[HN Gopher] Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a ...
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Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine
Author : tosh
Score : 149 points
Date : 2026-03-13 14:11 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macrumors.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macrumors.com)
| qaz_plm wrote:
| "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."
| Tagbert wrote:
| 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.
| kace91 wrote:
| Isn't basically m1 air equivalent in specs?
|
| I've got that one and I'm yet to feel limited.
| xattt wrote:
| 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.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| Always excited to hear about fellow M1 users. I'm not limited
| in the slightest. 5-6 years strong now?
| bloudermilk wrote:
| I've been an M1 Air fan since I got mine in 2020 but
| recently things have become unusable. Playing 4K videos
| often drops frames, even at 30fps. And I can't reliably run
| Notion's transcription AI on Zoom calls, even though it's
| not running locally. I'm going to do an OS reinstall soon
| to see if that helps, otherwise it will be time to
| upgrade...
| kace91 wrote:
| Yeah, honestly not even counting. The only reason I even
| consider moving is that I dislike Tahoe and I know
| eventually I won't be able to stall the update; hardware
| wise it doesn't even cross my mind.
|
| I have a current gen MacBook Pro for work configured with
| stupid amounts of ram and I feel no difference in terms of
| fluidity at all.
| MBCook wrote:
| Ish. It's better in some ways, like single core and maybe
| multi, but not by a ton. At the same time I think the M1 may
| have more raw GPU power, though missing a few fancy features.
|
| Hardware is mostly worse, but that's to be expected for the
| price. And nothing terrible, just little cuts all over.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| does that mean since this is the iPhone 16 cpu, by proxy the
| iPhone 16 can also run Windows in a virtual machine?
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| Thats pretty cool.
| MBCook wrote:
| Speculation I've heard from Ben Thompson of Stratechery is
| this machine is, in part, a way to get value out of iPhone
| Pro chips that had defects.
|
| The Neo has a 5 core GPU. The iPhone 16 Pro had a 6 core.
|
| So, if he's correct, these are the same exact chip. Just with
| a fault in one GPU core or one GPU core disabled if it was
| good. That lets them use extra chips they already made that
| would have gone to waste, at least until they run out.
|
| Which would mean they both would have identical abilities,
| assuming no software lock for segmentation purposes.
|
| It's all supposition. But it make a lot of business sense.
| hard_times wrote:
| Is this a trick question? Of course. However Apple imposed
| artificial limitations, like disabling JIT.
| duskwuff wrote:
| I mean, in principle you already can: https://getutm.app/
|
| It doesn't work _well_ - probably not at all for a modern
| version of Windows - but the tools exist.
| MattTheRealOne wrote:
| Yes. See UTM: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/utm-se-retro-pc-
| emulator/id156...
|
| Unfortunately, the performance is very poor due to Apple
| restrictions on iOS.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| 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.
| aruametello wrote:
| 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...
| havaloc wrote:
| 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).
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> 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. _
|
| 1. How do you know nothing happened? Define nothing in this
| case. Do Mac users check and report their SSD wear anywhere?
|
| 2. Didn't the OG 256gb M1 have 2 128MB NAND chips instead of
| one 256 meaning better wear resistance?
| randomfrogs wrote:
| If swapping was causing SSDs to fail on M1 Macs, we would
| never see the end of the hysterical articles about
| "NANDgate". Since we haven't seen any in all these years,
| it's seems pretty certain it's not happening.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| Hysteria would be if all had an issue like the keyboard
| gate, but this isn't an issue, it's a design limitation
| for certain uses cases which not everyone has. Some users
| will wear out faster than others due to usage patterns.
| If their M1 dies after 6 years of heavy usage, do you
| think they'll investigate if it was the NAND that died
| and go online to tell the news, or will they chuck it and
| buy new one?
|
| NAND is still the same wearable part that regular X64
| laptops have, Apple doesn't use some magic industrial
| grade parts but same dies that Samsung, Micron and SK
| ship to X64 OEMS, and those are replaceable for a reason,
| because they eventually fail.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| The reality is most 8GB M1 Macs are still working just
| fine 6 years later. Power users know they need more than
| 8GB of RAM and will buy a MacBook Air or Pro with 16GB+.
|
| The MacBook neo is for students, grandparents, travel,
| etc.
|
| Hell, even if it dies after 6 years it was still a better
| experience than using a $500-600 windows PC and the cost
| comes out to ~$8/month spread over 6 years.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> The reality is most 8GB M1 Macs are still working just
| fine 6 years later. _
|
| Do you think SSD drives are replaceable for no reason?
| Just because M1 mac aren't failing left and right doesn't
| mean their NAND won't fail.
|
| Even though I like the NEO, I can't in good faith buy a
| machine with soldered wearable parts. That's like buying
| a car with soldered brake pads because "in 6 years
| average users don't feel like they need changing".
|
| I still had laptops on my hands from 20 years ago that
| work fine simply because you can swap their drives with
| fresh ones. How many M1 mac will still be functional in
| 20 years?
| windowsrookie wrote:
| "How many M1 mac will still be functional in 20 years?"
|
| Probably quite a few, MacBooks have had soldered SSD's
| for over 10 years now. My 2018 McBook Pro still has a
| perfectly functioning SSD. I still see people using 2015
| and older MacBooks all the time. There is no widespread
| SSD failure issue after 10+ years of Apple soldering the
| SSD's.
|
| For most people the SSD's are lasting longer than the
| useful life of the device.
