11 ms·

“This is not the computer for you”

• sghiassy 7mo ago
  I appreciate the article and agree. If you have a desire to learn computers, just get your hands on whatever you can and learn.
  • netcoyote 7mo ago
    Yeah, that really resonated; the author captured something about the way kids explore. It brought back memories of when I first started using a Unix time share at university, and exhaustively read all the man pages. Didn’t know why, just wanted to discover everything.
  • georgeecollins 7mo ago
    I second that! This is also how I feel about Raspberry Pis. There's so much they can't do, and yet in a way they can do everything. It's not the power of the machine, its about how much control you have or how close you can get to the metal. At least that way you learn about why you need more powerful hardware. Chrome books and phones teach nothing.
    • lern_too_spel 7mo ago
      It's one click to set up a Debian environment on a Chromebook. Same on an Android phone. You can learn plenty from that. Once you've learned the limits of what you can learn within that environment, it's not difficult to then unlock the bootloader and learn even more.
      • gizajob 7mo ago
        To be honest, anytime I see someone recommending how easy it is to install Debian I always feel like they’re some relic from the nineties. Kids likely won’t follow any advice starting with “install Debian”.
        • jjkaczor 7mo ago
          They will if they are at all "technically curious" and bump-up against the limits of "ChromeOS" and running software they want to execute. A couple quick searches will find them some instructions, and boom - after a week or so, they are running Debian, their own Minecraft server, Blender (poorly), or whatever had prompted them to look for alternatives. Never underestimate the time investment and frugality of a "technically curious" young person... Myself, I would have been a happy end-user, loading/playing games, running software - except, I bought a cheap modem - with physical IRQ jumpers - and no documentation - and it's default jumper settings conflicted with my mouse in Windows. If it hadn't been for that cheap/frugal purchase and then having to invest the time to troubleshoot, I wouldn't have become "technical" and moved on to greater and greater challenges and learning experiences. Most people would have just returned it and got an external modem instead, or given-up on even the possibility of connecting to BBS's... What is fundamentally different from the late 80's/early 90's, is now there is a tremendous wealth of knowledge on the internet to actually facilitate that troubleshooting type of learning activity. Is that better? Well - there will always be a "known solution", but what I find many people do now, is follow whatever the first set of instructions they find, treating them like a "magical spell", without knowing/learning "why/how"... [And if the first set of instructions doesn't work, the majority just "give up"] Overall - in my experience, the percentage of people who are truly "technically curious" is about the same as it ever was - single-digits... It ultimately depends on whether or not their interests/passions/blockers align with being forced to go "beyond" their comfort zone.
        • lern_too_spel 7mo ago
          The advice isn't "install Debian." It's click the "Turn On" button next to "Linux Development Environment." They can learn whatever they're curious about from there.
  • ActorNightly 7mo ago
    Except if its an apple device.
• gnabgib 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • JSR_FDED 7mo ago
    I don’t understand the point you’re making?
• GameOfKnowing 7mo ago
  This is true but also not at all the point of a review. Some tools are better suited for some tasks— reviews help those with the privilege of choice find the best ones for them. Otherwise you’d have a review of a hammer saying “this is a great tool for driving screws if you’re not afraid to get cREaTive with it!” Folks who need to make do with what they have already know about their constraints.
  • MBCook 7mo ago
    I took the article as talking about the difference between reviews that say “this computer is not going to be great at X” and the reviews that say “this machine is only good for office tasks or Y“. The gatekeeping tone. It can do most anything. It may not be amazing, but people get buy. And they may be ok with it. I saw tons of comments in the original post about the Neo from people who talked about how they used extremely old hand-me-down/used laptops to learn to start programming and fall in love with computers. I was just watching a video from ETA PRIME who tests lots of small computers to see how good they are for gaming. He was playing RoboCop on it, and it ran pretty well. 45-ish FPS. It was using 11 gigs of RAM at the time. So it was obviously in swap. Is that ideal? No. But it works.
    • Forgeties79 7mo ago
      I’d bet a solid 25% of the people nitpicking the Neo would’ve called it a breath of fresh air if it wasn’t made by Apple. I don’t want one, it doesn’t do what I need. But I can definitely see the use cases especially at that price point.
      • GrifMD 7mo ago
        It reminds me of the iPhone 5C when I had a 5S, it's a beautiful colorful breath of fresh air that I wish I had but my needs are so much greater. But if I wasn't an engineer who needed a highspeced MacBook Pro I'd go with it.
        • eru 7mo ago
• SoftTalker 7mo ago
  > This computer is for the kid who doesn’t have a margin to optimize. Who can’t wait for the right tool to materialize. Who is going to take what’s available and push it until it breaks and learn something permanent from the breaking. That kid will be much better off with a used laptop and Linux or BSD.
  • hackyhacky 7mo ago
    > That kid will be much better off with a used laptop and Linux or BSD. True, and suffering through the limitations of the Apple platform will show the kid why Linux is better.
    • lelandbatey 7mo ago
      Don't downvote, it certainly did for me. My first computer was a MBP 13inch from 2009, as I was apple obsessed like the person in the parent article. Time passes and I realized I really didn't like either Windows or Mac, and for the past 10 years Ive been linux only. It really does happen, even if rarely.
      • GianFabien 7mo ago
        Good on you for rising up to the ranks of Linux/BSD. You just need to recognize that not everybody aspires to be competent with lower-levels of hardware and software that Apple makes that much more difficult. Most Apple users are content to use apps written by others and that is as far as their interest goes. An analogy is the car market. Most people don't care how the car works, etc. They just want to get to places. If you only need to drive to the shops and do minimal errands, you don't even need a truck - a sedan will do just fine. Same with computers, lots of different market segments with distinct needs and expectations.
        • MBCook 7mo ago
          Yep everyone has their preference. A lot of us have done both. I’ve run multiple distros. I’ve played with low level software. I have used and continue to use open source tools in places. And I prefer my Mac to this day as my main machine. Consumer user or Linux hacker is a false dichotomy people sometimes like to try to slot people into (not accusing you GianFabien).
• Animats 7mo ago
  Not enough memory -> can't do it. Not enough CPU -> can do it, but it's slow. (Ubuntu with the OOM killer - could do it, but when it filled half of memory, it was killed.)
  • bitmasher9 7mo ago
    Not enough memory is sometimes just a slowdown these days, with ssd and swap.
    • pocksuppet 7mo ago
      Swap has existed since Win95 btw
      • chongli 7mo ago
        Yes, though SSDs that can sustain 1.5G/s and an OS that transparently compresses memory before swapping yield a lot better experience than Win95 swapping.
        • pocksuppet 7mo ago
          Yes, but if your bar is "still works but slower" you don't need that.
  • TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
    For me, not enough memory is mostly -> close some damn browser tabs.
    • imp0cat 7mo ago
      If we're talking about Ubuntu, ZRAM is still a thing.
      • johnisgood 7mo ago
        Of course. I set it up on my Void Linux and Arch Linux.
• dangus 7mo ago
  I like the sentiment expressed here, but on this note, I think there are other dangers to consider listening to early reviewers: - Reviewers do get early access and often are receiving units AND doing their tests, writing their script, recording, and editing their videos before regular users can even possibly get a system shipped in. At best this rushes them where they miss details (e.g., few reviewers noticed that the MacBook Pro 14" M5 keyboard is different hardware then what you got on the M4 Pro because so much content is rushed) - Reviewers are almost never experts on what street prices look like because they are focused on reviewing, getting content out ASAP. They are not spending time monitoring pricing with only a few exceptional channels doing so. - The best marketing machine companies like Apple absolutely groom the review ecosystem without even needing to tell reviewers what to do directly. It's a competitive landscape of self-made YouTubers who are susceptible to positive reinforcement from the industry. i.e., companies don't have to tell reviewers to censor themselves, they can instead use positive reinforcement to select which reviewers are getting the best access and privileges. Now, about the computer itself: related to the way the author of this article talks about the MacBook Neo, about the role of a cheap computer to just try have a working computer that is able to get some stuff done: this is the kind of thing that should likely steer you AWAY from this MacBook Neo that initially looked so exciting. If you're considering a ~$500-750 computer, well, not only should you be checking the used market, but also, actually look at the competition to this thing. The reactions I've seen from regular people seems to be, basically, "wow, Apple pulled off an incredible feat, they've disrupted the computer market again!" Well, let's pump the brakes. First off, realize the Neo is making a lot of the same trade-offs that budget laptops have been doing for years. They aren't even giving you a backlit keyboard! The lower model cuts out biometric auth! There's no haptic trackpad, which used to be a major differentiator for Apple! It comes with a tiny slow charger! The battery life is actually not that good under load/bright screen because the battery is tiny! The CPU is old/slower/low power biased! These are all the classic cheap laptop tradeoffs that give PC manufacturers a LOT of room to actually compete really well against the Neo. On top of that, almost every cheapo Windows laptop on the market is going to deliver to you a computer with at least a replaceable SSD. Usually RAM is soldered but it's not impossible to find that as something you can upgrade as well even on consumer-ish stuff that isn't just an old ThinkPad. Actually spend the time to jump on some retailer websites like Best Buy and take a look at what the street prices look like. There are multiple computers on there that make way more sense for someone budget constrained than a MacBook Neo. My two favorites, one at a lower price and one at a higher price: Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 2K OLED Touchscreen Laptop, AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 2025 - 16GB memory, 512GB SSD, $679. This is a proper mid-range laptop and not just some cheap bottom of the barrel model in the lineup. To gain an OLED touchscreen, double the RAM, and the same storage as the highest Neo model at the same price, this is just great all around. I'm pretty sure these get very respectable battery life as well. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x 15.3" touchscreen snapdragon X, 16GB memory, 256GB storage, $549. With this model, you get a lot of the same ARM benefits that Apple is giving you. Sure, Windows on ARM is not the kind of polished native experience as a Mac, but we are just talking about a cheap laptop that works and, generally, everything you want to do in Windows will work on an ARM system. Once again, you're getting doubled RAM, which is important, and you're going to gain a touch screen, numpad, and possibly even beat out the Neo's battery life. Another option is the HP OmniBook X Flip 2-in-1, a little less of a good value than the above, but it's another 16GB/512GB option that slides under $700.
