad for dragging long ago -- before it got buried in Accessibility settings some years back. It lets you do a quick "double-tap and then drag" instead of a full "press-and-hold-down-on-the-trackpad” to move things around.

This is probably a terrible description, but I find it SO much easier to do in practice, and allows a lot more precision in dragging because you’re not also holding the trackpad down.

iMac 2026-03-12 at 10.57.44 AM.png
 
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Schrödinger’s said:
I pushed my Neo a bit: I started a Linux UTM VM, ran Xcode compilation in the background and browsed with Firefox in the VM. And guess what? Everything still works good. I’m a devoted RAM hog (128 GB isn’t that much) and 12 GB would’ve have been nice, but this little rascal surprised me again.
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Genuine question, I picked one up yesterday and was hoping to have it as a casual machine not to work on anything serious but rather for learning new things dev-wise with Xcode and then have it for some spreadsheet work, light photo editing and web browsing. However, not sure if it was all the iCloud data coming through, but Xcode was struggling to get the SwiftUI Canvas to boot up and the iOS sim was also going through a rough time. And to clarify this was a fresh new project, not anything I previous worked on. Memory pressure was yellow and _lots_ of swap was going on. I know Xcode is demanding, but didn’t think it bring the machine to a halt. Again I think it was that I have all my data coming in from iCloud at the same time. Any ideas or context you can add to your stress-test?
 
iJcaP said:
Genuine question, I picked one up yesterday and was hoping to have it as a casual machine not to work on anything serious but rather for learning new things dev-wise with Xcode and then have it for some spreadsheet work, light photo editing and web browsing.
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I guess one thing to point out is that, after you buy a new Mac or upgrade the OS & slap a ton of software like XCode on it, it's probably worth leaving it to its own devices for a few hours while it finishes Spotlight indexing (& completes its first TM backup if you've set that up).
 
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My only gripe is that the usb c ports are on the left side! I’ve only ever use the right hand side usbs on all of my previous Mac’s and PC’s so this will be an adjustment.
 
ignatius345 said:
I started using Use trackpad for dragging long ago -- before it got buried in Accessibility settings some years back. It lets you do a quick "double-tap and then drag" instead of a full "press-and-hold-down-on-the-trackpad” to move things around.

This is probably a terrible description, but I find it SO much easier to do in practice, and allows a lot more precision in dragging because you’re not also holding the trackpad down.

View attachment 2612704
Click to expand...


Ah, what us ol' folk used to call Drag Lock…
 
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DeepSix said:
How's the quality of the OLED screen OP?
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I am the wrong person to ask about screen quality, as I have pretty low standards. I just use my computer for office apps, email, web, quicken, etc. But to me the screen is really nice. It has a pretty decent viewing range & it looks good to my. BUT I'll let others with a more discerning eye weigh in
 
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Went to my local Apple Store yesterday morning to check out the colors. Good thing I did, the Indigo is NOT indigo, it's more like a cornflower blue, and the silver looks really nice. The Neo is very solid, doesn't feel delicate like the 12" Macbook or cheap like the white/black MacBooks of ancient history.

Traded in my old iPhone 16 for the basic Neo in Silver and the 12 monthly payments on my Apple card are just under $10! Since this is going to replace my beloved 2012 11" MacBook Air (STILL runs exquisitely but always having to carry the magsafe charger and only getting 90mins on a charge - it's time to retire it) that I was using for travel, the Neo is now the perfect choice. (My main notebook is a 15" M4 Macbook Air, totally tricked out and worth over $2000, no way is TSA going to get their hands on THAT!)

Got home to set up, and save for a glitch getting the new update installed (it froze so I restarted the setup process and chose "Update later") it was a real pleasure getting it up and running. Performance-wise? snappy snappy SNAPPY, very pleased. The screen is excellent. Trackpad (set on "Tap To Click") is fine. The speakers are surprisingly good.

Keeping an eye on the battery life, but will be infinitely better than my i7 Intel MBA 11 no matter what 😝

I DO miss the backlit keys. But since the keys are white, it's not THAT huge of a problem.

Simply an incredible deal.
 
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