Macbook Neo Hot Take™, take 2. Earlier I was annoyed at tech reviewers who should *really* know better giving a *really* myopic assessment of its gaming potential.
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@glyph so i'm not asking to advocate for any particular Should in this situation (i simply don't care what people do anymore), i just don't know and people talk about this subject like the student shitbox laptop is not a product category anymore: does hp not make cheap shitbox laptops anymore?
@glyph honestly i'm very happy for the apple congregation rediscovering the joy of the shitbox
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@glyph so i'm not asking to advocate for any particular Should in this situation (i simply don't care what people do anymore), i just don't know and people talk about this subject like the student shitbox laptop is not a product category anymore: does hp not make cheap shitbox laptops anymore?
@aeva I'm far from an expert over the entire domain, but from my casual interest in it… I don't really think so? The student shitbox laptop has largely been replaced by the "gaming laptop" category, which has a ton of problems right now. The two biggest being "Windows" and "Intel"
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@aeva I'm far from an expert over the entire domain, but from my casual interest in it… I don't really think so? The student shitbox laptop has largely been replaced by the "gaming laptop" category, which has a ton of problems right now. The two biggest being "Windows" and "Intel"
@aeva x86_64 windows laptops are still kinda heavy, kinda hot, unreliable, sluggish, but most of all the main thing I hear from actual Windows users is that sleep just doesn't work at all? Among mac users "my laptop got hot in my bag and it was dead when I got to work" does happen but it's the kind of problem that would make one suspect a hardware problem and bring it in for repair, on Windows it seems to be a weekly occurrence on most machines, particularly those priced in the shitbox category
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@glyph so i'm not asking to advocate for any particular Should in this situation (i simply don't care what people do anymore), i just don't know and people talk about this subject like the student shitbox laptop is not a product category anymore: does hp not make cheap shitbox laptops anymore?
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@aeva x86_64 windows laptops are still kinda heavy, kinda hot, unreliable, sluggish, but most of all the main thing I hear from actual Windows users is that sleep just doesn't work at all? Among mac users "my laptop got hot in my bag and it was dead when I got to work" does happen but it's the kind of problem that would make one suspect a hardware problem and bring it in for repair, on Windows it seems to be a weekly occurrence on most machines, particularly those priced in the shitbox category
@aeva there are also ARM windows laptops which are… okay, I guess, and their battery life while still markedly worse than a macbook is "fine", but have terrible graphical performance and tons of weird compatibility issues where most stuff works but some software just randomly won't launch
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@aeva x86_64 windows laptops are still kinda heavy, kinda hot, unreliable, sluggish, but most of all the main thing I hear from actual Windows users is that sleep just doesn't work at all? Among mac users "my laptop got hot in my bag and it was dead when I got to work" does happen but it's the kind of problem that would make one suspect a hardware problem and bring it in for repair, on Windows it seems to be a weekly occurrence on most machines, particularly those priced in the shitbox category
@glyph again, i'm not advocating for any particular Should here, i'm just wondering if a product category that was a thing when i was a student is still a thing or if it got devoured by ipads or google or whatever, not whether it is or ever was Worthy
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@glyph again, i'm not advocating for any particular Should here, i'm just wondering if a product category that was a thing when i was a student is still a thing or if it got devoured by ipads or google or whatever, not whether it is or ever was Worthy
@aeva I mean, technically, yes, the devices do still exist, but I don't know anyone who uses one willingly, even *very* budget-conscious folks. 15 years ago a windows shitbox was largely the same experience as an iPad or a chromebook at a competitive price point with some bonus ability to run older casual games and entirely serviceable. Nowadays it's a hideous albatross that can barely boot Windows 11 and is nowhere close to what you can get in other categories for about the same price.
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@glyph again, i'm not advocating for any particular Should here, i'm just wondering if a product category that was a thing when i was a student is still a thing or if it got devoured by ipads or google or whatever, not whether it is or ever was Worthy
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@aeva @glyph like if access to macOS specifically is the revolutionary thing, then sure, this is pretty revolutionary. But that is a pretty weird take when you put it that way!
If access to a reasonably capable general-purpose computer is the revolutionary thing, then at best this is a new point on the price-performance Pareto frontier, but it sure ain't the bottom of the price curve.
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@thomasdorr the fact that they released this new product in this "it's a regular mac" configuration implies a pretty long-running future commitment to "it's a regular mac" as branding. there are other clues in the marketing; I mean they don't show Xcode running but almost every screenshot is multitasking, it's running scads of different apps, they clearly don't appear to be making a "simplicity" pitch
@glyph @thomasdorr in case it’s helpful I found this leaked screenshot of the next MacBook Neo OS:
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@glyph @thomasdorr in case it’s helpful I found this leaked screenshot of the next MacBook Neo OS:
@scott @thomasdorr yeah I was thinking about this software but I dare not speak its name lest I break the seals on the nightmare dimension it was sealed away in in the late 90s
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@scott @thomasdorr yeah I was thinking about this software but I dare not speak its name lest I break the seals on the nightmare dimension it was sealed away in in the late 90s
@glyph @thomasdorr
same! That’s why I only pasted a screenshot. I guess I am old enough to have attempted to administer machines running this software that shall not be named
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@dotstdy @aeva are there chromebooks at that price point which are actually capable of doing anything useful though? like I have seen some $200 chromebooks which I would describe as "regulatory arbitrage" devices; computers which in the most technical sense do work, but exist mostly to soak up school district budgets, whose hardware specs are literally based on running *earlier* versions of google docs and are visibly sluggish to run the current one to the point where it's distracting
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@aeva I mean, technically, yes, the devices do still exist, but I don't know anyone who uses one willingly, even *very* budget-conscious folks. 15 years ago a windows shitbox was largely the same experience as an iPad or a chromebook at a competitive price point with some bonus ability to run older casual games and entirely serviceable. Nowadays it's a hideous albatross that can barely boot Windows 11 and is nowhere close to what you can get in other categories for about the same price.
@glyph this is a product category where the main selling point is Jr. gets to have an education without Mom having to get another part time job. it doesn't have to be The Most Advanced Shitbox Ever, it just has to be cheap and mostly work.
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@glyph this is a product category where the main selling point is Jr. gets to have an education without Mom having to get another part time job. it doesn't have to be The Most Advanced Shitbox Ever, it just has to be cheap and mostly work.
@aeva yeah, I am aware, and I have even advised on some purchases in this category. IME the overall experience in the shitbox category has degraded —mostly due to Windows—to the point where it’s actively interfering with the education part. maybe others have good recent experiences but from what I have heard from students stuck with these it seems pretty dire
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@glyph this is a product category where the main selling point is Jr. gets to have an education without Mom having to get another part time job. it doesn't have to be The Most Advanced Shitbox Ever, it just has to be cheap and mostly work.
@glyph like, it seems obvious to me that the Neo doesn't exist because of unprecedented visionary design genius, it exists because the people in charge seem to be paying attention enough to notice that we've been in a period of significant downward mobility that isn't going to be stopping any time soon, and they need to meet their customers where they're at if they want to keep having any
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@glyph like, it seems obvious to me that the Neo doesn't exist because of unprecedented visionary design genius, it exists because the people in charge seem to be paying attention enough to notice that we've been in a period of significant downward mobility that isn't going to be stopping any time soon, and they need to meet their customers where they're at if they want to keep having any
@aeva you are probably right about that. I have another story about market segmentation and device categories that I would like to tell myself but tbh that is probably self-soothing about the state of the world outside the margins of this discussion
