In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I realise the Neo uses a different CPU than other Macs, not sure how much different it is to the M chips

Have a look at:

MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

On my M4 pro mini, if I unplug the external disk with GG on it - without changing the startup disk - it just goes back to booting off the internal drive. No recovery mode or boot choice screen. I’ve never had any problem with Macs with an OS on an external drive. And with an external SSD it’s almost as fast as booting off the internal drive. Only niggle is it keeps associating my iCloud account with the new disk and I have to change it back when reverting to the internal drive.

When using an external install I always unmount the internal disk to avoid any potential unintended consequences.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I realise the Neo uses a different CPU than other Macs, not sure how much different it is to the M chips.

Its the same family, same design team, same capabilities, just a reduced capability version. But anyone asking this question isn't in the market for a Neo. The Neo uses the A18 Pro SoC and the cores inside are very similar to the M4 SoC used in other Apple devices.

One way to look at it:
A18 Pro = a high-performance sports motorcycle. Extremely fast, compact, and efficient.
M4 = a high-performance sports car. Similar engineering DNA, but with more room for power, cooling, and sustained speed.


More geeky detail:

Modern computers use System on Chip (SoC) which means the many CPU cores, L2, and L3 cache and in a lot of cases the SSD storage and other controllers are on the chip. The A18 Pro has CPU cores known as Tahiti, and the A18 Pro has 2 performance at upto 4 GHz, and 4 efficiency at upto 2.42 GHz. The M4 SoC is the closest comparison. It has more cores, 3 or 4 performance, and 4 or 6 efficiency.

The main design difference is the A18 Pro is designed to slow down, be cool, throttle if hot, and it has lower memory bandwidth. The M4 can slow down (as in MacBook Air) but can also be cooled traditionally with fans and thermal paste, and so have a higher duty cycle. The M4 is also physically larger, more cores higher memory bandwidth and so can do more. (for more money).

For workloads lasting only a few seconds, the A18 Pro can feel surprisingly close to an M-series chip. For longer tasks, the M4 pulls far ahead because it can sustain higher power levels and avoid thermal throttling.

(I wrote the above, used google and some AI queries for research, but this isn't a copy/paste from an AI tool)

Good précis.

Bit hard to completely avoid any AI in searches etc nowadays, so you may as well roll with it, just avoid being a meat proxy 😅

I hadn't realised until I blog post in the link in my post above just how quickly the Neo hits a "thermal cliff" - only 60 seconds at full throttle before it throttles. Savagely.

Taking your analogy; that's like a chainsaw, that runs flat out - but there's only 2 spoon-fulls of two-stroke left in the fuel line to the carb...😂

Suppose that will be fine as these machines have 'only' 8GB of RAM - so its not like they're going to be running AI models or doing heavy video post-production for example. Wrong beast for that stuff.

The right beast probably for many other run of the mill / ordinary day to day tasks that don't require much sustained heavy lifting from the CPU/GPU/ much memory.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I hadn't realised until I blog post in the link in my post above just how quickly the Neo hits a "thermal cliff" - only 60 seconds at full throttle before it throttles. Savagely.

That's really what put me off even buying one as something to "play" with, given I have an iPad Pro M2 and a Mac Mini M1 around... but I'm a Windows/Linux person, not really a fan of macOS.

Taking your analogy; that's like a chainsaw, that runs flat out - but there's only 2 spoon-fulls of two-stroke left in the fuel line to the carb...😂

ha ha.

Suppose that will be fine as these machines have 'only' 8GB of RAM - so its not like they're going to be running AI models or doing heavy video post-production for example. Wrong beast for that stuff.

I think if you see them as the "apple chromebook" to try and get back into the US education market, that might be fair. Although Google may be slowly moving away from chromebook.

The right beast probably for many other run of the mill / ordinary day to day tasks that don't require much sustained heavy lifting from the CPU/GPU/ much memory.

And for the home users I know that mostly use the web, or use their phones, it is ideal technology.

Its a shame you can't buy a chassis and dock an iPhone 16 or later to get equivalent.