• bitmasher9 7mo ago
  I hope they sell so many of these, because the Mac ecosystem is just better for learning about computers then what most young people use daily.
  • Stori_Rjomi 7mo ago
    How? I grew up with Windows, learned decent skills on that, probably as much as I would have on a Mac. The current mobile era stuff has put alot or control and grit away, for making things 'more accessible'.
    • fragmede 7mo ago
      These days it would be an iPad though.
      • idontwantthis 7mo ago
        Or a chromebook which is probably worse.
        • zamadatix 7mo ago
          Chromebooks themselves can actually be great machines for hacking (in the traditional sense, not the modern security/jailbreaking sense). E.g. https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en is arguably better than a direct typical Linux install because it's an isolated environment which won't break the main function of the device as you tinker. As the page notes though, the real problem for kids is the devices are of course locked down: > Important: If you use your Chromebook at work or school, you might not be able to use Linux. For more information, contact your administrator.
          • eru 7mo ago
            I mostly agree. Just one thing: > (in the traditional sense, not the modern security/jailbreaking sense) As far as I can tell, the two senses have pretty much always existed side by side. Nothing traditional vs modern about it.
• dhruv3006 7mo ago
  You can run blender on a Chromebook using the Linux environment.
• TheDong 7mo ago
  > The kid who tries to run Blender on a Chromebook doesn’t learn that his machine can’t handle it. He learns that Google decided he’s not allowed to. Or they learn to enable developer mode, unlock the bootloader, and install Linux, or use the officially supported Crostini, or so on. There's like 3 different ways to run Linux desktop apps on a modern Chromebook. The Macbooks don't let have an officially supported path to unlocking the bootloader (edit: yes, I'm aware of asahi linux, which lives on the edge of what apple allows) and install your own OS. The Chromebooks do. I don't think that comparison plays as favorably as you think.
  • t-writescode 7mo ago
    Switching to developer mode is very likely something he won’t be doing nor allowed to do on the Chromebook his parents bought him or the school assigned him.
    • sagarm 7mo ago
      Will a managed MacBook allow the installation of random native apps, either? Though let's be realistic, here: $600 is much more than the typical school-assigned Chromebook.
      • raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
        Yes
      • hyperhello 7mo ago
        It’s $500 for a kid, a full time student.
      • deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
  • wolvoleo 7mo ago
    You can't install a different OS on these? Are they different from the M series? Because those have Asahi Linux.
• lapcat 7mo ago
  In my opinion, this article looks like a straw man argument, and the author appears to completely misinterpret "This is not the computer for you." Such a statement needs to be understood in the relevant context. It's not intended to discourage kids from buying a Mac! Rather, it's intended to rebut critics who are already Mac owners and who scoff at the MacBook Neo technical specs, such as RAM. The computer is indeed not for them, people who can already afford a MacBook Pro, for example. The point of "This is not the computer for you" is the opposite of how the author characterized it: the point is that the MacBook Neo and its specs are actually fine for the people who are going to buy one. For some strange reason, the author has invented an imaginary opponent to become offended by. We're supposed to cheer for the kids here, and I see that many people have fallen for it, but the whole schtick falls completely flat for me. The kids were never endangered or discouraged by the reviews of the MacBook Neo.
  • shmeeed 7mo ago
    I don't know why you're downvoted. No matter how many feel-good anecdotes the author tacks to their article, to me the premise appears a strawman. It would have been entirely possible to make pretty much all the same points about just getting a used Thinkpad, or anything really. My first laptop as a kid was a passed-down business Toshiba that was to be scrapped. I then bought a soldering iron to fabricate a serial dongle in order to reset the BIOS password that was locking it down, and then installed Xubuntu on it. Guess young me shoulda gotten a Macbook instead to inspire the true spirit of freedom and exploration? It's an old and persuasive myth of the Apple community that of course it's not about the tool, but what you do with it creatively. Still, they never fail to mention how the tool being an Apple is important in one way or another. I just don't get it.
• TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
  I like how these days you have to say things like: "fuck-ass system modification" just to prove you're not AI.
  • lukestevens 7mo ago
    But it is AI! Or, at least, it's been run through it. (Staccato sentences; Not X. Not Y. Z...) It's a shame for a personal reflection. It's hard to imagine what the (I'm guessing) Claude-isms add that improve what would otherwise have been a nice unmolested personal essay.
    • astafrig 7mo ago
      What else is a shame is claiming that some single language feature supports a foregone conclusion that the writing's been 'molested'. It's hard to imagine what a constructive comment this could've been with the minimum of effort to know that the author has written this way consistently since at least 2021, before the first public release of ChatGPT.
      • lukestevens 7mo ago
        Really? In that case I retract the statement and will ponder what AI has done to my ability to assess this kind of writing!
        • ghoulishly 7mo ago
          Author here, it’s all me. I ran it through Claude before publishing to spot check me on grammar/typos and it caught a few syntax things, but this is just my writing style. Here’s a satire piece I wrote in the summer of 2021. Tonally very different but you can pick up on my voice between it and my essay yesterday: https://samhenri.gold/blog/20210803-localhost/ https://samhenri.gold/blog/20210803-localhost/
          • lukestevens 7mo ago
• raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
  I had no personal computer for years except what only served as my Plex Server until I took it down. I bought a 16GB M2 MacBook Air after I was Amazoned to work on a side contract when I was between jobs. I used it for four weeks and the only thing I ran on it was VSCode, Safari and Zoom. I would have been fine with the MacBook Neo. Right now with a job, it’s about the same - we use GSuite in a browser.
• JohnTHaller 7mo ago
  I don't get the folks referring to this as a "Chromebook killer". Chromebooks start at around US$150 new. The MacBook Neo is 4 times the price at US$599. There are premium Chromebooks like the Chromebook Plus line that are more in the Neo price range, but those aren't the ones being bought for schools and such. Doesn't make the Neo a bad thing, of course, I think it's a solid basic laptop from the reviews.
  • slipheen 7mo ago
    I think for kids in particular, it's important to remember that the educational discount brings it down to US 500. That's not exactly nothing but that's a pretty reasonable amount for a non-crap laptop.
    • JohnTHaller 7mo ago
      I used non-discounted consumer prices for both. Education discounts for both the Neo and Chromebooks will bring them down further.
• Forgeties79 7mo ago
  A little dramatic in tone but loved it all the same. I really do remember what it felt like to work on a “machine” as a kid. The family dell lol hit all sorts of walls but learned a lot.
• everyone 7mo ago
  [flagged]
• tombert 7mo ago
  When I was sixteen I got one of the earlier digital HD cameras (Canon VIXIA HF100) and Sony Vegas Movie Studio for my birthday. It was a neat camera and I liked Vegas, and I was grateful that my parents got them for me, but an issue that I had with it was that my computer wasn't nearly powerful enough to edit the video. Even setting the preview to the lowest quality settings, I was lucky to get 2fps with the 1080i video. I still made it work. I got pretty good at reading the waveform preview, and was able to use that to figure out where to do cuts. I would apply effects and walk through frame by frame with the arrow keys to see how it looked. It usually took all night (and sometimes a bit of the next day) to render videos into 1080i, but it would render and the resulting videos would be fine. Eventually I got a job and saved up and bought a decent CPU and GPU and editing got 10x easier, but I still kind of look back on the time of me having to make my shitty computer work with a certain degree of fondness. When you have a decent job with decent money you can buy the equipment you need to do most tasks, but there's sort of a purity in doing a task that you really don't have the equipment you need.
