That kid will be much better off with a used laptop and Linux or BSD.

Or they learn to enable developer mode, unlock the bootloader, and install Linux, or use the officially supported Crostini, or so on. There's like 3 different ways to run Linux desktop apps on a modern Chromebook.

The Macbooks don't let have an officially supported path to unlocking the bootloader (edit: yes, I'm aware of asahi linux, which lives on the edge of what apple allows) and install your own OS. The Chromebooks do. I don't think that comparison plays as favorably as you think.

I still made it work. I got pretty good at reading the waveform preview, and was able to use that to figure out where to do cuts. I would apply effects and walk through frame by frame with the arrow keys to see how it looked. It usually took all night (and sometimes a bit of the next day) to render videos into 1080i, but it would render and the resulting videos would be fine.

Eventually I got a job and saved up and bought a decent CPU and GPU and editing got 10x easier, but I still kind of look back on the time of me having to make my shitty computer work with a certain degree of fondness. When you have a decent job with decent money you can buy the equipment you need to do most tasks, but there's sort of a purity in doing a task that you really don't have the equipment you need.

Is that even possible now? Probably not. Years ago I tried to get my kids interested in playing with their own Raspberry Pi when they came out, that they could do whatever they wanted with on the side, to little effect. Not even the idea of setting one up as their own Minecraft server (they were heavily into it at the time) piqued their interest. Oh well.

Personally I think a the Steam Machine will have a better chance to cheat a general computing device into the home of someone not looking for it. The Neo gives me hope on price point.

I had replaced all the Windows sounds and cursors to customize the system so it looked and sounded like a Sci Fi system. I even patched the boot screen to be a humorous screen of "MS Broken Windows". It also was quite broken from messing with system files I didn't understand.

It was a magical period and I learned so much.

This is a $599 computer with purpose-built architecture for (barely) running (small, underpowered, near-useless) LLMs. There are children saving pennies for this machine that will do great, horrifying, dangerous things with these computers. I can’t wait to see the results.

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.

I'm in the same boat as the author; I cut my teeth on a hand-me-down 2005 eMac, then a hand-me-down 2008 Macbook, before finally getting my own 2011 iMac. I think this is overly harsh on Chromebooks given they belong to the cheaper end of the market - you can still put linux on them and go for gold, you're just going to hit earlier resource limits.

I think when you're younger and building an aptitude for computers, it's the limitations of what you have that drive an off-the-shelf challenge: doing what you can with what you've got. That can vary from just trying to play the same video games as your friends (love what /r/lowendgaming does), usage restrictions (e.g locked down school issued laptops) or running professional tooling (very slowly) just like the author.

When IT caught my interest, I did all of the above - on Mac, Windows and Linux, on completely garbage machines. The Macbook Neo is an awesome machine for it's cost/value, but I don't think it's hugely special in the respect described beyond making more power available at a more accessible price point.

10 year old me identifies with this so much.

I managed to get the computer to display 256 colours instead of the 16 it had been set up with. Everyone was impressed and this meant I was now allowed to take the computer apart and put it back together again without anyone being scared.

Brilliant. Thank you for that.

This hits home. Not because I did it as a kid; I'm a bit old for that. But because I've done this exact thing two or three times. You stare and know, just know, that somewhere in this byzantine interface there is the raw power to do lots of cool 3D stuff. But damn. It's quite an interface.

> That is not a bug in how he’s using the computer. That is the entire mechanism by which a kid becomes a developer. Or a designer. Or a filmmaker. Or whatever it is that comes after spending thousands of hours alone in a room with a machine that was never quite right for what you were asking of it.

Yeah. For me it was an old, beat-up 286 that I couldn't get anyone to upgrade and and loving devotion to MS-DOS, old EGA Sierra games, TSR programs, TUIs, GeoWorks, and just not being able to get enough of it.

When I finally saved up enough to buy a 486 motherboard, I installed Linux because it seemed cool (and was cool) and never looked back. But that 286 sparked my obsession with computers that has influenced almost every aspect of my life.

Love the spirit of the post.

As a high school dropout, with a GED, I’ve spent my entire adult life, looking up noses. I chose a career jammed to bursting, with sheepskins, because I really enjoy doing tech. Not because I wanted to make money, or because I wanted to be a big shot.

My first ever program, was in the 1970s, some time. It was a Heathkit programmable calculator. My first ever ”serious” program, was Machine Code, typed into a 6800-based STD card, nailed to a piece of wood, with a hex keypad, and an 8-digit LED display. My first personal computer, was a VIC-20, with 3KB of RAM. My first Apple computer was a Mac Plus, with 4MB of RAM, and an external 20MB SCSI hard drive.

Learning on limited resources helps us to become frugal and efficient. It also helps us to become tough as hell. Some of the best engineers I ever worked with, had rough backgrounds.

These days, I use a pretty maxed-out Mini, and an LG ultrawide screen. I’m spoiled.

With a clear feedback loop and the insane motivation of a child I learnt to make games/software on basic which ended up defining my life.

