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.
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.
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
Sometimes I feel privileged for being in the generation that learnt to program BASIC on a C64 and 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 it one up as their own Minecraft server (they were heavily into it at the time) piqued their interest. Oh well.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
?? 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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"
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).
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
" 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."
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.
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.
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
Sometimes I feel privileged for being in the generation that learnt to program BASIC on a C64 and 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 it one up as their own Minecraft server (they were heavily into it at the time) piqued their interest. Oh well.
> 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.
The bootloader isn’t locked. Asahi’s developers have written about how Apple specifically built support for third-party OSes into the bootloader.
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.
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.
Surprisingly enough you don’t need Linux to learn about computers. You know that Macs have terminal?
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
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).
?? 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.
> 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 appreciate the article and agree. If you have a desire to learn computers, just get your hands on whatever you can and learn.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
I’d bet 99% of professional developers have never peeked at kernel source code or built their own device drivers.
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).
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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’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.
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.
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).
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.
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.)
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.
For me, not enough memory is mostly -> close some damn browser tabs.
You can run blender on a Chromebook using the Linux environment.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
" 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