  • neonstatic 7mo ago
    It's a great example of going the extra mile due to external limitations. I bet you developed skills and intuitions you wouldn't have if you started with great hardware from the get go.
  • m463 7mo ago
    At some point the limitations can flip around. when you're young, time is infinite, money is scarce. Older, and time seems to take over. The limitations are - when can you free up the time? Is relaxing allowed?
    • tombert 7mo ago
      Oh no argument on that. I have a typical yuppie software job with decent pay, so generally I will buy the right tools for a job now instead of trying to make due with whatever I can scrap together. I'm not that busy of a person, but I certainly have more obligations than I did when I was sixteen, and now sometimes it really is worth it to spend an extra grand on something than it is to spend a week hacking together something from my existing stuff. Still, I look back at the hours I spent making terrible YouTube videos with my terrible computer really fondly. I was proud of myself for making things work, I was proud of the little workarounds I found. I think it's the same reason I love reading about classic computing (80's-90's era). Computers in the 80's were objectively terrible compared to anything we have now, and people still figured out how to squeeze every little bit of juice possible to make really awesome games and programs. The Commodore 64 and Amiga demos are fun to play around with because people will figure out the coolest tricks to make these computers do things that they have no business doing. I mean, the fact that Bad Apple has been "ported" to pretty much everything is something I cannot stop being fascinated by. [1] [2] [3] [4] [1] https://youtu.be/2vPe452cegU https://youtu.be/2vPe452cegU [2] https://youtu.be/qRdGhHEoj3o https://youtu.be/qRdGhHEoj3o [3] https://youtu.be/OsDy-4L6-tQ https://youtu.be/OsDy-4L6-tQ [4] https://youtu.be/Ko9ZA50X71s https://youtu.be/Ko9ZA50X71s
• dwd 7mo ago
  Sometimes I feel privileged for being in the generation that learnt to program BASIC on a C64 when it was the coolest thing around at the time. Being that much closer to the metal is a whole different experience of learning what a computer is and can do. Is that even possible now? Probably not. Years ago I tried to get my kids interested in playing with their own Raspberry Pi when they came out, that they could do whatever they wanted with on the side, to little effect. Not even the idea of setting one up as their own Minecraft server (they were heavily into it at the time) piqued their interest. Oh well.
  • ghssds 7mo ago
    Most child of every generation don't care about those things. Most of the few that cared about the C64 just used it to play game. You are in the minority who got interested in the C64 and the minority within that minority who also was interested with BASIC. It's good you tried with your kids but the odds were against you. Meanwhile, some other kid in your area probably got scolded for installing F-Droid. Oh well...
  • jezzamon 7mo ago
    Plenty of great tools for kids to start making games with if they're interested in it! Personally, I think running something on a Raspberry Pi isn't very interesting or inviting as a first thing to play with. Creating a game in Roblox, designing an outfit in Roblox, or building a game within Minecraft is more interesting. And people build crazy stuff in Scratch. But also, not every kid is interested in that anyway.
    • dwd 7mo ago
      They used Scratch at school, but you might be right about the Pi just not being inviting.
  • gizajob 7mo ago
    I totally admire raspberry pi and their attempt to get kids a gateway into cheap computing - made by people the generation who started on those BASIC machines. But I’ve always found it to be a radically different experience on Raspberry Pi given it boots into a full desktop and has endless things to do, compared to the empty terror-filled void that is a blinking BASIC cursor with nothing else on the screen except for some arcane copyright message. Loading a game from tape and experiencing the 5-minute cacophony of that noise was also a surreal and tedious experience for the nippers of the 1980s. It made you really want it in a way that machines since can’t deliver.
• kelvinjps10 7mo ago
  For this kind of experience I would recommend just buying a Thinkpad t480 you can buy for 200$ and install a Linux distro like Linux mint and then something more challenging like arch Linux
• jayd16 7mo ago
  The Neo seems kind of nice but I don't really see how it's more significant than "a nice low end computer." The article reads like its fire from Olympus but a nicer screen and trackpad is only incrementally better than what was available in Chromebooks and cheap PCs. Personally I think a the Steam Machine will have a better chance to cheat a general computing device into the home of someone not looking for it. The Neo gives me hope on price point.
  • gizajob 7mo ago
    One also has to consider that Apple remains an “aspirational” kind of computer. The things bemoaned by HNers due to Apple having something of the status of a luxury brand delivering a premium computing experience are also desirable to huge numbers of people in the world seeking to improve their status and lot in life. It’s very easy for us in the west to overlook that there’s a couple of billion people in the world earning $300-400 a month. So there’s a billion kids out there who would perhaps be lusting after this machine instead of struggling along with a very recycled and half-decrepit laptop. There’s also huge numbers of people in the west who live paycheck to paycheck so having an actual machine at this price point that will deliver years of faultless computing will probably make a big difference. At least I get the aspirational tone the OP is arguing for - a kid completely learning the edges and maxing out their machine will likely produce better results and better educational outcomes than one given a top of the range MBP or windows desktop supercomputer.
  • NooneAtAll3 7mo ago
    you're commenting on an ad for Apple of course it will praise the product like it's golden, turning disadvantages into "that's actually the good part"
    • criddell 7mo ago
      It must be a drag going through life as a cynic. The idea that constraints aid in creativity is not new.
  • Paracompact 7mo ago
    I didn't really read it as a specific advert for this computer, but rather a nostalgic defense of cheap starter PCs in general. It gave me some hope for the future.
• maxvij 7mo ago
  I absolutely loved reading this, bring back memories. I was that kid too.
  • jameszog 7mo ago
    Me too… I sold everything to buy a used 512k Mac with a 400k disk drive and an ImageWriter printer…. The joy of that time!
• randallsquared 7mo ago
  I'm sorry to say that those kids are a lot fewer and farther between than they were even 15 years ago, and much, much fewer than 30+ years ago. When I was working my most recent corporate job (as a people manager, natch) there were new hires even in 2019 that had never owned a computer that wasn't a phone, and just used whatever laptop or other system was supplied by their school or (now) work. This experience blackpilled me a little, I will say.
  • _qib3 7mo ago
    Why do you think they're fewer and farther between? It's almost certainly at least partially because of Chromebooks and the save-the-user-from-themself design philosophy.
    • randallsquared 7mo ago
      I would say it's primarily because their phone (android or iphone) does nearly everything they would ever want a "computer" to do, and so they never had a hook into real curiosity about computing. This will probably be exactly the same whether the school supplies a Macbook Neo or a Chromebook.
      • _qib3 7mo ago
        It's the same epidemic. I don't think the author has a problem specifically with Chromebooks.
      • acuozzo 7mo ago
        Hackers tinkered with other things (e.g. the telephone) before pervasive computing. I imagine the young hackers of today just find other things with which to tinker. I've seen kids build some amazing things in Minecraft. Is this really all that different from modifying the source to a game you copied-by-hand from BYTE magazine?
      • genthree 7mo ago
        I'm a computer nerd who started on DOS on IIRC a 286, all the Windowses (OK not quite all, though my first job did expose me to a couple NT versions and 2K in addition to nearly-all the home versions I upgraded through on my own) and various Linuces (Gentoo as my primary OS, even, for like... five years, LOL) These days there are two things I use my "real" non-server computers for in my personal life: 1) Media piracy, only because I've been too lazy to set up a headless torrent system on my media server w/ VPN connection (why does the media server exist? Again, purely for piracy, remove that use case and it'd be gone as a waste of electricity and space the very next day). I could fix this in a Saturday and remove this entire use case, improving my process significantly at the same time, just haven't yet. 2) Video games. Really hoping that new Steam console doesn't end up being sky-high expensive, because I'm excited about "consolizing" this use case and ditching my last "real" PC tower (other than one server that I go months and months without directly messing-with; and that "real" PC tower is already running Bazzite to make it Steamdeck-like, it's just janky as fuck because it's Linux on frankensteined hardware so of course it's janky as fuck, so I'm still eager to swap it for something designed and with support for that actual use case). Everything actually-important happens on iOS, and usually on a phone. In my personal life, I've concluded that I just have no idea what more-useful-than-the-time-it-takes stuff I'd even do with a "real" computer, despite spending absolute fuckloads of my time screwing around with them from ages like 7-30. What I learned in that time was "how to computer" to a pretty advanced level, and luckily that per se has paid the bills and then some, but in all that time the actually-directly-useful-to-me stuff I've done with it has amounted to very little. To me, personally, I've realized PCs are a solution looking for a problem, and that so rarely does my trying to bridge that gap result in an actual net-benefit (usually, not even close) that I've mostly stopped trying. That impulse got me where I am, can't complain, that "wasted" time over literal decades gained me a bunch of skills that are (it turns out) almost entirely useless to me personally but that others are willing to pay for, great, but I find myself a computer nerd who doesn't actually know WTF to do with a "real" computer. I just use my damn phone. I suppose I'd still find them a lot more useful if iPads and iPhones didn't exist and so I needed to do banking and reading and such on some other computery device, but those do exist, so... yeah, not a lot of motivation to even own a "real" PC anymore, to include a MacBook—I doubt I'll replace my M1 Air when it finally dies. To sum up, as a lifelong computer dork, I don't even know why I need a "real" computer any more, let alone why anyone else does.
