Rolling out Neos

[Sheridan]

Its been a while since I managed Macs in a Windows environment, but with the Neo's being so cheap and so good for the price (around £415 edu price!) I can't honestly think of a reason not to deploy some in certain areas (Art/Music for example)

 

Anyone else planning to deploy Neos, or already have? We already use Mosyle for iPads so would just pay for the MacOS mdm licenses. I'm getting one in to test the battery life in the real world etc but the old days of them being prohibitively expensive are gone

[paulkerton]

34 minutes ago, Sheridan said:

I can't honestly think of a reason not to deploy some in certain areas (Art/Music for example)

I can, primarily that they'll expect them to be able to do things that they probably aren't powerful enough to, particularly in those departments.
Great little device, but I do worry that the "Apple" logo will give inexperienced teachers an expectation that they're capable of things a £2000+ device is.

[Cazab]

They don't really work in a windows environment.

[DalekSec]

12 minutes ago, Cazab said:

They don't really work in a windows environment.

 

Can you explain why ?

 

We have Macs and Windows co-existing without issue, it's all about setup and correct MDMs

[Sheridan]

I'm talking about using them instead of windows laptops so they'll cope fine with the office/music/art apps we use anyway

 

I've happily managed suites of Macs in a Windows domain before - albeit a little while ago!

[msi_school]

I manage a mixed Windows, Mac, Chromebook environment and it is harder than a single OS but it all works fine.

 

I agree with @paulkerton in that I don't know how powerful they really are and the Staff here already thing everything is slow. I am trying to get someone to fund me one for testing but so far no luck.

 

I would be interested in hearing about your results if you go ahead.

[Sheridan]

1 hour ago, msi_school said:

I manage a mixed Windows, Mac, Chromebook environment and it is harder than a single OS but it all works fine.

 

I agree with @paulkerton in that I don't know how powerful they really are and the Staff here already thing everything is slow. I am trying to get someone to fund me one for testing but so far no luck.

 

I would be interested in hearing about your results if you go ahead.

Honestly, I know a couple of techy people who already have them for home and have been very pleasantly surprised how good they are - I mean, we're not editing 4k video streams on them but for general use and web apps they're basically an ipad with a keyboard attached and we use ipads with no issue

[dhicks]

5 hours ago, Sheridan said:

Anyone else planning to deploy Neos, or already have?

 

I have a Neo myself, my girlfriend has been using it for general Microsoft Office and for audio playback for a theatre production, which it seems to have handled just fine, no slowness or delay (which you would notice with audio). She (and I) disliked the mouse pad, but that might just be because we're both simply unused to them.

 

We use Moysle to manage our 20 classroom iMacs in school. Works okay, but if you're using the devices as multi-user devices rather than assigned to one user we found user profiles started to fill the harddrives up. The main culprit seems to be Chrome, which turns out to download several GB of AI model per user per device, so we've set a Moysle setting and/or login script to try and sort that.

[Sheridan]

3 minutes ago, dhicks said:

 

I have a Neo myself, my girlfriend has been using it for general Microsoft Office and for audio playback for a theatre production, which it seems to have handled just fine, no slowness or delay (which you would notice with audio). She (and I) disliked the mouse pad, but that might just be because we're both simply unused to them.

 

We use Moysle to manage our 20 classroom iMacs in school. Works okay, but if you're using the devices as multi-user devices rather than assigned to one user we found user profiles started to fill the harddrives up. The main culprit seems to be Chrome, which turns out to download several GB of AI model per user per device, so we've set a Moysle setting and/or login script to try and sort that.

Thanks, that’s a useful bit of info

[synaesthesia]

14 hours ago, dhicks said:

 

I have a Neo myself, my girlfriend has been using it for general Microsoft Office and for audio playback for a theatre production, which it seems to have handled just fine, no slowness or delay (which you would notice with audio). She (and I) disliked the mouse pad, but that might just be because we're both simply unused to them.

 

We use Moysle to manage our 20 classroom iMacs in school. Works okay, but if you're using the devices as multi-user devices rather than assigned to one user we found user profiles started to fill the harddrives up. The main culprit seems to be Chrome, which turns out to download several GB of AI model per user per device, so we've set a Moysle setting and/or login script to try and sort that.

I need a little educating here, mostly as I've not had enough time to sit and look properly yet. Are they full MacOS devices but with an IOS hardware base, or are they closer to IOS in operation?

[dhicks]

2 minutes ago, synaesthesia said:

Are they full MacOS devices but with an IOS hardware base, or are they closer to IOS in operation?

 

Full MacOS, with no differences / limitations that I can see compared with, say, our school iMacs. So far we've run Microsoft Office and browser-based applications on the Neo with no problem, at some point I plan to try it with QLab / SweetLight for sound and lighting control. I haven't tried compiling / running any of my own (Golang) applications on there yet, either.

[synaesthesia]

Ah, cheers. It was the MDM question that made me wonder  I don't think we're likely to go down the Neo route any time soon but always good to have options when the next project comes around!

[Andycat]

For home use, I've had one to trial since before Easter for potential 6th form use (instead of iPad + Keyboard, nearly same price). Basic 256gb one.

 

I also have an M4 Macbook Pro that I usually use.

 

Day to day, I've used the Neo so far without having to swap back to the M4 for anything. Not tried FinalCut, but have done basic stuff in Logic, used QLab and done everything Office (installed) wise, plus usual browsing/films/downloading etc with no noticeable issues.

 

For us, as an alternative to a ~£330 ipad package, the ~£405 Neo looks a no brainer for 6th form use as a personal device.

[Sheridan]

Been trialling one for a couple of days now - in 'normal' use to me it feels like a 13" MBA - I use a 15"MBA as my personal laptop at home and apart from some subtle differences in the screen and the lack of the backlighting on the keyboard the performance has been absolutely fine. I'm using cloud apps, local apps and watching content and its been very solid

 

Repairability is a concern for class use, but having spent most of a day extracting a keyboard from a Dell laptop, this is more of a common theme across all laptops these days! I'm also concerned how long the white keys (on my silver EDU model) would stay white!

[flipthebit]

2 hours ago, Sheridan said:

Been trialling one for a couple of days now - in 'normal' use to me it feels like a 13" MBA - I use a 15"MBA as my personal laptop at home and apart from some subtle differences in the screen and the lack of the backlighting on the keyboard the performance has been absolutely fine. I'm using cloud apps, local apps and watching content and its been very solid

 

Repairability is a concern for class use, but having spent most of a day extracting a keyboard from a Dell laptop, this is more of a common theme across all laptops these days! I'm also concerned how long the white keys (on my silver EDU model) would stay white!

This model is probably one of the most repairable Apple products in a long time. Spares available as well. There's probably a few YouTube videos on the subject.

[TheHyperTechie]

https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-repairable-macbook-in-14-years

[2ilent8cho]

We have 40 Neo's here, but we were already mainly macOS anyway as have over 600 of Macs. Was very surprised just how nippy these little things are. 

[Sheridan]

Aye they definitely look a lot more repairable. Mainboard, battery, speakers, usb ports and even the keyboard look reasonably replaceable. Screen might be trickier but its a definite improvement

 

Speed wise I've not noticed I'm running on a 'lesser' chip than my personal m4 MBA so I'm impressed, especially at the edu pricing level you'd struggle to as good a windows or even chromebook device