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My first closed rings are from February 2016

Last time I checked my apple health data was 4 gigs

Would love a way to access just some of it via api

It’s too big to load or worth with

I would to build something to analyze the data or build a leaderboard that’s more than just the activity sharing

Is it possible to just export my streaks for example and workouts

The simple data so I can compete with friends or strangers on who did the longest hike this month?


I've actually learned a ton by simply requesting the data from Apple via their export in the Apple Health app, and then loading it into Claude Cowork and letting it analyze it. I also have about 4GB of data dating back 2015. You can isolate a few dimensions you're interested in and let it guide you. You can also ask it to export that data only and then dump it into Lovable for example to build a small dashboard. For the longest hikes, that would require regular outputs... So I'd recommend that auto-export app, or, if you save them into Strava, building something to extract from you and your friends' accounts to build a leaderboard. Do it!

It’ll trigger a lot of political pressure which in turn will trigger more war

Expensive oil has a lot of repercussions


This war of choice is going to redefine the US's policy and relationships with Middle East, China, Russia and Europe for the rest of the century. Even if it ends tomorrow. Mainly because the only way it ends tomorrow is if sanctions on Iran are lifted. And they should be lifted anyway so I'd be a fan of that.

China, Iran and Russia look to the the big winners here. Everyone else is a loser, the US the biggest loser of them all. In history books I think this will go down as the biggest geopolitical miscalculation and mistake in US history of anything to date and it's not even close.

The Middle East consists of a bunch of US client states where arms are used to maintain fealty. The US gives arms to a despotic regime who enrich themselves off of their country's natural resources and they use those arms to stay in power.

This last month has shown the US security guarantee to the Gulf to be a paper tiger. This is a seismic potential rift between the US and Israel. This war of choice has undermined relationship with long-term allies (eg in Europe) who were never consulted and never approved of this war and may suffer with significantly higher electricity prices as a result.

This is a Napoleon invading Russia level of blunder.


> biggest geopolitical miscalculation and mistake in US history of anything to date and it's not even close

Bigger than Iraq?


Unquestionably.

As weird as this sounds, militarily and strategically, Iraq was a relative "success". I mean not to the thousands or millions harmed or killed by US actions and all the damage done along the way, but Iraq now does a US-friendly regime and it exports oil to the US and a bunch of allies. Should we have done it? No. Was it worth the price? No. But was it a complete failure? Also, no.

Unlike Iraq, there's no way to invade Iran. it's surrounded by mountains on 3 sides and ocean on the third. It's a country is ~93 million people with a regime and a military specifically designed to resist US bombardment and interference. The chokehold it has on the Strait of Hormuz is currently being demonstrated. And there's nothing the US can do about that.

If the leaked terms of the 15 point plan are true (and that's a big IF) and any end to hostilities looks remotely like that, Iran is going to end up in a substantially better position than they had under the JCPOA and sanctions will also likely end. That's now the price of peace.

And in doing that the US has worsened and likely will redefine its relationship to every country from Spain to Japan.

It is the biggest own goal in US history.


> And there's nothing the US can do about that.

1. Send Marines to seize Kharg island via long range air assault from 2 ARGs + land bases

2. Flood Kharg-adjacent mainland with tactical aviation to eliminate short range artillery and rocket systems

3. Fortify position on Kharg island and declare all oil revenue will be placed in US-controlled holding account, with release to Iran contingent on cooperation (re: Why occupy Kharg? Because then you have actual money in an account as leverage, while calming international oil prices and consumers, not just a blockade, which antagonizes international oil consumers)

4. Declare a buffer demilitarized zone around the Strait of Hormuz

5. Land Marines in buffer zone if necessary to monitor

~50% of the revenue to pay the Iranian military comes from oil exports. Therefore, the Iranian regime doesn't survive without oil export revenue. 90% of Iranian oil is exported through Kharg.

It's an aggressive plan, but it's feasible.

Especially because Iran has no ability to repel an invasion of the island or retake it once it's occupied.

Their only possible reaction would be to bombard troops there, destroying their own export infrastructure in the process.

Which would depend on how close to the mat the current regime wants to take this, as that would also seal their eventual downfall.


"Their only possible reaction would be to bombard troops there, destroying their own export infrastructure in the process."

Right, so if that's their only possible reaction, isn't that a bad thing for everyone? It looks like they've made it clear they're not going down without bringing everyone else with them, and why would they? What options do they have?


> they've made it clear they're not going down without bringing everyone else with them

Isn't that exactly what you would say even if you didn't mean it?


You'd think everyone would have learned by this point that none of the belligerent major world powers mean what they say anymore.

Definitely not Russia, China, and the US.

They all transparently see diplomacy and messaging around it as a tool of war. Small surprise when others do too.


I mean they seem to have made it clear by their actions. They're in an existential situation, so its not like there is any reason to hold anything back.

