> The I/O is also a genuine limitation: one USB 2.0 port is functionally useless for data transfer, no Thunderbolt means no fast external storage, and charging occupies your only USB 3 port.
You're supposed to use the USB-2 port for charging and save the USB-3 port for external accessories, not the other way around
It only supports 10Gb/s compared to 40 that USB-4 is theoretically capable of, but that's more than enough for anyone in the $600 laptop market.
Anecdotally, and as a big fan of Apple laptops, I've had so much trouble with their USB and SDCard hardware when it comes to data transfer that I wonder if I'm cursed or if I'm crazy.
Transferring a about a dozen GB of data over USB3 is a crapshoot depending on the drive you have. Even amongst name-brands with similar advertised speeds, some thumb drives are basically useless with my 2024 MBP and I've had similar issues with a previous 2015 MBP model. The transfer speeds will be so slow as to be considered unusable.
On the 2024 MBP, using ANY microsd card adapter with any microsdcard causes the card to immediately overheat, and the card will never be properly usable by the OS. Only full-size SDCards work.
I've seen some posts about this elsewhere, but it seems to me like one of the few peripherals on this expensive piece of kit being incompatible with the vast majority of the hardware it's supposed to work with would be kind of a big deal.
I've had similar issues with microSD in a variety of adapters. I think the core issue is most microSD cards just aren't built, in terms of thermals, for sustained writes. In most devices they're either read-heavy loads or burst-y writes. When you stick them in a warm laptop and do a lot of writes they overheat and start throwing errors.
For many cards their drive controller might advertise and support higher UHS speeds the Flash memory is likely the cheapest silicon that can just barely pass acceptance tests. When I encounter cards that fail sustained writes I've had good luck using pv's (pipe viewer) rate limit. I stick it between dd invocations. This has worked well when writing OS images for Raspberry Pis onto cheap microSD cards. They're fine in the Pis but would fail trying to write OS images.
I've read the same, but for me, a newly-formatted microSD will overheat as soon as it's plugged into the MBP. The OS may be reading/writing something to cause that, but it's automated as part of the mounting process from what I've seen.
Both 10Gb/s and 8GB RAM limit come from iPhone 16 Pro chip limitations used in Neo. Next year's should have 12GB of RAM.
If they can maintain the same price tag for A19 based Macbook Neo with 12GB of RAM, I genuinely do not know how other companies can compete.
I’m waiting for the first A chip designed after the Neo decision - it’ll be interesting to see what they do knowing it’ll end up in a laptop. The obvious thing is “fixing” the USB problem.
They compete by not being a Mac.
It’s a bizarre take.
It’s not functionally useless, it supports a mouse, keyboard, printer or even an iPhone (non pro) perfectly fine at full speed. It also probably has enough speed for the average cheap terrible quality USB drive that the buyer of a $600 PC might have.
This is a Silicon Valley tech geek take not a real world one.
The assortment of cheap USB sticks I have do not surpass 400mbit/sec. Not even the ones labeled USB3.0 or High Speed.
That is good enough speed for plenty of use cases.
"genuinely" is an AI tell now as well as doing things in physical world that don't make sense like walking to the car wash to wash your car if it's close, or maybe not using USB ports in the way they were designed...
This feels like a dumb question, but is there nothing to distinguish the USB 2 port from the USB 3 port? I think there is an alert to tell people if they are using a fast device in the slow port, but I wonder whether their target market will read the manual and know which is which. I feel they will be surprised when that pop-up appears.
The Apple Take a tour of [the] MacBook Neo page describes the ports by location only:
"The left port can support one external display and transfers data at USB 3 speeds (up to 10 GB/s). The right port transfers data at USB 2 speeds (up to 480 MB/s). You can charge your MacBook Neo and connect accessories using either port."
...and...
"Tip: As a best practice, charge your MacBook Neo using the right port (USB 2), which leaves the left port (USB 3) available for a display or for connecting accessories that can take advantage of the higher speeds."
The target market rarely connects anything to their laptop besides the charger. The most commonly connected would be crappy flash drives or a mouse. A few might connect to present on a TV/projector but those are already frustrating to connect to.
Yeah, but that USB 3 port has to do a lot of heavy lifting. It 's also the only video out port making decent dongles a necessity. On a $600 PC it's not uncommon to have USB A (at 3.0 speeds), HDMI in addition to USB C and maybe even Ethernet.
>making decent dongles a necessity
I used a macbook air all throughout school, I never once owned a dongle or even plugged the thing in to an external monitor. My requirements were something that could run photoshop/illustrator and chrome. If I ever transfered something over USB it was a 300kb docx file or something else that would have copied instantly at 2.0 speeds.
I think there's a huge problem of tech enthusiasts projecting their own requirements on to a device that is designed for a very different person, and then declaring it unfit for use. Apple prioritized things that actually matter to students like battery life, lightness, price, and hinges that don't snap after the first year. Rather than tons of super fast IO and 32gb ram.
I went to school too. Sometimes at school we would do presentations using a projector connected by HDMI, maybe you could get away with the room computer but that only had USB A ports being some ancient desktop. Sometimes we did group projects and rather than huddle around one tiny 13" or 15" laptop screen we used one of the big ass TVs in the rentable group study rooms.
It's not tons of super fast IO. It's pretty basic IO.
Even then the problem can be solved by a cheap usb a + c flash drive. At least in offices every meeting room I’ve used for a while now has a usb c dongle for the TV.
HDMI has been less common than usb c on laptops for quite a long time now.