| astrange wrote:
| Just because it's soldered doesn't mean it can't be
| replaced.
|
| (But it's encrypted, so you'd better have backups because
| you can't read it off the chips.)
| wtallis wrote:
| > Do you think SSD drives are replaceable for no reason?
|
| The number one reason why laptop OEMs primarily use
| replaceable SSDs is so that they can switch SSD vendors
| on a monthly basis to whoever is the lowest bidder at the
| moment. The number two reason is so that they can offer
| multiple storage capacity options without building
| different motherboard configs (though in practice, a lot
| of OEMs never get around to actually selling the
| alternative configs). Repairability is a _very_ distant
| third place.
| havaloc wrote:
| Exactly. If some sort of random Dell model has a failure,
| you'll never hear about it because there's only a few
| thousand or so in circulation. But if any Apple product
| which sells in the tens/hundreds of millions has an
| issue, you'll hear about it whether you want to or not.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > Do Mac users check and report their SSD wear anywhere?
|
| As a data point: I got a 14" MacBook Pro with a 512 GB SSD
| the first day it was available in 2021, and I've used it
| daily since then.
|
| According to the SMART data ("smartctl -x /dev/disk0"), the
| SSD "percentage used" is 7%, with ~200 TBW. At this rate,
| the laptop will probably outlive me.
| stackskipton wrote:
| 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.
| seabass-salmon wrote:
| that doesn't maths
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 12GB a day isn't very much. If your working set is larger
| than the 8GB RAM, you're swapping multiple times per second.
| It doesn't take very many megabytes per swap to reach 12GB if
| you're doing that multiple times per second.
| gruez wrote:
| >Most flash has average wear out after 300k cycles
|
| No it doesn't. Most 1TB drives are rated for around 600 TBW,
| so enough to overwrite the drive 600 times, nowhere near 300k
| cycles. If you search for specs of NAND chips used in SSDs,
| you'll find they're rated for cycles on the order of hundreds
| to thousands, still nowhere near "300k".
|
| https://www.techpowerup.com/ssd-specs/crucial-
| mx500-4-tb.d95...
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
|
| I thought wear leveling worked at the page/block level, not the
| chip level? On an SSD, if there was a failure of an entire
| chip, you're still screwed.
| wtallis wrote:
| You're correct, GP's understanding of how wear leveling works
| is off by several layers. Counting the number of BGA packages
| tells you _nothing_. There are multiple NAND dies per
| package, multiple planes per die, many blocks per plane, and
| the size of each erase block is the largest-scale feature
| that is relevant to wear leveling.
| foldr wrote:
| The M2 MacBook Air base model has 8GB RAM and a single 256GB
| NAND chip. Nearly 4 years later, it doesn't seem to have caused
| any problems.
| j45 wrote:
| If Parallels can run it, UTM likely can run a fair bit too.
| donatj wrote:
| Was that in doubt?
| crazysim wrote:
| 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.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| The first Apple Silicon developer boxes were Mac Minis with A
| series chips so I wouldn't have expected any issues.
| crazysim wrote:
| That's why I chose to specifically mention production. The
| developer boxes were to get macOS native stuff going but
| virtualization was not a priority.
| bydo wrote:
| The A12Z in the developer transition kit didn't support
| hardware virtualization.
| MBCook wrote:
| But they also had iPad chips, not iPhone.
| xeromal wrote:
| It uses the iphone processor (which I think still might be one
| of those Mchips?) so I think it was ok to be unsure.
| jayd16 wrote:
| 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.
| MBCook wrote:
| The M line was derived from the A line in the phones, and the
| individual cores are generally the same (though not in the
| same year). Counts, accelerators, other stuff on package/die
| is custom.
|
| I think it was a fair question too. Even if things should be
| capable it was always possible the feature would be disabled
| in hardware or software somehow.
|
| And with iPhones never running VMs as far as I know, we
| didn't know if it was capable at all.
| SpecialistK wrote:
| UTM seems to make VMs available on iOS (with App Store
| limitations) although I've only used it on Mac:
| https://docs.getutm.app/
| MBCook wrote:
| I thought it was emulating _everything_ like QEMU, not
| using virtualization hardware like you normally would on
| a computer.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Virtualization requires specific hardware support to be
| performant. There are ways to do complete software emulation of
| a virtual machine but it would be so slow that nobody would
| want to use it.
|
| This is them confirming that the CPU has enough virtualization
| support that they can virtualize rather than emulate the guest
| OS
| bfrog wrote:
| Funnily it probably runs Windows better than the typical
| corporate spyware burdened x86 laptop.
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| Took 6 minutes from power button to login prompt this morning.
| Probably even longer from login responsive desktop. So yes,
| probably!
| amluto wrote:
| 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.
| asimovDev wrote:
| these iMacs have horrible Fusion drives (128GB SSD + 1TB
| HDD combo) iirc that fail often. Have you looked into that?
| kstrauser wrote:
| I bet this is it. I had a 2018 Mac Mini with a failing
| drive that moved like frozen molasses, but wasn't
| throwing obvious errors. Before it failed, it was slow
| compared to an SSD, but booted up in a reasonable amount
| of time and ran office apps just fine, just with a little
| startup lag. It was bad _compared to an SDD_ , but not
| intolerably slow.
|
| If a Mac is running _that_ slowly, there 's probably a
| hardware issue.
