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.
> 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.
I like the cut of you jib! If you lived around the corner, we’d have a coffee.
You nailed it.
> 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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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…
You can run blender on a Chromebook using the Linux environment.
"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).
There are also some funny humorous pieces on this site.
Learning to make use of limited resources is truly rewarding.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
Used thinkpad or mini pc seems more practical
" I faked being sick to watch WWDC 2011 — Steve Jobs’ last keynote — and clapped alone in my room when the audience clapped, and rebuilt his slides in Keynote afterward because I wanted to understand how he’d made them feel that way."
jesus christ thats grim
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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.
This was lovely, I appreciated reading it
> He is going to make a folder called “Projects” with nothing in it.
I'm still this person today :)
If one doesn’t know how to play the violin, they can make a Stradivarius sound like crap.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
The hacker is strong in this one. Keep it up.
> 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.
When Chromebooks originally came out, that was not an option. And almost all school-issued computers will not let you do this.
I absolutely loved reading this, bring back memories. I was that kid too.
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!
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.
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...
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.
I tried to learn to program as a kid too. It didn't take, couldn't get past the hello world/simple program stage interest wise. I just wanted to go right to making games. Closest I got was messing with configs and skins and some map making. Took until later in college when I started programming "for real."
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.
They used Scratch at school, but you might be right about the Pi just not being inviting.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
It's the same epidemic. I don't think the author has a problem specifically with Chromebooks.
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I don’t understand the point you’re making?
What's so special about this machine? Is there no comparable $599 Windows or Linux laptop for kids to buy?
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.
Can you use an apple notebook without an apple account?
yes.
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.
For the past decade or so, many children had no access to real computers. Before covid, many households either only had school-issued chromebooks, or only smartphones. With covid causing a rise in remote schooling, many families got laptops, but again often only locked-down chromebooks.
There's adults nowadays that do their taxes on their phone, cut videos on their phone, and edit spreadsheets on their phone.
And while smartphones and chromebooks are great at accomplishing your desired tasks, they offer no opportunities for growth. You can't change and play around with the system, become a power user, modify your system, look behind the curtain, and gain real understanding.
There's an excellent blogpost on this topic, "The Slow Death of the Power User": https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/the-slow-death-of-the-pow...
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
I used non-discounted consumer prices for both. Education discounts for both the Neo and Chromebooks will bring them down further.
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.
All of the computers you listed have an inferior CPU, inferior battery life, inferior performance, inferior build quality, and inferior software for most peoples usecases. I know we all love linux here, but a lot of creative (or school, or work) apps that people use don't support Linux, so people must choose between MacOS and Windows.
All of the "cons" you list for the Neo apply doubly if not more for the alternatives you provided. Not to mention the cheap plastic build quality, poor OEM support, horrible screens, etc.
You make some great points here. Here’s one of the places I’m coming from that seems to be aligned with the author of this.
I find macOS to be a superior OS for doing computer work to all the alternatives. It still sucks for a lot of reasons, but to my taste it generally sucks less. I’m a web dev, so I host a lot of crap in Linux, and I’m pretty confident in using it as a desktop. But the general day to day experience I find macOS superior.
There’s plenty of people in similar boats, and this is the most affordable machine (new, not used) that lets someone get to use macOS.
For a lot of people with budget limits I’d point them to used MacBook Air models rather than the Neo, but having this as a new model is a really nice option for some people.
Also you can call the Neo CPU slow but its benchmarks run circles around anything you find at its price range. Those machines have more RAM and storage, but the Neo will likely provide a more responsive experience than anything in its price range.
I do agree on refurb/used rather than the Neo. The best low-ish cost computer Apple is selling right now is probably their refurbished $750 MacBook Air M4 with 16GB RAM/256GB storage.
The only way I'll push back on this is the Ryzen 5 AI 340 is faster at multicore than the A18 Pro. Slower single core by a slight amount, and much slower iGPU.
However, that means to compete with the MacBook Neo more completely including integrated GPU, all you have to do is go up one CPU SKU to the Ryzen 7 AI 350 and you're further increasing your multi-core performance lead as well as completely closing the iGPU gap by doubling your GPU performance.
