alt.hn

3/8/2026 at 1:08:44 PM

The new Apple begins to emerge

 https://parkerortolani.blog/2026/03/07/the-new-apple-finally-begins.html

by atombender

3/8/2026 at 2:31:59 PM

I think Steve Lemay is a good guy. I kind of fought with him when I was an engineer, he was a young, new designer (at Apple). But I always respected his point of view—even when we argued.

When Jobs came back to Apple in the latter 1990's "Design" slowly came to have an outsized role. I was one half of the engineering team that owned Preview (the application) when Steve Lemay became a seemingly regular presence in the hallway. As the new "Aqua" UI elements arrived in the OS like the "drawer" and toolbar, Steve and his boss (forgetting his name right now—Greg Somebody?) were often making calls about our UI implementation.

The bigger argument I remember with Steve revolved around the drawer UI element. With regard to PDF's, (the half of Preview that I worked on, another engineer handled images), the drawer was to display thumbnails for each page. If the PDF had a TOC (table of contents) the drawer is where we would display that as well.

So when you opened a PDF in Preview, the PDF content of course would appear in the large window—thumbnails, TOC (later search) would be relegated to a vertical strip of drawer real estate alongside the window—the user could open/close the drawer if they liked to focus perhaps on the content.

Steve Lemay insisted the drawer live on the right side of the window [1]. This was inexplicable to me. I saw the layout of Preview as hierarchical: the left side of the content driving the right side. You click a thumbnail on the left (in the drawer) the window content on the right changes to reflect the thumbnail clicked on.

Steve said, no, drawer on the right.

"Why? Why the hell would we do that?"

Steve was quick: "The Preview app is about the content. The content is king."

I admit that I still disagreed with him after the exchange, but I had a new respect for him as a designer because he was able to articulate a rationale for his decision. I suppose I was prejudiced to expect hand-waving from designers.

(Coda: some years later after I had left the Preview team, an engineer still on the app let me know that the thumbnails, etc, were at last moving to the left side of the app. The "drawer" as as a UI element had by this time gone away: resizable split-views were the replacement.)

(Addendum: Steve also invented the early Safari URL text field that also doubled as a progress bar. Instant hate from me when I saw it: it was as if the text of the URL you entered was being selected as the page loaded. So I'm old-school and Steve had some new ideas…)

[1] Localization was such that in countries where right-to-left was dominant, the drawer would of course follow suit.

by JKCalhoun

3/9/2026 at 8:45:46 AM 

  I had a new respect for him as a designer because he was able to articulate a rationale for his decision.
That would be more encouraging if Apple under Tim Cook didn't suffer from bad UX that sounds good when put into words.

Tim Cook and the other c-suite Apple execs have bad taste.

If they had better taste, they never would have approved text layout that automatically applies inconsistent kerning to squish long menu items into narrow spaces. It's a tasteless idea that sounds great when put into words.

Flat UI probably sounded brilliant as a spoken sales pitch: "We'll make the GUI honest, direct, elegant: the clarity of highway signage". In practice, the Scott Forstall era was both easier to understand, and prettier.

'Liquid Glass' probably sounded fantastic when put into words. Unfortunately, there are some implementations of a 'lickable' GUI that are tasteless.

Hope springs eternal for some people. I personally gave up on Apple shortly after SJ died.

by thomassmith65

3/9/2026 at 2:25:38 PM

> Tim Cook and the other c-suite Apple execs have bad taste.

> If they had better taste, they never would have approved text layout that automatically applies inconsistent kerning to squish long menu items into narrow spaces. It's a tasteless idea that sounds great when put into words.

I have a feeling what happened was that the C-Suite only watched a Keynote or live product demo that, like everything Apple presents to the public, was highly curated and scripted to win approval.

by ValentineC

3/9/2026 at 2:21:38 PM

You're right that hope does spring eternal for me. To bastardize Churchill, Apple has the worst ecosystem, except for all the others out there.

by JKCalhoun

3/8/2026 at 2:43:54 PM

Steve was quick: "The Preview app is about the content. The content is king."

Seems like this is exactly what is going wrong with design at Apple?

https://pxlnv.com/blog/window-chrome-of-our-discontent/

by microtonal

3/8/2026 at 11:24:31 PM

Suppose someone had just said, make it a preference in a checkbox whether it goes on the left or the right. Would these titans have just stopped arguing, turned on whoever made the suggestion, and destroyed them together?

by hyperhello

3/9/2026 at 7:37:30 AM

Sounds like the road to checkbox hell. Not to mention the added costs of supporting both the code and users with varying setting combos.

by stefanfisk

3/9/2026 at 2:24:27 PM

Generally, you're right about your first point. Apple (and perhaps all "designers") want to get it right, not leave it to the whims of the user.

Even if you allow for both options, you can still have a long drawn out argument about what the default should be. (And then if you can agree on the default, the thought raises its head—maybe we ought to just go with that alone and keep it simple.)

by JKCalhoun

3/8/2026 at 10:18:21 PM

There is at least room to hope that Lemay may be able to take a more nuanced, reasonable approach. Believing that Preview.app needs to be designed with the "content is king" mindset doesn't necessarily mean believing that "content is king" needs to be the top priority everywhere throughout the OS even to the detriment of usability. After all, Preview.app is a pretty extreme example: displaying content is its primary purpose and almost the sole purpose; its editing and annotation capabilities are minimal and far less frequently used than the core functionality of viewing PDFs and images.