• esafak 7mo ago
  The hacker is strong in this one. Keep it up.
• waynesonfire 7mo ago
  Depending on your process, there is nothing wrong starting with this tool (Neo) first. It's a classic dilemma. For your first tool, buy the cheapest one possible to get the job done. Once the tool becomes understoond, it's limits reached, it's place in the process discovered, then, buy the most expensive one you can afford. The Neo is the right first tool for many people.
• easygenes 7mo ago
  I liked this not because it's a good story. It is, but that's beside the point. I liked this because it's my story. Not literally so, but the shape of it is. He's struck a nerve at the heart of growing up eager and curious and seeing a computer as a pathway to your dreams.
  • qnleigh 7mo ago
    100%. Few things on this site have resonated with me so much.
• maguay 7mo ago
  My first computer was a hand-me-down Compaq LTE laptop, several times removed from the original owner, with a 700MB hard drive and Windows 95 a decade after those were leading-edge specs. It had only Word and Access, of all things, and little room for more. But it was mine, I tinkered with it forever, learned databases enough to turn Access into a basic quasi-Excel for my needs, cataloged things that really didn't need to be tabulated, and generally learned as much as that little machine would let me. That was a limited computer, one that couldn't possibly have let me do what I needed to do when I hit university. But it got me started, taught me to tinker, and I'm prety sure pushed me to learn more than a state-of-the-art for the time computer would have. And so I do wonder, at times, if it's the nostalgic look back at early computing that makes people inclined to say "my god that would have been an amazing computer to start out with" when you look at an entry-level computer. I'm inclined, even, to say man that's going to be an epic $100 computer on the second-hand market in a half decade or less. When at the same time, it's actually a solid machine for more of us than us geeks with our inflated expectations of computers have than we'd like to accept. That, too, is pretty cool.
• sudo_cowsay 7mo ago
  Learning to make use of limited resources is truly rewarding.
• croes 7mo ago
  Can you use an apple notebook without an apple account?
  • inatreecrown2 7mo ago
    yes.
• andai 7mo ago
  Main machine is a $50 Thinkpad. I haven't used a computer more recent than 2016. As far as I can tell, the only thing I'm missing is AAA gaming (RTX looks cool), and local LLMs. I did a bunch of game jams on it. Even won one! (Of course, even 2010s hardware is overkill for 2d games :) I also did some basic video editing on it but it was a bit slow to render. I won't say I'm not missing out — I'm certainly looking forward to an upgrade! — but that you can get surprisingly far with surprisingly little.
  • alpaca128 7mo ago
    In the middle of a gaming session one stops thinking about graphics once it's reached a certain level of fidelity, and that level is far below RTX. Not worth the money, especially today.
  • torgoguys 7mo ago
    Yes, exactly this. I'm using a 10 year old elitebook folio g1. It's about 2 pounds and does what I need it to do. Available with a 4k screen if that's your thing. Does not feel sluggish. Given that I'm not gaming, video editing, or doing local LLMs (and I think there is a big chunk of the population in that camp), I feel like I am missing out on nearly zero. (And I'm not trying to say anything is special about the laptop I'm using. I adore using trackpoint (so much that I brought my own trackpoint keyboard in to work to use there) so would gladly trade for an old thinkpad if what I had didn't already do what I need it to do).
• sarbanharble 7mo ago
  If one doesn’t know how to play the violin, they can make a Stradivarius sound like crap.
• Agentlien 7mo ago
  I remember this period of my own life. I had taken over my father's old 486 and spent my days and evenings trying to learn the basics of programming in C. I was making silly text based games, dreaming I'd one day be creating the game of my dreams. I also modded games by opening every content file and trying to figure out what they did and how I could modify them. I was still years from realizing game development was a career and not just a hobby. I had replaced all the Windows sounds and cursors to customize the system so it looked and sounded like a Sci Fi system. I even patched the boot screen to be a humorous screen of "MS Broken Windows". It also was quite broken from messing with system files I didn't understand. It was a magical period and I learned so much.
  • Brajeshwar 7mo ago
    Because most people don’t know that the boot screen and even the shut-down (Safe to Shut Down Windows) screens were simple BMPs, they get shit scared when you “hacked” the computer to show different messages/pictures. (Always backup and have a renamed copy of the BMP, just in case.)
• aenis 7mo ago
  When I was 6, I got a Commodore PLUS/4, which was Commodore's unsuccessful attempt at a business-oriented 8 bit computer. I think my folks wanted to give me a Commodore 64, but things happen. Since there were not nearly as many games on that thing, I learned to program early. It had a build in assembler/disassembler (shift-reset would reset the computer without wiping the memory - just the first byte of the program memory), so I learned how to reverse engineer assembly code before I was 10. This arguably "wrong tool" shaped my whole life, and was maybe the most important thing that happened to me. If I got a C64, I could have easily turned into someone else.
• samename 7mo ago
  This article struck a nerve. There's something about the curiosity of tinkering around in a computer. It's the most powerful technology humankind has built. It's versatile. It lets you break it. It's a bicycle for the mind, as Steve Jobs would say. May all the hackers out there, old and young, discover the beauty of the personal computer.
• iqfareez 7mo ago
  [dead]
• raincole 7mo ago
  What's so special about this machine? Is there no comparable $599 Windows or Linux laptop for kids to buy?
  • prmoustache 7mo ago
    As new I have no idea but I think I have never spent that much on a computer as I always buy second hand. 400€ has always been my max. I honestly don't know why I should spend more, the brand new laptop the company I work for gave me don't run significantly faster than my 7y old laptop and this has pretty much always been the case in the last 25 years.
  • commandersaki 7mo ago
    I looked at laptops around that price range in Australia, and they're all awful in one way or another. Either they're Chromebooks (yuck) or come with an ad-infested OS (gross) and/or with serious compromises in quality and finish.
  • jon-wood 7mo ago
    There are absolutely $599 laptops available from companies that aren't Apple but they've all made major compromises to get to that price in ways that people will notice. The cooling will be terrible so that every 30 seconds the fans kick in at full speed, thermal throttling takes hold, and then it decides all is fine 30 seconds after that so you're working on a machine that's constantly cycling fan noise. The trackpad will suck, meaning you need to have a mouse precariously balanced somewhere anytime you're using it. It'll have some irritating BIOS feature you can't work out how to turn off that flashes a giant icon on the screen whenever you hit the caps-lock button. The casing will be plastic and snap where the screen hinges are screwed in after a year of light use. It may even be a Chromebook, making it a glorified tablet with an attached keyboard and (terrible) trackpad. The thing Apple have done here isn't to release a $599 laptop, its to release a $599 laptop where the compromises are ones the average user buying a $599 laptop isn't going to notice everyday, while not compromising on the things they do notice. Its made of metal, the trackpad feels good to use, the keyboard is pleasant, and the battery is large enough that you're not carrying around a charger that weighs as much as the laptop itself.
• mbgerring 7mo ago
  He’s right. I built a hackintosh from a PowerMac G4 motherboard I bought off of eBay with my saved-up babysitting money when I was 12 or 13 because I was absolutely desperate to have a machine I could edit movies with, I couldn’t afford a real Mac, and I read on the internet somewhere that this was the cheapest way to get one. I knew lots of older brothers who were “into” computers (all of them for gaming) that thought I was an idiot, because building my own mac made everything ten times harder. I didn’t care. I was obsessed. This is a $599 computer with purpose-built architecture for (barely) running (small, underpowered, near-useless) LLMs. There are children saving pennies for this machine that will do great, horrifying, dangerous things with these computers. I can’t wait to see the results.
• haritha-j 7mo ago
  I don't think this is about the macbook neo. I don't think the comments need to devolve into a mac vs. linux argument. It's simply an ode to that kid pushing hardware to the limits, and learning so much along the way. What I feel a bit sad about is, I was that kid. Growing up in a 3rd world country, running games that i didn't own on hardware that ought not run it, debugging why those games don't work, rooting my phone and installing custom OSs just for the heck of it. Man I had so much time to tinker. Now I have amazing gaming hardware but I barely touch games. When I do, its on steam. I've swapped out the endless tinkerability of android with the vanilla 'it just works'-ness of the iphone. That curiosity took me far, but I seem to have lost it along the way.