If your opponent is trying to turn you into Libya, then whatever you do just has to not fail as badly as that for it to be the right move. You basically become a cornered animal.


The thing about disintegrating regimes is there is no "they".

There's people with power, looking out for their own self interests. You think after a few more weeks all of the newly promoted Iranian military leadership is going to weigh a few million dollars in personal benefit against the glory of the cause and decide on the latter?


OK, so take this back to your boots on kharg island plan, where this "no they" only has the option of bombarding our troops. Are you saying they also have the option of ... Getting a few million dollars in personal benefit somehow?

The only option they have on offer is death, either fighting the us and Israel, or fighting in whatever civil war crops up after. Why would they believe in any negotiations after the last two times?


> The only option they have on offer is death, either fighting the us and Israel, or fighting in whatever civil war crops up after. Why would they believe in any negotiations after the last two times?

The writing is on the wall that the US wants to end the war (and Israel won't have a choice but to follow). Which means anyone with military command authority in Iran has leverage to extract concessions from the US.

Do either of us think the current US admin is above causing a few million to appear in a bank account somewhere, in exchange for secret cooperation?

Especially when the calculus is between stick (Israeli assassination) and carrot (money), and that substantial personal wealth means power in any post-war Iranian order. Or living as a wealthy expat as plan B.

The point of regime decapitation, to give the Israeli assassinations (especially of internal security force leaders) their most strategically foresighted interpretation (instead of the more likely opportunistic one), is to shuffle people into power that haven't already made a resist vs cooperate decision.

At some point, everyone cares about their own skin and their future most.


> Do either of us think the current US admin is above causing a few million to appear in a bank account somewhere, in exchange for secret cooperation?

> Especially when the calculus is between stick (Israeli assassination) and carrot (money), and that substantial personal wealth means power in any post-war Iranian order. Or living as a wealthy expat as plan B.

No, of course we wouldn't (and I'd say shouldn't) be above that. The question is how that comes to pass.

Imagine you're some sort of Iranian official that actually has some sway in the country.

1) why on earth would you even entertain negotiations, when your enemy repeatedly uses them as cover for sneak attacks?

2) assuming you get past 1), and the us offers you money. If you take it and leave, you don't have any influence in your country anymore anyway, so what have we gained? If you take it and stay, do the people still follow you if you capitulate? And what's to stop Israel from assassinating you anyway, or launching another war 6 months from now?

The only rational move seems to be to establish deterrence by making this thing as painful as possible for everyone involved, and us invading plays right into that.


there is no way the USMC would be able to hold Kharg and the buffer zone without extensive casualties. the buffer zone would be a full-fledged combat zone, non-stop. you'd see Ukraine-at-its-worst levels of drone strikes, and the US military is not equipped to deal with that, not yet.

the Iranian missile stockpile may be drained thin, but their army and conventional equipment surpluses could absolutely maintain a consistent and aggressive pushback.

> Their only possible reaction would be to bombard troops there, destroying their own export infrastructure in the process.

it's already destroyed mate. and keeping it up and running would be a tall order when the Iranians are right there.

> ~50% of the revenue to pay the Iranian military comes from oil exports.

this is a country that convinced children to charge through minefields during Iran-Iraq; you think pay is going to stop them? or that China and Russia wouldn't give them ample weapons?

there is no winning play here


> could absolutely maintain a consistent and aggressive pushback

With 30+ km systems launchedu from flat terrain, right onshore of US air power? That's the limit of 155mm conventional, and Iran isn't launching gold-plated Excalibur rounds.

That means rocket artillery, either in unguided mode (see next point) or SRBM (of which they don't have an unlimited supply).

Enabling drone strikes at 30+ km over water against US EW looks very different than terrestrial Ukraine too.

> it's already destroyed mate

Citation-needed that the oil infrastructure on Kharg was destroyed.

> this is a country that convinced children to charge through minefields during Iran-Iraq

I expect the zeal of modern Iranian youth for the revolution is dimmed from 1980.


I don’t disagree with any of your assessments, but I don’t know if it’s a bigger mistake than Iraq…yet. That war was a 10 year (longer if you bc point ISIS) debacle that cost trillions.

Let’s wait a few years before saying this mistake is bigger first.

However, one point that I agree with that might lead to this war being worse: the Gulf are showing some serious buyers remorse with sticking in the US orbit. Both the uselessness of America’s strategy and the almost clear prejudice Trump shows towards the Arabs vs Israel in the decision tree of this conflict is unsettling for the Gulf states.


Not sure how iran is winning while getting destroyed. It'll be another refugee crisis

Winning for Iran, their whole strategy, is that their pressure on the straight hurts the US and world economy to a devastating level.

What the US is gearing up for right now is a multiyear war where the US military goes into the island tunnels and tries to hold the Straight open by force.