But even though I'm hopeful, I'm definitely not holding my breath for a quick turnaround and big mea culpa from Apple. I bought a new laptop last fall specifically to avoid using Liquid Glass for as long as possible.

by wtallis

3/9/2026 at 9:56:06 AM

“I admit that I still disagreed with him after the exchange, but I had a new respect for him as a designer because he was able to articulate a rationale for his decision.”

Any competent designer gets really good at justifying their decisions. Everyone has an opinion about design and thinks that their taste is correct.

I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that on the software side.

by mierz00

3/8/2026 at 2:41:04 PM

> Steve Lemay insisted the drawer live on the right side of the window [1]. This was inexplicable to me.

Makes some sense to me if, as I suspect, people tend to place their windows aligned to the left of the screen. If that’s the case, opening the drawer to the left of its container (the window) would require not sliding the drawer out, but sliding the window to the right to make room for the drawer.

I think that that’s a reason the drawer analogy doesn’t really make sense. Another is that the question “what do you store in a drawer?” certainly isn’t “page thumbnails and table of contents”. “Rarely used tools” or “spare paper” are better answers.

by Someone

3/8/2026 at 2:56:38 PM

"…but sliding the window to the right to make room for the drawer."

You're right about that. (You should be a designer, ha ha.)

I think the "solution" was that the drawer was open by default when a new document opened. Therefore the window was placed in a way that already allowed for the drawer width.

by JKCalhoun

3/8/2026 at 10:19:10 PM

Wouldn't help if the user closes the drawer and moves it to the left - which users used to having apps to the left (and to a left to right reading culture) would.

The main problem I see is the mouse pointer has reason to be on the proximity of the left side: the Apple menu is there, the most important dock elements (on a bottom dock) are there - or the whole dock for a left-placed dock), the menubar File, Edit, etc, and the most common icons for icon bar operations are there.

And if 'content is king', navigating the content (TOC, search, thumbnail) should also be king, not just the current viewing page.

by coldtea

3/9/2026 at 2:25:53 PM

Yeah, probably ultimately why the drawer disappeared in favor of the resizable split-view.

by JKCalhoun

3/8/2026 at 3:16:54 PM

It's not a perfect equivalency but putting the drawer on the right side seems to be a bit inconsistent with their own Finder display (Show Items as Columns) where you drive from left-to-right with the right-most being a preview of a media asset such as a picture for example.

But I wasn't an early user of MacOS, I don't know when this Column layout was first introduced.

> The Preview app is about the content. The content is king.

If "left-hand" is king I wonder if they would have reversed the drawer's position for localization in countries with RTL languages.

by vunderba

3/8/2026 at 9:42:21 PM

> But I wasn't an early user of MacOS, I don't know when this Column layout was first introduced.

1989. See the screenshot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP

Instead of the drawer on the side, NeXTSTEP had the Shelf on top: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_(computing)

by wtallis

3/8/2026 at 9:14:05 PM

"I wonder if they would have reversed the drawer's position for localization in countries with RTL languages."

I believe AppKit did so.

by JKCalhoun

3/8/2026 at 2:50:25 PM

Love this kind of behind the scenes -- thanks for sharing!

Personally, I think in a way you both ended up right. Content is king. But with the iPad (my favorite PDF viewer) as an important part of the Preview landscape now, I view the right side as where content should live.

by whynotminot

3/8/2026 at 11:26:04 PM

> Steve was quick: "The Preview app is about the content. The content is king."

> I admit that I still disagreed with him after the exchange, but I had a new respect for him as a designer because he was able to articulate a rationale for his decision.

That's a soundbite masking as a rationale that is really only "because I said so". He may have been right, there may have been more to it than this but if that's the extent? As another poster said, this kind of reflexive thought is part of Apple's current design challenges.

by FireBeyond

3/8/2026 at 2:15:09 PM

Lemay has been at Apple for 27 years and has a track record that implies the future of Apple software under his leadership is extraordinarily bright.

I don't share the optimism. I mean, he was there when Liquid Glass was designed and presumably in a good position if he became an executive leader now. Sure, Alan Dye may be the face, but Liquid Glass was made by a very large department. And it is not like Apple's design rot started with liquid glass, this recent post shows that it is regression after regression after regression (which is also my impression after having used Macs since 2007):

https://pxlnv.com/blog/window-chrome-of-our-discontent/

It is sad that Apple is still extremely good at hardware (I have the iPhone 17 Pro and the design is stellar), but software has become worse and worse over the years. They can only get away with it because almost all of the rest of the industry is even worse (macOS is still a glass of ice water if you are in the hellscape that is Windows).

by microtonal

3/8/2026 at 3:22:22 PM

All those "new" names have been at Apple for decades and they're as guilty as the ones who recently left or will leave.

by nottorp

3/8/2026 at 10:22:39 PM

>I mean, he was there when Liquid Glass was designed and presumably in a good position if he became an executive leader now.