  • raincole 7mo ago
    > I don't think this is about the macbook neo. It shouldn't be, except that the author chose to make every single paragraph about Mac, Apple ecosystem and bashing Chromebook.
    • markild 7mo ago
      I'd agree it is about the Neo in the sense that the device and the talk around it obviously triggered this post. I don't think the author is exactly bashing the Chromebook. I'm reading it in that the author praise an open ecosystem where you have flexibility and the choice to "take off the guard rails" and go where the device was not originally made to take you. There's an argument to be made that it is ironic that Apple is the example of this, but to me that shows why I _still_ like MacOS, when all the other variants (iPadOS and iOS) are entirely locked down.
      • NamlchakKhandro 7mo ago
        it's so wild that we're in a place now where the utterly brainwashed can say this with a straight face: > There's an argument to be made that it is ironic that Apple is the example of this, but to me that shows why I _still_ like MacOS, when all the other variants (iPadOS and iOS) are entirely locked down.
    • 7mo ago
• michaelhoney 7mo ago
  This was lovely, I appreciated reading it
• mr_briggs 7mo ago
  > A Chromebook’s ceiling is made of web browser, and the things you run into are not the edges of computing but the edges of a product category designed to save you from yourself. I'm in the same boat as the author; I cut my teeth on a hand-me-down 2005 eMac, then a hand-me-down 2008 Macbook, before finally getting my own 2011 iMac. I think this is overly harsh on Chromebooks given they belong to the cheaper end of the market - you can still put linux on them and go for gold, you're just going to hit earlier resource limits. I think when you're younger and building an aptitude for computers, it's the limitations of what you have that drive an off-the-shelf challenge: doing what you can with what you've got. That can vary from just trying to play the same video games as your friends (love what /r/lowendgaming does), usage restrictions (e.g locked down school issued laptops) or running professional tooling (very slowly) just like the author. When IT caught my interest, I did all of the above - on Mac, Windows and Linux, on completely garbage machines. The Macbook Neo is an awesome machine for it's cost/value, but I don't think it's hugely special in the respect described beyond making more power available at a more accessible price point.
  • saagarjha 7mo ago
    When Chromebooks originally came out, that was not an option. And almost all school-issued computers will not let you do this.
    • tosti 7mo ago
      It was possible on the Acer model I got when it first came out, but it was still useless. A switch that wiped the whole thing back to defaults was needed to open a terminal and from there a shell script could install Ubuntu. It still ran the unmodifiable chromeos kernel with no updates and without some of the modules I'd like. And then the screen died. It was junk. The EeePC was cheaper, lasted much longer and had Debian out of the box.
    • zeta0134 7mo ago
      I've owned and used the CR-48 prototype Chromebook model, which very well did have a developer mode and a third kernel option built right in. Ran Ubuntu on it with no issues. This has been possible since before the device family was officially available for purchase. The school thing is different, but also hardly unique. A school issued macbook is often similarly locked down and unusable as a dev machine, due to the student lacking permissions to install anything the school deems dangerous.
• teekert 7mo ago
  "I edited SystemVersion.plist to make the “About this Mac” window say it was running Mac OS 69, which is the s*x number, which is very funny." If I'd see that on my kids' computer it would fill me with pride. I do miss the days that a (Linux) computer was like this for me. I say Linux because I had a similar obsession with FOSS and what it meant in a broad sense. But it doesn't matter, before that I de-compiled some program to make the text on the Windows START button different. Re-installed Win 2000 about every week, often after f-ing it up. Before that I changed some lines in DOS' autoexe.bat so it would ask for a password (which was just 2 input parameters readable in the autoexec.bat, but that is some mighty fine security (through obscurity) in a normie family).
• kruffalon 7mo ago
  > He is going to make a folder called “Projects” with nothing in it. I'm still this person today :)
• cjfd 7mo ago
  There are also some funny humorous pieces on this site.
• jonplackett 7mo ago
  > He is going to go through System Settings, panel by panel, and adjust everything he can adjust just to see how he likes it 10 year old me identifies with this so much. I managed to get the computer to display 256 colours instead of the 16 it had been set up with. Everyone was impressed and this meant I was now allowed to take the computer apart and put it back together again without anyone being scared.
• clouedoc 7mo ago
  Same. I got a crazy old Ubuntu desktop when I was 9 or something. It couldn’t run any games and that’s why I learned Python. I wouldn’t be who I am today if I had a machine capable of running Minecraft at the time…
• f055 7mo ago
  You learn the most from failure and the least from success. Likewise, you grow the most from pushing through the limits and the least from living in abundance. You can do pretty much anything on a full spec Mac Studio, but so can anyone else with a lot of money. But if you push through the limit of a MacBook Neo, you just did something no one else was able to do. And that is awesome.
• oleggromov 7mo ago
  > He is going to go through System Settings, panel by panel, and adjust everything he can adjust just to see how he likes it. He is going to make a folder called “Projects” with nothing in it. He is going to download Blender because someone on Reddit said it was free, and then stare at the interface for forty-five minutes. Brilliant. Thank you for that.
• moregrist 7mo ago
  > He is going to download Blender because someone on Reddit said it was free, and then stare at the interface for forty-five minutes. This hits home. Not because I did it as a kid; I'm a bit old for that. But because I've done this exact thing two or three times. You stare and know, just know, that somewhere in this byzantine interface there is the raw power to do lots of cool 3D stuff. But damn. It's quite an interface. > That is not a bug in how he’s using the computer. That is the entire mechanism by which a kid becomes a developer. Or a designer. Or a filmmaker. Or whatever it is that comes after spending thousands of hours alone in a room with a machine that was never quite right for what you were asking of it. Yeah. For me it was an old, beat-up 286 that I couldn't get anyone to upgrade and and loving devotion to MS-DOS, old EGA Sierra games, TSR programs, TUIs, GeoWorks, and just not being able to get enough of it. When I finally saved up enough to buy a 486 motherboard, I installed Linux because it seemed cool (and was cool) and never looked back. But that 286 sparked my obsession with computers that has influenced almost every aspect of my life.
  • b3lvedere 7mo ago
    I still love to revive old hardware and push it beyond it limits. Mostly because i think it's fun, but also because it's dirt cheap or free. Back then made an old GPS system play Monkey Island or mp3's or read E-books. Reinstalled lots of old Android phones and tablets. Made photo frames out of them. Made webcams out of them. Transformed old laptops into Chromebooks. Make lots of old NAS devices work again. Stuff like that.
  • naftalibeder 7mo ago
    I got a cracked copy of 3ds Max at a LAN party (back when it was "Discreet 3dsmax"), and immediately dragged dozens of cubes, spheres, and cones into the scene. Then I closed it for a year. Opened it up again one day, followed a box-modeling tutorial (from the documentation PDF linked in the Help menu!), and I was hooked. Spline modeling, rigging, walk cycles, texturing, lighting experiments, every spare minute for the rest of high school. I still remember the whole-body panic of accidentally turning on "adaptive degradation", which replaced all meshes with their bounding cubes when rotating the viewport camera, and thinking I had broken my video card.
• ChrisMarshallNY 7mo ago
  > They have very little interest in what you might become because of one. Love the spirit of the post. As a high school dropout, with a GED, I’ve spent my entire adult life, looking up noses. I chose a career jammed to bursting, with sheepskins, because I really enjoy doing tech. Not because I wanted to make money, or because I wanted to be a big shot. My first ever program, was in the 1970s, some time. It was a Heathkit programmable calculator. My first ever ”serious” program, was Machine Code, typed into a 6800-based STD card, nailed to a piece of wood, with a hex keypad, and an 8-digit LED display. My first personal computer, was a VIC-20, with 3KB of RAM. My first Apple computer was a Mac Plus, with 4MB of RAM, and an external 20MB SCSI hard drive. Learning on limited resources helps us to become frugal and efficient. It also helps us to become tough as hell. Some of the best engineers I ever worked with, had rough backgrounds. These days, I use a pretty maxed-out Mini, and an LG ultrawide screen. I’m spoiled.
  • NamlchakKhandro 7mo ago
    AHH an apple acolyte. so not a real computer user then
    • ChrisMarshallNY 7mo ago
      Yeah… I’ve been hearing that, along with “Apple’s a dead company; give it up.” For much of my life…
• moondowner 7mo ago
  > He is going to open GarageBand and make something that is not a song. As a kid I just loved playing around in Reason (1 or 2?) and making strange sounds and just flipping the racks around and trying to connect the cables in any jack possible, to see what happens. I would open one of the demo songs, to 'learn' how these racks were wired, and then experimented. Good old memories. Kids nowadays need those type of experiences too.
