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
I saw somewhere a take that this is getting us used to weak hardware that cannot do much of anything, and thus forcing us to rent cloud services for anything and everything@viq@social.hackerspace.pl @glyph@mastodon.social which is quite funny because when I looked at the A18 benchmarks vs. the M1 in an Air, which is still quite a powerful machine, the A18 goes fucking hard.
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What is interesting about the device is not that you *should* buy it—the whole value proposition is that it is a very cheap, but also kinda bad, MacBook—it's that people *will* buy it. A lot. It fills a market gap. The only products that this is positioned against are Chromebooks and iPads; cheap refurb Linux machines are not in the same product category for most potential buyers, and I think the fact that Linux fans do not understand the different categories are endemic to why Linux struggles.
Potential customers for this fall into a few categories, including:
1. Parents who don't know a lot about tech, but whose kids need "a laptop" for school.
2. Kids & young adults who want a macbook to run something like GarageBand but have a very limited budget *and* also don't otherwise know much about tech.
3. Schools.
4. School-like programs, like software dev clubs & summer camps.These customer types need a low price, but they also need A LOT of *support*. The support is the product here.
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Potential customers for this fall into a few categories, including:
1. Parents who don't know a lot about tech, but whose kids need "a laptop" for school.
2. Kids & young adults who want a macbook to run something like GarageBand but have a very limited budget *and* also don't otherwise know much about tech.
3. Schools.
4. School-like programs, like software dev clubs & summer camps.These customer types need a low price, but they also need A LOT of *support*. The support is the product here.
Out of all of these I have the most experience with category 4. I have set up labs full of Linux computers on many occasions. I've also done the same for macs. I won't say that macs are universally superior but there are TONS of things about imaging, configuring, provisioning, and authenticating macs that are vastly superior to Linux. If it's to teach a topic that isn't programming or sysadmin, like say graphic design, macOS has huge, huge advantages for legibility to the instructor.
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@glyph
I saw somewhere a take that this is getting us used to weak hardware that cannot do much of anything, and thus forcing us to rent cloud services for anything and everything -
Out of all of these I have the most experience with category 4. I have set up labs full of Linux computers on many occasions. I've also done the same for macs. I won't say that macs are universally superior but there are TONS of things about imaging, configuring, provisioning, and authenticating macs that are vastly superior to Linux. If it's to teach a topic that isn't programming or sysadmin, like say graphic design, macOS has huge, huge advantages for legibility to the instructor.
Yes, you could personally get a more powerful computer by getting a refurb 16GB M1 MacBook Air somewhere by bargain hunting. But you will need to hunt; right now on the official refurb store the cheapest MacBook Air is $929. If you're shopping on eBay, now you've got a machine with a ton of wear cycles on the SSD, and dubious amounts of damage.
If you, personally, have the time & energy for that, it *IS* a better choice.
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Yes, you could personally get a more powerful computer by getting a refurb 16GB M1 MacBook Air somewhere by bargain hunting. But you will need to hunt; right now on the official refurb store the cheapest MacBook Air is $929. If you're shopping on eBay, now you've got a machine with a ton of wear cycles on the SSD, and dubious amounts of damage.
If you, personally, have the time & energy for that, it *IS* a better choice.
But if you're trying to source a 50-machine bulk order for a CS extracurricular program, with a uniform hardware profile so that students have a consistent experience, then no, you cannot reliably do that by going around to garage sales and rummaging through bargain bins. You cannot afford to repair all of these units (which WILL have a failure rate several times the average for a new machine) yourself. You can't even afford to troubleshoot them and manage the RMA process.
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Potential customers for this fall into a few categories, including:
1. Parents who don't know a lot about tech, but whose kids need "a laptop" for school.
2. Kids & young adults who want a macbook to run something like GarageBand but have a very limited budget *and* also don't otherwise know much about tech.
3. Schools.
4. School-like programs, like software dev clubs & summer camps.These customer types need a low price, but they also need A LOT of *support*. The support is the product here.
@glyph Notably: All situations where there is usually a very small list of "approved" devices by whatever school or organization is involved - None of which will be linux devices, because linux hasn't done the lobbying & buy-in to enter the 'exploiting children and students' market for anything that isn't a tech/computers (programming, admin, etc.) class already in the first place.