That position could be as the guy who argued against it, but didn't have the power to call the shots, which is especially likely "if he became an executive leader now" due to the backlash.

by coldtea

3/8/2026 at 2:34:21 PM

As a heavy user of both operating systems, I really don’t feel that either has changed much in the last decade. Visually, sure, things go through cycles, but from a “how do I use it?” perspective my work flows on neither OS have changed.

by twodave

3/8/2026 at 8:34:31 PM

Visually, it has been an ongoing degradation over the past 15-ish years, in the sense of UI controls versus content having become progressively harder to distinguish and less self-explanatory. Functionally, there is less consistency between apps and in UI idioms than there used to be.

by layer8

3/8/2026 at 9:47:28 PM

And while UI controls have been becoming harder to recognize, they've also been inflating to waste more screen space. Liquid Glass is a big jump in that respect. Though the web has been afflicted much worse, because everything online is now designed with a touch-first UI in mind and information density is not a priority at all.

by wtallis

3/9/2026 at 4:09:48 PM

Have you seen Asian interfaces? They are so info dense, its quite overwhelming.

by thenthenthen

3/8/2026 at 10:25:44 PM

Well, duh, they're not rethinking the UI to work differently.

They just make the UX worse in tons of subtle and not so subtle ways. Less differentiation between controls, more wasted space, UI widgets that become unreadable based on what content scrolls under them, more samey (thus harder to find) icons, and 1000s of such paper cuts.

by coldtea

3/9/2026 at 9:12:52 AM

This comment summa it up well!

by cromka

3/8/2026 at 2:20:07 PM

> Sure, Alan Dye may be the face, but Liquid Glass was made by a very large department

And the board is ultimately the culpable party here. The executives are just useful idiots. The board has clearly lost whatever direction they ever had of why the company they're running has value—and they can't just hire Steve Jobs back anymore.

by throwaway27448

3/8/2026 at 2:33:55 PM

This spurred me look at the board of Apple. Not a lot of builders/software/hardware/product people one there.

by thenobsta

3/8/2026 at 9:08:53 PM

They can get away with it because Apple fans (even the ones who are tech-literate) react with visceral disgust when anyone suggests and Android phone or a non-Mac PC.

It does not hurt that Android and iOS are both kind of the same OS now. Yes, I get that there are a million differences between the two, but now that we're at almost two straight decades of the platforms copying features from one another, the difference is academic for most people.

by SR2Z

3/8/2026 at 7:15:29 PM

I really hope Steve Lemay fixes liquid glAss in macOS and iOS 27.

I've held off upgrading past Sequoia because of it, or wanting to buy M4/M5 Macs.

I've tried and absolutely love the iPhone 17 Pro hardware, but the camera app is an unusable monstrosity.

by ValentineC

3/8/2026 at 7:36:32 PM

I too am holding back on ios18. One of the weekly calls I get from a non tech friend (actually that's unfair, they're just scared to change settings in case something breaks) wanted to know how I made the timelapse video I'd just sent. I dutifully explained what to tap and how to get to it but to no avail - such is said abomination of the ios26 camera app.

by IndySun

3/8/2026 at 11:10:14 PM

Link screen kernel panics during Time Machine

Asus rog 128gb sends like a really good deal at this point

by jbverschoor

3/8/2026 at 10:01:06 PM

I found Tahoe so bad that I rolled back. That was after a good few months of using it.

by pupppet

3/8/2026 at 2:14:15 PM

> I care about Apple holistically, as a living breathing entity not just their products.

Out of curiosity, why?

by kaladin-jasnah

3/8/2026 at 2:21:22 PM

Because you buy not just a device but into an ecosystem. Because you have expectations of future development. Because, as far as a changing political landscape will allow, you hope you can trust their judgement. Because you want support. Because you want to be able to walk into a store. Lots of reasons…

by asplake

3/9/2026 at 6:03:20 PM

> Because, as far as a changing political landscape will allow, you hope you can trust their judgement

funny to bring this one up as an example among the others (but i suppose it's evidence that things can go the other way).

i was waiting to buy a new M5 MBP this year until they got so cozy with the current administration. now i'm just making do with my current machine until i can get a decent price on a used M5 machine in a couple of years. i'm in the process of cancelling all of my recurring apple subscriptions as well.

i'll probably use macs for as long as i use computers, but i think i'm done giving apple any money directly.

by GuinansEyebrows

3/8/2026 at 2:17:02 PM

I think it’s like caring for your favourite football team. Which I find much much stranger

by simianwords

3/8/2026 at 7:22:28 PM

If you have one company that has "done what you want" for 20+ years and is not "not doing what you want" you will feel sad, and hope they go back to what you want.

Of course, the argument about how much of that is "convincing you that you what what they do" is left to the reader - but marketing hype can only take you so far.

by bombcar

3/8/2026 at 11:38:38 PM

Tribalism.

I have a macbook and a Samsung. The products I buy are here to do a job for me and that's it. If another brand does a better job then I'll switch to that with no qualms.

by fennecbutt

3/8/2026 at 2:20:15 PM

I suppose because it is silly to think of Apple as some kind of divine entity.

by amelius

3/8/2026 at 2:29:24 PM

Like it or not, they’re a Silicon Valley institution. They’ve affected technology more and stuck around longer than most everyone else.

