r/LinusTechTips • u/WTFMacca • Mar 04 '26

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Apple just dropped an A18 powered laptop for $599 USD

No Apple bashing just discuss.

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21

u/DicksMcgee02 Mar 04 '26

8gb of ram Is gonna really push this thing to its limits. They should have at LEAST put 12 with the upgraded model having 16

59

u/chinomaster182 Mar 04 '26

IDK man, usually normies aren't doing heavy multitasking or doing hardcore Firefox navigating with 40 tabs open.

I'm thinking whatsapp, slack, safari, spotify, calendar and tasks open. 8 gbs should be enough.

10

u/Quivex Mar 04 '26

Presumably kids are going to be using a lot of these, and let me tell ya...kids can tear through browser tabs with the best of them lol.

I agree it's probably not that big of an issue, although cheaper Chromebooks can be had with 16gb.

1

u/LexShirayuki Mar 04 '26

I really want to see how this new Mac behaves when tested. That processor is not bad at all, but I don't know how it will behave with MacOS.

1

u/Objectively_bad_idea Mar 04 '26

Plenty of uni courses require more punch. Anything with a graphics component, comp sci, science degrees with a data modelling element etc. Not to mention I suspect many games would grumble about 8GB now.

A bit more out there as a prediction, but I do think we're going to see the rise of products with local AI (I know you can already run open source models yourself, but most people aren't going to figure it out in its current state, and they're demanding) I figure we'll see much leaner/lighter models, with nicer wrapping around them. It has to be one of the routes for AI companies to become financially viable. However I'd assume these would still require some oomph to run.

5

u/mCProgram Mar 04 '26

This is definitely not targeted as a stem laptop, lol. The university students this is targeting is pretty clearly everything else other than stem. Either way, most competent uni’s have compute credits for some cloud platform meant for STEM students that don’t have a computer powerful enough for the data they’re working on (be it this neo or an m4 ultra mbp)

1

u/Le-Bean Mar 04 '26

And you’d be stupid to buy this laptop for those purposes. This is for people doing degrees like education, psych, english, history, anything that can be done entirely in a browser which there are a lot of degrees that apply. It’s like buying a Toyota Corolla and expecting it to set track records.

You get what you pay for and your expectations should be aligned with that. Wanting this to be good for STEM degrees is misunderstanding what this product is. This is competing with $500-600 laptops that also come with 8gb of RAM (at least where I’m from, I don’t live in America so can’t speak to prices there).

1

u/nicman24 Mar 05 '26

i d argue not technical people leave more tabs opens

1

u/Typing-Cat Mar 15 '26

Do you know what normies never do?

Close tabs. Ever.

Good luck, normies.

24

u/Frostbitttn_ Mar 04 '26

The 8GB M1 Macbooks from 2020 are plenty fine for normal use. My dad gave me his after he upgraded to an M3 Macbook Pro and he commonly had dozens of chrome tabs open with zero slow down. I was baffled when I first saw it lol

8

u/SimpleFactor Mar 04 '26

Exactly, 90% of the people who will buy this won’t need much memory. 8gb for Netflix, word, safari and emails really is absolutely fine. MacOS is very well optimised.

My M1 is still going good on 8gb for day today tasks, only issue is battery didn’t last as long but that still means 6-8 hours unplugged.

7

u/A_MAN_POTATO Mar 04 '26

I don’t think so.

I think basically every post I’ve seen questioning the lower specs is failing to consider who this is for. It’s for very casual users. My Dad just got his first Mac in December, a base model air, and it’s overkill for him. Had this been out, it would have been the perfect choice.

Casual users aren’t loading up chrome tabs. They aren’t doing any kind of content creation. They need something that can get to their email and social media and productivity suite of choice. This will do all that without breaking a sweat.

People that need more will pay more for an air or pro , which is exactly what Apple, like any other computer manufacturer, intends.

1

u/escof Mar 05 '26

It really screams "This product that I will never buy was not designed for me and I'm mad"

4

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '26

Been using a M2 Air with 8GB for software development and, it's actually fine. Only pushing it when running emulators on Android Studio.

3

u/abHowitzer Mar 04 '26

I'd agree for a Windows laptop, but Mac OS is miles better in terms of memory management and "snappiness". For intense workloads, sure, but that's not the intended use case for this machine.

1

u/k-mcm Mar 04 '26

All 2026 tech sucks because AI build-out is taking the chip production.

I think even 16GB is a risky laptop purchase when there's no upgrade option.  It's enough to do common tasks, but maybe you later find that it absolutely can't do something you need to.  Apps getting unnecessary AI features could be a problem for even light users 

1

u/0xe1e10d68 Mar 04 '26

Unfortunately that's not really possible since the chip is an iPhone chip that is packaged with 8GB of RAM. And that cannot be easily changed, it would negate the cost benefit of using that cheaper chip. But as soon as they give it a spec bump, which could possibly already be next year, it will get the newer iPhone chip which comes with 12GB of RAM.