I’ve been shutting up through the majority of this round of Discourse online because I think the whole Mac Neo thing is distinctly pitched for murka-lowend or similar
I see maybe a couple of corp types here (ZA) try it out, and pull back in revulsion/failure. The price point isn’t especially a major winner/attraction point either afaict
My reasoning here comes in multiple parts. As already stated, I don’t believe the economics are as attractive as it might be elsewhere
Idly, with the world where it is right now, I don’t know how long it’ll stay attractive elsewhere either. How fast and how bad that’ll go, no idea, but I do see it as a risk
On the compute/resource side? Oh boy I’ve seen some weirdly hopetimistic takes
My current machine is a 16GB 2020-series m1 mbp, not even running Apple Ass. So I know *exactly* how that experience will end up turning out
And let me tell you: it’s a fair bit more limiting than you’d expect
Not that it’s going to be useless! The M1 is a stunningly impressive chip. I’m *still* quite surprised at what it can carry given the age. Power efficiency is great, I love it for what I gain. Part of why I’ve held onto the machine so long.
But I’ve also started feeling how a bunch more modern software feels
And I don’t for a second buy the argument that “being resource constrained” will make eg webdevs actually code for those things
Unless these devices take over entire markets at some extremely rapid pace (sufficient enough to have slow things be complained about at scale) nothing web/app dev side will change
We’re in a world awash in (consentless) product telemetry, and with many people (across third world) already on slow devices, and I have *seen* how app dev teams respond to that internally: it’s with derision, with disregard
If you want that dev to care, *they* have to work on one of these
We’re also in a long-built-up environment of developer coddling and comfort. Now this one is a tad more tricky to talk about because I don’t want to say people don’t deserve comfort. But a lot of that environment has been a contributor to the laziness, to the excess, to the waste
(I will say: there’s a whole difference between *good* tools and *comfy* tools, and a lot of people using the latter mistake them for the former)
If you want change, reckon with that problem
As a “tinkerer’s device”, eh….. I’m not sold on that argument
So much current software utterly fucking sucks. Many people barely have any idea how to work in constrained space. And *even when they do* there’s stunningly few options right now (compared to years past). Yes, things could be written again, things could be changed. But, time
I’ll note that I’m lightly steeped in this community: I follow and track as many small-compute things of interest as possible. Islands in a wide sea
@froztbyte There's small and there's small - I've handed one of my niblings a board < 1"2 in size that'll run micropython and is comparable to my first PC minus the HDD
(less RAM, drastically faster even without touching the second core, easy to play with the blinkenlight but no other display of its own: serial-over-USB for the REPL)
Not expecting it to become the main computing device ;) but an appreciation of what a modern PC is may just result...
@jwz it's organisational alongside tooling
a lot of the higher-end dev roles (and I say this trying not to strain myself) have involved a lot of "safety" that other roles would not find as easily
on the compute side, I've seen a lot of pointless faff tools that exist largely because of an environment vacuous of knowledge/competence. these things regularly exhibit very slick UIs, friendly language, while adding relatively little (or no) actual benefit beyond something that already exists
@jwz "safety" is perhaps a bad word there, far too overloaded
I mean things like: such devs would have an outsize voice in aspects of product direction or company, simply _because_ it is the dev that is the one saying it, rather than because of good technical/business arguments
JP
Philippa Cowderoy
jwz
spinnyspinlock