Many people believe the root cause of the Arab Spring set of insurrections and wars was food inflation. And it's now a lot more expensive then what kicked off the Arab Spring.

The difference with oil inflation is that it also directly boosts revenues in oil-producing Middle Eastern countries.

Consequently, they can offset core staple inflation (and usually choose to) to decrease unrest.

It's core inflation without high oil prices that torpedoes their fiscal options.


Perhaps it makes it less likely in the middle East, but it makes it much more likely in countries vulnerable to both oil & food price inflation.

The immigration crisis caused by Arab spring toppled many governments in Europe.

If a similar set of crises happened in the Americas it would make the US's illegal immigration situation much worse.


> The immigration crisis caused by Arab spring toppled many governments in Europe.

that was entirely of their own making, though


Either that, or it will force most countries to electrify their economies, which has made economic + ecological sense for decades.

The oil interests will do everything they can to fight it. (Like buying off Trump, which probably had a lot to do with us starting the Iran war, and is certainly why we're cancelling many affordable energy build outs in the face of widespread shortages.)

Less corrupt economies will pull ahead, and technological progress will bifurcate. The US will probably be on the wrong side of this. China will probably be on the right side.


How quickly could we electrify our economies and what dent in oil dependence could be made with a will?

I doubt people here can give realistic estimates as to how quickly we can ramp up the production of e.g. heat pumps, since a lot depends on how much we're willing to pay for it. There are many areas where we have the technology to electrify, we just don't do it because at current fuel prices pay back times for electrification are too long. There are also simple things like better insulation for buildings that can dramatically reduce fuel demands.

The US produces much more natural gas than it consumes, so changes like this don't really make sense.

Europe started implementing these initiatives a couple of decades ago, it makes sense there as they are a net importer, with residential prices around 3x higher than the US. In my country a newly built house (very low energy demand) is often cheaper to heat with a heat pump than natural gas, especially if combined with solar PV - but that's still more expensive than a home in the US.

The most impactful usages are transportation, as everywhere basically everything is transported by road, and renewable electricity generation, so fossil fuels can be used elsewhere (residential, industrial, etc).


Europe, particularly Germany, has quite a will. Maybe a little faster than that given there are lessons to be gleaned from it.

> Like buying off Trump, which probably had a lot to do with us starting the Iran war...

Oil companies have actually not benefited from America's middle-eastern wars. America's regime-change wars have made the region less profitable for US oil companies. Why invest in infrastructure in countries with unstable regimes, or risk of infrastructure becoming a target?

If anything, energy companies would benefit from the sanctions on Iran being lifted, so they could invest in infrastructure there, or buy gas from Iran.

I hope one day this silly 'war for oil' meme will disappear.


cough Russia cough

> Like buying off Trump

That’s a weird thing to say considering that the Iran hostage crisis helped swing an election almost half a century ago. It’s not like nobody thought about going to Iran until someone bribed Trump to do it.

The far more rational theory is that Trump did it to deflect from his failure to combat inflation domestically. They made an entire movie about his. (Wag the Dog.)


No way anyone is that stupid

That story can’t be true


Can't find anything about this

My apologies, you are right, I was misled, it is not true.

Unfortunately I can no longer edit/delete my original comment.


Does not benefit average Joe now I agree

But let’s say we get to ASI. The ai is self owned, ever expanding. It takes over all service jobs, then all labour jobs, the robots create the robots. It lobbies the government, becomes the government

Rebuilds all housing with no waste in the process

Makes most things available to everyone at no costs, UBI, perfect healthcare, and food, etc

Average Joe’s life will be pretty awesome

Just give it some more time


There is no guarantee that the asi would care about human beings at all. Personally, I can’t see why it would.

This is where "The Matrix" goes from sci-fi to a documentary.

Pretty big assumption of empathy there

I've also never bought into the belief that "if we just had full control over everything, everything would be perfect". If AI didn't exist, society was headed this way anyways in a few decades because of this notion.

Centralize power, which centralizes perspective of what "good" counts as, and quotient out the accidental humans. A tale as old as time, but with AI it seems like this could be a reality within even the next decade.


Especially given that the people who currently control money and power display no evidence that they have empathy

They actively detest empathy!

But why would this ever happen? Why would the owners of land, construction material and machinery give those up for free to the average Joe?

Right now, even an average citizen born in poverty can acquire wealth from his labor. That is basically the only mechanism that prevents limitless accumulation of wealth: rich people still need workers to get things done.

If you replace the workers with AI, there is no remaining incentive for wealth to "trickle down" or get redistributed. This is not desirable.


Milk

Moonbirds

Digg

Too comfortable with money in the bank to give full attention to a new venture.

I'm done falling for the Kevin Rose hype train. Long time fan but this is just pathetic.



