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 @miss_rodent @aeva I miss netbooks. Like, yeah, I know they still exist, but not like circa 2008, when they were cheap and low-powered but well-designed and filled a very particular niche.
@xgranade @glyph @miss_rodent @aeva every now and then I dig out my EeePC 901 for a thrill of nostalgia. About 90 seconds of typing is all it takes for me to wish to put it away again. But what a great little device it was/is.
Best netbook trick I ever pulled with it was loading some offline'd pages from WikiTravel onto it while romping around in Europe for the first time. City guides and language guides, mostly. But it felt truly futuristic, especially in an era when offlining stuff like that was more of a pain in the ass.
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@miss_rodent @glyph @aeva I got my current XPS 13 towards the start of the pandemic, and... it's beginning to show its age. There's basically nothing out there that can replace it, though.
There's other product categories, but that niche of "professional machine with mid-tier specs in a solid case" has just vanished. Now you tend to either find absolute shit for inflated prices or super-premium machines at outrageous prices.
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@miss_rodent @xgranade @aeva the experience in both software and hardware has been degrading for decades but for a long time it had a sort of janky DIY charm. now it’s just broken and kinda ruining people’s lives with faulty-from-factory parts
@miss_rodent @xgranade @aeva like I had a shitbox that barely worked in ~2007 and I loved it, I even named it “trogdor” because it had a rear vent that would just blow SCALDING hot air that you absolutely did not want to touch. if I ask someone of a similar age and laptop budget how they feel about their current budget windows box now, well, at best it sounds much like your story, at worst they just get a thousand yard stare and say “can we talk about something else”
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@glyph
I worry they might segment the os market... Could we see an Lite MacOS? No terminal, limited AppStore only installs?The bigger risk is that some school districts may buy these for kids, and then lock them down in the name of child safety, eliminating the possibility of discovery and curiosity.
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@miss_rodent @glyph @aeva I got my current XPS 13 towards the start of the pandemic, and... it's beginning to show its age. There's basically nothing out there that can replace it, though.
There's other product categories, but that niche of "professional machine with mid-tier specs in a solid case" has just vanished. Now you tend to either find absolute shit for inflated prices or super-premium machines at outrageous prices.
@miss_rodent @glyph @aeva 32 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD, hi-dpi screen, and a reasonable processor for like $1400 at Costco. I can't imagine something like that now.
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The bigger risk is that some school districts may buy these for kids, and then lock them down in the name of child safety, eliminating the possibility of discovery and curiosity.
@joelle @thomasdorr the reason that I don’t see this as a risk is that it’s the current state of affairs pretty much everywhere, except with iPads and chromebooks. Famously, one of the big trends among middle school kids right now is having conversations in comments sections on barely visible objects in homework google docs because there’s no other messaging software permitted on their egregiously supervised school devices
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@glyph @aeva I am a certified Apple hater, and so I'm perfectly fine saying that while I think some Apple hardware is catastrophically badly design (e.g.: plugging the mouse in from the bottom, or Antennagate), I don't think they tend to fall into "made so poorly that it's manifestly unfit for purpose." That's more than I can say for bottom-rung HP laptops, sadly.
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@miss_rodent @glyph @aeva 32 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD, hi-dpi screen, and a reasonable processor for like $1400 at Costco. I can't imagine something like that now.
@xgranade @miss_rodent @aeva I can, it’s a macbook air
one of the reasons I am even peripherally aware of this mountain of defects (honestly, *my* lightly used no-copilot Windows VM kinda works fine) is that for an ever-lengthening list of reasons, I *REALLY* do not like recommending exclusively Apple products. but the alternatives remain so dramatically worse for most people that it’s hard for me to get away from.
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@xgranade @miss_rodent @aeva I can, it’s a macbook air
one of the reasons I am even peripherally aware of this mountain of defects (honestly, *my* lightly used no-copilot Windows VM kinda works fine) is that for an ever-lengthening list of reasons, I *REALLY* do not like recommending exclusively Apple products. but the alternatives remain so dramatically worse for most people that it’s hard for me to get away from.
@xgranade @miss_rodent @aeva You can get *pretty* close with Framework, I guess? $1700 not $1400, to compare to Apple’s $1500 with similar specs
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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 Hey I agree and have run school fleets of Macs and Chromebooks. I also once converted a school to Ubuntu. AMA.
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@xgranade @miss_rodent @aeva You can get *pretty* close with Framework, I guess? $1700 not $1400, to compare to Apple’s $1500 with similar specs
@glyph @xgranade @miss_rodent framework has it backwards you're not supposed to sell the shitbox for the price of a good computer
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@xgranade @miss_rodent @aeva I can, it’s a macbook air
one of the reasons I am even peripherally aware of this mountain of defects (honestly, *my* lightly used no-copilot Windows VM kinda works fine) is that for an ever-lengthening list of reasons, I *REALLY* do not like recommending exclusively Apple products. but the alternatives remain so dramatically worse for most people that it’s hard for me to get away from.
@glyph @miss_rodent @aeva Yeah..... but the nice thing about the XPS line was always how easy it was to just throw Linux on it. I don't think Asahi is there yet, IIUC?
That's getting far afield of the point though, sorry. I don't know what I'd tell a grass-touching friend if they asked me what kind of computer they should get.
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@glyph @xgranade @miss_rodent framework has it backwards you're not supposed to sell the shitbox for the price of a good computer
@aeva @glyph @miss_rodent The whole DHH thing completely undermined any competitive differentiation they might have had, too. If I'm OK with buying from fash, I'm not going to pay a premium to go with Framework.
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@glyph Hey I agree and have run school fleets of Macs and Chromebooks. I also once converted a school to Ubuntu. AMA.
@mttaggart that is awesome to hear! I definitely have questions, beginning with: were you converting existing hardware with the ubuntu conversion or sourcing something new?
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@glyph @miss_rodent @aeva Yeah..... but the nice thing about the XPS line was always how easy it was to just throw Linux on it. I don't think Asahi is there yet, IIUC?
That's getting far afield of the point though, sorry. I don't know what I'd tell a grass-touching friend if they asked me what kind of computer they should get.
@xgranade @miss_rodent @aeva Asahi is EXTREMELY not there. The main reason to get a mac to run Asahi is to help develop Asahi, largely while it is plugged in to your other computer that you use for work, which you hopefully also have
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@miss_rodent @glyph @aeva I got my current XPS 13 towards the start of the pandemic, and... it's beginning to show its age. There's basically nothing out there that can replace it, though.
There's other product categories, but that niche of "professional machine with mid-tier specs in a solid case" has just vanished. Now you tend to either find absolute shit for inflated prices or super-premium machines at outrageous prices.
@xgranade @glyph @aeva Yeah I've been looking into options for a new laptop, the last decent one I got was a system76 in like 2016 - it's like 1700$ for the newer model of the same, with less ram and storage, negligably-better processor. x.x
So I'm really leaning towards the 'reurbished thinkpad' sort of space for my next one.
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@mttaggart that is awesome to hear! I definitely have questions, beginning with: were you converting existing hardware with the ubuntu conversion or sourcing something new?
@glyph The Ubuntu conversion was a budgetary decision at the end of a MacBook Pro lifecycle. The reality was sourcing PC laptops but using Ubuntu for a more familiar interface/working with similar services made more sense than going all-in on Windows. It was an opportunity to see if it could work, and it mostly did, except at the time (2013), there were serious issues with Broadcom WiFi drivers that necessitated a lot of handholding.