That same Yoga laptop is offered in this configuration including extra storage (16GB RAM/1TB SSD/Ryzen 5 AI 350) for $800
That...really is only $100 more than the 512GB configuration of the MacBook Neo if we aren't tossing in the education store pricing.
Perhaps it's more of a MacBook Air competitor at that price range. Stretching up to $800 is a lot...but you do also get a lot for that stretch.
> They have very little interest in what you might become because of one.
Love 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.
AHH an apple acolyte. so not a real computer user then
Yeah… I’ve been hearing that, along with “Apple’s a dead company; give it up.” For much of my life…
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.
I had a similar experience but with design software (which I pirated at the time since I just didn't have the money to buy stuff from Adobe).
I'd install Photoshop and Illustrator on my shitty computer I put together from spare parts my dad didn't have the use of anymore from his business computers. It was horribly slow, but I kinda made it work slowly.
The thing is that I think this is what made me think a bit differently, since everything was slowed down and took more time than I would want it to, I had to make deliberate decisions on what to add/edit. I still work the same way today to pa point, but that's because I'm both faster, more experienced and the computers have gotten more performant (and because I can afford better devices sure).
When I look at my half-brother and his teenage generation I wonder if they can still have such an experience. The personal devices have gotten better and faster, most things are really convenient and you sometimes even don't have to think a lot to do something also because they're cheap to do... they probably won't have the experience of "grinding it out" just for the sake of producing something they like...maybe sports is the closest...no idea, but have been thinking about this quite a lot recently...
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.
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?
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
[2] https://youtu.be/qRdGhHEoj3o
I like how these days you have to say things like: "fuck-ass system modification" just to prove you're not AI.
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.
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.
Really? In that case I retract the statement and will ponder what AI has done to my ability to assess this kind of writing!
I appreciate the article and agree. If you have a desire to learn computers, just get your hands on whatever you can and learn.
Except if its an apple device.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
Most of us learned a lot that way, trying to squeeze and make something work out of nothing. That's why we understand much more than kids today. In the end that is the reason I still optimize stuff in my corporate company and I have a pretty awesome job, so it's a good path.
I didn't grow up in a 3rd world country but had the same experience, bar running games I don't own. Not everyone in the west had parents that wanted to just spend thousands on hardware that seemed to be obsolete next year, or any means of making that money. And I've never stopped using sub-par hardware, to this day I enjoy squeezing every drop of performance from cheap pre-owned stuff.
> 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.
And faking being sick so he could clap at Apple marketing events. He kinda lost me there.
He's looking back to a time when they were still special. When every keynote brought out a new, interesting product, feature, OS enhancement, etc. Back in the Steve Jobs era, it was still worth tuning in every year to see what was new.
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.
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.
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.)
For me, not enough memory is mostly -> close some damn browser tabs.
If we're talking about Ubuntu, ZRAM is still a thing.
Not enough memory is sometimes just a slowdown these days, with ssd and swap.
Swap has existed since Win95 btw
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.
Yes, but if your bar is "still works but slower" you don't need that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have a high specced MacBook Pro, but honestly I mostly use it for vscode tunnels to my actual dev machine.
So the only real benefit compared to my MacBook Air is that the screen is a bit nicer, and I can keep more Firefox tabs open, because it has more RAM.
Bingo! IMO, laptops are best used as thin clients and you do the heavy lifting on servers or a box in a closet somewhere.
I'va been migrating my workflow to this approach and I'm an embedded dev! My closet does have hw strewn about but once you set it up that you don't have to touch wires it's super convenient.
My one gripe with MacBook airs up to m4 was support for only one external monitor. But m4 fixed this.
I'm not sure about this being the best approach. It just works for me sometimes.
> 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.
The kid’s parents want to be able to monitor their kid. The kid’s parents want to be able to drag the machine to a local store and have the people there fix it.
The kid’s parents - and the kid - all have iPhones, so it’s familiar.