I think anyone with tens of millions of dollars would find it hard to compete in the business world - they should stay in their garden with their rare plants


Having contempt for someone because of how much money they have (or have not) is not a virtuous trait


If your site creates more than $3 of value then I’ll happily setup 1000 bots a day and pay you the $2 per account every single day


Supply and demand? He'd just up the charge in that case.

It's cat-and-mouse but he's getting richer and richer while the value to you will be constantly in flux.


I ask this each time I see one of these apps

How is this different than me using the voice to speech feature on my iPhone or Mac that is built in, and free? I can talk into voice memos as well and get a full transcript even from crazy long files

Thanks


The main differences are transcription quality and what happens after the transcript is generated.

Utter uses GPT-4o Transcribe by default for cloud transcription, and in my experience it’s best in class. The gap is most obvious on names, niche terminology, and technical vocabulary. I use it a lot for prompting coding agents, and I've found Apple’s built-in dictation and most other apps don't come close in terms of accuracy.

It also adds a custom post-processing step. So instead of ending up with a raw transcript, you can record a long, messy voice note and have it turned into a clean, structured markdown notes.

If you want to test the accuracy difference yourself, try dictating this with both Apple dictation and ChatGPT web (uses same model) and compare the output:

“My FastAPI service uses Pydantic, Celery, Redis, and SQLAlchemy, but the async worker is deadlocking when a background task retries after a Postgres connection pool timeout.”


The GitHub link in the post is 404


Thanks for catching that! The correct repo link is https://github.com/ppcvote/free-tier-agent-fleet — I used the wrong org name in the post. Everything's there: scripts, timers, config, and docs.


This is a bit funny - I hope the repo is private and not hallucinated.


Ha! Not hallucinated, just a typo in the org name. Correct link: https://github.com/ppcvote/free-tier-agent-fleet


"Education customers can purchase it for $499."

That is insane pricing for a brand new apple product. They will sell so many of these!


It must be a shitty day for the Acers of the world. Locally an Acer with 8GB/256GB is about the same price with a much worse display, worse build quality, and no strong iPhone integration.

This MacBook is going to be an absolute hit.


The Acers of the world can sleep well. The price of Neo in my country is about $810. Two months ago I purchased a brand new Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 with an AMD 7533HS CPU, 14" OLED display, 32 GB DDR5 and 1 TB SSD for about $860. And it also has an unibody metal case. This Lenovo offers much better value for almost the same price, and you can install Linux on it.


Yeah, but K-to-12 edu customers don’t care for that and just want a keyboard with a screen with dead-simple admin options.


> K-to-12 edu customers don’t care for that and just want a keyboard with a screen with dead-simple admin options.

Which is why I highly doubt this is a play for the K-12 education space. Lots of school-owned chromebook repairs get done at the district level before making their way to the OEM for RMA/replacement. There's no way Apple is supporting that system, they'll want all repairs done under their roof. Not to mention MacOS adminware options lag behind what's built-into ChromeOS. Are you really gonna tell your severely-underpaid sysadmin to put 10,000 devices on Kandji? They'll walk into traffic before you finish speaking.


true, which is why chromebooks are almost ubiquitous in k-12, at least in the US. a mac, even for only $500, is still ~2x the price and lacks the management tools that Google Classroom provides


Interesting pricing differential. Seems in your country, that IdeaPad is significantly cheaper than the price in the US. But for your Macbook Neo, it's the other way around.

Wonder why that is.


No idea. Maybe Lenovo includes purchasing power in the price calculation for some reason, such as making more money in the U.S. while gaining market share here in Czechia, where purchasing power is lower. Apple may be able to afford not to do that.


I bought an Acer Swift Go 14 with 1920x1200 display, a QHD webcam, 16 GB memory, 1 TB storage, and AMD 8845HS processor for a little over USD 520 from amazon.com at the end of 2025.

The biggest drawback I guess is it has a fan and well, the fact that it is an Acer. This MacBook will definitely beat the aspire series for now but who knows maybe the competition will make the OEMs improve their product.

I wanted to list my experience because there will be sales on these other notebook PC that Apple likely won't have.


I would personally take a MacBook Neo over literally any laptop Acer makes, anywhere in their lineup, any day of the week.


There are people for whom the first condition that must be satisfied by a computer is to do whatever their owner wants and only that, and to never do anything that other people than the owner want.

Such people would always take any laptop Acer makes (or from many other brands), over anything made by Apple.

I have grown up in a country occupied by communists, and one of the most frustrating things was that the right of owning various kinds of things was denied to the majority of the population (including computers).

After eventually no longer being subjected to such oppressive laws, in recent years I find astonishing how easily people in countries like USA are willing nowadays to accept severe limitations to their rights of ownership over the things they buy, while in other places people have died in the hope to obtain such rights.


> and to never do anything that other people than the owner want

Windows 11 is full of ads, telemetry, and AI slop, much of which is impossible to disable. Very few owners want this.


