havaloc

I loved reading his columns at PC Magazine growing up, it's an end of an era. He had such an interesting view of the PC industry as a whole and his column was almost always the first thing I read when a new issue would arrive at my house.

I really like Fastmail, but I wish they offered a lightweight AI feature. Their filtering system is unmatched, yet I’d love a basic, privacy-focused AI filter powered by a small, private model they run.

For example, I could set rules like “if an email looks like a promotion, move it to the promotions folder.” I could roll my own MCP server sure, but that’s not the direction I want to go.

Come on, a one gigabyte Pi is under $50. There's no plot lost, it's just expensive RAM. 2gb is $75. That's where Pi plays well.

The 12gb number is weird, but also telling.

iPhones have 12gb, current Neo has 8gb, the next gen Neo is speculated to have 12gb (as it'll be based on a later iPhone chip).

If you spend more than 1 minute on Facebook, you realize what they are potentially training their data on, and it is not good. Their advertising algorithm is very good, I'll give them that.

And you should have the right to stop them immediately. I don't see how that's controversial.

I like how I can slap up a free Turnstile on my projects in two minutes and not have to worry about endless comment spam and user registration spam. Yes, I understand there's problems with Cloudflare, but there's also a lot of problems out there in the wild west of an open internet.

Now Mac is almost the same if not cheaper up front, and in the long run too. It's a wild thing to see.

Agreed, the only time I did upgrades on boxes is swapping out spinning disks for SSD, that saved me a whole upgrade cycle it was such an improvement.

What's sad is that in my experience supporting 80 users, Word et al work with fewer issues on Mac. The stack integration on Windows is fine, until it isn't.

Yes! iOS 27 needs to categorize notifications using AI. Apps aren't supposed to advertise to you, but some don't allow for that distinction. I want notifications on for when my sandwich is arriving, but I don't want push notifications for a promotion. Some apps are good about this, others don't allow that granularity. I hate the all or nothing.

On the flipside, I have an app that sends notifications. We don't abuse it or use it for promotions, and APNS and Google's version works perfectly fine for us.

Strongbox already got bought out, but it's still very good and you can store the file wherever you want.

I use it more and more as a primary, and it doesn't feel like I've made many tradeoffs at all. I even like the keys better, they aren't transparent, so the plastic feels different, but in a good way.

I think I would cut the line at M3 or above. I think M2 uses an older architecture and it doesn't have WiFi 6E in it, and of course single core is a bit lower. Also M2 batteries are about maybe halfway done already unless the refurb replaced the battery.

I bought a Neo as an out of the house computer and it really is a triumph. If the Air is good enough for 99% of the population, the Neo as is approaches good enough for 90% of the population at half the cost.

I really don't understand why more companies don't emulate Apple in terms of line simplicity. Look at Dell for a great example of a sprawling product mix. I can't imagine having that many product varieties helps with profitability.

In the consumer space, I recently bought a Sonicare toothbrush, and the number of models and combinations is staggering. 1000x plaque removal, 750% plaque removal, it's ridiculous.

The MacBook Neo proves that gadget "shrinkflation" is largely a choice. I own an Neo and I continue to marvel at how capable, nice, and yet inexpensive it was.

I own a business and I go out of my way to respect other businesses, because I know how hard it is to own one.

Maybe California should ask Brightline to take a look at it. They've had some pretty good success in Florida, although it's a totally different model.

I bought a Neo to "replace" an M3 MacBook Air "travel/out of the house/outside" laptop. Are there drawbacks? Most certainly, but it feels like something special, and I enjoy the slightly smaller form factor. The main drawback is perhaps the most surprising, the screen, which is really good at 500 nits, draws a disproportionate amount of energy compared to the rest of the system, so you get about 3.5 hours in bright sunlight / maximum brightness.

As the only IT person in an 80 person unit, I can say the Neo trounces Dell Latitudes in a lot of ways, those have awful 250 nit screens out of the box, and they are nearly $1,200!

However bad you think 65+ users are on social media, it's way worse than you think. Imagine being scammed by ads and grinding the remaining years of your life away with that. Yikes. I've seen it with my own eyes. It's awful.

The fundamental problem seems to be that screens as a basis for learning how to learn, study, and retain information in kids appears to be detrimental to developing that core skill we have already developed.

As I like to say, AI is great for those of us who "learned it the hard way", be it coding and learning, but I suspect I would not have bothered learning it the hard way if I had it available when I was younger.

Why are they so powerful in the hands of a curious person, yet making everyone dumber?

Curiosity level varies per individual. I find certain things fascinating that many others don't. AI has been a boon for me and others who may be limitlessly curious, and it may be a negative for the uncurious.

Much ink has been spilled in the comments already, but as a child of the 80s, computers were a class, and not a lifestyle. If I had gone through school with what's available today, I doubt I would have done as well as I did. Most things were handwritten, I learned cursive, and computer class was Oregon Trail and basic programming essentially.

Looking back, I don't think Chromebooks, iPads and the like would have been beneficial to my elementary/middle/high school education at all.

Our primary instrument of learning was the teacher and really thick textbooks that were passed down student to student, and you could see that journey inside the in front cover where you signed it out for the year.

As someone who would protest at learning long division when a calculator was around, in retrospect, the teacher was right.

Cook seems to be dragged for some of his decisions ( like China ), but he was the right CEO for the time. Ternus in turn seems to be the right CEO for this phase of Apple. I'm excited to see what Ternus does in the role! It's a homecoming of sorts having a product person and there has already been chatter he'll be more like Jobs in the role.

If they can maintain their hardware lead and tighten up the software a bit, the next era looks bright.

You sort of have to admire what a clever purchase Vizio was for Walmart.

Exactly. If some sort of random Dell model has a failure, you'll never hear about it because there's only a few thousand or so in circulation. But if any Apple product which sells in the tens/hundreds of millions has an issue, you'll hear about it whether you want to or not.

Missing the A18 Neo! :)

There was quite a bit of discussion about that when the M1 first came out, but none of it really seemed to have happened six years later. The target audience isn't in danger of wearing it out and the ones that will push the limits will grow tired of it and sell it in a year or two or move on to the Neo 2, which might have 12gb of ram due to the expected chip.

I still think it's a great machine, but I think all these worries about NAND dying really haven't come to fruition, and probably won't. I have about a hundred plus of various SSD Macs in service and not one has failed in any circumstance aside from a couple of battery issues (never charged and sat in the box for 2 years, and never off the charger).

I think this is a great generalization, I'm not sure I would have bothered with a PC if I had a smartphone as a child/teenager, but I also have no regrets about the smartphone free era I grew up in.