Also, a large fraction of students these days use Google Docs. I don’t have first-hand experience, but I imagine they would either share presentations with the account the shared computer is logged into, or log into their own account on the shared computer. No hardware involved either way.
This cheap laptop is not for people with external displays. Almost everyone buying this would have no desire for an external display, they wouldn’t even feel this as a limitation.
If you want a separate display or super fast data transfers, more usb ports or more than 8MB of RAM buy one of the more expensive laptops.
> On a $600 PC
Yes, but it is uncommon for a $600 PC to have a beautiful screen, great trackpad, metal case, and top notch build quality. Also, the neo performs really really well.
The 2020 MBP wasn't much better in terms of IO and it was wildly successful as a $1200+ laptop.
I suspect the majority of $600 laptops live their entire functional life without anyone plugging anything other than a charger into them.
A multi-port USB-C hub is about ten dollars on Amazon. If a Neo owner really needs additional ports they're a few bucks. For a vast majority of Neo owners the lack of ports is a non-issue and for the others that occasionally need the extra ports they're cheap.
I doubt there's many Neo buyers that really needed multiple Thunderbolt ports but decided to pick up the $600 entry level machine instead.
Sometimes on HN while this is technically correct I wonder if Mac users will truly notice. This is probably a limitation of the A19 chip. Many people just see the price tag and buy.
Yep. For me it was a perfect gift to replace moms 10+ year old Intel based MacBook Air.
USB 2.0 speeds are still fine for 99% of my USB transfer needs.
I agree that for the actual target market, 10Gb/s is probably not the thing that will make the machine feel limited
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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
The computer pops up a warning if you plug a fast device into the slow port, which is a lot more informative for the average user than a tiny label that most users wouldn’t even read.
Labels would be nice, I guess, but their absence is hardly a dealbreaker.
Windows has been showing popup USB speed warnings since at least Windows XP.... so 25 years?
Let's not use this cope to mislead anyone into thinking this is a unique Mac innovation (it isn't) that trumps this abomination of human factors (it doesn't).
I have never ever seen Windows provide this warning even once just because there is a faster port on the machine and the user plugged the device into the wrong one. Please provide a source for this claim that you are making. Citation absolutely needed.
In the unlikely case that this feature exists thanks to Microsoft, I would like to say that is great, because it is much more user friendly than only having tiny labels. But since I’ve never seen this feature work before, it seems to me that it must be broken, if it exists at all.
These warning messages do exist, at least for if your computer supports USB4 but not on that port, or thunderbolt / DP alternate mode but not on that port
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/u...
The OP might be remembering this (link) style of message from the Windows XP days. I don't think I've seen it for windows 7/10/11, sadly.
It will warn you if you're charging over the slower to charge port, though.
https://superuser.com/questions/1022542/windows-10-display-a...
You get a message on screen that you should be using the other port.
But yes, labeling should have been better. One of the USPs of MacBooks is that all USB ports are the same. Unlike other computers where you have to look where you are plugging it in. The Neo breaks that tradition.
That was definitely not the case on one of the macbooks I had, which wouldn't charge properly on the right side if recall. Maybe one of the last Intel macbook pros?
Do you think those same users know the difference between usb3, usb4, and thunderbolt (or even that all three exist)? More over, do you think they know how to tell cables apart for the three?
$150 netbooks solved this by labeling the ports "SS" or using blue USB-A inserts, but those are matters inferior PC users have to deal with.
I legitimately have no idea what "SS" means next to a port, and I've seen it plenty of times. Labeling doesn't solve everything. The message on screen that you get when you plug something into the wrong port on the Neo is, obviously, much better because it assumes nothing about the user's knowledge except for the ability to read.
SuperSpeed, but you’re not supposed to use that as a consumer facing label anymore
> NOTE: USB4® Version 2.0, USB4® Version 1.0, USB 3.2, SuperSpeed Plus, Enhanced SuperSpeed and SuperSpeed+ are defined in the USB specifications however these terms are not intended to be used in product names, messaging, packaging or any other consumer-facing content.
USB-IF’s recommended name for this port is now just “USB 10Gbps”
Not that I would expect an average consumer to understand that as a label, but at least it takes up less space and allows relative comparisons better than USB 3.0 SuperSpeed+ or whatever the old equivalent was.
https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_data_performance...
> I legitimately have no idea what "SS" means next to a port
surströmming
> it assumes nothing about the user's knowledge except for the ability to read.
Sometimes I question whether some users have that ability
Most people can read; it’s comprehending what they just read that’s the deal-breaker.
USB 3.0 was marketed as SuperSpeed USB. SS-marked ports should give you 5Gbit/s, compared to 480 Mbps USB 2.0.
I feel confident in saying that I am better at computers than 99.99% of the general population and I have no clue what “SS” or blue USB ports are supposed to indicate.
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Apple never colored their ports because up until the Neo all ports were the same speed. No need to distinguish them.
No need to distinguish ports when you can remove them all instead.
"Solved" - hardly. No one knows what those symbols mean.
Apple should show users an alert when they plug a USB-3 device into the USB-2 port because they are visually identical
Oh wait https://i.imgur.com/7HWgxZ1.png
I don't know the details of Apple's silicon designs, but I assume the USB port bandwidth is because this is using the chip from iPhone 16 Pro, a phone which of course had a single USB-3 port. They've done what they can with it to hit the price point.
The alternative was to not include a second USB port for charging, in which case people would be bitching about it not being able to use peripherals while charging like the last time they made a single port laptop.
This is why standardising in USB c the connector was a mistake.