Everyone has a MacBook Neo take, so here's mine.
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@kevingranade @glyph @darby3 I think that's a little different, though, in that a Chromebook is restricted to being just a browser *by design*. That wouldn't even be the worst if local-only PWAs were more popular, but browser UIs do a piss-poor job of surfacing dependencies on remote services.
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@xgranade Yeah, I don't think being stuck at 'every byte is precious and must be monitored carefully' would be great ...
... but I think the experience of learning how to program in a resource-conscious way is valuable, and treating ram as something to be utilized *reasonably*, and having *some* effort put into using it frugally would be a dramatic improvement over where we are now.@xgranade but it seems like basically only embedded devs, real-time systems, and those who go into certain niche hobby spaces like retro console systems really bother most of the time...
... and web dev has gone completely off the rails in the opposite direction. -
@xgranade but it seems like basically only embedded devs, real-time systems, and those who go into certain niche hobby spaces like retro console systems really bother most of the time...
... and web dev has gone completely off the rails in the opposite direction.@miss_rodent Yeah, like I tend not to go "the truth is in the middle," but I think that's the case here... we shouldn't all have to be retro console devs to make things (though that should still exist, not shitting on it!), but we shouldn't need to have web dev–scale devices to *use* software, either.
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Anyway, I still don't like Apple, I still think that *on the whole* they're net negative for computing, and severely so. But I try to also be intellectually honest and hold ~~nuanced views~~.
@xgranade
Intellectual honesty? In this economy?? -
@miss_rodent Yeah, like I tend not to go "the truth is in the middle," but I think that's the case here... we shouldn't all have to be retro console devs to make things (though that should still exist, not shitting on it!), but we shouldn't need to have web dev–scale devices to *use* software, either.
@xgranade Yeah, I am not generally a 'moderate' by default (... I'm more a mouthy opinionated idealogue, and in some areas even I'd describe my positions as 'extremist' just not in a bad way...)
... but for this case in particular, I think "Just show some reasonable restraint and moderation" is actually a good place to aim for; some things like high-end 4k gaming can have absurd requirements still, a word processor should prob be fine on like 1GB-2GB though - it's just formatted text!
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@xgranade Yeah, I am not generally a 'moderate' by default (... I'm more a mouthy opinionated idealogue, and in some areas even I'd describe my positions as 'extremist' just not in a bad way...)
... but for this case in particular, I think "Just show some reasonable restraint and moderation" is actually a good place to aim for; some things like high-end 4k gaming can have absurd requirements still, a word processor should prob be fine on like 1GB-2GB though - it's just formatted text!
@xgranade And websites... like... why the fuck is my browser choking on a news site text article? [Rhetorical; the answer is tracking and metrics and ad serves and shit, and blocking them makes it a lot less miserable - my point is, it's excessive and wasteful though]
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@glyph made the point that the Neo is an implicit promise from Apple that macOS will run just fine on 8 GB of memory for the next 8 years.
But I think it goes farther than that: Apple made a reference device for application developers. They've never been shy about enforcing requirements on developers, and this is an interesting positive side to that: developers now have a huge incentive to make applications that fit within modest memory limits.
@xgranade @glyph my first thought about the Neo was that Apple is using an iPhone chip and amount of RAM/storage it can squeeze into an iPhone for a laptop: there’s no reason other than siphoning money out of its users not to make the iPhone a primary computing device.
Instead of the Neo they could just let the iPhone do double-duty as a desktop. Sell a USB-C Dock to connect to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, let the phone run full applications.
The Neo is just proof that the iPhone is artificially hobbled as a device.
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@dalias @xgranade Yeah, emacs has always been ... heavy.
But it's also basically just a lisp OS. I've literally used it as a terminal emulator, browser, text editor, word processor, spreadd sheet, and email client... simultaneously.
And it doesn't seem to have gotten noticably heavier in the last couple decades, it's gotten to the point where I can't even really make fun of it for bloat anymore. -
@xgranade @glyph my first thought about the Neo was that Apple is using an iPhone chip and amount of RAM/storage it can squeeze into an iPhone for a laptop: there’s no reason other than siphoning money out of its users not to make the iPhone a primary computing device.
Instead of the Neo they could just let the iPhone do double-duty as a desktop. Sell a USB-C Dock to connect to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, let the phone run full applications.
The Neo is just proof that the iPhone is artificially hobbled as a device.
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@dalias @xgranade Yeah, emacs has always been ... heavy.
But it's also basically just a lisp OS. I've literally used it as a terminal emulator, browser, text editor, word processor, spreadd sheet, and email client... simultaneously.
And it doesn't seem to have gotten noticably heavier in the last couple decades, it's gotten to the point where I can't even really make fun of it for bloat anymore.@miss_rodent @xgranade That's the thing - at the time it was very heavy, but it's remained pretty much exactly the same weight for 3 decades while everything else grew to consume everything Moore's law gave it.