It’s like caring about Bell Labs if it still existed, or Kodak at its peak. Sure, they were part of big monopolistic companies, but the other side of that is a unique entity with a resume of accomplishments that make them worthy of national pride.

by dangus

3/8/2026 at 10:49:19 PM

Those accomplishments were only possible by making shitloads of money by exploiting monopolistic advantages. It is very strange to find pride in that.

by amelius

3/8/2026 at 11:33:28 PM

Of course, accomplishments like the Apple I/II, Macintosh, Newton, iMac, iPod, and iPhone really had nothing to do with monopolistic advantages. All of these industry-changing products were built by a company that was nowhere close to being a dominant force.

In my original comment I did acknowledge the problematic aspects of giant companies like Apple or AT&T in my examples, but I can still see how one might separate that from real legitimate innovation and positive impact and be willing to celebrate that.

I’ve talked to a lot of space enthusiasts that have similar mixed feelings about SpaceX. It’s hard to root against a company that is so innovative in a field of your interest just because the owner is an asshole.

Further examples, I’m sure a lot of aviation geeks feel the same about Boeing. All the scandal, corruption, and military aspects of the company shouldn’t completely erase the awe-inspiring experience of being on a 747 or a 787 jet.

by dangus

3/8/2026 at 2:26:39 PM

Do people like the Macbook Neo? When I saw it was announced I groaned thinking this was Apple's chromebook, cheap, representative of a disposable mindset. Underpowered and even more locked into the ecosystem..

I'd love to be proven wrong. But to me it feels regressive. I guess the only positive spin on it I can think of is that this is designed for kids in schools.

by Avicebron

3/8/2026 at 2:30:54 PM

I'm actually very excited for the Macbook Neo.

I do all of my development on cloud servers. I just want a cheap laptop with a good battery life and, crucially, a keyboard and track pad that aren't complete trash.

I'd strongly prefer to have Linux over Mac - but this seems like the best option (and I kind of hate Apple tbh).

I don't think a better product exists at this price point, though I haven't tried it yet.

by onlyrealcuzzo

3/8/2026 at 3:09:26 PM

> Do people like the Macbook Neo?

At the time of our writing, it is a new product and was announced about a week ago, to be released on March 11. By Thursday of last week, Costco had essentially sold out of preorders for both models. (I think a few of the pink color remain.)

So I think there is incredible demand — especially when memory prices are skyrocketing, everyone stores most of their data in the cloud, most LLM inference is also on remote machines, and the chip can handle most if not all typical office and web tasks (pretty much anything except running local models and demanding video editing).

I'm interested in one myself for law work on the couch, and I'm eager to read the first reviews.

by treetalker

3/8/2026 at 2:30:11 PM

It’s a remarkably powerful computer for a decent price. I like this new direction from Apple and also think chromebooks were a great idea even if the execution on them hasn’t always been great. I don’t see how they are disposable, perhaps for you their price makes them so? For many it just means they are actually attainable unlike other Mac products.

If you’re looking to a corporation to save you from corporate lock-in I’m not sure what to say.

by grey-area

3/8/2026 at 2:50:21 PM

I waited for such a device for years. I have 3 Macs at the moment. My MacBook Pro (still an M2 Max) from work for work. A Mac Mini M4 Pro from last year and an older M1 MacBook. I separate my work and private usage because of all the security software my employer forces on the machine. I didn’t want to buy yet another 4000Euro MacBook for my private stuff. So when the new Mini was announced I jumped on it. But my problem was that this meant that my personal computer was no longer portable. I was lucky because I still had the M1 in my house. My wife gave it to me because she stopped using it. If not for the M1 I would definitely have spend money for a MacBook Air or a used older laptop. This Neo would also fit my requirements. But I don’t need it at the moment.

The second reason is of course kids. Yes I thought multiple times if I should get my kids some kind of computer. But the issue is that I don’t want a Chromebook or a windows device under my care. Used would be the way to go here but I love the fact that there is finally a good value entry level machine that also looks fun.

by larusso

3/8/2026 at 2:49:23 PM

I like it in the sense that Apple is finally willing to admit after about 15 years that iPads are not a replacement for MacBooks. I think this is one of the things that plagued Apple for years initially led to the neglect of macOS for years (always a third citizen) and then terrible stuff like Catalyst. Apple being able to admit that even high school students are better of with a MacBook than iPads is a win. But yeah, to get there it took the Chromebook to butcher their market and now they have to compete on price (which means lower specs, but still an insanely good CPU).

by microtonal

3/8/2026 at 4:03:45 PM

It doesn't scream "disposable" to me.

It'll blow the doors off everything else in that price range, in a machine that feels like a macbook, which retain value better than anything else.

by dd8601fn

3/8/2026 at 5:13:41 PM

I really hope it has the effect of kicking other ~$500 laptop manufacturers in the nuts and forcing them to stop putting out such crappy half-assed plastic junk with terrible screens and touchpads, at that price tier.

by ryandrake

3/9/2026 at 6:35:25 AM

I hope Windows continues to lose market share. Their monopoly has been a tax on all of us.

by tonyedgecombe

3/8/2026 at 2:34:52 PM

I think it's great to have a lower cost entry level option for the MacBook, especially given how resistant Apple has been to allowing local development tools and shared files on iPadOS. It seems like a worthy replacement to the M1 MacBook Air they were selling through Walmart this whole time. The colors are a really nice touch on a solid hardware offering. It doesn't seem especially disposable or more locked-in to any ecosystem than any other MacBook, and with less ecosystem lock-in than a Chromebook.