• NamlchakKhandro 7mo ago
  > Nobody starts in the right place. You don’t begin with the correct tool and work sensibly within its constraints until you organically graduate to a more capable one. That is not how obsession works. Obsession works by taking whatever is available and pressing on it until it either breaks or reveals something. The machine’s limits become a map of the territory. This is why you should grow your own trees and wait a million years and melt the silicon into nvidia gpus and install linux. learn linux. only sanfran idealists dreaming of a world that destroys them use apple products.
• erelong 7mo ago
  Used thinkpad or mini pc seems more practical
• lxgr 7mo ago
  My first computer was a Palm m100 with 2 MB of RAM. No persistent storage. (I once lost all my data when changing batteries a bit too slowly.) I’m optimistic that kids will continue ignoring adults telling them what is and isn’t “reasonable” with this hardware and that software and just have fun!
• m000 7mo ago
  A key point that TFA misses (probably for the sake of story-telling) is that, unlike the 2006 iMac the author fondly remembers of, MacBook Neo is not a hand-me-down computer. It is not the proverbial gift horse. You are paying fresh $ for it. So, it is only reasonable to have some baseline expectations on redeeming value from it. Also, an important point of the MacBook Neo criticism is that because of its cut-down features, a Neo may never graduate to a "hand-me-down computer", but instead head straight to the e-waste pile.
  • ghoulishly 7mo ago
    ARM macs are too new for us to know how the reuse/hand-me-down/legacy support world will shake out for them. There’ll be signs when the first M1 machines get axed but for now, I have no clue.
    • rconti 7mo ago
      Apple wants to give me $250 trade-in for my M1 Air with 16GB, but it seems to be worth $500+ on the open market, so yeah, still above hand-me-down territory. It feels as good as the day I bought it, and literally the only reason I'm considering replacing it is now we have 2/3 laptops with magsafe and I'd like to start distributing those chargers around the house. So tempting to just swap for a used M2 for a couple hundred dollars, but the chore of moving to a new computer is holding me back.
• jameszog 7mo ago
  I like the cut of you jib! If you lived around the corner, we’d have a coffee. You nailed it.
  • DonHopkins 7mo ago
    Is the poop deck really what I think it is? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8DB60Wj9Cg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8DB60Wj9Cg
• _glass 7mo ago
  When doing my Bachelor degree my dad gave me an old thinkpad to run on linux. It was a horrible experience for preparing powerpoints, papers, etc. But I still have that command line muscle memory and an eye to spot errors which really helped me in my career. In my final year I bought myself a macbook because I earned real money doing a consulting internship. But the unix muscle memory stayed, and I found working with IDEs so wasteful. In my first years at my job I rejected word and excel still to do everything in groff and awk.
• umarniz 7mo ago
  Talking about staring at interfaces, I got my first Pentium computer when I was 7 in a village in Pakistan. I spent all day fooling around and accidently stumbled upon quick basic. Having nothing to do I learnt how to code because the help menu listed all the commands and the interpreter gave errors when I did something wrong. With a clear feedback loop and the insane motivation of a child I learnt to make games/software on basic which ended up defining my life. Sometimes we overthink it, all a child needs is a safe environment to fool around and letting them be obsessed about things.
  • SuperHeavy256 7mo ago
    I was robbed of that safe environment. Gosh... it hurts me to think about what could have been.
• SuperHeavy256 7mo ago
  Thank you thank you thank you for writing this. This made me smile and feel like shedding a tear. This is exactly how I felt when I watched the Dave2D video of the MacBook Neo, and other "reviews" that miss the entire point. This captures the point. The other reviews capture specs. This captures the emotion. This captures the reality.
• orbital-decay 7mo ago
  >Somewhere a kid is saving up for this. He has read every review. Watched the introduction video four or five times. Looked up every spec, every benchmark, every footnote. He has probably walked into an Apple Store and interrogated an employee about it ad nauseam. He knows the consensus. He knows it’s probably not the right tool for everything he wants to do. Anywhere in the world, the kind of kid that does all this and installs Blender on it is WAY more likely to save up for any janky terrible half-working PC laptop with a bit better specs (memory in particular), or a desktop computer if possible, because A. games B. Linux C. piracy and more software D. he does not care about it being Apple or "just working", in the words of the author himself. I don't know how the US kids in particular feel about this since the reality distortion field is so strong, but anywhere else it's like this.
  • herrherrmann 7mo ago
    Depends on the kid’s hobby and purpose of the computer. I’ve always known that MacBooks are better for music making (especially driver hassle, audio signal reliability, etc.). Could I afford a MacBook as my first laptop? No. Did I buy a second-hand MacBook as soon as I could afford it, and have been happy with it since? Yes. As a teenager, I would’ve loved to buy a new MacBook for 500/600€. I’m sure most other applications are less Mac-optimized, though (software development, 3d/graphics editing, gaming, …).
  • carlosjobim 7mo ago
    That's very true, and it's a great tragedy. Kids get skilled in troubleshooting awful computers instead of getting skilled in creative things which actually have future value. As for piracy, it's just as easy on a Mac, and MacOS has more quality software than any other platform - unless you're talking about software used in factories and such. But how many kids actually "save up" for a computer vs being given one by their parents or getting a hand-me-down from relatives? I would suspect that many parents would be more than happy to buy a Macbook for their kid if they showed that kind of interest.
    • orbital-decay 7mo ago
      I think you're making it sound like they're forced to build Linux from scratch while walking knee deep in the snow, uphill both ways. That's way too detached from reality and certainly it's not a "tragedy". Kids are not doing specialized things that only have future value, they tinker with everything. Usually on what's available, yes. >and MacOS has more quality software than any other platform This is simply untrue, and not something a tinkerer cares about on a general-purpose machine anyway (with my niece and son as n=2).
• mnky9800n 7mo ago
  In high school we had a g3 Mac that we got Final Cut Pro on. It took forever to render a minute or two of video. But having a nonlinear editing system that took forever to do anything was way better than not having anything at all. Edit: for true self embarrassment purposes you can see some of the films we made here: https://youtu.be/FRQv7VUauWs?t=447&si=lCu3rp28XfKWN5ch https://youtu.be/FRQv7VUauWs?t=447&si=lCu3rp28XfKWN5ch And also here: https://youtu.be/ytKIG802baw?t=615&si=FJI8Cm9yYaXKMZdS https://youtu.be/ytKIG802baw?t=615&si=FJI8Cm9yYaXKMZdS I put the start times at my movies. But there are others as well. lol.
• DGAP 7mo ago
  I fear this kind of experimentation will soon by killed by ai.
• amadeuspagel 7mo ago
  This article is a strange combination of defending the macbook neo from stupid attacks, and making similarly stupid attacks on the chromebook, with no self-awareness (unless there's some level of irony I'm missing here, which, come to think of it, might well be the case). Chromebooks have a linux VM where you can install anything, including GUI apps, and doing that is much more straightforward then installing something from the web on a mac. Download, right-click, install on linux. No scary warnings. No need to go to system settings.
  • butILoveLife 7mo ago
    This is why I skip tech youtube videos with MacOS. The users have the reality distortion field. I always wonder what the world would be like in a battle between Google and M$ rather than M$ and Apple. Obviously less advertisement, more focus on function and less form.
  • torginus 7mo ago
    I think this is entirely fair - this laptop imo could satisfy 90+% of Apple's userbase (including me, I used to do dev work on my M1 Air I bought out of curiosity) - it's a fully featured computer, that's incredibly well made, to the point that I don't think anything compares favorably in the Windows land at any price point. Likewise you'd have to go for the premium segment if you wanted to get a machine with similar single-thread perf (which is the perf that matters the most for most people) It's not locked down in any way, this is a fully featured machine, unlike Chromebooks, which in my experience don't cost a cent less than equivalently specced Windows laptops. Due to this I never considered buying those. I'm not even a Mac fan, I just think they make nice computers and their OS has the least amount of downsides atm.
• glimshe 7mo ago
  I used to run POV-Ray on my pathetic AMD 386 clone. A simple render took 20 hours and yet I did it.
• butILoveLife 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • tosti 7mo ago
    Moderation here sucks and doesn't really work well imho.
  • eschatology 7mo ago
    Because new user, ostensibly bad faith, throwing short cliched statements with no clear intent to start a meaningful discussion. Seemingly effortless comments yelling to the void not worth starting a conversation with. Not the kind of comments that belongs or are wanted in this platform.
  • nindalf 7mo ago
    I flag uninteresting comments, such as yours.
    • fsflover 7mo ago
      For that we have downvotes, not flags.
      • nindalf 7mo ago
        True. But this comment broke guidelines as well. (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
    • someguynamedq 7mo ago
      I'd say this comment fails the "Be kind. Don't be snarky" test. Wouldn't you? If we're appealing to the rules to justify our actions it puts a bigger burden on ourselves to make sure we're perfectly in line with them too :)
  • dang 7mo ago
    You have many years of experience creating accounts to post like this, as well as to break HN's rules in countless other ways, so I assume the question is rhetorical.