The kid’s school requires Windows or Mac for their WiFi and won’t let the kid use Linux because they don’t trust it.
There’s plenty of reasons why Linux isn’t the answer in current climate.
I started college with a white G3 iBook. By the end of freshman year I had installed Yellow Dog Linux, then Suse, Mandriva and eventually Gentoo.
Now, 20+ years later all my home computers are running Linux (Debian though), and my kids grew up using Linux.
But I'm going to send my teenager to college with Windows or a Mac. They're going to be 1200 miles away, and they're going to need to get support for their computer and I won't be there.
Yes, I like Linux 1000x better than Windows or Mac, but Linux demands a different relationship with the admin. This kid hasn't wanted that relationship with tech, and will rely on friends to help get Office or Zoom or whatever installed.
I'm still deciding between Mac and Windows now. I'll probably end up getting a quality used business laptop from FB marketplace, but the Neo is interesting too.
I’ve been an Apple fan boi since the Apple II in my room. 44 years later, 15 in software engineering, and I’m still very happy with Apple
Unless said kid ports Asahi Linux...
> 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.
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.
My first computer was a Compaq my parents got during that peak era of home PC mass adoption in the late 90s. I immediately played a ton of games, got on AOL, learned VBScript, C++, HTML, etc.
This was such a natural and common thing that I never even questioned if others were having a different experience with computers. This sounds crazy now, but it felt as if everyone was either going to learn to program or already had, not as a career choice but as an essential form of literacy. I mean even the calculators were programmable!
To me, Macs were just "the boring computers" we had at school and what my grandparents bought. They seemed locked down and weird like an appliance. I have no idea what my life would be like now if I had grown up in a different time and with a Mac.
This isn't to hate on Macs, but to tell the story of the dominance of Microsoft at the time and how much culture shifted towards more "dumb" consumerism. By the time the first iPod came out I realized the adults had no interest in any of this more progressive future. Then the iPhone and Windows Vista confirmed it.
I installed Ubuntu on the ThinkPad I had in high school and never really looked back. To this day, I am still baffled by the obsessions people have with AI "replacing jobs" and Apple devices as status symbols. I think those people miss the point entirely and worry about their incomplete worldview being passed down to younger generations. What I see is the masses refusing to participate and technofeudalists taking advantage of them.
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.
> You just need to recognize that not everybody aspires to be competent with lower-levels of hardware and software
You don't really need that to use Linux.
People should stop copy/pasting urban myths or stories from the late 90's. We are in 2026 and one can perfectly buy a laptop preinstalled on linux with full support and just find the apps they need from an "app store" which in this case is just the frontend for the flatpak and packages manager. Picking up an app from Gnome Software is no different than installing an app from the play/apple/microsoft store.
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).
I think this’d be a good comment if it weren’t for the superiority complex :/
Most schools don't let you use chargers due to fire and tripping hazards. The macbooks strength is you can use it on battery for the entire day. Most alternatives fail at this.
ARM PC laptops are on par with Macbooks in terms of battery life nowadays.
Is ARM Windows usable these days?
Very much so if you don't care about gaming. x86-64 emulation has already been great, and 99% of popular apps have native ARM64 versions. The only exception was Discord for me for a long time. I used to use an unofficial wrapper called "Legcord" instead. But, now even Discord has a native Windows version. I mostly use my laptop for software development + browsing.
I haven't tried gaming, but I feel like it'll suck for almost anything that's not natively ARM64. Steam doesn't have an ARM64 based client yet, AFAIK.
Isn't Discord just a web app? Why would you need an ARM64 specific version in the first place when you have a browser?
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.
Ew. The fanboyism is disgusting at this point.
They don't have an open source kernel. You can't recompile the kernel or build your own device drivers. I'm not sure what you mean by "learning about computers", but I personally find being able to peek into the kernel source code to be more educational than anything in the mac ecosystem.