Personally I'm still waiting for a return of the 12" MacBook or 11" MacBook Air with an M-series chip in it. The current MacBook Air model just doesn't have the same feeling of super portable grab-ability that my old 11" MacBook Air had. Unfortunately, the age of the netbook is long past and hardly any manufacturer makes laptops with screens less than 13" unless you go all the way down to some kind of weird handheld thing without a keyboard. I liked how the 11" MacBook Air had just enough width and depth for the keyboard and a usable trackpad and no more.

by wffurr

3/9/2026 at 10:38:48 AM

is it underpowered? i'm pretty sure that a-chip variant is binned way faster than the m1 air i had and that thing was a paradigm shift little workstation in a backpack when it came out in 2020 that somehow had no fan and got all day battery. i was compiling faster on that then i could on the actual workstation i was provisioned for work, so im gonna guess there aren't laptops at this price point that put this kind of horsepower down? there's quite a few trade offs getting this over an air but i doubt it's an underpowered device at its price point

by trueno

3/8/2026 at 5:05:19 PM

The Walmart outlet on eBay is selling refurb M1s for $380, I think that's still a better deal not just because it's cheaper but you get Touch ID, a better screen, and dual Thunderbolt ports. Backlit keyboard too!

by haunter

3/8/2026 at 2:35:04 PM

If they keep the quality of the Magic Keyboard for iPad then I have no doubt in Macbook Neo.

by a012

3/8/2026 at 2:33:18 PM

Can you even market a fully fledged desktop replacement thin and light in this price hemisphere in 2026? Both RAM and flash SSDs are now worth their weight in gold.

by mapt

3/8/2026 at 2:36:05 PM

It's more powerful than my M2 MacBook Air, which is the most powerful computer I've ever owned and I'm only vaguely thinking about a future upgrade.

by post-it

3/8/2026 at 2:28:41 PM

I like how cheap it is. But I’m not a typical Apple user. My laptop is a MacBook Air 11” that does everything I need it to do that I bought on eBay for about $75 in 2022.

by Mistletoe

3/8/2026 at 2:35:50 PM

I was hoping they might have brought back the 11" Air. I never do much serious work on the run so a small device like that would be ideal for me.

by tonyedgecombe

3/8/2026 at 4:24:34 PM

I replied to somebody else earlier, but the 11" air and the new neo are very close in physical size.

The 11" MacBook Air was 11.8" x 7.56" the neo is 11.71" x 8.12".

by windowsrookie

3/8/2026 at 7:36:41 PM

It's partly the weight that made the 11" MacBook Air great:

  MacBook Air: 1.08 kg (2.38 lbs)
  MacBook Neo: 1.23 kg (2.70 lbs)

by programd

3/9/2026 at 6:36:46 AM

I'd assume the bezels would shrink in a modern version.

by tonyedgecombe

3/8/2026 at 4:22:45 PM

Definitely not typical, the 11" MacBooks had terrible screens by modern standards and have no hardware acceleration for modern video codecs.

It really is too bad they never upgraded that 1366x768 LCD in the 11" MacBooks otherwise I think they could be great linux devices today.

by windowsrookie

3/8/2026 at 2:35:18 PM

The only negative is the 8gb ram but the processor lies in between M1 and M2, aluminium chassis etc

by Hardwired8976

3/9/2026 at 1:29:58 PM

I love it, and I don't normally use a Mac. If I could think of any use case for it, I'd have already ordered one.

by gambiting

3/8/2026 at 2:33:28 PM

I think mainly what upsets me about it is how it can only have 8gb of ram. Everything else you can kind of work with and stretch if you’re not a “power user,” but 8gb just isn’t enough in 2026 IMO if ewaste is a concern. Especially not in an era where people have ChatGPT open all the time

Would be interesting to see these specs in a mini body with 16gb ram but I have a feeling there isn’t really a market for that.

by Forgeties79

3/8/2026 at 2:45:46 PM

8GB should be enough forever.

what do we need more memory for on our machines. Video files are already at a resolutions where any increase barely matters. Audio or any other multimedia as well. You won't be gaming on a macbook so that goes out of the window, and a lot of games actually work fine with 8GB. You can edit video or music with that much RAM.

Only thing that needs more ram is running Facebook, which is more of a problem with the sad state of webdev, not the MacBook.

by sznio

3/8/2026 at 5:14:45 PM

Your comment just bruised an Electron app developer.

by ryandrake

3/8/2026 at 11:41:43 PM

People joke about electron but I've seen optimised electron run well and some native apps consume ludicrous amounts of memory.

These days code is nothing, content = memory.

by fennecbutt

3/8/2026 at 7:23:02 PM

Should be, but it isn’t.

