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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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
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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.
It's also going to give a TON more kids access to things like "a terminal". Kids will be encountering MacBook Neos in places where they've previously seen Chromebooks or iPads, devices which either cannot be used to write software at all, or implicitly have locks that most people will not bother to remove. This will not be 100% consistent (some schools will wall off MacBook Neo dev tools for "security", I'm sure) but it will still be a big enough population that it will be *interesting*.
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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!
@glyph
Unfortunately, secondhand laptops now come with no SSDs or RAM as people pinch them now there's a shortage... -
@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.@miss_rodent yeah I agree with all that but if I start delving into that part of the problem domain, I will have to start thinking about "digital proctor software" and I will get so angry I will explode
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@miss_rodent yeah I agree with all that but if I start delving into that part of the problem domain, I will have to start thinking about "digital proctor software" and I will get so angry I will explode
@glyph Entirely reasonable thing to explode about, tbqh, but fair.
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@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
@glyph Apple's in a unique position here: like on iOS, they could force app memory onto disk if they're in the background and using too much memory. they could even publicly shame the app, saying on screen what happened to explain slower access times as it's rehydrated into memory
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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.
@glyph It’s always interesting that that Chromebook isn’t counted as a Linux laptop. It’s like Champagne- it only counts as a Linux laptop if you need at least three obscure terminal commands to get it working properly, otherwise it’s just a sparkling laptop.
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@glyph Apple's in a unique position here: like on iOS, they could force app memory onto disk if they're in the background and using too much memory. they could even publicly shame the app, saying on screen what happened to explain slower access times as it's rehydrated into memory
@seanlinsley earlier today I posted something similar, and I kinda hope it happens, but I don't want to get *too* far out over my skis imagining stuff like that because the fact remains that right now they *have not* done that, and an equally possible outcome is that they just make the experience of the Neo suck so that everyone is banging into its limitations all the time and starts lusting after an upgrade. Let's not give them too much credit that they haven't earned
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It's also going to give a TON more kids access to things like "a terminal". Kids will be encountering MacBook Neos in places where they've previously seen Chromebooks or iPads, devices which either cannot be used to write software at all, or implicitly have locks that most people will not bother to remove. This will not be 100% consistent (some schools will wall off MacBook Neo dev tools for "security", I'm sure) but it will still be a big enough population that it will be *interesting*.
@glyph
... I miss cheap PCs (especially when they were 32bit and thus still came with a built-in debugger (yes, even Windows 10 had this!)). For all the flaws of old Windows builds (and there are almost infinite of those), you can basically get almost anything to run decades down the line! -
@glyph
... I miss cheap PCs (especially when they were 32bit and thus still came with a built-in debugger (yes, even Windows 10 had this!)). For all the flaws of old Windows builds (and there are almost infinite of those), you can basically get almost anything to run decades down the line!@ddlyh I remember buying an Eee PC on day 1 and thinking it was going to change the world, so maybe my analysis is not entirely correct here either
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It's also going to give a TON more kids access to things like "a terminal". Kids will be encountering MacBook Neos in places where they've previously seen Chromebooks or iPads, devices which either cannot be used to write software at all, or implicitly have locks that most people will not bother to remove. This will not be 100% consistent (some schools will wall off MacBook Neo dev tools for "security", I'm sure) but it will still be a big enough population that it will be *interesting*.
@glyph
I worry they might segment the os market... Could we see an Lite MacOS? No terminal, limited AppStore only installs? -
@ddlyh I remember buying an Eee PC on day 1 and thinking it was going to change the world, so maybe my analysis is not entirely correct here either
@glyph
Netbooks did change the world *briefly*, until Apple managed to market a giant iPod touch better than any proper computer manufacturer had done for decades. "Technological progress" was supplanted by "marketing progress" once again... -
@seanlinsley earlier today I posted something similar, and I kinda hope it happens, but I don't want to get *too* far out over my skis imagining stuff like that because the fact remains that right now they *have not* done that, and an equally possible outcome is that they just make the experience of the Neo suck so that everyone is banging into its limitations all the time and starts lusting after an upgrade. Let's not give them too much credit that they haven't earned
@glyph true, but I think the iOS precedence does make it more likely.
If I were working at Apple in a leadership position and involved in this project, this would be the first step in a 20 year plan to take large market share from Windows. So it'd be pointless to kneecap the Neo; you'd want it work as well as it can so as people need more power they're happy to pay more b/c of the trust established
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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 If I were going to get them on Linux, I'd tell them to get a used business thinkpad, specific model. Hardly "mystery meat". But I wouldn't do that to begin with unless I wanted to do support or knew they could handle it themselves.
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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!
@glyph I spent 6 months, starting May 2025 figuring out solid list of distros and configs that work on Core 2 Duo. Anything newer is even easier and more powerful. I was wanting to help people that needed/wanted computer but didn't have one get something solid. I have yet to find one person that was interested. They only want phones, tablets, or gaming consoles.
