Before the 12" MacBook, before the 11" MacBook Air, there was the 9" ASUS Eee PC hackintosh, and there were a number of new-to-macOS developers in our community who learned how to develop for iPhone on this very setup, and started their careers from it.
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@stroughtonsmith 2009 I had the Dell Mini 9! https://flickr.com/photos/tehdik/3469558956/in/photolist-6hAp11
@dk @stroughtonsmith MSI Wind Hackintosh checking in. Had to use an external monitor to go to system preferences cause some of the panes were too high for the crappy resolution.
Wasn't that young, but was at a point where I could not afford a proper Mac and yet still wanted to use macOS.
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Before the 12" MacBook, before the 11" MacBook Air, there was the 9" ASUS Eee PC hackintosh, and there were a number of new-to-macOS developers in our community who learned how to develop for iPhone on this very setup, and started their careers from it.
The Eee PC 901 netbook was priced at, you guessed it, the same $599 as the brand-new incredibly-powerful MacBook Neo
@stroughtonsmith I bought an eeePC 1001p on April 22, 2010 for USD 301.78 including shipping for use in Grad school. That would be ~$450 now
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Before the 12" MacBook, before the 11" MacBook Air, there was the 9" ASUS Eee PC hackintosh, and there were a number of new-to-macOS developers in our community who learned how to develop for iPhone on this very setup, and started their careers from it.
The Eee PC 901 netbook was priced at, you guessed it, the same $599 as the brand-new incredibly-powerful MacBook Neo
I had an Acer netbook that took to Snow Leopard just fine and ran that until I could afford a full desktop #hackintosh. That’s what started me into liking Apple initially and I still keep coming back to Macs today despite my love for #Linux.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@stroughtonsmith 2009 I had the Dell Mini 9! https://flickr.com/photos/tehdik/3469558956/in/photolist-6hAp11
@dk @stroughtonsmith I was just about to mention the Mini 9, we had one as well, also running macOS.
Wonderful little device, I’m perpetually tempted to try and find one again.
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Before the 12" MacBook, before the 11" MacBook Air, there was the 9" ASUS Eee PC hackintosh, and there were a number of new-to-macOS developers in our community who learned how to develop for iPhone on this very setup, and started their careers from it.
The Eee PC 901 netbook was priced at, you guessed it, the same $599 as the brand-new incredibly-powerful MacBook Neo
@stroughtonsmith man, I miss mine
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Before the 12" MacBook, before the 11" MacBook Air, there was the 9" ASUS Eee PC hackintosh, and there were a number of new-to-macOS developers in our community who learned how to develop for iPhone on this very setup, and started their careers from it.
The Eee PC 901 netbook was priced at, you guessed it, the same $599 as the brand-new incredibly-powerful MacBook Neo
@stroughtonsmith when the Neo was initially rumoured it was said to have white coloured bezels. I can see the cutout for the camera here and that’s why Apple probably dropped that idea!
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@stroughtonsmith 2009 I had the Dell Mini 9! https://flickr.com/photos/tehdik/3469558956/in/photolist-6hAp11
@dk that looks better than Liquid Glass.
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Before the 12" MacBook, before the 11" MacBook Air, there was the 9" ASUS Eee PC hackintosh, and there were a number of new-to-macOS developers in our community who learned how to develop for iPhone on this very setup, and started their careers from it.
The Eee PC 901 netbook was priced at, you guessed it, the same $599 as the brand-new incredibly-powerful MacBook Neo
@stroughtonsmith Today with half the purchasing power.

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Before the 12" MacBook, before the 11" MacBook Air, there was the 9" ASUS Eee PC hackintosh, and there were a number of new-to-macOS developers in our community who learned how to develop for iPhone on this very setup, and started their careers from it.
The Eee PC 901 netbook was priced at, you guessed it, the same $599 as the brand-new incredibly-powerful MacBook Neo
@stroughtonsmith I suspect that a significant chunk of the strength of both Apple’s dev and user bases are owed to the hackintosh scene. More than Apple would ever dare to admit.