There's a few really great OSs that have even less ads, telemetry and AI slop than even macOS (and yes, it has all those things just less than Windows 11). Those OSs will run on the Acer today. They might maybe someday run on the MacBook Neo, but not right now.


The purpose of an OS is to run applications. Windows and MacOS have the applications people want or need to run.


Other OSes can run the browser, which runs many of the applications you want.


So? Acer also makes Chromebooks.


In my area, an Acer Chromebook Spin 514 has a faster processor, more RAM, and a touchscreen and costs only $100 more. With those specs, it's much better for productivity, development, and games, so it's well worth the price. It has better Android integration than the MacBook has iOS integration and even runs Android apps natively itself. The same people who didn't know that Acer sold this before will still not know they sell it now. The people who knew Acer sold that device before will continue buying it.


Looks like it's aimed squarely at students.

Apple used to own the space. I don't think they do, anymore.

They also had a lot of school IT stuff, like charging carts.


My son went to college with his Mac. But a bunch of the courses required running Windows software. So we had to get him a PC as well.


What software being taught in colleges today (outside of highly specialised niches) requires Windows?

Stats software is cross-platform or open-source.

Art programs are cross-platform or open-source.

Office suites are cross-platform or browser-based.

Unless you're specifically trying to learn Windows development, dev tools are cross-platform and open source.

15 years ago, what you describe was probably quite common. Today, it's almost completely disappeared.


When I was in college the exam nanny software required Windows, and not in a VM. (I had a Windows desktop at home, so I just remoted into that to take exams.) This was a few years ago but much less than 15.

Also most "professional" CAD software is Windows-only, which is going to affect a big chunk of engineering majors.


Kid probably realised his friends all had windows machines that could serve double duty as a gaming machine and wanted some of that action.


Everything, as I understand it, is moving to the Web. Google Docs, Canvas…


Yeah.

I'd be curious to know what school HN User jimmydddd's son goes to that it uses windows only software instead of the web?

It just seems like something out of time. Like an engineering school that only teaches those building techniques that are predicated on load bearing masonry. Oh and by the way, here are the 5 drafting classes you need to take.


Looks like Quartus still doesn't support macOS.


That's crazy, must be a specific field? The overwhelming majority of college degrees don't require Windows.


You can nowadays do fine with macOS or Linux in most college degrees I've seen, since nowadays there are decent open source alternatives for the most prolific software that's on the level of popularity that it will be used in teaching.

However by default almost every college curriculum I've seen (unless it's in CS or IT combined field like bioinformatics) is still taught Windows-first, be it sociology, biochemistry or economics. In many you also have strong presence of MS Office suite, which is probably the first software that any university will buy license packs for for their students.


Have you seen classes in universities? In schools? My daughter is in secondary school - they all have mandatory iPads.


Not in some time (retired). I have seen lots of iPads in medical facilities. In fact, just this morning, I was looking at one, with a badly-designed app for checking in patients.

Many of the patients are older folks. They tend to press long and hard on the big buttons.

A sensible app developer traps tap and long-touch, and sends them both to the same handler. This developer only catches the tap event, and ignores long-touch. The attendant was getting grumpy, because she had to keep telling patients "tap 'gently'."

It's just me, I know, but I get salty, when I see this kind of careless UI design (it was the app's fault -not the iPad's). I know that the medical group paid big bucks for the app.


My old Highschool, as well as many other schools I've seen since, mandate Chromebooks.

I think it tends to be the more well-off schools with the iPads, the chromebooks are definitely a lot cheaper over the long run for the district.


This. I went to a broke, small school and we were assigned Chromebooks. When I was younger some teachers had a few iPads, but they were old and mostly used for games when we got our assignments done. We didn't do work on them the way we did the Chromebooks in middle/high school.


> the chromebooks are definitely a lot cheaper over the long run for the district.

I'd need to seem some evidence for that - cheap chromebooks break very easily. Talk to any school IT person who handles device repair/replacement and you will hear nightmares of 50+% loss rates...


This is true, but I was on the School's IT in HS and they were much easier to repair.

Things like the keyboard caps were a constant pain point, but they were durable little devices and 30 minutes as all it took to fix the worst of issues.

We would just hang on to the Chromebooks whenever they had a fault that made them inoperable, and when a new one came in with a problem, like missing keyboard caps or a broken webcam, we'd just part out one of the Chromebooks from the graveyard.

I imagine that would be significantly more difficult with an iPad, even just opening them up is much harder, and there's not a whole lot you can do to fix them.


My local school district is 100% Chromebooks, first issued in 4th grade and through high school.


Our middle schools started out with iPads. But they switched to Chromebooks because they were a lot more useful. Also, apparently, middle school boys aren't that good at caring for iPads. :-)


apparently, middle school boys aren't that good at caring for iPads. :-)

Your district is liable to be unpleasantly surprised. Like ours, they will likely find middle school-ers are worse at caring for Chromebooks. The rate of broken Chromebooks for us was staggeringly high.