| asimovDev wrote:
| what? on a semi modern CPU and a SATA / M2 SSD?? My Vista
| laptop on a spinning drive took that long to boot I am pretty
| sure. I am flabbergasted if this is true
| joe_mamba wrote:
| Wouldn't corporate spyware equally burden the NEO? Especially
| more give the 8GB of RAM vs 16+ on X64 laptops? Chrome, Teams,
| IDEs, websites etc are equally bloated on both platforms.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| The cpu in Neo is 2-3 times faster.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| My (former) corpo HP laptop with 16GB RAM had 75% RAM used
| at idle after a fresh boot with Outlook, Teams and all the
| copro shit running in the background. So the 8GB NEO CPU
| will spend its time swapping data from ram to disk versus
| the 16GB+ ones, given both being filled with corporate
| spyware and same heavy use cases.
|
| Also it isn't 2-3x faster, stop with the made up nonsense
| please. Just checked and my 3 year old AMD laptop is on par
| with the NEO geekbench score I found online (slower in
| single core but faster in multi core), not 2-3x slower.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| This is another myth that needs to die. You can't just
| look at Task manager and see that the OS is using extra
| memory and assume anything else loaded will cause
| swapping. Thats not how modern OS work.
| MBCook wrote:
| Yep.
|
| A Neo will win a race with a similar speed Windows computer
| full of bundled crap and security slop.
|
| But it would work the other way around too.
|
| The nice thing about Macs is even if you see a lot of what
| Apple puts on the computers as useless trash ("Why the hell
| do I need iBooks?") it's not stuff running in the background
| interfering with everything you do the way bad PC security
| software bundled on cheap Windows PCs or forced by corporate
| often does.
|
| I can tell you my last work Mac slowed down noticeably
| (though not too bad, luckily) the day they decided to put the
| corporate security crud on it.
|
| The newer security crud we use now seems much better behaved
| though.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Geekbench 6 was around ~2600 single-core with the VM overhead
| for me. That's still punching above single-core power in its
| class for Windows machines and it makes me giggle.
|
| https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/17011372
|
| This was the latest UTM in the App Store, so native
| Hypervisor.Framework access for arm64 Windows acceleration.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Every thread about Windows on Hacker News includes claims about
| apps taking 30 seconds to launch, web pages taking 20 seconds
| to load, simple applications being unusable, and other extreme
| performance problems. These are puzzling for anyone (like me)
| who uses Windows at home without all of these extreme
| performance problems.
|
| That was until I realized how many reports are coming from
| people talking about their work laptops loaded with endpoint
| management and security software. Some of those endpoint
| control solutions are so heavy that the laptop feels like
| you've traveled back in time 15 years and you're using a
| mechanical hard drive.
| toast0 wrote:
| Corporate spyware is pretty nasty, regardless of platform.
| When I was at FB, they had something that forced a kernel
| module that was incompatible with the next big OS release;
| and I had accidentally disabled the FB spyware scripts. I set
| /etc/hosts to immutable because I was tired of them fucking
| with it ... didn't realize that's why things were better for
| the next 3 months, until I did the major update and I had to
| fix things from safe mode ... where everything only barely
| works.
|
| Microsoft _also_ puts a lot of crap into a default install
| that you may want to disable. Windows 11 with some judicious
| policy editor settings isn 't so awful.
| zbentley wrote:
| I once worked on a computer for the US Government that felt
| slow. I counted nine (9) directly competitive and redundant
| endpoint protection products on it.
|
| Not nine different/only somewhat overlapping pieces of
| software from _companies_ that were competitors. Nine
| _equivalent products_. I guess defender made ten.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Ten protection layers! This is the reverse of the seven
| proxies meme.
| mounram wrote:
| Can you elaborate?
| MBCook wrote:
| In college I remember one room had some kind of all-in-one
| PCs built into the desks. It would have been useful.
|
| Except they were unusably slow. Literally.
|
| Log in when class starts, you may get control after 10+
| minutes. Opening a web browser was a mistake you may not
| live to regret.
|
| The network there was not fast. The various security stuff
| slowed every computer down a lot.
|
| I suspect they were already older and maybe underspec.
| Probably had 4200 RPM disks or something.
|
| But the combination meant they were 100% worthless.
| everdrive wrote:
| There's an unspoken rule in corporate America, colleges, etc.
| Laptops MUST be loaded down with terrible software, no
| exceptions. My last corporate laptop actually had the paid
| version of winzip in 2025, and it ran with a little tray icon
| that I couldn't disable or remove. That was in addition to
| all the other corporate crap I couldn't remove.
|
| Some of this is not _just_ a corporate problem. Why would
| Winzip have an auto run application and tray application in
| the first place? Every single app seems to think they need
| one, and it's a classical tragedy of the commons. Perhaps on
| a virgin Windows install, your app with autorun and a tray
| icon will be more responsive. But when 20 other apps pull
| that same trick, no one wins.
|
| This is actually one of the reasons I'm not excited at the
| idea of Linux defeating Windows. If it did, corporations
| would just start crapping up Linux the way they've crapped up
| Windows.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Our corporate linux machines have exactly the same
| monitoring software as Windows - even the servers. The
| performance is still not even remotely comparable. Could be
| the hooks are more performant on linux, could be the
| filesystem, maybe the tools are written more sanely... But
| loading apps, filesystem operations... Everything is still
| far faster on the linux dev instance. And I have half the
| ram allocated to that one.
| simulator5g wrote:
| The reason every developer makes their app open at startup,
| is because the Windows ecosystem doesn't have a good
| package manager. So every app needs to be its own package
| manager and check for updates on a timer. So they need to
| run all the time so they can run that timer.