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Yes, you could personally get a more powerful computer by getting a refurb 16GB M1 MacBook Air somewhere by bargain hunting. But you will need to hunt; right now on the official refurb store the cheapest MacBook Air is $929. If you're shopping on eBay, now you've got a machine with a ton of wear cycles on the SSD, and dubious amounts of damage.
If you, personally, have the time & energy for that, it *IS* a better choice.
@glyph I have two 16GB M1 MacBook Airs from 2020 that I am *never letting go of* and expect to use for years to come
one has a bad pixel though ;_; *sob*
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But if you're trying to source a 50-machine bulk order for a CS extracurricular program, with a uniform hardware profile so that students have a consistent experience, then no, you cannot reliably do that by going around to garage sales and rummaging through bargain bins. You cannot afford to repair all of these units (which WILL have a failure rate several times the average for a new machine) yourself. You can't even afford to troubleshoot them and manage the RMA process.
This problem is magnified for institutional buyers, but for folks without a ton of tech experience it's the same. The 1-year manufacturer warranty for new-in-store models is a big deal. The implicit promise of several years of software support is really important. Apple stores run free trainings you can go to. They have a business support program where you can talk to someone about fleet management problems for free. They have 24/7 chat support on the web if you have software issues.
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@glyph Notably: All situations where there is usually a very small list of "approved" devices by whatever school or organization is involved - None of which will be linux devices, because linux hasn't done the lobbying & buy-in to enter the 'exploiting children and students' market for anything that isn't a tech/computers (programming, admin, etc.) class already in the first place.
@glyph Like, when my cousin had to get a 'school laptop' the school told them what sort of laptop it *could* be, what OSes it *could* run, etc. -
No one is putting 'refurbished thinkpad running linux' on that list. -
This problem is magnified for institutional buyers, but for folks without a ton of tech experience it's the same. The 1-year manufacturer warranty for new-in-store models is a big deal. The implicit promise of several years of software support is really important. Apple stores run free trainings you can go to. They have a business support program where you can talk to someone about fleet management problems for free. They have 24/7 chat support on the web if you have software issues.
If you think that you can compete with this with a bespoke Linux installation on a few old ThinkPads, you need to figure out a way to provide *all that other stuff* to the people who will be using them. And I wish you would! If you ran a charity campaign to raise money to scale up such an effort for a few local school districts in a particular region, I'd probably donate to it!
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@glyph Like, when my cousin had to get a 'school laptop' the school told them what sort of laptop it *could* be, what OSes it *could* run, etc. -
No one is putting 'refurbished thinkpad running linux' on that list.@glyph (okay, not "no one", I'm sure if the FSF is sponsoring an event, refurb thinkpad with a linux distro is an option -
but... that is so niche as to be negligible, and not at all the same market this is aimed at.) -
If you think that you can compete with this with a bespoke Linux installation on a few old ThinkPads, you need to figure out a way to provide *all that other stuff* to the people who will be using them. And I wish you would! If you ran a charity campaign to raise money to scale up such an effort for a few local school districts in a particular region, I'd probably donate to it!
But if you have people with zero tech experience in your life, who have a kid who doesn't really know what kind of computer they need… I'm not going to tell you that you should never recommend Linux to such a person. But at the *very least* you cannot be recommending that they go bargain hunting for mystery-meat laptops that will "probably work with Linux". You need to find a company like System76 or Framework that will actually help them out if the dang thing breaks.
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But if you have people with zero tech experience in your life, who have a kid who doesn't really know what kind of computer they need… I'm not going to tell you that you should never recommend Linux to such a person. But at the *very least* you cannot be recommending that they go bargain hunting for mystery-meat laptops that will "probably work with Linux". You need to find a company like System76 or Framework that will actually help them out if the dang thing breaks.
@glyph even then you'll need to prep your response for random "the trackpad stopped working" texts!
