> I built multiple iOS apps and went through two start up acquisitions with my M1 MBA as my primary computer, as a developer. And the neo is better than the M1 MBA. I edited my 30-45 min long 4k race videos in FCP on that air just fine.

Before I was a professional software developer, I used a scrawny second-hand laptop with a Norwegian keyboard (I'm not Norwegian) because that was what I could afford: https://i.imgur.com/1NRIZrg.jpeg

This was the computer I was developing PHP backends on + jQuery frontends, and where I published a bunch of projects that eventually led to me getting my first software development job, in a startup, and discovering HN pretty much my first day on the job :)

The actual hardware you use seems to me like it matters the least, when it comes to actually being able to do things.

I just spent vacation deciding not to bring a laptop, but to use my android phone (a galaxy s22) with a hdmi adapter and Bluetooth travel keyboard. Plugged it in to the TV in our accomodation and had a lot of fun.

Running neovim on termux was fine. Developing elixir was no problem, the test suite took 5s on my phone, and takes 1s on my laptop. Rust and cargo compiling was slow enough that I didn't really enjoy it though.

Meant that I could just pack up instantly and have an agent do review workflows while I was out and about as well in my pocket, and didn't really notice a big battery hit.

I was using a M1 Mac Mini and only 8GB of RAM on it to build iOS apps for maybe a year. It's absolutely doable, though it very noticeably gets a little less snappy when building projects. When building in Xcode and then switching to Firefox to browse for instance, I could tell it took slightly longer to switch tabs and YouTube playback would occasionally stutter if too much was happening.

I also was using an Intel MacBook Pro with 16GB at the time. Doing the same thing there was much smoother and snappier. On the whole, it actually made me want to just the laptop instead since it "felt" nicer. (This isn't measuring build times or anything like that, just snappiness of the OS.)

It's starting to show its age, but I've been using a 2019 MacBook Pro with the Intel chip and 16GB of memory. Still handles multiple terminal sessions with Claude Code and Codex simultaneously, building in Xcode, running Docker in the background, etc.

(Maybe the fans sometimes sound like they're a jet engine taking off…)

Finally just put an order in for a new 16" MBP M5 Max with 48GB memory only because it looks like they're going to stop supporting the Intel stuff this year and no more software updates. It'll probably be obsolete in six months with the rate things are going, but I've been averaging seven years between upgrades so it should be good!

It will do real work fine. But slack and a browser will bring it to its knees.

I was doing Android development and Verilog synthesis on a mobile Nehalem i5 in 2020. That machine is still totally adequate for anything a "normal person" does with their computer, provided they have good tab hygeine. The reality is that (unless you play video games and/or you want local LLM inference) the demands people place on their computers haven't changed significantly in at least 10 years.

I'm glad enough people got M1 MacBook Airs now that the broader sentiment within the commentariat is changing and people are pushing back on the dismissals.

8gb has ALWAYS been fine in Apple Silicon Mac OS. RAM usage on a fresh boot is a meaningless statistic (unused RAM is wasted RAM). And they're just plain capable!

I just retired my m1 air to being a server this month. They’re very capable laptops. If the neo is even comparable in spec it’s excellent for the price

I know it's not really related, but how did you manage to build two startups worth getting acquired in such a short period of time?

Would say get one with a fan, my small react native app building/indexing in xcode takes several minutes on a 2020 M1 macbook air

But damn I like that design

It would have been a better fit for me than the M4 Air, I literally use it only for typing and browsing, plus a could of Mac-only tools. Brilliant machine but complete overkill for me. It's almost tempting to switch just to get rid of the display notch.

I'm still doing iOS dev on my 2020 M1 MPB, and it's fine! I expect that if I change out its battery and apply new thermal paste it would run for another 6 years.

Can you say a little more about what you mean by "better"? How much faster is editing?

The argument is misrepresented - I think it's about frustration and convenience, not achievability.

I developed some work that keeps tens of thousands of people alive every day on a $100 Acer netbook almost 15 years ago. The tools are always there, I don't think anyone thinks the work is actually impossible to do on a limited machine.

most dev workflows from pre 2021 can probably run just fine on a NEO - i think once you get into conductor / 8 terminals with claude code territory that’s where things start to slow down

i just got an m5 max with 128gb of ram specifically to run local llms

It’s fine to if you don’t have any memory hogging apps. But as soon as you fire up a couple demanding Docker containers you’ll feel the pain. 8GB isn’t so much RAM for some applications.

> I’ve been tempted to buy one and do “real dev work” on it just to show people it’s not this handicapped little machine.

But... you can do the same exercise with a $350 windows thing. Everyone knows you can do "real dev work" on it, because "real dev work" isn't a performance case anymore, hasn't been for like a decade now, and anyone who says otherwise is just a snob wanting an excuse to expense a $4k designer fashion accessory.

IMHO the important questions to answer are business side: will this displace sales of $350 windows machines or not, and (critically) will it displace sales of $1.3k Airs?

HN always wants to talk about the technical stuff, but the technical stuff here isn't really interesting. The MacBook Neo is indeed the best laptop you can get for $6-700.

But that's a weird price point in the market right now, as it underperforms the $1k "business laptops" (to avoid cannibalizing Air sales) and sits well above the "value laptop" price range.

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