| axus wrote:
| In theory the Windows Store will handle updates. In
| practice, I avoid the Windows Store version of
| applications. Also, you can't turn off app updating, only
| pause them for a time.
| simulator5g wrote:
| No this is not just an enterprise issue. I waited 10 seconds
| (I counted.) for a Windows Explorer context menu to open the
| other day. This is on a fully decked out system with an Ultra
| 9 cpu and a 4090 and 32gb of memory, and basically no apps
| running. I think I had 2 tabs in Edge? Windows is a shitshow
| these days.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| I just tried to open the context menu in Windows Explorer.
| It showed up almost as soon as I released the mouse button,
| and I have a much slower CPU, older video card, and way
| less RAM then you do. I was also running 12 windows of
| Firefox with collectively 1000+ tabs (though only about 36
| or loaded), Steam, a Unity game, and Microsoft Teams, plus
| a number of background programs.
|
| If your Explorer context menu is taking more than a split
| second to load, there's something wrong with your hardware.
| Rohansi wrote:
| Other than hardware it could also be some third-party
| software hooking into Explorer to do who knows what.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| There must be something wrong with quite a lot of
| hardware then. My windows laptop at work took > 20
| seconds to open the right-click menu on the desktop.
|
| During the wait the entire desktop background went black
| along with the icons then it came back. I was actually
| trying to get to a setting to set the background to a
| fixed colour instead of an image in the hope of speeding
| the machine up.
|
| From a UX experience there was zero indication that it
| was trying to do anything during this time.
| nirava wrote:
| Outside corporate setting, it is also the fact that most
| windows systems you encounter are installed on cheap machines
| by people who just care that their word processor works a few
| times a month. And you were probably forced to fix it.
|
| At the same time, as someone with a well maintained Windows
| gaming rig, I don't like spending time in the OS these days.
| Something about transparently doing stuff that puts money in
| their pocket while inconveniencing me gives me the ick.
| MBCook wrote:
| And Windows laptops are such a commodity business that
| prices are incredibly low. So PC makers load 'em up with
| junk because they get paid for those deals.
|
| They are more incentivized by that than the few lost sales
| from people who know better to look for low crud machines.
|
| And on more expensive machines they'd just be leaving money
| on the table. So they still often ship bundled crud.
|
| Similar to spyware on TVs. Margins are razor thin. They're
| going to make them up somewhere.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I've said for decades that from a user perspective, malware
| scanners and prevention tools are fundamentally
| indistinguishable from actual malware. They intercept file
| accesses, block you from doing what you want to do, pop
| things up all over the place, and make your machine slow aand
| unreliable.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I like videogames, maybe more than I should at my age, and I
| prefer to play them from Steam in Linux through Proton. A
| couple of months ago I caved in and bought a proper Windows
| gaming miniPC because a game I want is not stable in Proton.
|
| I use a corporate Windows VDI at work, so the experience is
| understandably subpar there, but it is still horrible on
| high.end hardware. Took me half a day just to herd it through
| update after update, while avoiding linking it to a Microsoft
| account despite its protests.
|
| It's literally used to run only Steam and Firefox, and it
| still sucks compared to the ease of install/management of
| Linux. Ubuntu LTS took me about an hour to set up dual boot,
| apply updates, install Steam, and every other software and
| tool I use daily.
|
| Why is Windows 11 still so clunky in 2026? It doesn't feel
| like the flagship product that many bright minds have
| improved for three decades. Why are hobbyists and small
| companies outperforming Microsoft's OS management?
| SpecialistK wrote:
| Because Windows isn't really an OS anymore, but a
| "platform" to deliver advertisements and lock you into
| Microsoft services. The OS core itself is fairly solid (and
| has been since Vista/7) but it's all of the crud shoved on
| top which really ruins everything.
|
| The LTSC IoT releases are easy to find (wink-wink) and
| don't have 80% of the annoyances, including constant
| "feature upgrades" - still not Linux, but better than
| consumer Windows.
| bfrog wrote:
| Oh yeah no... its still terrible even without all the
| spyware.
|
| First experience of Windows 11, trying to download a file
| through firefox caused my 18 core 10980xe to have the entire
| UI freeze for the full time the download was going.
|
| Reverted back to windows 10 immediately and the problem went
| away.
|
| Windows 11 is full of spyware from the Mothership
| ezfe wrote:
| This has always been my experience even just this past week.
| The system feels so unresponsive.
|
| Like, the UI shows my hovers and interactions live but
| clicking things just takes time to do the corresponding
| result.
| dwedge wrote:
| A bank I worked at had one so bad that at 9am when everyone
| was logging in or forcing updates it could take 15 minutes to
| be usable. And every couple of weeks they'd force update just
| to change everyone's lock screen to something like "I support
| pride month"
| kyriakos wrote:
| corporate laptops is the key here. take 2 identical laptops one
| with and one without the spyware - its night and day in both
| performance and battery life.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| My corporate spyware laden Surface ARM runs Windows faster than
| the Macbook Neo, but unlike the Neo can survive a fall onto a
| concrete floor. (Ask how I know...)
|
| My home laptop is even faster.
| Someone wrote:
| How do you know a Neo cannot survive a fall onto a concrete
| floor? I think it would take at least ten tests each with a
| new machine to get some confidence of the impossibility of
| that.
| enopod_ wrote:
| Can it run Linux?