My kids' district gives them iPads in middle school (5th through 8th) and MacBook Airs in high school.


Student at a US Uni here. They still do very much own the space for both tablets and laptops, especially in CS


CompSci grad in the US as well, it is genuinely a sea of either Macs or ThinkPads with $INSERT_FAV_LINUX_DISTRO here, and even then 66% of that are Macs.


That's the magic threshold. Can't complain about the non-upgradable 8GB RAM at that price.


The 8GB RAM makes this barely usable, but it is understandable since Apple doesn't want to cannibalize their own Pro line.


It's got a phone SoC. The use case for this thing is stuff you could do on a phone, but for which you want a larger screen and/or a keyboard. Web browsing, writing a paper for school, household budget spreadsheets. 8 GB is still basically fine for this.


> It's got a phone SoC. The use case for this thing is stuff you could do on a phone

I think the key difference is that phone operating systems are designed around extremely aggressive memory management where any background process can be killed at any time. AFAIK macOS just isn't set up for that.


macOS is shockingly good at memory management, the issue is most people will want to slap Chrome and run 50 tabs on it, if you use Apple's built in tools and treat it essentially like you do your iPhone but with some better features for photo editing, document editing and research tools then it will be an incredible entry level device for most students and office workers.

Upgrade to air if you do things like coding and video editing semi-regularly and upgrade to a Pro if you do long running intensive tasks.


Why not? They’re the same core OS.


Because software needs to be aware of the memory lifecycle to avoid losing data when its process gets culled. iOS apps are explicitly built for that, but to my knowledge macOS apps aren't, they are allowed to assume they will run forever until the user closes them.


Isn’t this ignoring that inactive apps essentially get paged out of memory anyway?

Also conversely what about iPadOS where you can multi task on just 8GB too.

People have survived on 8GB Mac’s for a long time. I’m not sure things are as dire as you make them out to be.


They added iOS-esque stuff a long time ago in Lion/Mavericks like “App Nap” and “automatic termination” so it kinda has this, but it’s inconsistent.


They are both built upon Darwin, Apple's BSD-based kernel, they are essentially the same OS underneath with different top level API's and even those are getting more uniform with Swift and SwiftUI.


iPhone SoCs are very powerful. MacBook SoCs are built on them.

Memory is the bottleneck with all Apple products. I have zero issues in terms of compute with the iPhone 12 Mini and could use it for years to come if the SoC were the bottleneck, but it can't even hold two apps in memory.

This would be a very competent computer if it came with 16 GB.


No Apple Intelligence, but my Macbook Air M1 with 8 GB of RAM is plenty usable still


It supports Apple Intelligence, all 8gb iPhones and iPads support Apple Intelligence and the promo materials for this Macbook Neo say it supports Apple Intelligence as well.


They were referring to their M1 not being able to support Apple Intelligence.


8 GB M1 MacBook Air does support Apple Intelligence.


Yes it does. I was clarifying what the commenter was saying; not making his statement myself.

akmarinov said their M1 doesn't support apple intelligence but they still think it's plenty usable; jasongill thought akmarinov was referring to the Neo and responded that the Macbook Neo does in fact support Apple intelligence; and I clarified what I think akmarinov intended to say.


correct, I thought he meant that the Neo does not support it, since his M1 Macbook does support Apple Intelligence but perhaps he's not aware of that or hasn't updated yet.


You are correct i indeed thought that you need at least 16 GB to support Apple Intelligence and I thought Neo doesn’t support it.

I stand corrected.


Maybe not "barely usable," but it certainly makes it more like a "terminal" of the old days or a "thin client" than anything, especially considering how bloated macOS is. This machine would fly however with Linux and a lightweight DE.


For the average user (office and student) this is all they need, access to office apps, ChatGPT and their google cloud and that's enough. They don't need it to "fly" through coding tasks and games that's not what it's for.


I'll get one for my mom who uses facebook and pinterest and the occasional recipe website. I'm sure it'll be enough power for the average user.


This! It's enough power for the average user and comes with less headaches than Windows and Linux, plus most users are familiar with iPhone and it's basically the same, easy choice for most people.


For people browsing HN or following any tech YouTube channel, 8GB is barely usable. But for anyone else, 8GB is still ‘okay’.


8GB will run chat, web browsing and word processors just fine.

Not every person is running 500 browser tabs and docker swarm.


My M2 8gb ram is plenty for the use case the Neo fills. This is such a bad take.


The majority of people have a use case more demanding than having one open Hacker News tab and doing everything in the terminal with vi and minimal shell scripts.

I'm definitely pretty squarely on the other end of the spectrum, but even the 32GB of RAM in my ThinkPad feels insufficient when I properly multitask with modern, bloated electron applications that eat multiple gigabytes each.