The hardware here is incredible, but it's crippled by not adequately supporting Linux, BSD, or any other properly open source kernel you can compile and install yourself. A good learning environment doesn't put up immovable barriers like "you need a kernel signed by apple", it lets you push away barriers when you're ready, like "Are you sure you want to turn off secureboot, or install your own secureboot keys"
> They don't have an open source kernel
Yes they do in fact, it's called darwin XNU
Eh, qemu runs just fine, so you can peek at Linux kernel code (and recompile and experiment with it) on the Mac just as much as you can on Linux.
> then what most young people use daily.
Most people are using Windows or phones where that isn’t an option.
Yeah you can root or change the OS but that seems outside the spirit of the comment to me.
These are Macs. They run Xcode and you can develop apps for your iPhone for free with one.
Yeah you need to pay to distribute, but a computer to do it has never been cheaper.
> You can't recompile the kernel or build your own device drivers.
I just don’t think this is what, like, nine-year-olds are looking for in a computer.
In any case, at least it’s good that they’re starting with macOS over Windows! Puts them on a good path to understanding that POSIX is the One True Paradigm and therefore makes them much more likely to compile their own kernel in the future.
I was that kid, and can confirm.
My curiosity for all things computer related was boundless, but I eventually tinkered with Linux but only because I’d had been exposed to a *nix style command line from the comfort of an OS X desktop first.
By then I had started messing around with code but had only built toys and extremely basic tools and would’ve been lucky to write a moderately functional desktop program using high level libraries (which didn’t happen for several more years).
Writing drivers or poking around in kernel code was so far beyond the scope of capabilities at that point that you would’ve had better luck teaching your dog how to knit. I don’t think I could’ve had any chance at doing these things until at least my mid 20s.
I’d bet 99% of professional developers have never peeked at kernel source code or built their own device drivers.
It's something you never need to look at, until suddenly you do and then it's invaluable. Any time you format some data for another system and get a cryptic error code back, looking at the source code becomes invaluable.
The parent commenter said "learning about computers". Most "professional developers" don't learn about computers, they learn enough react to get a paycheck, but don't have an insatiable curiosity about how the whole computer works (i.e. the "hacker spirit").
Professional developers are not what this thread is about. It's about curious kids, about hackers, and that group does peek at kernel source code (as well as everything else).
I’m fairly confident that the Venn diagram of (a) nine-year-olds that are playing with a computer and (b) people who claim that access to kernel source code is a prerequisite to “learning about computers” is two circles that are barely touching.
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'.
Windows would do just fine. But the state of cheap Windows laptops is abysmal, and Windows as a product is in the doghouse lately because... well, I honestly don't know why Microsoft is doing what they're doing, but from the outside they certainly do appear to want to ruin Windows.
These days it would be an iPad though.
Or a chromebook which is probably worse.
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 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.
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.
> 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.
This is an argument, but it’s also fundamentally comparing a computer that works out of the box to one that doesn’t.
I was sadly too dumb in high school to figure out how to get Linux running on my Chromebook.
There’s an entire Linux distro (Asahi) for MacBooks. Apple has never released a Mac with a locked bootloader.
And macOS frankly provides a far better Unix experience than ChromeOS, in my experience, having actually used both (including for development, though only for a short time on ChromeOS because it was horrible).
Apple did not lock the bootloader, but they do not provide documentation for their products.
What would have been a trivial porting work with documentation, becomes extremely time-consuming and hard work without documentation.
That is why Asahi Linux lags by several years with the support for Apple computers, and it is unlikely that this lag time will ever be reduced. Even for the old Apple computers the hardware support is only partial, so such computers are never as useful for running Linux as AMD/Intel based computers.
The bootloader isn’t locked. Asahi’s developers have written about how Apple specifically built support for third-party OSes into the bootloader.
The same Asahi developers also wrote about how Apple didn’t document anything and especially, Apple never talked in public about this. Apple betting Apple, If they had cared a single second about this, they would have called this Bootcamp 2.
Honestly I’m pretty convinced that this « open » bootloader was just there to avoid criticism and bad press from specialized outlets when they presented the M1 because, for once, they needed specialized outlet to benchmark the M1 performance and not have anything bad to say about anything else.