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| In a VM, definitely. Just like other Macs.
| stuxnet79 wrote:
| If the A18 Pro has the same ISA as the M-series chips then
| this may not be so straightforward. I am still hanging on to
| my 2020 Intel MBP for dear life because it is the only Apple
| device I own that allows me to run Ubuntu and Windows 11 on a
| VirtualBox VM.
| Retr0id wrote:
| As long as you're ok with arm64 guests, you can absolutely
| run both Ubuntu and Win11 VMs on M-series CPUs. Parallels
| also supports x86 guests via emulation.
| stuxnet79 wrote:
| How is the performance when emulating the x86
| architecture via parallels?
|
| Also is it possible to convert an existing x86 VM to
| arm64 or do I just have to rebuild all of my software
| from scratch? I always had the perception that the arm64
| versions of Windows & Ubuntu have inferior support both
| in terms of userland software and device drivers.
| alwillis wrote:
| > As long as you're ok with arm64 guests
|
| I've run amd64 guests on M-series CPUs using Quem.
| Apple's Rosetta 2 is still a thing [1] for now.
|
| [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102527
|
| [2]: https://mac.getutm.app
| garblegarble wrote:
| Would you elaborate what you mean by saying Linux on an
| M-series chip isn't straightforward? That's not been my
| experience, I (and lots of other devs) use it every day,
| Apple supports Linux via [0], and provides the ability to
| use Rosetta 2 within VMs to run legacy x86 binaries?
|
| 0: https://github.com/apple/container
| stuxnet79 wrote:
| Clearly I'm not as knowledgable about this as I thought I
| was. I already have a Ubuntu x86 VM running on an Intel
| Mac (inside VirtualBox). Same with Windows 11. Can this
| tool allow me to run both VMs in an Apple Silicon device
| in a performant way? Last I checked VirtualBox on Apple
| Silicon only permits the running of ARM64 guests.
|
| While I have a preference for VirtualBox I'd say I'm
| hypervisor agnostic. Really any way I can get this to
| work would be super intriguing to me.
| argsnd wrote:
| Run ARM64 Linux and install Rosetta inside it. Even on
| the MacBook Neo it'll be faster than your 2020 Intel Mac.
| js2 wrote:
| > Can this tool allow me to run both VMs in an Apple
| Silicon device in a performant way?
|
| I use VMWare Fusion on an M1 Air to run ARM Windows.
| Windows is then able to run Windows x86-64 executables I
| believe through it's own Rosetta 2 like implementation.
| The main limitation is that you cannot use x86-64
| drivers.
|
| Similarly, ARM Linux VMs can use Rosetta 2 to run x86-64
| binaries with excellent performance. For that I mostly
| use Rancher or podman which setup the Linux VM
| automatically and then use it to run Linux ARM
| containers. I don't recall if I've tried to run x86-64
| Linux binaries inside an Linux ARM container. It might be
| a little trickier to get Rosetta 2 to work. It's been a
| long time since I tried to run a Linux x86-64 container.
| MBCook wrote:
| Possible catch: Rosetta 2 goes away next year in macOS
| 27.
|
| I don't know what the story for VMs is. I'd really _like
| to_ know as it affects me.
|
| Sure you can go QEMU, but there's a real performance hit
| there.
| js2 wrote:
| Not until macOS 28., but you're right, it's frustratingly
| unclear whether the initial deprecation is limited to
| macOS apps or whether it will also stop working for VMs.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/102527
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/
| run...
| MBCook wrote:
| Oh I have another year? Phew.
| fragmede wrote:
| Pay Parallels for their GPU acceleration that makes Arm
| windows on apple silicon usable.
| alwillis wrote:
| > Last I checked VirtualBox on Apple Silicon only permits
| the running of ARM64 guests.
|
| I used to use VirtualBox a lot back in the day. I tried
| it recently on my Mac; it's become pretty bloated over
| the years.
|
| On the other hand, this GUI for Quem is pretty nice [1].
|
| [1]: https://mac.getutm.app
| muricula wrote:
| Same Armv8 ISA. And it's the same ISA Android Linux has run
| on for over a decade.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| The instruction set is not the issue, the issue is on ARM
| there's no standardized way like on x86 to talk to
| specialized hardware, so drivers must be reimplemented with
| very little documentation.
| wtallis wrote:
| That has nothing to do with running VMs.
| hu3 wrote:
| Native, no. That would cannibalise Apple services which is a
| huge source of revenue for them.
| dymk wrote:
| Nobody is moving to Linux because there's an iCloud
| replacement waiting for them over there...
| Retr0id wrote:
| Have you confirmed this? I haven't seen anyone concretely
| describe the boot policy of the Neo yet (it should be an easy
| enough check for anyone who has one in-hand).
| alwillis wrote:
| Like any other Apple Silicon Mac, you can't currently boot
| into Linux but Apple has native container support that
| Linux works on [1].
|
| [1]: https://github.com/apple/container
| Retr0id wrote:
| I'm writing this from Linux running natively (not
| virtualized) on an Apple Silicon mac (M1 Pro)
| alwillis wrote:
| I'm aware of that option, but that's not something the
| average user is going to do. But knock yourself out if
| you want to try it.
| Retr0id wrote:
| If you were aware then why did you tell me I can't???
| nar001 wrote:
| I'm confused, you weren't talking about what the average
| user would do, just about what it can? Asahi Linux is
| pretty good, not sure why that'd be a real issue?