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But if you have people with zero tech experience in your life, who have a kid who doesn't really know what kind of computer they need… I'm not going to tell you that you should never recommend Linux to such a person. But at the *very least* you cannot be recommending that they go bargain hunting for mystery-meat laptops that will "probably work with Linux". You need to find a company like System76 or Framework that will actually help them out if the dang thing breaks.
Telling someone to get an old Linux machine when they don't know anything about Linux yet, and then sending them off to college only for them to fail out of their first literature seminar because when they needed to submit their homework their wifi suddenly stopped working, and that "shouldn't be a big deal because you can get a more reliable driver on github" or some other kind of "fuck you" like that, you're turning other people into grist for your ideological project.
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Telling someone to get an old Linux machine when they don't know anything about Linux yet, and then sending them off to college only for them to fail out of their first literature seminar because when they needed to submit their homework their wifi suddenly stopped working, and that "shouldn't be a big deal because you can get a more reliable driver on github" or some other kind of "fuck you" like that, you're turning other people into grist for your ideological project.
If you really want to help them save money, step zero is you have to volunteer to be 24/7 on-call tech support, be responsible for the decision, and help them out every step of the way. I have done this! It's a TON of work! It can be very rewarding when you help people build the relevant skills to use a computer like that. Personally, I have a kid now and I could not handle it today myself, but if you can do it you probably *should*, but it's important that you recognize you *need to*.
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Telling someone to get an old Linux machine when they don't know anything about Linux yet, and then sending them off to college only for them to fail out of their first literature seminar because when they needed to submit their homework their wifi suddenly stopped working, and that "shouldn't be a big deal because you can get a more reliable driver on github" or some other kind of "fuck you" like that, you're turning other people into grist for your ideological project.
@glyph ... also a lot of schools run or require some sketchy terrible proprietary shit, that, like, unless you're very comfortable futzing with things, often just refuses to work on linux, or adds a bunch of extra hoops to jump through.
As someone who *did* use linux through my time at university (over 15 years ago, doesn't seem to have improved really) - I sometimes had to argue with teachers about acceptable file formats, there was a weird security block from an LMS one class used, etc. -
If you really want to help them save money, step zero is you have to volunteer to be 24/7 on-call tech support, be responsible for the decision, and help them out every step of the way. I have done this! It's a TON of work! It can be very rewarding when you help people build the relevant skills to use a computer like that. Personally, I have a kid now and I could not handle it today myself, but if you can do it you probably *should*, but it's important that you recognize you *need to*.
So, back to the MacBook Neo and why it is interesting.
If you're reading this, you probably shouldn't buy it. But you should be aware that so many people *are* going to buy it, that it's going to set a consistent new minimum standard for software. For one thing, lots of apps are going to want to start targeting "fits into a MacBook Neo's memory envelope", which is to say, 8GB minus macOS overhead. Cheap hardware exists now, but not enough of it deployed consistently enough for app devs to care.
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@glyph ... also a lot of schools run or require some sketchy terrible proprietary shit, that, like, unless you're very comfortable futzing with things, often just refuses to work on linux, or adds a bunch of extra hoops to jump through.
As someone who *did* use linux through my time at university (over 15 years ago, doesn't seem to have improved really) - I sometimes had to argue with teachers about acceptable file formats, there was a weird security block from an LMS one class used, etc.@glyph Like, it was mostly doable - but also most of my classes were offline and involved literally 0 software. Papers were mostly fine to be handed in on actual paper, I only had one class that used the LMS (the other professors fucking hated it because it was new and barely worked), etc. -
So it was likely *easier* when I did it, before the big tech mnopolies got their tentacles into every educational orifice in the country. -
So, back to the MacBook Neo and why it is interesting.
If you're reading this, you probably shouldn't buy it. But you should be aware that so many people *are* going to buy it, that it's going to set a consistent new minimum standard for software. For one thing, lots of apps are going to want to start targeting "fits into a MacBook Neo's memory envelope", which is to say, 8GB minus macOS overhead. Cheap hardware exists now, but not enough of it deployed consistently enough for app devs to care.
@glyph honestly for average use cases (browsers, docs, spreadsheets) 8 GB is plenty. If memory hogs like browsers could just intelligently reset to avoid using swap there'd be no need to do the manual 'quit everything' cycle to free memory
