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by jmyeet 17 days ago
As a fellow family IT specialist, about a decade ago I took the stance that if it's not Apple, I'm not fixing it. I'm not dealing with some bullshit issue with weird proprietary drivers or crapware. The straw that broke the camel's back was a Dell laptop that wasn't working with the Wifi until I turned off IPv6.

It's also why I don't use Linux for a desktop unless I have to. I've had years of debugging weird issues with drivers, editing /etc files, changing X settings and so on.

MacOS isn't perfect. In fact, I think Apple keeps making it worse because they have no real product vision now and it's just a bunch of teams making local changes to justify their own existence. But you can look at MacOS in one of two ways: as a better Windows (by having a UNIX-like core) or as a better Linux (by having a better UI subsystem). Either way it's a win (IMHO).

I'm torn on the Macbook Neo, personally. It really is just a giant iPhone 18 with a keyboard. Plus you can get a Macbook Air at times for $900. That's $200 more than the high-end Neo. Like is it that different to a (cheaper) iPad, which you can also get a keyboard for? I guess it's just not for me.

3 comments

> Like is it that different to a (cheaper) iPad, which you can also get a keyboard for? I guess it's just not for me.

For anything that's not pure consumption, that's a massive upgrade. A proper keyboard makes a world of difference. You don't need it if all you do is browse and view, and you can manage if you only need to send an email here and there, but I'd never want to program or write longer texts (emails, essays, spreadsheets for that matter) on an iPad, even if I hooked up a keyboard, unless I'm desperate and have no other options.

The MacBook Air is a better machine, but the Neo is far better than an iPad because MacOS isn't constrained like iPadOS is. The Neo can't really be compared to an iPad for that reason alone.
It's very different to an ipad and keyboard because of the software being a proper OS rather than a phone one. I was a bit torn on Neo vs Air though - the Air's a bit cooler looking.