• NikolaNovak 7mo ago
  1. This is the most optimistic, inspirational thing I've read in months :) 2. Are there kids like that still?? I would love to think so. None of the kids in my circle of parents are. There is one teenager who's going into computer science because they are smart and love math, which is great, but they never built or explored or been curious about anything on their computer as far as I can tell. There is a big ecosystem of wish fulfilment and instant gratification, and I think (right) limitations like the author insinuated are part of the allure.
  • criddell 7mo ago
    I thought it was inspirational as well. When he described making a folder called "Projects" it reminded me of that feeling I had after graduating from a TI-99/4A to a PC. The possibilities were endless. Different computers definitely give me different feelings when I use them. Some inspire creativity and the desire to make something meaningful or beautiful, others feel like machines made for work or for play. All of the boundaries are fuzzy but, for me, computers definitely have an emotional valence.
  • kfajdsl 7mo ago
    To 2., yes - you just have to look in the right places. You're sure to find them in middle/high school or university robotics teams, for example. When computing was niche, you really only got into if you had a real interest in it (I assume - I wasn't around back then). That's changed, but it doesn't mean that that category doesn't exist anymore. If anything, it's probably way larger in absolute terms, if a smaller proportion of people who work on software in general.
• holliplex 7mo ago
  It's an interesting slip, given the premise of the article, that this hypothetical child is assumed to be a boy.
  • ghoulishly 7mo ago
    I actually gave a de-gendered draft of the essay to some friends a few days ago and heard that it landed with a thud — the essay is largely written about myself, in the third person, retrospectively, so removing the pronoun made the autobiographical thread harder to follow. I switched it to "he" to make that clearer. I think if I used "she" it would've made the "That kid was me" transition harder — it would either involve some gymnastics to make it make sense or it would introduce a reading I didn't intend.
    • holliplex 7mo ago
      Yes, I thought that was probably the case, but it stuck out to me. Sorry, I didn't mean to come across as chiding you; I think the basic point about who is and isn't "allowed" to think of themselves as a computer-person is a really interesting one, and also that you can't address this topic properly without addressing gender (and race).
• bichiliad 7mo ago
  I’ve never had a post hit me with nostalgia as hard as this one. Thanks to the author for capturing what it felt like to be a stupid little kid with a weird old computer so well.
• forinti 7mo ago
  Apple has turned computers into luxury items. They are not simply computers, there is some status and image projection involved. As a hacker and tinkerer I could never justify the cost of purchasing one of their machines, but I see people around me trying to sell their old Apple machines and phones at absurd prices (I do live in a peripheral economy and Apple stuff is even more expensive here). So it makes sense for Apple to segment its market like that. It makes sense for their audience too. When I shop for a car, I find the same issue: most analyses have very little to do with the car's technical attributes and there's a lot of gibberish about design and lifestyle.
  • acuozzo 7mo ago
    > most analyses have very little to do with the car's technical attributes and there's a lot of gibberish about design and lifestyle Which is what makes a used Lexus so compelling. Toyota engineering under the hood, "Luxury" design on top.
• DonHopkins 7mo ago
  >What Apple put inside the Neo is the complete behavioral contract of the Mac. I remember seeing and using my first powerbook 160 and being blown away that it had the "complete behavior contract of the Mac" that I knew at the time. Even the 16 shades of gray screen made it more luxurious than a classic black-and-white Mac. And the "What's on Your Powerbook" ads, with Todd Rundgren and Rev. Don Doll, SJ. https://alumni.creighton.edu/news-events/news/father-don-doll-apple-ad-todd-rundgren https://alumni.creighton.edu/news-events/news/father-don-dol... Todd> Flowfazer, the screen saver I codeveloped [with David Levine] Fernando Perdomo - Dreaming in Stereo Suite (FlowFazer Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z4X4FmIhIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z4X4FmIhIw http://www.trconnection.com/trconn.php/article=grokware.art/openindex http://www.trconnection.com/trconn.php/article=grokware.art/... https://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/pop-for-the-people-by-the-people-todd-rundgren-has-reinvented-himself-more-often-than-anyone-can-remember-now-he-s-at-it-again-with-a-new-name-and-a-project-that-lets-his-audience-control-the-music-andy-gill-met-tri-1441144.html https://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/pop-for-the-people-by... https://rocknrollwithme.substack.com/p/todd-rundgren-as-a-producer-the-creator https://rocknrollwithme.substack.com/p/todd-rundgren-as-a-pr... >Todd also co-developed graphic tablet software with a music theme for Apple in a technology venture in the late eighties. With Dave Levine, he designed and developed a screensaver product called Flowfazer (see example of one of the screensavers below), with the strapline “Music for the Eye.” They introduced it at MacWorld thinking they would publish it themselves, but found there was already well-funded competition with Berkeley Systems Flying Toasters and were forced to abandon the project.
• martwyymem 7mo ago
  I could 100% agree, putting up with i5-4210u and geforce 840m for twelve years. Making stupid shit, ditching Windows for Linux to gain any usability. Editing videos in too high resolutions. I taught myself being patient with electronics and it's the thing I couldn't have taught any other way.
• PaulHoule 7mo ago
  "A Chromebook doesn’t teach you that" But seriously, if you go to school today they will make a point to put you on the slowest, weakest Chromebook available because they're terrified that you're going to play Krunker. The result is you become an adult and you'll never buy a Chromebook. It's the same way that being bullied on the schoolbus means you become an adult who'll never ride public transit. https://ithacareuse.org/ https://ithacareuse.org/ will sell you a desktop computer for around $150 (e.g. four of them for the price of a Neo) which will put an enterprising young person on a much better path to learn about computers than the Neo ever will. Now you might say I'm being Orwellian but I really think Swift/XCode/iOS is "slavery" and the web platform is "freedom". I mean dev tools are fully competitive for the web platform, I can write my application once and run it on desktop and phone and tablet and VR headset and game consoles and all sorts of things I don't even know about it. I never have to ask permission if I want to deploy an app or update it. I don't have to pay anyone 30% of my revenue.
• deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
• jrochkind1 7mo ago
  John Gruber used it for a day and found it was actually totally adequate, or better, for his actual daily work. > But just using the Neo, without any consideration that it’s memory limited, I haven’t noticed a single hitch. I’m not quitting apps I otherwise wouldn’t quit, or closing Safari tabs I wouldn’t otherwise close. I’m just working — with an even dozen apps open as I type this sentence — and everything feels snappy. https://daringfireball.net/2026/03/the_macbook_neo https://daringfireball.net/2026/03/the_macbook_neo I think people are assuming it's going to be a worse experience than it actually is. I don't know how it does it with 8GB of RAM either, but apparently it does; i suppose my guess would be SSD and bus are fast enough that swapping on app change is no longer so disruptive? (I don't know if improvements in virtual memory swap logic could also be a thing that matters or not, this is not my area).
• elfly 7mo ago
  Dunno about Xcode, but if you put a go compiler in there, I doubt it will compile or run slowly. Some dependencies may require C, but you could avoid that mostly.
• officeplant 7mo ago
  > A Chromebook’s ceiling is made of web browser, and the things you run into are not the edges of computing but the edges of a product category designed to save you from yourself. The kid who tries to run Blender on a Chromebook doesn’t learn that his machine can’t handle it. He learns that Google decided he’s not allowed to. As someone who lived on a chromebook for fun because it was a cheap way to get a browser machine that also had Linux access. I don't really get this. You can run blender on a chromebook as soon as you turn on the linux container. It will run even better if you install linux on it after a quick firmware flash. If it's locked down by a school that's not really the chromebooks fault, schools are gonna lock down Macbook Neos via management policy the exact same way.
• monocularvision 7mo ago
  This post reminds me of a 14-year old boy reading the MS-DOS manual to figure out what AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS at his younger brother’s football games.
• oveja 7mo ago
  This reminds me of learning linux and cli commands because an old netbook with like 512 of ram was struggling with modern guis and web browsers. So I used a minimal i3 installation and interacted mostly with a terminal.
• delis-thumbs-7e 7mo ago
  > He is going to go through System Settings, panel by panel, and adjust everything he can adjust just to see how he likes it. He is going to make a folder called “Projects” with nothing in it. He is going to download Blender because someone on Reddit said it was free, and then stare at the interface for forty-five minutes. He is going to open GarageBand and make something that is not a song. He is going to take screenshots of fonts he likes and put them in a folder called “cool fonts” and not know why. ”Mrs. Jonson, the result are back. You son has autism.”
  • delis-thumbs-7e 7mo ago
    And before I’m lynched, I was that kid too and I agree with the author. It was just funnily written.
    • dijit 7mo ago
      I was that kid too, and I probably have Autism (yes, I know we're all on the spectrum somewhere, but a diagnosis is defined as it impacting your life severely, and I think many people would say that I have many autistic traits that are negative).