For example a lot of the more visible participants were pro audio people who had outgrown their old cheese grater towers but weren’t adequately served by the trash can Mac Pro. That’s a bunch of people who would’ve otherwise jumped ship.
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Before the 12" MacBook, before the 11" MacBook Air, there was the 9" ASUS Eee PC hackintosh, and there were a number of new-to-macOS developers in our community who learned how to develop for iPhone on this very setup, and started their careers from it.
The Eee PC 901 netbook was priced at, you guessed it, the same $599 as the brand-new incredibly-powerful MacBook Neo
@stroughtonsmith I miss the 901 still.
Now there's the GPD Pocket 4, but it's not the same.
Whould have loved some newer hardware in there. -
Before the 12" MacBook, before the 11" MacBook Air, there was the 9" ASUS Eee PC hackintosh, and there were a number of new-to-macOS developers in our community who learned how to develop for iPhone on this very setup, and started their careers from it.
The Eee PC 901 netbook was priced at, you guessed it, the same $599 as the brand-new incredibly-powerful MacBook Neo
@stroughtonsmith The Macbook Neo (2026) has the compute power of the iPhone 16 (2024) because it has literally the same SoC.
I wonder how the eeePC (2008) compares to the iPhone 1 (2007) in raw performance.
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@stroughtonsmith The Macbook Neo (2026) has the compute power of the iPhone 16 (2024) because it has literally the same SoC.
I wonder how the eeePC (2008) compares to the iPhone 1 (2007) in raw performance.
@Peetz0r @stroughtonsmith eeePC benchmark: https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/2743195
iphone 16 benchmark: https://browser.geekbench.com/ios_devices/iphone-16 -
@Peetz0r @stroughtonsmith eeePC benchmark: https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/2743195
iphone 16 benchmark: https://browser.geekbench.com/ios_devices/iphone-16@adamrice @stroughtonsmith Yes but how does that compare to the iPhone 1 (or any other smartphone from 2007-2008).
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Before the 12" MacBook, before the 11" MacBook Air, there was the 9" ASUS Eee PC hackintosh, and there were a number of new-to-macOS developers in our community who learned how to develop for iPhone on this very setup, and started their careers from it.
The Eee PC 901 netbook was priced at, you guessed it, the same $599 as the brand-new incredibly-powerful MacBook Neo
@stroughtonsmith the purchase power back then was a heck of a lot bigger.
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@Peetz0r @stroughtonsmith eeePC benchmark: https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/2743195
iphone 16 benchmark: https://browser.geekbench.com/ios_devices/iphone-16@adamrice @Peetz0r you can't remotely compare a Geekbench 2 result to Geekbench 6, but just for fun I can convert it. The most recent Geekbench 2 result I have is an iPhone 6, which I have benchmarked on GB5. And I can bench the MacBook Neo on GB5 too.
Neo: 2394
iPhone 6: 327For a 7.32x multiplier.
So the MacBook Neo would be 17,868 in GB2 numbers, or 22.6X the performance of the eeePC, per core
(Naturally, you can't directly convert between GB results, but fun experiment)



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Before the 12" MacBook, before the 11" MacBook Air, there was the 9" ASUS Eee PC hackintosh, and there were a number of new-to-macOS developers in our community who learned how to develop for iPhone on this very setup, and started their careers from it.
The Eee PC 901 netbook was priced at, you guessed it, the same $599 as the brand-new incredibly-powerful MacBook Neo
@stroughtonsmith I used a Medion Akoya E1222 10" netbook with a single-core Intel Atom N450 and 2 GB of RAM to run Snow Leopard – I think this thing cost about 250€ in 2008 at my local Aldi supermarket. It was quite useable, the only problem was that some application windows were too tall for the 1024 x 600 display.
Medion Akoya E1222
Medion Akoya E1222 specifications. Class Netbook, display size 10 inches, processor Intel Atom 1.66 GHz, graphics Intel GMA 3150, ram memory 1 GB, storage 250 GB
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