| dwedge wrote:
| How does it function? Last time I tried was a 2018 Intel
| MBP and it was a gamble where I would always lose either
| WiFi (despite the driver being in the installer iso) or
| the keyboard. I'm aware it's a totally different
| architecture, but I also seem to remember comments about
| that one too before I tried.
| Retr0id wrote:
| It's the best linux-on-laptop experience I've had so far
| (including various Thinkpads). Never had any issues with
| wifi nor bluetooth (I'm streaming music via bluetooth via
| spotify via wifi, right now). The only missing feature I
| personally care about at this point is HDR support.
| There's no thunderbolt yet, but I don't own any
| thunderbolt peripherals in the first place.
|
| There is occasional jank, but nothing out of the
| ordinary.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Likely yes, eventually
| alwillis wrote:
| Yes; macOS has native container support for Linux [1].
|
| [1]: https://github.com/apple/container
| jayknight wrote:
| Just run WSL inside of Windows.
| bram98 wrote:
| In a vm, I don't see why not.
| jaredcwhite wrote:
| As others have said, should be fine to run Linux in a VM.
| Running natively from boot, the only _potential_ option would
| be Asahi Linux, but my understanding is that the A18 Pro chip
| has certain internal attributes which are akin to an M3, and
| Asahi has only gotten full support in place for the M1 /M2
| generations. Perhaps once they get M3+ fully working, A18 Pro
| would also be an option. (I'm also super interested in a Neo
| running Linux.)
| Someone1234 wrote:
| If Apple continues with the budget Neo brand into a 12 GB
| iteration, I can see this becoming more _realistic_ (rather than
| a novelty). That being said, Parallels may need to review its
| licensing with a budget tier in mind. Few will buy a cheap
| computer and then pay what Parallels charges for a license
| (regardless if one-time or subscription).
|
| They need to introduce something below the Standard license
| targeting the Neo. What I'd personally consider is:
|
| - Standard gets 16 GB vRAM (to perfectly target the base MacBook
| Air). But leave it at 4-6 vCPUs to not compete with the Pro
| (still for _general_ computing, not power-users)
|
| - New "Lite" tier with 8 GB vRAM max for the Neo (4 vCPUs).
| Increasing to 12 GB vRAM if the Neo does.
|
| Then you target a $89 price point one-time-purchase for the
| "Lite" tier. Essentially three plans, targeting your three major
| demographics: budget, standard, and pro/power-user.
| conradev wrote:
| VMWare Fusion is free, even if it is a pain in the butt to
| download. It also has GPU paravirtualization for Linux/Windows
| which is the only reason I use a proprietary VMM on macOS these
| days.
| spullara wrote:
| You can also use UTM to run Windows for free and it is open
| source.
|
| https://mac.getutm.app
| LoganDark wrote:
| Last I checked UTM doesn't have GPU acceleration.
| Parallels' proprietary GPU driver is the only reason to pay
| for it.
| fragmede wrote:
| http://tart.run works great for running macOS (and Linux) VMs
| on macOS if you're technical. It's free for non-commercial
| uses too! (Don't think there's GPU acceleration tho).
| Asmod4n wrote:
| Apple already sells that, it's called MacBook Air.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| This isn't a novelty it will crush the low end of the PC
| market. No one cares if the next iteration will be better with
| 12GB of ram. The workloads that people say that 8GB can't
| handle will be ones that the actual users will either wait or
| tolerate. I've been noticing that people who review the Macbook
| Neo basically don't get the point [1] and just the headline of
| this article matters that VMs work and thats a big win. The
| most ridicuous thing about the laptop is that it appears to be
| reparable which sort of tells me this is a template similar to
| the M1 Air of the future laptop designs that Apple will come
| out with. [2]
|
| [1] https://samhenri.gold/blog/20260312-this-is-not-the-
| computer...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbPCGqoBB4Y
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > This isn't a novelty it will crush the low end of the PC
| market.
|
| You took what I said out of context and then replied to
| something _else_. Running _Parallels_ on a Neo is a novelty.
| Parallels is both what the _thread_ is about AND what my
| reply was expressly about.
|
| Nobody can _reasonably_ read what I wrote, in context, and
| believe I was referring to the computer itself as a novelty.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| I saw the other day people complaining about AI slop being
| posted on this site by new accounts - which I agree is bad.
|
| Someone suggested that people with 10k karma and/or 10
| years subscription to this site should be able to do things
| (such as auto-ban) to those accounts.
|
| The account that misrepresented your comment and thus acted
| in bad faith is one of those 10k+ accounts.
|
| To me, this is a data point showing the fallacy of long
| term subscription and/or karma accrual as evidence of their
| quality/good faith abilities
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I admit now after rereading that I did misrepresent what
| they said and I should have read their comment more
| closely and it was a knee jerk reaction and that its my
| fault.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Sorry, I misread your post I can't edit it anymore and I
| should have read into your post and it was a knee jerk
| reaction on my part.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Most people run Windows just fine on cheap laptops with 4GB
| of RAM.
|
| These won't run Crysis, but they don't need to.
| bitwize wrote:
| Windows doesn't run "just fine" on 4 GiB of RAM. I had a
| laptop with 6; Windows 10 became barely usable. If you want
| to run one, small, program at a time I think you'll be ok.
| Forget about web browsing; you'll get one tab and it'll be
| slow.
| johnebgd wrote:
| Agreed. Windows 10/11 can run just fine on 4GB of RAM.
| You just can't run anything inside of Windows 10/11 with
| 4GB of RAM.