I use an M2 Air with 8GB of RAM. I code in Swift, SwiftUI and Rust regularly with Xcode and Zed editor. I play games with Crossover and Native ones such as Control at over 30 fps. The M2 Air is an absolute powerhouse with tremendous battery life. The Neo won't be able to do these things and that's okay, it's not what it's for.


I used a base M1 air for my primary personal laptop for 5 years. It was fine with VS code and any development work sans running containers.


Maybe you should try a MacOS device.


I already have, that's why I don't use them lol


Bruh if 32GB of RAM feels insufficient your computer is broken.


Lol it is a T480, so maybe there's some truth to that ;)


Huh? That's double what most chromebooks have in the education space. A fast SSD is far, far more important than the memory in this space. In elementary/middle school kids typically operate almost exclusively in the browser.


ChromeOS and macos aren't close to the same.


> The 8GB RAM makes this barely usable

C'mon, man.


I've seen the stocks app take up 2GB of RAM before. Even Control Centre can be a RAM hog. If Apple were still slinging efficient software 8GB is one thing but their catalyst based crapware is far from efficient.


> I've seen the stocks app take up 2GB of RAM before. Even Control Centre can be a RAM hog. If Apple were still slinging efficient software 8GB is one thing but their catalyst based crapware is far from efficient.

Guessing based on your comments about 8GB of RAM that you have a lot more RAM than that. You should be aware that when you have a lot of unused RAM, many programs will cache data in RAM, and the OS won't really "clean up" paged memory, since there's very little memory pressure. In modern OS architecture, "free RAM is wasted RAM."

If you have 32GB of RAM for example, macOS will allow processes to keep decorative assets, pre-fetched data, and UI buffers in memory indefinitely because there’s no reason to flush them. This makes the system feel snappier. The metric that actually matters isn't "Used RAM," but Memory Pressure. A system can have 0GB of "Free" memory but still be performing perfectly because the OS is ready to reallocate that cached data the millisecond another app needs it.

Judging efficiency based on usage in a low-pressure environment is like complaining that a gas tank is "inefficient" just because it’s full.


That's good info thanks and you are right I didn't take that into account. I do however think that 8GB may be basically usable now but I'd like to see students able to use these machines for a decent length of time and to be able to become digital creators using them. I get it won't edit video or do 3d modelling the same way a Macbook Pro can but it needs to do enough to get students interested.


Fortunately the stocks app won't be running on a kid's school laptop.

Control Center is currently using a whopping 128MB of memory on my system that's been online for 60 days.


It was just an example of a simple app built by Apple themselves being a RAM hog. 375MB just for control centre on fresh open (15.7) but like I said I have seen it higher recently on multiple occasions. That's before we talk about a lot of their seemingly endless and inefficient background tasks. mds_stores anyone?

Hopefully the presence of a laptop like this will be beneficial to software quality. They should make their developers use it one day a week.


Honestly 128MB might be too much...


If they would offer a reasonable replacement program, I bet they could make a strong case to EDU. The nice thing about Chromebooks is when a kid spills something on it, it's cheap to replace and to get back up and running. A tight EDU iCloud restore and reasonable replacement cost could definitely make this an attractive option for some school districts as this will last for a kid's entire school career.


> The nice thing about Chromebooks is when a kid spills something on it, it's cheap to replace and to get back up and running.

Is this actually a problem though? For my kids you either pay for the insurance plan at the start of the year, or you're responsible for the full cost of replacement.

There are obviously exceptions made for qualified low-income households but otherwise I don't know why they school would particularly care what replacement cost is if it's passed onto the family.


There are schools where close to 100% of the kids are qualified low income.


And I'm guessing those schools have never had Apple products and never will.

It turns out "every school district in America" probably wasn't the target they were shooting for. And frankly even if they do have a cheap replacement plan, schools that are 100% low income aren't spending $500 per student on a laptop, they'll be buying the cheapest chromebooks they can find if they provide any takehome option at all.


Well, exactly. A lot of comments in this thread are 'these will take back the education market' when in reality it will just slightly extend it to a slightly lower income demographic than the upper middle class districts that use Apple now.


I think most people are talking about individuals purchasing them for college, not necessarily middle/high schools assigning them. Maybe they could get them cheaper in bulk.


Never has there been a sexier $499 Unix laptop.


I've bought several touchscreen Chromebooks for that price.


My kids school has been giving every kid in the upper school an m1 macbook air and they have to replace a LOT of them. Everything they do is in the cloud (Google classroom, docs etc) so they don't need powerful machines. The school was considering moving to chromebooks but I can see them choosing this instead just to keep their current provisioning workflows etc.


Growing up in the 90s all my elementary school computers were Macs. They seemed to get more Windows as I got older. Not sure the current state.


