alt Hacker NewsFunny just yesterday I almost bought one but got cold feet and opted for a low range MacBook with M5 chip. The Apple sales rep was not convinced it would be enough when i described using it for vibecoding and deploying so kind of talked me out of getting the Neo. I normally use a mix of LLMs, then connect to Github and do a one-click deploy on CreateOS. Do you think I over-reacted? The price of the Neo is SO attractive, a clean half price compared to what I got.
Replies
Why do you need an M5 to run Cursor and a browser? Your laptop isn't doing anything in your described workflow.
Imho 8GB RAM for productivity can quickly be restrictive. I used an M1 with 8GB and my current Macbook is M2 with 16GB, and to me the difference feels bigger than 2x. It seems not everyone here feels that way, but I'd say there's a reason Apple bumped the base models to 16 and makes that exclusive to non-Neo models.
If you have doubts and you have the money, why worry about it?
I think you’ll be quite a bit happier. Between the quality of life stuff like the ancient life sensor, the pure quality stuff like a better screen and speakers, and extra RAM so it lasts longer that seems like a good decision.
The Neo is neat and for someone who mostly does surfing and standard office work kind of stuff I suspect it’s a pretty great little laptop for way less than Apple usually charges.
But it’s not going to compete with an M5 anything.