|
| The last version of Windows that felt like 4GB of RAM was
| performant for me with applications was Windows XP. Not
| that every computer running the 32-bit edition of Windows
| XP could even see/utilize a full 4GB of RAM properly, but
| at least it was fast.
| accrual wrote:
| I found even Windows 7 ran very well with just 4GB of
| DDR2. I only upgraded to 8GB when I started testing
| Windows 8/8.1 on that rig.
|
| Though I get by just fine with 512MB on my favorite
| Pentium 3 XP system. :D
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| HDD or SSD? SSD can effectively make up for SOME amount
| of less RAM due to faster swapping, in my experience.
| bitwize wrote:
| 2015 laptop, spinning rust. Nevertheless, it was at least
| somewhat acceptable at purchase, but crapware installed
| with successive system updates brought it to a
| standstill. An SSD might've helped, but not by much. I
| wiped it and put Kubuntu on it to give to my wife, for
| whom it ran acceptably. She gave it back when she got a
| shiny new MacBook Air.
| wolrah wrote:
| > An SSD might've helped, but not by much.
|
| A SSD would have made an absolutely massive difference.
|
| Source: I have clients that still have 2nd/3rd gen i5
| systems running 3-4 GB of RAM with Windows 10 and they're
| tolerable solely thanks to SSDs. Swapping that much on a
| hard drive would just be painful to use.
|
| Nobody should be interactively using a computer
| post-2018ish (whenever SSDs fell below $1/GB) that's
| booting and running primary applications off spinning
| rust. They're perfectly fine for bulk storage drives but
| anyone waiting for an operating system booting off one
| has wasted enough of their life in the last year to have
| paid for the SSD. Companies that wouldn't spend $100 on
| an upgrade are literally throwing money away paying their
| employees to wait on a shit computer.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| A lightweight Linux desktop can keep a decent amount of
| browser tabs (using Firefox; avoid Chrome) on 4GB RAM if
| you set up compressed RAM properly. It's not foolproof
| like 8GB would be, but it's absolutely fine for casual
| use.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Most people run Windows just fine on cheap laptops with
| 4GB of RAM.
|
| Windows 7. Windows 10 eats about 6GB (custom IoT with a lot
| of things disabled).
|
| Neo is a parody of a computer.
| johnebgd wrote:
| Neo is powered by a fast and battery-friendly chip. It's
| definitely not a novelty any more than Chromebooks or
| Windows 11 notebooks with integrated graphics have been.
| monegator wrote:
| lolwut?
|
| check your install mate
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Most people run Windows just fine on cheap laptops with
| 4GB of RAM.
|
| And if they can do that, they can get them (at full MSRP)
| for about half the price of a MacBook Neo.
|
| Heck, you can get 8GB Windows laptops with twice the SSD
| size of the MacBook Neo's for a little over half of the
| Neo's price (again, at full MSRP.)
| kstrauser wrote:
| > Heck, you can get 8GB Windows laptops with twice the
| SSD size of the MacBook Neo's for a little over half of
| the Neo's price (again, at full MSRP.)
|
| Let's see one of these $300 Windows laptops with 512GB of
| SSD (in a reasonable format, e.g. not an SD card), a body
| that isn't disposable, a screen that isn't a dim potato,
| a CPU that's within 20% of the Neo's performance, and a
| GPU that isn't embarrassed to be called a GPU.
|
| I doubt they exist.
| sroussey wrote:
| I went looking, and did find stuff on Amazon, though none
| were made of an aluminum chasis, and none had the
| geekbench score anywhere near, and none had the screen
| brightness.
| kstrauser wrote:
| As I write this, the top Amazon search for "windows
| laptop" is a
|
| > Lenovo IdeaPad 15.6 inch Business Laptop with Microsoft
| 365 * 2026 Edition * Intel Core * Wi-Fi 6 * 1.1TB Storage
| (1TB OneDrive + 128GB SSD) * Windows 11
|
| The person who approved describing its 128GB storage as
| 1.1TB should be hanged.
|
| The CPU also has[0] 31% of the single core and 14% of the
| CPU Mark rating. The screen has 220 nits (vs 500)
| brightness, comes with 4GB of RAM, and weighs 30% more.
| At least it's half price, though.
|
| The shopping situation for Windows laptops is utterly
| dire.
|
| [0]https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/6268vs4227/Apple-
| A18-Pr...
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| I'm excited that Apple now has a reason to keep MacOS small.
| Their soon to be top-selling machine has 8GB and they won't want
| to make all those millions of Neos unusable by shipping a bloated
| OS.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| MacOS has always been incredibly bloated.
| LoganDark wrote:
| There's a difference between bloated and batteries included.
| From a development point of view, macOS has native system
| libraries for things no other platform seems to include
| native system libraries for. And by "native system libraries"
| I do not mean downloadable content, dynamic support or
| anything similar, even if they're first-party. Though having
| unremovable system apps for every one of Apple's services MAY
| count as bloated if you don't use them.
| p_ing wrote:
| The definition of bloat is something that you don't use,
| even if someone else does.
| phs318u wrote:
| There's a big difference between unnecessary applications
| taking up space on your storage device, and unnecessary
| services running in the background competing for RAM and
| CPU with the applications you actually want to run.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| There are a lot of stuff in all Linux distros that I
| never use.
| numpad0 wrote:
| 9.2.2 wasn't
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Compared to Windows sure. Compared to linux, its incredibly
| bloated.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| As long as you ignore that whole part of the OS was still
| running 68K code on PPC Macs, it crashed like a drunk
| driving a semi truck without protected memory and the end
| user still had to fiddle with the amount of memory an app
| could use
| alwillis wrote:
| I wrote about how Unified Memory, SSD directly attached to the
| SoC and Apple's use of real-time compression saves memory,
| reduces power consumption and wear on SSDs [1].