I edit for a living and 8gb is not sufficient at all unless you’re always doing proxies, doing reduced resolution playback, and not running any major effects. Playback starts dropping frames at the drop of a hat. Every video editor should have at least 16gb of ram - it’s been that way for years.

If you rarely edit you can get away with it. If you do it with any regularity you end up working around the constraints and taking significantly longer to do your work and deal with slideshow playback.

by Forgeties79

3/8/2026 at 11:40:41 PM

Why do you think the fact that you need more memory (and probably processor) to edit makes sense when talking about the cheapest MacBook available? Why aren’t you complaining you can’t edit in a ChromeBook or a NUC?

by NetMageSCW

3/9/2026 at 1:35:36 AM

I agree. The neo is not for editing. The person I responded to is the one who introduced editing into the conversation and said 8GB is enough for video editing.

by Forgeties79

3/8/2026 at 2:42:46 PM

Especially not in an era where people have ChatGPT open all the time

People aren’t generally running ChatGPT locally.

by iainmerrick

3/8/2026 at 11:41:03 PM

No one who is in the market for this has even heard of ChatGPT.

by NetMageSCW

3/9/2026 at 12:26:37 AM

What a weird comment about a computer that seems to be targeted at students.

by jmye

3/9/2026 at 1:37:41 AM

Exactly!

by Forgeties79

3/8/2026 at 5:27:46 PM

I didn’t say they were running it locally. A single tab of ChatGPT eventually eats a few gb of ram if you leave it open and are using it constantly, which is how I see most “casual” people using it in my vicinity. I’ve seen it push 2-3 gigs regularly.

People also tend to just leave a lot of tabs open all the time. Even when they are paused I just see people’s computers slow to a crawl because of this constantly.

I agree it should be enough and it even often is, but unless we’re going to get everybody to change their habits and get websites to be more efficient with tam usage (like how at work every single HubSpot tab I have uses 300-400MB which is ridiculous) 8 will become an issue, especially on macOS and windows. The way things are going it’s going to become a real problem in 5 years, which is relevant when we’re talking about ewaste. I just don’t see an 8gb mac neo lasting 8-10 years.

This has been my experience. I understand why other people disagree with me, but this is just what I’ve witnessed around me.

by Forgeties79

3/8/2026 at 11:41:49 PM

Fortunately Apple offers free recycling for all their products, so no ewaste will be created.

by NetMageSCW

3/9/2026 at 1:39:21 AM

Ehhhhhhh

by Forgeties79

3/8/2026 at 2:42:12 PM

it's a cheap way to escape from microslop, for those that really fear linux

by sznio

3/8/2026 at 2:31:54 PM

> Do people like the Macbook Neo?

People have been begging for MacOS on the iPad... and here it is, but in different clothing. The Neo is just a test bed before committing MacOS to the iPad.

by zikduruqe

3/8/2026 at 2:50:28 PM

Dear lord in heaven I hope this is true. My work laptop is an M2 Air and I recently got them to spring for an M5 iPad Pro as a companion device. Whenever I'm using it as a wireless second screen I am acutely aware that it both has a larger display and significantly more powerful processor than the laptop it's serving as an extension of.

by rurihoshino

3/9/2026 at 6:38:26 AM

I hope it isn't. The UI on macOS has been going to shit for years. Squeezing touch into it would accelerate that.

by tonyedgecombe

3/8/2026 at 2:42:21 PM

I don't understand this comment. In everything it does this is a MacBook, not an iPad. It doesnt have a touch screen. It has a fixed keyboard.

by rowanG077

3/8/2026 at 7:35:18 PM

It has an iPad chip, and is at an iPad price --- if it sells well, and doesn't gut iPad sales, then maybe we'll get Mac OS on iPad (but I'm not holding my breath) --- a more interesting development would be for someone to work out how to transfer the Mac OS from a Neo onto an iPad w/ the same chip.

by WillAdams

3/8/2026 at 7:42:11 PM

IPad pro exists with an M5 as well. And is prices basically the same as an MacBook air.

by rowanG077

3/8/2026 at 8:40:20 PM

fair point --- as I noted, I'm not holding my breath, and I don't think it likely, but maybe the above is why some folks think this might happen.

by WillAdams

3/8/2026 at 2:44:40 PM

Hey New Apple, can you guys fix the nearly weekly prompt I get to reject local network access for the browser? I don't have that on my windows or Linux machines so it's fixable!

by glimshe

3/9/2026 at 4:13:20 PM

The ‘new materials’ at the end of the post is a bit weird, arent they using ‘old’ A type chips?

by thenthenthen

3/8/2026 at 2:20:36 PM

Lemay has been at Apple for 27 years and has a track record that implies the future of Apple software under his leadership is extraordinarily bright.

