22 comments
  • bfrog28m

    Funnily it probably runs Windows better than the typical corporate spyware burdened x86 laptop.

    • nazgulsenpai21m

      Took 6 minutes from power button to login prompt this morning. Probably even longer from login responsive desktop. So yes, probably!

      • amluto2m

        I’ve helped someone with a rather clean iMac, circa 2019, still supported by Apple. Forget 6 minutes — you can spend a full hour from boot to giving up trying to get anything done.

        I think that Apple has gotten so used to having fast storage in their machines that the newer OSes basically don’t work on spinning rust.

  • Tagbert55m

    Not surprising but good to hear. It seems that there really isn’t anything that runs on a new MackBook Air that you couldn’t run on a NEO. It might not be as fast for some things but it gets the job done.

    • kace9118m

      Isn’t basically m1 air equivalent in specs?

      I’ve got that one and I’m yet to feel limited.

      • xattt6m

        It will have a longer support period than an M1 based on Apple’s history of device releases. This might also mean a longer support period for the 16-series phones than typical, similar to the 4S.

  • enopod_10m

    Can it run Linux?

  • donatj31m

    Was that in doubt?

    • xeromal28m

      It uses the iphone processor (which I think still might be one of those Mchips?) so I think it was ok to be unsure.

      • jayd166m

        The odds of it not running at all were low but the performance is the real factor for whether it can _practically_ run a windows VM.

    • crazysim29m

      Yeah. It's the first production Mac using an A-chip and is a Mac that has had many things cut out for savings. The question is did Apple feature cut required functionality.

      • nsxwolf24m

        The first Apple Silicon developer boxes were Mac Minis with A series chips so I wouldn’t have expected any issues.

  • joe_mamba54m

    Man, I do wonder what the realistic lifespan of that single NAND chip will be after it gets hammered by constant swapping of running tasks way beyond the capabilities of a 8GB RAM machine.

    I have a PC with a 10+ year old 256GB SATA Samsung SSD that's still in top shape, but that's different because that drive has those 256GB split over several NAND chips inside, so wear is spread out and shuffled around by the controller to extend lifespan. But when your entire wearable storage is a single soldered chip, I'm not very optimistic about long term reliability.

    • havaloc42m

      There was quite a bit of discussion about that when the M1 first came out, but none of it really seemed to have happened six years later. The target audience isn't in danger of wearing it out and the ones that will push the limits will grow tired of it and sell it in a year or two or move on to the Neo 2, which might have 12gb of ram due to the expected chip.

      I still think it's a great machine, but I think all these worries about NAND dying really haven't come to fruition, and probably won't. I have about a hundred plus of various SSD Macs in service and not one has failed in any circumstance aside from a couple of battery issues (never charged and sat in the box for 2 years, and never off the charger).

    • stackskipton15m

      Most flash has average wear out after 300k cycles. Let's say 64GB is used for swap. That's 19200 TB or 19.2 PETABYTES of Swap usage. Let's say you swap 12GB a day, you will burn out that 64GB of Flash Storage in 4.38 years and my guess is that amount of swap usage is extremely high that user would probably replace laptop sooner out of performance frustration.

    • aruametello42m

      from what i seen in "low end" ssds like the "120gb sata sandisk ones" under windows in heavy near constant pagging loads is that they exceed by quite a lot their manufacturer lifetime TBW before actually actually started producing actual filesystem errors.

      I can see this could be a weaker spot in the durability of this device, but certainly it still could take a few years of abuse before anything breaks.

      an outdated study (2015) but inline with the "low end ssds" i mentioned.

      https://techreport.com/review/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-t...

  • j4532m

    If Parallels can run it, UTM likely can run a fair bit too.

  • qaz_plm1h

    “Parallels Desktop runs on MacBook Neo in basic usability testing. The Parallels Engineering team has completed initial testing and confirmed that Parallels Desktop installs and virtual machines operate stably on MacBook Neo. Full validation and performance testing is ongoing, and additional compatibility statement will follow if required.”

  • the_real_cher55m

    does that mean since this is the iPhone 16 cpu, by proxy the iPhone 16 can also run Windows in a virtual machine?

    • hard_times28m

      Is this a trick question? Of course. However Apple imposed artificial limitations, like disabling JIT.

    • bombcar45m

      Maybe/maybe not (we don't know how identical the A18 chip is to what shipped in the iPhone) - but it does determine that the virtualization stuff that was added to the M1 (in the era of the A14) has now moved over to the A series, at least enough to support macOS.