They constantly break everything year after year without documenting any change which effectively makes Asahi unusable in anything recent.
I’m betting that they are just patiently waiting for Asahi to die by being too late of several years (which is already the case) to announce « The most secure Mac ever » silently releasing with closed bootloader when nobody and especially the press will care anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Asahi and I even have it installed on my M2 Air, the project is doing incredible quality work. But I don’t believe it will last long. Hope I’m wrong, though.
To be clear, "Apple" is a group, not a unified thing with one will.
That doesn't mean that the engineeers will necessarily ship something more flexible than what the PMs asked for. Often not.
But sometimes they will.
Apple's legal department will kill it once someone tells them the project is a handy tool for patent trolls to mine for infringements.
For them to call it Bootcamp 2 (a "product" per se), they'd have had to have another OS they could actually demo installing. Otherwise "Bootcamp 2" is just a mysterious empty chooser window.
But at the time there was nothing, because Apple Silicon wasn't a platform anyone but them was targeting, because they had just created it.
So they built the infrastructure, and then waited for someone to actually start taking advantage of it, before bothering to acknowledge it.
And because that "someone" isn't a bigcorp (i.e. Microsoft) wanting to do a co-marketing push, but just FOSS people gradually building something but never quite "launching" a 1.0 of it — Apple just "acknowledged" it quietly, at developer conferences, exposing it only via developer-centric CLI tooling, rather than with the sort of polished UI experience they would need if Microsoft was trying to convince Joe Excel User to dual-boot Windows on their Apple Silicon MBP.
> announce « The most secure Mac ever » silently releasing with closed bootloader
That's extremely unlikely to happen, as Apple's hardware and OS developers build Macs and macOS (and all the other hardware + OSes) using Macs and macOS. And those engineers (and engineers working at Apple's hardware and accessory manufacturing partners) will always need to be able to diddle around with the kernel and extensions "in anger" without needing to go through a three-day-turnaround code-signing process.
There's a whole proprietary, distributed kernel development and QC flow for macOS, that looks a lot like the Linux one (i.e. with all the same bigcorps involved making sure their stuff works), but all happening behind closed doors. But all the same stuff still needs to happen regardless, to ensure that buggy drivers don't ship. Thus macOS kernel development mode being just one reboot-and-toggle away.
that you spent so much of your life typing that many characters in response to someone utterly pwning the church of apple.... it speaks volumes about where your priorities are.
a sane freedom loving person would simply... join me in trolling the shit out of you
> And because that "someone" isn't a bigcorp (i.e. Microsoft) wanting to do a co-marketing push, but just FOSS people gradually building something but never quite "launching" a 1.0 of it — Apple just "acknowledged" it quietly, at developer conferences, exposing it only via developer-centric CLI tooling, rather than with the sort of polished UI experience they would need if Microsoft was trying to convince Joe Excel User to dual-boot Windows on their Apple Silicon MBP.
It's also important to remember that Microsoft was in the middle of their Qualcomm exclusivity deal at the time of the M1's release, and thus Windows for ARM wasn't available on anything other than a few select devices or unofficial use of Insider builds.
That deal didn't actually expire until 2024[1], at which point Windows for ARM finally started to be sold in an official capacity with stable builds widely available.
It's entirely possible, though unconfirmed, that Apple was intentionally leaving the door open for "Boot Camp 2", and Microsoft simply never took them up on the offer, either because they were stuck in a deal made prior to the M1's release that prevented it, or because they no longer saw a financial benefit to being able to sell Windows to Mac users (possibly since Windows license sales are effectively a rounding error to Microsoft at this point; they make way more off of subscription services and/or Office, all of which are already available on macOS without having to dual-boot Windows).
[1]: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/windows-on-a...
?? I installed Omarchy on an old MBP simply by inserting the usb stick into a USB port and holding a key combo during boot. Didn’t have to unlock anything.
Try it on a new one.
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.
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.
It’s $500 for a kid, a full time student.
Yes
> 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.
