There is a certain kind of computer review that is really a permission slip. It tells you what you’re allowed to want. It locates you in a taxonomy — student, creative, professional, power user — and assigns you a product. It is helpful. It is responsible. It has very little interest in what you might become.
The MacBook Neo has attracted a lot of these reviews.
The consensus is reasonable: $599, A18 Pro, 8GB RAM, stripped-down I/O. A Chromebook killer, a first laptop, a sensible machine for sensible tasks. “If you are thinking about Xcode or Final Cut, this is not the computer for you.” The people saying this are not wrong. It is also not the point.
Nobody starts in the right place. You don’t begin with the correct tool and work sensibly within its constraints until you organically graduate to a more capable one. That is not how obsession works. Obsession works by taking whatever is available and pressing on it until it either breaks or reveals something. The machine’s limits become a map of the territory. You learn what computing actually costs by paying too much of it on hardware that can barely afford it.
Great piece on the MacBook Neo, which makes me nostalgic for the days where I’d be so enthusiastic about technology that I’d push it to its limits, versus meeting its minimum.
It’s a coincidental companion piece to some conversation on this week’s The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast where Jorma Taccone talks about how they’d make beats, and the convoluted ways they’d get the results they’d want, which — once they knew about or could afford the right tools — came so much easier later.
Maybe there’s a lesson in this, about doing more with less. Worth a thought.