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.
> 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.
Depends very much on whether the kids' interests leans toward doing computer stuff, or doing stuff with computers.
And they can do the former in a VM anyway. Install Linux, or a BSD, and go. With the bonus that you can experiment fearlessly because you've got snapshots and the worst-case for experimentation still leaves you with an entirely functioning laptop. Or use a cheap VPS, remotely.
Cheap computers with hardware constraints have been around for decades. Now Apple ships one with pretty damn good performance, and they've invented "cheap computers with hardware constraints." HA!
My first computer was a Commodore 64 I found in a pile of trash a few years after they came out. My first PC was a 33Mhz Cyrix Instead I bought off my first college roommate. Now there are some real hardware constraints!
But yeah, necessity is the mother of invention. No doubt about it. Just not seeing how a $600 polished and performant laptop fits that bill ;)
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, an...
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.
> 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.
Some kids undoubtedly get there, exactly as you say. That's not at all the same experience as opening a device that has a MUCH bigger sandbox to begin with and lets them start exploring with boundless applications from the beginning.
The bootloader kids get my deep respect. I think I'd rather give my kid a Neo to begin with.
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.
I don't know why you're downvoted. No matter how many feel-good anecdotes the author tacks to their article, to me the premise appears a strawman. It would have been entirely possible to make pretty much all the same points about just getting a used Thinkpad, or anything really.
My first laptop as a kid was a passed-down business Toshiba that was to be scrapped. I then bought a soldering iron to fabricate a serial dongle in order to reset the BIOS password that was locking it down, and then installed Xubuntu on it. Guess young me shoulda gotten a Macbook instead to inspire the true spirit of freedom and exploration?
It's an old and persuasive myth of the Apple community that of course it's not about the tool, but what you do with it creatively. Still, they never fail to mention how the tool being an Apple is important in one way or another. I just don't get it.
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 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.
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.
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...
8-bit. 16KiB of RAM. BASIC as the programming language. 640x256 resolution in 8 colours.
I could make that thing sing in an hour. It was hard to get it to do much, but then the difficulty was the fun thing.
By the time we got to the early 2000s and I could buy something with more RAM, CPU and storage than I could ever reasonably max out for the problems I was interested in at the time, I lost something.
Working within constraints teaches you something, I think. Doing more with less makes you appreciate the "more" you eventually end up with. You develop intuitions and instincts and whole skillsets that others never had to develop. You get an advantage.
I don't think we should be going back to 8-bit days any time soon, but in the context of this post, I want novices to try and build software on an A18 chip, I want learners to be curious enough to build a small word game (Hangman will do at first, but the A18 will let them push way, way past that into the limits of something that starts to feel hard all of a sudden), to develop the intuition of writing code on a system that isn't quite big enough for their ideas. It'll make them thirsty for more, and better at using it when they get it.
“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - ll of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
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...
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.
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."
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
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.
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 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.
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.
I'd say the low end is closer to a Raspberry Pi or perhaps a used old Thinkpad. A $600 machine with good single-core performance is only low end if you ignore everything outside the Apple product lines.
> trackpad is only incrementally better than what was available in Chromebooks and cheap PCs
Did you use a touchpad of an old cheap PC? Apple would not dare to use one comparable to that in their wildest nightmares.
The build quality and usability on mac laptops is something else, I've yet to see even 2k€+ laptops that people typically get for their jobs that aren't a pain to use without a mouse and monitor. Whereas I'm sitting here in front of my macbook and not touching the mouse next to it most of the time.
That's definitely valuable, but not for a child in my opinion, it's the type of luxury equivalent to a Mercedes over a Renault. Perfectly defensible but, just like a Mercedes is hardly a starter car, I don't think an MBP is that fit for a starter PC. It's also mostly useless if you're not traveling for work regularly.
That said, does any of that even matter any more? People were learning Blender, programming and whatever else 15 years ago on low to mid range machines already. The equivalently priced - or dirt cheap second hand - machines of today are multiple times more capable at everything. Stick Linux and a $5 mouse in it and you're 90% of the way to a macbook pro in terms of user experience.
