So, look, I relented, and bought myself a Macbook Neo. This is, I think, my fourth macbook in my life I’ve bought. The first way back in 2006? – I think I bought for £900 at currys (iirc there was a sale on).
I’d been staunchly windows based for a long long time, and my pal had a macbook and I very much coveted it’s silver metal casing, and it’s instant on, and thought “yes please – save me from a pc with a case that was constantly open because maybe the next tv adaptor card will be the final one ” ( I never did find a final tv adaptor card and in the end streaming made it irrelevant)
As I walked out of Currys with my first apple bit of hardware, a thought occurred that I was the first point of advice for a LOT of people (it was my day job at the time, people paid for my opinion!) and I figured if I was ready to move to mac, then a LOT of other people were too – and that’s when I decided to buy apple shares.
Unfortunately I had no idea how to buy apple shares, so that idea fizzled. Which is a shame because a year later apple introduced the iphone and and the rest yadda yadda.
Over the years I’ve bought macbooks and imacs and mac mini. The last computer purchased was a mac mini. I like the macs, I’m fully in the eco system and every time I try out a PC (in fact, about three computers ago I went to PCs because I couldn’t find a mac at the price point/spec I wanted) I deeply deeply regret it.
My priorites over that time have converged on a couple of points, primarily:
1 ) Silence. I want a dead silent computer. Not a fan of a fan. Just give me the gentle pitter patter of tiny fingers hitting a keyboard and whatever ambient sound is in the quiet room am in and I’m happy.
2) A good screen. Oh lordy, I can’t believe we lived in a world with a maximum screen resolution of 72dpi – no more of that, thank you…
3) UHM… that might be it.
I think I’m flexible on every other requirement. Maybe I’ll add good insurance is now my standard on this stuff. Apple’s on going apple care is a pain but it means any equipment I have will keep working until I decide I’m done with it,
So here’s some early thoughts on it:
Initially I was concerned about lack of back light keyboard. Honestly my eyesight is not what it was, and I like the reassurance of being able to see letters in high contrast. The macbooks neos in every colour except silver have quite a low contrast on the keyboards – the letters printed in dark grey and the keys are a tinted white (to match the colour of the laptop). So I went with the silver. But, a thing my wife reminded me of – I can touch type. I just don’t because… well, for stupid reasons (I’m an artist!) my keyboard is sat away to the left of my huion graphics tablet so if I’m ever typing it’s me turned at an awkward angle and trying to find the keys.
So having sat and typed up some stuff on this keyboard, it turns out I don’t even glance at the keyboard, and maybe a lit one would be a little distracting.
I went for the 256Gb hard drive. Sure an extra £100 woulda doubled the memory, but the price escalator must be avoided (sure another hundred for that and another hundred for this and pretty soon you’re staring down the barrel of a £1400 laptop and you’re thinking “what am I doing?”)
I wanted the cheapest one I could go for. The plan this is to attack writing, and this is the weapon with which I will attack it and so, for that purpose 256Gb is oodles.
The 8Gb of ram (standard on the macbook neo) doesn’t bother me at all. I had an 8Gb M1 mac mini and it was fine – and this thing (the neo) is supposed to be faster than the M1 (which wasn’t slow for my purposes at all).
Look, computer speed is a funny thing, most people think faster is better – and it is, but the lived reality is – for the most part – the computer is waiting on YOU doing something. Sure if you’re rendering video, or compiling code, then you’re waiting on it, but if you’re typing a document or drawing something in clip studio – it’s mostly just waiting on you.
The limiting factor of a dual USB might be a bit annoying – god knows, on my M4 mac mini the four usb-c ports drive me nuts, it’s just not enough for a desktop. So I’m dongled up the wazoo on it. But actually having two usb-c ports just helps me restrict what this thing is for (I mean I genuinely contemplated deleting the mail.app off the laptop, thinking NO – this is for writing, not for email correspondence. But then I came to my sense)
(by the way everything here is being typed on the neo – turns out my touch typing speed is actually pretty damn good on this thing)
Still, what if I did want to do a bit more with it… what could I do?
Well, I stuck my huion 16″ drawing tablet in to the usb-c 3 port, and it worked great! downloaded affinity and clip studio, and both run well enough for my purposes that it means this machine will comfortably pull double duties as a back up computer in case the m4 mini karks it.
You can use either port to charge the macbook, so you use the usb-c 3 (the rearmost one) to plug in the huion and the foremost one to charge.
Does mean you’re not plugging anything else in to it though, but that’s ok.
(I might eventually buy a bluetooth mouse as I quite like a mouse but don’t want a dongle, the apple magic mouse is just … it’s weird. C’mon, it’s weird)
Anyway needless to say didn’t get much work done today. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
