I have a MacBook Pro from like 2018 that hasn't worked well for a couple of years now, but I don't use it very often so I hadn't felt a need to do any actual troubleshooting. The other day, I decided to remove all the Adobe apps since I canceled my subscription a few months ago, and as soon as I did, the MacBook Pro started working like it's brand new. Go figure.
Been watching reviews of the Neo ad nauseam and iPad Neo comparisons. I ultimately have no use for Mac OS with my current work and personal needs. lol Im struck by how sucked into new tech releases I am. How are they so good at the marketing and social discourse. I think im my perfect world the next mini has enough power and the ability to use a secondary display for me to have the form factor of a mini when using it as a tablet, and a full second screen when using it for work. I’d missing watching movies and tv on the bigger 11 in screen, but if it’s oled I think I’ll be just fine.
Thinking of getting an M5 Air instead of a Neo, is it actually worth getting more RAM or am I fine just sticking with 16GB? I’m not really wanting to do anything crazy with it, just standard video and photo editing and stuff like that?
Personally, I'd go with 24GB if you can swing it. If you like having more than 5-6 tabs open in any browser on macOS, I'd recommend more RAM. I'm struggling with the 16gb on my M1 Air due to constant memory pressure solely from browser tabs. Yes, macOS handles swap memory well, but I wish I'd realized this sooner. I typically run 8-9 extensions on Safari, but even after testing with extensions uninstalled, some web apps are just too hungry for memory (Google's entire suite is a big culprit). I think 16GB is fine for now, but if you plan on keeping this computer for more than 3 years, I'd bump it up. 16GB just became the baseline for Mac's last year, which was the proper call. I think the Neo's successor with 12GB A19 Pro will be a better memory baseline for that product over 8GB.
Counterpoint to this - I am in Slack, Teams, Safari, Edge, and Chrome all day for various things with many tabs open in each and never encounter any memory constraints with my 16 GB M4 Air.
Ultimately I think the iPad mini is the only iPad that makes sense for me going forward but it's a tough sell right now when it's has a SoC that's older than the current cheapest Mac.
I've suspected the more recent M-series chips are better optimized in the memory department than the M1 was all-around, and I now recall a good amount of the YouTube reviews for the M4 Air were doing much more with 16GB than I'm able to. While I’m certain that I’ll get more than 16GB in my next purchase, individual needs may vary. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but a 14-day trial of the base M5 Air may be good to see how you'll use it. If you decide you need more, you can swap it, but as quoted above, you likely won't need it. I've done that with a few previous Apple products.
Here's a really good article I came across today about the Neo addressing your exact use cases, along with the browser tab concern I had. My MacBook Neo handled a week of stress better than I did | Macworld
I'd honestly be hard-pressed to notice a difference in battery life between the Neo and Air for my use case. Neo rocks.
Please let this be the kick in the ass to make iPadOS even more capable. Hell, or even dumb it back down. This in-between sucks.
I personally think the iPad will now being stuck in an infinite time loop of a product category that exists but never progresses or makes sense for anyone. Neo fills the space of iPad+Keyboard, upcoming iPhone fold probably fills the space of iPhone+iPad Mini for some, and MacBook Air/Pro already fills the space of iPad Pro+Keyboard. You've got to really want an 11"+ touchscreen tablet iOS-like experience for iPad to make sense moving forward. Maybe that's a hot take and some would have a different perspective on the usefulness of an iPad from here. Edit: And I forgot to even mention the touchscreen Macs that are supposedly on the way
I think a lot of non tech people just like big phones/tablets. And they'll probably keep outselling Macs. The more I see people use (traditional) computers on a regular basis, the more I think most people don't love computers or know how to use them. They like scrolling their Instagram and I think the iPad will continue to be successful for that market. Still the best watching baseball device of all time.
IMO People that grew up in a laptop world will forever see the value in laptops and people who grew up with iPhone’s and iPads will forever be perplexed why someone would want a laptop when an iPad does 95% of what most people use a laptop for. If you edit videos or photos, are buried in spreadsheets all the time, or develop software you need a laptop but for the majority of people iPads are so serviceable with a keyboard, but then you also get a tablet for everything else. I’m sure most people have both.
Apple’s trend shows a goal to transition all their mobile devices to OLED. Starting with the Watch, then iPhone, and iPad Pro, they plan to introduce OLED to the MacBook Pro, followed by the Air line (both Mac and iPad), possibly with ProMotion. With 120Hz now standard on the iPhone 17 and rumors of it on the 19e by 2028, I believe only the base iPad and MacBook Neo will remain LCD devices by 2030, and even those may have it by then. To make OLED mainstream, they’ll need to reduce costs on the larger panels. With that assumption, I'm keeping my M1 iPad Pro until a future OLED iPad Air is released. I've come to realize I am a casual iPad user, thus I have no need for another iPad Pro. The M4/M5 OLED iPad's are really nice, but they cost way too much for what I'd use it for. An OLED iPad Air will definitely become my go-to streaming device.
Y'know, I love OLED and have never experienced burn in on my several devices I've owned, but the thought of an OLED MacBook would make me a bit nervous. I owned my last MacBook Pro for 10 years haha. That's a long ass time to expect these kind of panels to last, especially with static elements on the screen
Maybe a hot take but outside of the blooming on my m1 iPad I have never looked at one of my Apple product screens and thought “this isn’t good enough,” let alone wanted to pay a premium for a better one. Granted I don’t use them to watch tv much. As for the earlier point regarding usefulness, I think an iPad is just exponentially more fun to use than a laptop and especially a phone for anything beyond texting (and anything not explicitly requiring a laptop). iPads forever, man.
I have this lovely bug on my Mac where I cannot turn on any iCloud services that are currently off. They all revert back to off after flipping to on. From what I've read the fix may be signing out and back in to iCloud but that's such a nightmare these days. Edit: I'm still expecting a nightmare at some point but this did fix my issue.
Big fan of the oled screen. We don’t even have a tv and it’s a real treat watching shows and gaming on it. I watched a movie on a flight and had no idea if the brightness is all the way up the battery drains so bad. I went from 100- 30 on a 2.5 hour flight.
I mean, that's just standard for my iPad these days. One hour of notes and it has to be charged again.