Oh so all our hypothetical child has to do to discover what computers can actually do is completely rebuild one's software from scratch with no prior knowledge.
Next you'll tell me F1 drivers in their teens just have to LS swap a Saturn SC2 and book time at a track.
It's really not that hard. Someone who can follow a tutorial can do it.
5 seconds of googling will get you an answer to "install blender on a Chromebook"
And these days, you can ask your favourite LLM for step by step advice, and you can even give it shaky phone camera shots of the error message on your screen.
> It's really not that hard.
Of course not. I could do it in a coma. I've also been using computers since 2004, and you're probably similar.
I've been using computers since 1991 (I'm 42, from 1984), and to be honest this stuff is getting harder and more confusing, not easier. Mostly because it keeps changing, and not based on any logic towards improvement. Sure I'm good at getting my questions and problems solved now, especially with AI, but I don't believe I have the ingrained mastery I felt after a while with computers in the 90s.
I used to be the cool tech guy in school because I memorized the tutorial to jailbreak iPhone or to cheat in games with a memory editor. You know, stuff like "when you see this screen, click that icon", "find row 5 and change the second value to 0", or "open terminal, copy paste this command and hit enter". I don't think I learned anything useful from those.
You learned that such things are even possible, and you learned that other people saw you as the cool tech guy just because you took time to memorise that stuff.
Well, sure. Maybe you're the kid in the article who opened Xcode and Blender and Final Cut, but it didn't click for you. Of course not everything is for everyone, but it doesn't prove exploring the limits like that is a bad thing.
You can't install a different OS on these? Are they different from the M series? Because those have Asahi Linux.
Asahi linux effectively only supports the M1 and M2 chips, so even a modern macbook air won't work, and even on "supported devices" you can't use thunderbolt or a usb-c display yet.
These use the A series chip, and even supporting new M chip revisions has been enough of an undertaking that I wouldn't really expect this to get Asahi linux anytime soon....
And apple can lock down the bootloader to be closer to the iPad/iPhone at any time with no notice, and based on their past actions, it would be quite in-line with their character to do so.
By “past actions”, do you mean doing extra work to make the bootloader support other operating systems? https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/introduction/
Asahi only supports M1 and M2 series Macs currently. The Neo uses an A18 Pro, which was only ever in an iPhone before. I wouldn’t count on Asahi coming to these soon.
I see no reason they couldn’t.
But we know there’s lots of other models that they’re already working on. We don’t know how similar or different it is from an OS perspective.
The reason is the lack of documentation from Apple.
Reverse engineering needs a lot of time and hard work, which may not be worthwhile.
Sometimes someone does this work, and everyone may benefit from it, but you should never count on this happening, unless you do the work yourself.
Surprisingly enough you don’t need Linux to learn about computers. You know that Macs have terminal?
The default Mac terminal environment is the Weetabix of UNIX-likes. You need GNU coreutils to do pretty much anything.
I'm confused. Isn't coreutils a just small subset of even macOS's current zsh's builtins? What do you prefer about systemd to launchd? defaults seems like a convenient way to manage settings. Is it confusing for people from other operating systems?
Name one thing lacking in the utilities included with MacOS (which come from BSD).
Is it still shipping with that ancient bash, the awful Iterm and without a package manager? I haven't used OSX for a while.
No. Zsh is now standard, though it still included an old optional version of bash. Apple hates GPLv3 that's why they moved away from bash.
The terminal app is not iterm. But Apple's own Terminal.app
And no there's no package manager but there's brew and macports.
The overwhelming majority of UNIX-like software isn't designed for BSD runtimes, to name one.
I ask for a specific example, and you respond with more generalities.
Aside from the BSD software, the Mac software, and all the software that’s actually POSIX-compliant (on purpose or by accident).
The overwhelming majority of UNIX-like software is available in the package managers right now for major BSDs.
`grep -P` kinda annoying. GNU has Perl-compatible regex, and BSD does not. You're reaching for `perl` or installing `ggrep` the moment you need a lookbehind.
BSD grep is the pure grep version though. Perl regex is unnecessary bloat.