That Macbook Neo wallpaper [1] does not give me confidence.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2026/03/MacBo...

by lateforwork

3/8/2026 at 4:58:04 PM

Reminds me of bacteria under a microscope.

by cmckn

3/8/2026 at 2:29:52 PM

Did someone at Apple discover some cool shader tricks and just can't stop?

by arvid-lind

3/8/2026 at 2:52:35 PM

yeah at some point around 1999 with Mac OS 9, they started making abstract desktop backgrounds like this, and there’ve been a few like it in every OS released since then https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNNQyeVrqxBdNmBkq9ILswi...

by jitl

3/8/2026 at 4:29:48 PM

Thanks for sharing, I find those backgrounds beautiful. The Neo background, on the other hand, is ugly, at least to my taste.

by lateforwork

3/8/2026 at 8:41:41 PM

It definitely has a bit of a 1990s gradient 3D buttons vibe.

by layer8

3/8/2026 at 2:44:09 PM

So, the biggest signal here is Apple caring enough about the low-end of the market to make a laptop for it, and they didn’t just continue making the M1 (as has been the case up to now at Walmart). Apple instead chose to bring back color, to provide better cooling to a newer and more power efficient chip, and thereby deliver better performance than M1. They didn’t skimp on materials. They didn’t skimp on the screen. The Neo is a premium device, it’s just low on RAM and GPU cores. For a student who just needs Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Safari, that’s fine. For the average HN reader, it’s not fine, but the Neo isn’t intended for HN readers.

My biggest complaint is actually the positioning of the USB-C ports. The USB2 port should have been the one in the corner where most people will connect a charger, and the one in front should have been USB3 where most people would be plugging anything else. For the current layout, it seems like they’re counting on the buyer to get a dock of some kind… but this is meant to be budget?

by BirAdam

3/8/2026 at 11:45:06 PM

Depends - for an external monitor connection, the back corner is probably better.

by NetMageSCW

3/8/2026 at 2:13:58 PM

I look up to apple as a company that has good taste as opposed to Samsung that immediately appears as bloated.

But the Touch Bar, butterfly keyboard and Face ID have been so laughably bad that I wonder what the hell was going on. Or was I the only one who hated them.

Face ID in particular is probably one of the most annoying things about the iPhone. Constantly misses.

by simianwords

3/8/2026 at 2:20:18 PM

Interesting, I have a lot of criticisms for Apple, but Face ID is not one of them, it is absolutely flawless for me. I wonder if you wear glasses or have facial hair?

by microtonal

3/8/2026 at 2:26:34 PM

No I don’t. I can’t open it during the night when I’m under the blanket for example

by simianwords

3/8/2026 at 2:39:21 PM

That comment is so Hacker News.

by tonyedgecombe

3/9/2026 at 1:59:57 PM

What does that even mean? I know people not on HN who have the same complaint. I also dislike Face ID, it often fails in very dark or very bright situations, it’s never a feature I don’t need to think about. Touch ID on my previous iPhone, however, never failed.

by latexr

3/8/2026 at 2:33:02 PM

I'm honestly suddenly having issues unlocking my iPhone 17 Pro in broad daylight. Feels like it doesn't work in the sun anymore. No hair, just eyeglasses.

by halapro

3/9/2026 at 4:15:57 PM

I've found you can do one of two things to some door this:

1. Turn around and face the other way. 2. Make a visor with your other hand on your forehead.

by amazingman

3/8/2026 at 2:20:19 PM

I think I’m in the opposite camp. Loved the butterfly keyboard and Face ID works almost always, so much so that I regret getting a Touch ID iPad. And this is with me having facial hair and glasses. Touch Bar was a miss for me too though

by alivenotions

3/8/2026 at 4:06:04 PM

I loved the touch bar.

Unfortunately it was a cool thing that died a slow death when nobody made meaningful use of it. At that point it made sense to axe it.

by dd8601fn

3/9/2026 at 4:17:15 PM

The experience of using the butterfly keyboard was fantastic, I agree, but it was definitely polarizing. Some people hated it. At the end of the day, however, the reliability issues were unacceptable.

by amazingman

3/8/2026 at 3:04:15 PM

I thought the Touch Bar with Esc was kinda ok, but by that time its reputation was already destroyed.

by microtonal

3/8/2026 at 2:43:08 PM

It's insane to me that they didn't let Face ID be an alternative to Touch ID

by heavyset_go

3/8/2026 at 11:43:53 PM

Why? TouchID is less secure, has more friction, and brought up more biometric concerns.

by NetMageSCW

3/9/2026 at 1:27:41 AM

Convenience, it's easier to put your thumb on the phone, it's already in your hand

by heavyset_go

3/9/2026 at 3:26:59 AM

And I'm already looking at my phone

by wpm

3/8/2026 at 2:21:24 PM

If you think FaceID is hit or miss, I guess you haven't tried the keyboard lately?

by luckman212

3/8/2026 at 3:21:05 PM

My wife and I always make a grocery list at the end of the work day. About 1/3rd gets autocorrected in something that is wrong, was not the case a few years ago. Also, selecting text is an absolute pain now (also used to be ok).