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47354705
| benoau wrote:
| In practice I think this is going to be very specific to your
| data being good for compression and not already compressed -
| so not gaming, where textures can fill up the Neo's 8GB very
| fast depending on the game: Cyberpunk, Robocop, Bioshock and
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmarks are showing 9 - 10 GB of
| RAM used at just 720p.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOe-Ock4pnw
| dude250711 wrote:
| Now just needs to have that pre-installed by Apple, and macOS
| somehow hidden during boot time.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| > Windows 11 VM requires a minimum of 4GB of RAM to function
|
| You can give it less. It may refuse to install, but even without
| using any workarounds, you can change the assigned RAM after
| installing and it will not refuse to boot. The minimum for
| Windows Server 2025 is 2 GB, and it's basically the same OS (just
| with less bloat).
| moralestapia wrote:
| Nice!
|
| The best Windows laptop you can buy is still a MacBook.
| bitwize wrote:
| Kinda like how back in the day, the best Mac you could buy was
| an Amiga. :)
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| I was around and in the comp.sys.amiga.advocacy wars. That
| was always a load of BS.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| So in other words... We COULD in theory run Windows on our
| iPhones.
| paxys wrote:
| In theory you can run any software on any hardware.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Oh I fully get that, what I mean is in a viable way.
| layer8 wrote:
| It was already demonstrated in practice: https://www.xda-
| developers.com/tiny11-dev-windows-11-iphone-...
|
| Also: https://getutm.app/
| happymellon wrote:
| We had WinCE. No thanks.
| arjunchint wrote:
| Just need to download some more memory
| rationalist wrote:
| Here you go!
|
| https://DownloadMoreRAM.com
| roody15 wrote:
| MacBook Neo is going to sell like crazy. In the education market,
| educators, students, aides... nothing close at this price point.
| With memory and SSD prices so high I don't see how Dell, Asus and
| others are going to be able to compete. Unless the build quality
| is significantly worse than a M1 macbook air not sure budget PC
| makers will be able to compete.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| ITs going to sell like crazy not because of specs, but because
| its apple, and its a cheap. Cause god forbid you pull out a
| chromebook in a starbucks and be seen as a peasant.
|
| If you know what you are doing and don't want to spend a lot of
| money, its really not that hard to buy a refurbished thinkpad,
| swap in more ram, and install your linux disro of choice, for a
| lower price and get very similar usable performance.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| And run what on the Chromebook exactly?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Web browser and youtube. You know, what people mostly do on
| macbooks.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| But that's _all_ you can do on Chromebooks.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Are you sure about that?
| gigatexal wrote:
| The Chromebook would be slow and run worse software. So...
| but also yeah nobody wants to look like a peasant.
| mountainriver wrote:
| MacBooks are a far superior product, not just a status symbol
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Would expect nothing less from e/acc
|
| Did you know your favorite guy George Hotz doesn't even use
| macs anymore?
| incanus77 wrote:
| What school IT director does this?
| nextos wrote:
| In the US, cheap ThinkPads like E14 sometimes sell for a bit
| less when you factor in all typical discounts. They are good
| machines that run Linux well and can be repaired.
|
| In EU, and I imagine other markets, there's nothing remotely
| close. I hope this puts some pressure on Lenovo and the rest of
| manufacturers to be more competitive.
| porphyra wrote:
| > and can be repaired
|
| The Macbook Neo is highly repairable too [1]. Not _quite_ as
| repairable as some Thinkpads with a 10/10 score, but still
| pretty respectable at a 6/10 with easily replaceable
| batteries and stuff.
|
| [1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-
| most-r...
| sourcegrift wrote:
| 8 GB RAM and 6/10 "respectable" repairability.
| nar001 wrote:
| RAM has no bearing on repairability? And yes, sure stuff
| is soldered to the motherboard, but everything is
| basically modular outside of it, you can replace every
| big part pretty easily, and no glue, even for the battery
| mylies43 wrote:
| The RAM being soldered is a hit against repair ability,
| you can't expand it or if the ram has issues you can't
| replace it, you will just be forced to throw out the
| entire machine. What else is modular here anyways? Can I
| swap out the CPU, the screen, the keyboard,
| ports...anything?
| wtallis wrote:
| Repairability and upgradability aren't quite the same
| concept.
| jxdxbx wrote:
| I have a Neo and 16GB Thinkpad and the Neo smokes it.
| moffkalast wrote:
| In the EU it costs $200 more so it's more like a mid range
| laptop.
| wolpoli wrote:
| PC makers are going to stop some of the artificial segmentation
| they used on the lower price devices, and that is going to hurt
| the sales of their higher-end lines. There is no reason they
| kept pushing 70 percent srgb panels on even the mid tier
| Thinkpads when the Neo has a good display.
| dana321 wrote:
| Not many people know this, but you can use wine on macos.
|
| brew install wine-stable
|
| or package any windows app with your own environment:
|
| brew install --cask Sikarugir-App/sikarugir/sikarugir
| robmccoll wrote:
| I sometimes run Xubuntu on my phone via termux and proot. The
| hardware we carry around in our pockets is ridiculously capable.
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