That's to say, I agree with the core of the article: kids will make the most out of the least. But I disagree that this particular laptop is a necessity or a boon for that. If anything, it's a hindrance for being a mac.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 75.1 ms ] threadThat kid will be much better off with a used laptop and Linux or BSD.
And they can do the former in a VM anyway. Install Linux, or a BSD, and go. With the bonus that you can experiment fearlessly because you've got snapshots and the worst-case for experimentation still leaves you with an entirely functioning laptop. Or use a cheap VPS, remotely.
Cheap computers with hardware constraints have been around for decades. Now Apple ships one with pretty damn good performance, and they've invented "cheap computers with hardware constraints." HA!
My first computer was a Commodore 64 I found in a pile of trash a few years after they came out. My first PC was a 33Mhz Cyrix Instead I bought off my first college roommate. Now there are some real hardware constraints!
But yeah, necessity is the mother of invention. No doubt about it. Just not seeing how a $600 polished and performant laptop fits that bill ;)
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.)
- 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, an...
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.
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 kids get my deep respect. I think I'd rather give my kid a Neo to begin with.
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.
My first laptop as a kid was a passed-down business Toshiba that was to be scrapped. I then bought a soldering iron to fabricate a serial dongle in order to reset the BIOS password that was locking it down, and then installed Xubuntu on it. Guess young me shoulda gotten a Macbook instead to inspire the true spirit of freedom and exploration?
It's an old and persuasive myth of the Apple community that of course it's not about the tool, but what you do with it creatively. Still, they never fail to mention how the tool being an Apple is important in one way or another. I just don't get it.
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 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.
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?
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...
8-bit. 16KiB of RAM. BASIC as the programming language. 640x256 resolution in 8 colours.
I could make that thing sing in an hour. It was hard to get it to do much, but then the difficulty was the fun thing.
By the time we got to the early 2000s and I could buy something with more RAM, CPU and storage than I could ever reasonably max out for the problems I was interested in at the time, I lost something.
Working within constraints teaches you something, I think. Doing more with less makes you appreciate the "more" you eventually end up with. You develop intuitions and instincts and whole skillsets that others never had to develop. You get an advantage.
I don't think we should be going back to 8-bit days any time soon, but in the context of this post, I want novices to try and build software on an A18 chip, I want learners to be curious enough to build a small word game (Hangman will do at first, but the A18 will let them push way, way past that into the limits of something that starts to feel hard all of a sudden), to develop the intuition of writing code on a system that isn't quite big enough for their ideas. It'll make them thirsty for more, and better at using it when they get it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro
- Brian Eno
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.
Meanwhile, some other kid in your area probably got scolded for installing F-Droid. Oh well...
But also, not every kid is interested in that anyway.
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.
of course it will praise the product like it's golden, turning disadvantages into "that's actually the good part"
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...
> trackpad is only incrementally better than what was available in Chromebooks and cheap PCs
Did you use a touchpad of an old cheap PC? Apple would not dare to use one comparable to that in their wildest nightmares.
That's definitely valuable, but not for a child in my opinion, it's the type of luxury equivalent to a Mercedes over a Renault. Perfectly defensible but, just like a Mercedes is hardly a starter car, I don't think an MBP is that fit for a starter PC. It's also mostly useless if you're not traveling for work regularly.
That said, does any of that even matter any more? People were learning Blender, programming and whatever else 15 years ago on low to mid range machines already. The equivalently priced - or dirt cheap second hand - machines of today are multiple times more capable at everything. Stick Linux and a $5 mouse in it and you're 90% of the way to a macbook pro in terms of user experience.
That's to say, I agree with the core of the article: kids will make the most out of the least. But I disagree that this particular laptop is a necessity or a boon for that. If anything, it's a hindrance for being a mac.
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.
The Neo is the right first tool for many people.
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.