I don't think this is about the macbook neo. I don't think the comments need to devolve into a mac vs. linux argument. It's simply an ode to that kid pushing hardware to the limits, and learning so much along the way.

What I feel a bit sad about is, I was that kid. Growing up in a 3rd world country, running games that i didn't own on hardware that ought not run it, debugging why those games don't work, rooting my phone and installing custom OSs just for the heck of it. Man I had so much time to tinker.

Now I have amazing gaming hardware but I barely touch games. When I do, its on steam. I've swapped out the endless tinkerability of android with the vanilla 'it just works'-ness of the iphone. That curiosity took me far, but I seem to have lost it along the way.

(Author of the post here) The post was inspired by the Neo and provoked by a certain YouTuber’s review of it, but yeah it’s about the Neo in the same way that The Old Man and the Sea is about fishing.

I wrote about the Mac in general since that’s what I know, but I imagine if I grew up in the Windows world and liked Windows more, I would have a similar experience with my dad’s old ThinkPad or something.

> I've swapped out the endless tinkerability of android with the vanilla 'it just works'-ness of the iphone. That curiosity took me far, but I seem to have lost it along the way.

I feel this, and on the whole I've done the same thing. I'm deep in the Apple ecosystem because it all just works together without me having to tinker with it. I think this is mostly a reaction to now doing that stuff professionally - 4 days a week, whether I feel like it or not, I'm required to make computers do things they couldn't do before I started.

When I get to the end of the work day, or out of bed on a Sunday morning, I might get the urge to tinker with things but I refuse to have tinkering with things to make them work be a requirement for my rest time. Leisure tinkering must be on my terms, because if I'm forced to tinker with something just to do what I really wanted to do that's not tinkering, that's the thing fucking with me, and I will swear profusely at it throughout.

I didn't grow up in a 3rd world country but had the same experience, bar running games I don't own. Not everyone in the west had parents that wanted to just spend thousands on hardware that seemed to be obsolete next year, or any means of making that money. And I've never stopped using sub-par hardware, to this day I enjoy squeezing every drop of performance from cheap pre-owned stuff.

Mostly same story. Tinkered for hours with Windows 3.1 floppy disks. Reinstalling OS’s all the time because I’d break stuff or I’d just want a fresh slate. I loved pushing the boundaries. In my 30’s I slowed down with the tinkering because of life (kids, work). I thought I lost the ability to tinker. But recently at 42, I bought a MacBook for the sole purpose of tinkering on the couch at the end of the day (basically after being on computer the whole day, I didn’t want to be in office anymore). And slowly, it’s coming back. I’m playing with new things, learning about Neural Networks, learning about Softare Defined Radio, installing tons of random libraries and tools to test that out. It’s coming back. Keep pushing on it and hopefully it returns for you too!

> I don't think this is about the macbook neo.

It shouldn't be, except that the author chose to make every single paragraph about Mac, Apple ecosystem and bashing Chromebook.

Most of us learned a lot that way, trying to squeeze and make something work out of nothing. That's why we understand much more than kids today. In the end that is the reason I still optimize stuff in my corporate company and I have a pretty awesome job, so it's a good path.