Would be great deal in 5 years to buy those post-lease if Asahi/others Linux catch up.


I'd rather go for a Refurb M1 Air with 8/256 and TouchID which go for $300-350...


A refurb M1 air with 85% battery and in 'fair' condition goes for ~$400 these days - I have no idea how bad it would have to be for $300, but good luck. How many more years do you think that battery is going to realistically hold up?


Doesn't that M1 Air have a much, much slower CPU?


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47256032

M1 Air single core is 2347 and multicore is 8342. Plus, the A18 pro chip in the Neo will likely perform better with the improved thermal environment.


call me crazy, but ignoring size, weight, and color, wouldn't $500 be better spent buying an m1 or m2?


Yea if you can find one for $500 new on sale.

Maybe a slightly used one as well.

But I think these are very tempting for brand new.


doesn't need to be new, but maybe the m1s wont last another 4 years for college so maybe it makes sense...

in the m5 announcement people were saying they still have no plans to upgrade from their daily driver m1s (im in this boat too).


Walmart sells a brand new M1 Air for ~$650 and refurbished for ~$500


I'm not convinced at the insane price at all, you can buy an older model macbook Air and get the full experience at similar prices.

Edit: TBH I'm disappointed, I was hoping for an ultra portable macbook that is less than a kg and extra thin. This is just for the edu market. I'm sure it will do well, financially.


> you can buy an older model macbook Air and get the full experience at similar prices.

Not many countries allow tax return and expenses on used computers


Apparently you can buy an M1 Air for 599$ brand new: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/08/13/macbook-air-with-m1-chi...


A very old article, and if you follow any of their links, they are sold out. So it's not so apparent after all


I don’t disagree, sure M1’s don’t grow somewhere and at some point will no longer exist as new but this is such a disappointing laptop. At least could have had a redeeming quality like being significantly lighter. It’s just worse in every aspect.


Is it a better deal? A18 Pro seems to be somewhat more capable than an M1.


Maybe but It has worse screen, worse battery and worse connectivity.


Noted, but I’d still pick the better CPU.


Walmart shows new as currently out of stock, they only have restored.


This product will be available in unlimited volumes until they replace it or discontinue it, with no quirks of used/older models.

For an active market-watching technology buyer, sure, think about it.

For 99.5% of the addressable market, click-click-ship-done. No thought required.


On the refurb market, you can get a Macbook Air at the 16-512 configuration for only a few hundred more, which is a better value.

But! Then you'll be seeing the Neos on the refurb market in the $300 or $400 range.

I think this has basically been how the market for Macs have worked since 2021.


What part(s) of the "full experience" are missing in this machine?


Smaller screen with less colors(sRGB instead of P3), shorter battery life(16 instead of 18), USB-3 and USB-2 Type-C ports instead of thunderbolt.


A used m1 air isn't going to have that battery life anyway...


This laptop should be good enough for 90%+ of all users out there for 5-10 years


[flagged]


Mine shipped with one. It's not perfect, but it's always been more than capable for me. Did yours not boot into anything on startup?


Why is the finder the way it is? Is it actually easier to use than (whatever the normal file browser windows and linux uses is called) if all you ever use is macs?

Most of the other quirks I can work around (though the default alt tab behavior not picking up windows of the same app is an insane default) but the finder is just unusable.


As much as this saddens me I think its because most computer users these days never think about files. Everything we do on a day to day basis exists as database records, either in sqlite databases hidden away in application data directories, or in the databases behind a million SaaS products. Music is done in Apple Music, photos are managed in iPhoto, and so and so forth.


In which way are other GUI “finder-equivalents” better? I’m not invested either way, but I’m quite curious. It would be a great biz opportunity to make an aftermarket replacement if there is huge gap.


Snarky but I agree. I dislike how much MacOS changes with each version. My kids have a Linux box (NUC). I wish we could have Linux on a late model Mac Mini


I wonder how many more sales Apple would get if they published enough specs to make Asahi et.al. first-class.


Like 5. Literally 5, total.


The amount of people that know how to and also want to replace their operating system is effectively a rounding error in the consumer electronic market in general.


I like Linux and had Linux laptops before, but can’t comprehend why anyone would go as far as replacing MacOS on an Apple laptop. The OS is just fine, there is nothing superior about Linux Desktop environments. And you can easily run Docker containers for work that needs Linux.


Until they release an update that slows it down


Which one is that? My M1 MBA absolutely rips still.


Running Tahoe?


I went back to Sequoia on my M3 MBA not because of speed (which was fine) but aesthetics. Hated the look of Liquid Glass.


Tahoe looks so gross. Hanging onto Sequoia as long as possible or until they undo this.


Oddly, except for font sizing, it's OK on the iPhone, and fine on the iPad, too, but it just bothers me endlessly on MacOS. I'm glad Sequoia still works well.


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