At this point I'm wondering if program managers at Apple even use it, but then what else would they use?

by microtonal

3/8/2026 at 2:25:43 PM

I would prefer Touch ID

by simianwords

3/8/2026 at 2:40:42 PM

I meant: the keyboard is highly unreliable.

by luckman212

3/8/2026 at 3:09:31 PM

fair yeah that too

by simianwords

3/8/2026 at 2:16:13 PM

Hopefully Apple is humble enough to course correct, while being wildly successful. It’s easy to ignore criticism when your books are overflowing with cash, but the cracks are spreading and the foundation will eventually crumble if they don’t start taking their problems seriously.

by mrkstu

3/8/2026 at 11:43:12 PM

"You're holding it wrong"

by fennecbutt

3/9/2026 at 4:20:12 PM

People were in fact holding it wrong to get the signal to attenuate. The way you had to grip the phone to affect signal was not practical in any way. That controversy was entirely bullshit and only Apple would have ever been dragged for it.

by amazingman

3/8/2026 at 9:05:36 PM

Hardly what I would label as ‘longform’, though the author did.

by vjulian

3/8/2026 at 2:17:10 PM

Unless I'm missing something, I hate fanboys

> The MacBook Neo is a new kind of product for Apple

It's just a laptop with a dumbed down CPU. It is not a NEW KIND of product. Apple already sells laptop with different CPUs..

by rrgok

3/8/2026 at 2:20:53 PM

I think "value laptop" is the new product—for Apple.

The closest they ever came to something similar was the far too expensive 12" MacBook, and the far-too-compromised PowerBook Duo (IMHO).

by geerlingguy

3/9/2026 at 12:29:46 AM

12" MacBook, PowerBook Duo, PowerBook 2400, and first-gen MacBook Air were attempts at making the smallest possible Mac notebook.

The Neo is their only attempt to date at making the least expensive possible Mac notebook.

by rjrjrjrj

3/8/2026 at 2:25:52 PM

And to zoom out a bit, Apple has lots of experience selling budget devices e.g. iPhone SE.

by ayewo

3/8/2026 at 2:22:28 PM

It's new and revolutionary, because it's the first sub-$1000 laptop from Apple.

by Kwpolska

3/9/2026 at 12:52:28 AM

Apple invents chromebooks!

by neko_ranger

3/8/2026 at 2:23:21 PM

That’s a very spec-focused way to think about something that has nothing to do with specs.

This is a laptop being sold at half the price of the cheapest laptop Apple has ever sold save for some oddities like the eMate.

Apple has never threatened the “I just need a working cheap laptop for $500” market in this way before.

by dangus

3/8/2026 at 2:22:34 PM

To Apple it is a new kind of product.

by zsoltkacsandi

3/8/2026 at 2:27:06 PM

It is absolutely a distinct, new kind of product for them and I don’t understand how it is fanboyism to say so. They have very few, very clear lanes of products with few variations. This is an entirely different fleet/price point for their laptops. It doesn’t even use the M chip, which every other computer they offer does.

It’s a budget laptop. They didn’t have a budget laptop prior.

by Forgeties79

3/8/2026 at 9:56:52 PM

The MacBook Neo is there to redefine the floor for the product line-up. There’s a reason why it didn’t take the “MacBook” moniker: they’re going to phase the Air out, introduce a more expensive “MacBook” and eventually shuffle the Pro line around so it’s MacBook Neo -> MacBook (???) -> MacBook Ultra

The 599 price point is just there to justify recycling the A18 chip (8GB limit is due to the chip). It will pivot and the price will climb back up (699, 799 probably) after a cycle or two.

There is no ‘new’ Apple.

by deafpolygon

3/8/2026 at 8:16:54 PM

> the marketing is radically different. Apple’s advertising materials for the Neo are a radical departure from their typical work. It’s drawing exactly the kind of attention that they need to. It’s fun, it’s different, and it’s most importantly current. Not just following trends, but taking what makes Apple, Apple and meshing it together with what’s expected of brands in 2026.

Could someone explain what the OP means here?

by mmooss

3/9/2026 at 12:46:25 AM

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47301241 particularly the tiktok shorts.

by krackers

3/9/2026 at 3:46:09 AM

I feel almost ill. How sad. They even discarded the cubist element of the Finder icon, which would have been interesting in 3-D.

The idea that the Mac community has lost its artistic sense and enjoys it says a lot. Maybe I'm making too much of this derivative work, and Apple's own material isn't like it?

Time moves on, I suppose.

by mmooss

3/8/2026 at 2:15:15 PM

Stop giving Alan Dye the Package Designer God-like powers. As if he was alone reaponsible for any design changes.

Federighi answers only to Cook and God (not sure about God though), and he and his minions have been happily implementing every single bullshit under the sun, and praising it on stage. They spent probably millions of man-hours on Liquid Glass. And shipped it in the state it is in.

For the new Apple to "begin to emerge" you need more than meaningless web page updates. You need a leadership that cares. When is the last time you've seen any of Apple's senior leadership care?

by troupo

3/8/2026 at 2:11:03 PM

I really hope Ternus gets the next CEO spot. I haven't seen much of him, but I watched part of an interview with him and he seems very reminiscent of Jobs, in the good way. Reportedly Tim Cook is preparing runner-ups from all the top-level divisions, not just engineering:

> But Mr. Cook is also preparing several other internal candidates to be his potential successor, two of the people said. They could include Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software; Eddy Cue, its head of services; Greg Joswiak, its head of worldwide marketing; and Deirdre O’Brien, its head of retail and human resources.

Personally I wouldn't like to see any of these. Especially services needs to calm the fuck down and stop giving into the temptation to milk their captive audience; that's absolutely not what Apple is supposed to stand for.

by LoganDark