Sometimes we overthink it, all a child needs is a safe environment to fool around and letting them be obsessed about things.

Chromebooks have a linux VM where you can install anything, including GUI apps, and doing that is much more straightforward then installing something from the web on a mac. Download, right-click, install on linux. No scary warnings. No need to go to system settings.

2. Are there kids like that still?? I would love to think so. None of the kids in my circle of parents are. There is one teenager who's going into computer science because they are smart and love math, which is great, but they never built or explored or been curious about anything on their computer as far as I can tell. There is a big ecosystem of wish fulfilment and instant gratification, and I think (right) limitations like the author insinuated are part of the allure.

As someone who lived on a chromebook for fun because it was a cheap way to get a browser machine that also had Linux access. I don't really get this. You can run blender on a chromebook as soon as you turn on the linux container. It will run even better if you install linux on it after a quick firmware flash.

If it's locked down by a school that's not really the chromebooks fault, schools are gonna lock down Macbook Neos via management policy the exact same way.

”Mrs. Jonson, the result are back. You son has autism.”

The kid’s parents - and the kid - all have iPhones, so it’s familiar.

The kid’s school requires Windows or Mac for their WiFi and won’t let the kid use Linux because they don’t trust it.

There’s plenty of reasons why Linux isn’t the answer in current climate.

Now, 20+ years later all my home computers are running Linux (Debian though), and my kids grew up using Linux.

But I'm going to send my teenager to college with Windows or a Mac. They're going to be 1200 miles away, and they're going to need to get support for their computer and I won't be there.

Yes, I like Linux 1000x better than Windows or Mac, but Linux demands a different relationship with the admin. This kid hasn't wanted that relationship with tech, and will rely on friends to help get Office or Zoom or whatever installed.

I'm still deciding between Mac and Windows now. I'll probably end up getting a quality used business laptop from FB marketplace, but the Neo is interesting too.

It brought back memories of when I first started using a Unix time share at university, and exhaustively read all the man pages. Didn’t know why, just wanted to discover everything.

Oh so all our hypothetical child has to do to discover what computers can actually do is completely rebuild one's software from scratch with no prior knowledge.

Next you'll tell me F1 drivers in their teens just have to LS swap a Saturn SC2 and book time at a track.

Chrome books and phones teach nothing.

when you're young, time is infinite, money is scarce.

Older, and time seems to take over. The limitations are - when can you free up the time? Is relaxing allowed?

Meanwhile, some other kid in your area probably got scolded for installing F-Droid. Oh well...

But also, not every kid is interested in that anyway.

I'd install Photoshop and Illustrator on my shitty computer I put together from spare parts my dad didn't have the use of anymore from his business computers. It was horribly slow, but I kinda made it work slowly.

The thing is that I think this is what made me think a bit differently, since everything was slowed down and took more time than I would want it to, I had to make deliberate decisions on what to add/edit. I still work the same way today to pa point, but that's because I'm both faster, more experienced and the computers have gotten more performant (and because I can afford better devices sure).

When I look at my half-brother and his teenage generation I wonder if they can still have such an experience. The personal devices have gotten better and faster, most things are really convenient and you sometimes even don't have to think a lot to do something also because they're cheap to do... they probably won't have the experience of "grinding it out" just for the sake of producing something they like...maybe sports is the closest...no idea, but have been thinking about this quite a lot recently...

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

There's adults nowadays that do their taxes on their phone, cut videos on their phone, and edit spreadsheets on their phone.

And while smartphones and chromebooks are great at accomplishing your desired tasks, they offer no opportunities for growth. You can't change and play around with the system, become a power user, modify your system, look behind the curtain, and gain real understanding.

There's an excellent blogpost on this topic, "The Slow Death of the Power User": https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/the-slow-death-of-the-pow...

> trackpad is only incrementally better than what was available in Chromebooks and cheap PCs

Did you use a touchpad of an old cheap PC? Apple would not dare to use one comparable to that in their wildest nightmares.

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.

8-bit. 16KiB of RAM. BASIC as the programming language. 640x256 resolution in 8 colours.

I could make that thing sing in an hour. It was hard to get it to do much, but then the difficulty was the fun thing.

By the time we got to the early 2000s and I could buy something with more RAM, CPU and storage than I could ever reasonably max out for the problems I was interested in at the time, I lost something.

Working within constraints teaches you something, I think. Doing more with less makes you appreciate the "more" you eventually end up with. You develop intuitions and instincts and whole skillsets that others never had to develop. You get an advantage.

I don't think we should be going back to 8-bit days any time soon, but in the context of this post, I want novices to try and build software on an A18 chip, I want learners to be curious enough to build a small word game (Hangman will do at first, but the A18 will let them push way, way past that into the limits of something that starts to feel hard all of a sudden), to develop the intuition of writing code on a system that isn't quite big enough for their ideas. It'll make them thirsty for more, and better at using it when they get it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro

I always wonder what the world would be like in a battle between Google and M$ rather than M$ and Apple. Obviously less advertisement, more focus on function and less form.