  • monkaiju 7mo ago
    I mean i did this sort of thing a ton and am not on the spectrum. Idk when being "quirky" meant you are autistic, seems like it was within the last 7-10 years though.
    • delis-thumbs-7e 7mo ago
      Let A = quirky, B = spectrum, and AnB =/= AuB. Therefore if x e A, x e B if and only if x e B (and therefore not all x e A -> x e B)
  • MrDrMcCoy 7mo ago
    This is also the sort of obsession that follows ADHD. Source: me
  • 7mo ago
• ferguess_k 7mo ago
  For young people out there, it is better to build a desktop gig instead of a laptop. You can't change much in a laptop, unless it is some legacy laptops, but definitely not a Mac. Parents should help their kids to build a 16GB Linux gig. It's going to be more expensive than $599 nowadays due to the price of everything, but still, it is very expansible, and the kid can earn $$ and decide which parts he wants to upgrade. BTW a laptop is definitely the only choice if the kid wants mobility, though.
• deepsquirrelnet 7mo ago
  Interesting read! I love to see this spirit. I grew up with a different - but similar experience. Only, as an 80s and 90s kid, computers were nothing but limitations. Even when my dad built a machine with a 133MHz Cyrix chip, already a year later, it was outdated by computers with literally double the computing power. That Cyrix machine was already miles ahead of the 386 that was handed down to me to play text based games on and learn dos through hard knocks. I remember leafing through old hard drives that had 10mb of capacity and realizing they had no value despite not being that old. Later in college, I had the confidence to build my own first desktop with parts cobbled together from sketchy resellers. Athlon A1 single core 1ghz. Man that thing could fly.
• palla89 7mo ago
  I loved every word of this article, I went back in time and felt again with my Pentium III 500 Mhz trying to hack everything out, like changing the splash screen of Windows 98 SE while loading just to feel I did it! These things were the ones that led me to this passion and that today, with LLMs and almost only business applications to develop for the sake of living, feel like the magic is finally fading. God I miss the old times! (I'm 36 yo but I feel like 70 in this specific moment!)
• Shalomboy 7mo ago
  Outstanding article; I'm glad you put these thoughts into words and published them because I've felt similarly this week since I've had time and reason to reminisce on my 2010 MacBook. I had AutoCAD on that poor little computer, working at the pace it could handle.
• zahlman 7mo ago
  My daily driver has a CPU less than half as powerful and a motherboard that doesn't even support DDR4 RAM.
• kccqzy 7mo ago
  As a kid, I grew up before laptops became hugely popular, so instinctively my thought was, of course a MacBook (indeed any MacBook) is not the computer for a kid; the Mac mini or an iMac is. The author started with a 2006 Core 2 Duo iMac inside the kitchen and he should know this. The simplest and easiest parental supervision that doesn’t involve any software is to have a desktop machine in the living room, within the peripheral vision of parents. Watching some videos that you shouldn’t be watching? Dad comes and tells you why not. Want to bring the computer to your bedroom and eschew sleep? Physically impossible. Playing a game for an hour? Dad comes and tells you it’s enough. But learning about formulas in Excel? He comes and offers to answer your questions.
• red-iron-pine 7mo ago
  > window say it was running Mac OS 69, which is the s*x number bro its your blog just say sex
• overfeed 7mo ago
  > The kid who tries to run Blender on a Chromebook doesn’t learn that his machine can’t handle it. He learns that Google decided he’s not allowed to. Wut? Chromebooks can run full-blown graphical Linux apps via a VM, including Blender - Linux apps get a regular icon on the Chromebooks launcher. This sheds light for me on why some people are lauding a $599 computer as accessible, I guess they do not know what you can run Blender, VS Code or entire dev stacks on a Chromebook with an 10-hour battery life that costs $299 new, or $50-80 used.
• ngerrity 7mo ago
  Well said. Artificial constraints often breed creativity and for younger folks getting into computers, these Macbook Neos seem like a great option.
• Akuehne 7mo ago
  Bought one for my wife
• rocksandsticks 7mo ago
  A Chromebook's ceiling is not made of web browser. Every Chromebook is a Linux machine. No downloading required, just enable the command prompt and Bob's your uncle. Maybe people don't know this because of how Chromebooks are marketed.
• kristianp 7mo ago
  This is a great reaction to those people who said things like: "If the phrase "Java app" is in your vocabulary this laptop probably isn't for you." [1], in response to someone who said "Large Java apps like Android Studio are not good at managing 8gb of RAM". Kids and poor students are totally gonna run Android Studio slowly on these. A year ago 8GB was the min requirement [2]. As others say, most disadvantaged kids won't be buying one of these, it will be a 2nd hand windows machine. Probably with 8GB of RAM and they'll be hounded by popups telling them that their machine is no longer supported by windows 10, or trying to run windows 11 on them. Bring on a new generation of linux users. Many lucky or industrious ones will get a Neo though. Maybe the sales of the Neos will turn back the clock on minimum system requirements. I can see dev shops having a couple of them around for user testing. Maybe the Adobe resident Creative Cloud app will start to suck less (probably not). I'm interested to see how Mac OS market share will track with the release of the Neo. I've even bought some Apple shares for the first time. My experience with running some things I "shouldn't have", was running software like Povray on my 486sx (which has no working FPU). Being able to pirate software by copying a floppy was a good way to learn professional tools back in the days before everyone had a modem. For me that included Word Perfect 5.1 and Turbo C 2.0 that I didn't upgrade for a long time. Then again I regret not upgrading the 486sx a lot sooner. There's still a window to pirate software, but many non-cloud versions are getting too old to run on current OSs now. Lots of open source dev tools now of course. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47346858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47346858 [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20250311194741/https://developer.android.com/studio/install https://web.archive.org/web/20250311194741/https://developer...
• sunwukong666 7mo ago
  [dead]
• incanus77 7mo ago
  Totally resonates with me. I was a kid in the country from a yard sale-scrounging sort of family, and we didn't have money for a computer, but we had a strong ethic of DIY and of education. I had a TI-99/4A (1981) in the late 80s, and an IBM PCjr (1984) in the 90s, but I still stretched them both to the limits of what I could figure out, find in any book I could get my hands on, experiment with $1 shareware I'd find at the mall, or learn about from talking to someone. No net, no meetups, no one else with a computer like mine. I'd come across a Packard Bell at the mall Sears, or a Tandy at Radio Shack, or a 486 setup for Wolfenstein 3D in the university bookstore during a journalism field trip. Figured out how to make a RAM disk to fool a PC game running on my PCjr into thinking there was a C: drive, all kinds of stuff like that. Just kept hacking and pushing and learning.
• treszkai 7mo ago
  Why wouldn't one buy a second-hand refurbished MacBook Air M1 with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage for the same price? [1] I really don't see the advantages of getting a newer computer for the same price with worse specs, unless it's a gift and social customs only allow a new one. [1]: https://www.rebuy.de/i,11380014/apple/apple-macbook-air-13-3-true-tone-retina-display-m1-7-core-gpu-8-gb-ram-256-gb-pcie-ssd-late-2020-space-grau https://www.rebuy.de/i,11380014/apple/apple-macbook-air-13-3...
• etempleton 7mo ago
  This hits the nail on the head. The MacBook Neo is compelling because it is a computer. A real computer with a full ecosystem behind it. Not some bastardized chrome book or tinker box Raspberry Pi, but a full on computer at a price where the competitors are 4 year olds used MacBooks or PCs or absolute ewaste garbage that barely functions and will assuredly break within two years. I think what surprises everyone is that Apple beat all of the low cost PC manufacturers at their own game. And they did it through scale, superior software memory management, and world class chip design. I don’t know if the Neo will be a success. Chromebooks have entrenched themselves in Education. But for end users this is a no brainer in this price range. If you are looking for a computer in the ~$500 range you would be almost foolish to buy anything else unless your specific needs demanded it.
• etempleton 7mo ago
  This hits the nail on the head. The MacBook Neo is compelling because it is a computer. A real computer with a full ecosystem behind it. Not some bastardized chrome book or tinker box Raspberry Pi, but a full on computer at a price where the competitors are 4 year olds used MacBooks or PCs or absolute ewaste garbage that barely functions and will assuredly break within two years. I think what surprises everyone is that Apple beat all of the low cost PC manufacturers at their own game. And they did it through scale, superior software memory management, and world class chip design. I don’t know if the Neo will be a success, but it is a great product at a great price.
• tantricked 7mo ago
  I’d be curious to know what Apple’s margins are on the MacBook Neo.
• donaldbaker3 7mo ago
  Such a great review, I was 12 in 1998 and my family didn’t have a computer, used to walk into a computer shop not far from my house every day and stare at the machines talk to the guy, eventually overtime he started teaching me computers. I was one of the kids