Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“This is not the computer for you”

samhenri.gold

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 390 posts

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#191

Post by umarniz »

Talking about staring at interfaces, I got my first Pentium computer when I was 7 in a village in Pakistan. I spent all day fooling around and accidently stumbled upon quick basic. Having nothing to do I learnt how to code because the help menu listed all the commands and the interpreter gave errors when I did something wrong.

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.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#192

Post by SuperHeavy256 »

Thank you thank you thank you for writing this. This made me smile and feel like shedding a tear. This is exactly how I felt when I watched the Dave2D video of the MacBook Neo, and other "reviews" that miss the entire point. This captures the point. The other reviews capture specs. This captures the emotion. This captures the reality.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#193

Post by alpaca128 »

andai wrote: post #110

Main machine is a $50 Thinkpad. I haven't used a computer more recent than 2016. As far as I can tell, the only thing I'm missing is AAA gaming (RTX looks cool), and local LLMs. I did a bunch of game jams on it. Even won one! (Of course, even 2010s hardware is overkill for 2d games :) I also did some basic video editing on it but it was a bit slow to render. I won't say I'm not missing out — I'm certainly looking for…

In the middle of a gaming session one stops thinking about graphics once it's reached a certain level of fidelity, and that level is far below RTX. Not worth the money, especially today.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#194

Post by SuperHeavy256 »

umarniz wrote: post #191

Talking about staring at interfaces, I got my first Pentium computer when I was 7 in a village in Pakistan. I spent all day fooling around and accidently stumbled upon quick basic. Having nothing to do I learnt how to code because the help menu listed all the commands and the interpreter gave errors when I did something wrong. With a clear feedback loop and the insane motivation of a child I learnt to make games/soft…

I was robbed of that safe environment. Gosh... it hurts me to think about what could have been.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#195

Post by commandersaki »

hackyhacky wrote: post #6
SoftTalker wrote: post #5

> This computer is for the kid who doesn’t have a margin to optimize. Who can’t wait for the right tool to materialize. Who is going to take what’s available and push it until it breaks and learn something permanent from the breaking. That kid will be much better off with a used laptop and Linux or BSD.

> That kid will be much better off with a used laptop and Linux or BSD. True, and suffering through the limitations of the Apple platform will show the kid why Linux is better.

I grew up tinkering with linux since 2.0.x days up until 2.4.x lamenting on how Linux needs to take over Microsoft. Then sudden (legal) blindness hit, and computers were becoming difficult to use. Took a punt on a powerbook 12" at the time, and learned the accessibility features and never looked back. I do 90% of things in a terminal on a mac today, but Windows / Linux is the real limited OS for me due to lack of accessibility features rendering them unusable.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#196

Post by commandersaki »

raincole wrote: post #133

What's so special about this machine? Is there no comparable $599 Windows or Linux laptop for kids to buy?

I looked at laptops around that price range in Australia, and they're all awful in one way or another. Either they're Chromebooks (yuck) or come with an ad-infested OS (gross) and/or with serious compromises in quality and finish.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#197

Post by orbital-decay »

>Somewhere a kid is saving up for this. He has read every review. Watched the introduction video four or five times. Looked up every spec, every benchmark, every footnote. He has probably walked into an Apple Store and interrogated an employee about it ad nauseam. He knows the consensus. He knows it’s probably not the right tool for everything he wants to do.

Anywhere in the world, the kind of kid that does all this and installs Blender on it is WAY more likely to save up for any janky terrible half-working PC laptop with a bit better specs (memory in particular), or a desktop computer if possible, because A. games B. Linux C. piracy and more software D. he does not care about it being Apple or "just working", in the words of the author himself. I don't know how the US kids in particular feel about this since the reality distortion field is so strong, but anywhere else it's like this.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#198

Post by mnky9800n »

In high school we had a g3 Mac that we got Final Cut Pro on. It took forever to render a minute or two of video. But having a nonlinear editing system that took forever to do anything was way better than not having anything at all.

Edit: for true self embarrassment purposes you can see some of the films we made here:

https://youtu.be/FRQv7VUauWs?t=447&si=lCu3rp28XfKWN5ch

And also here:

https://youtu.be/ytKIG802baw?t=615&si=FJI8Cm9yYaXKMZdS

I put the start times at my movies. But there are others as well. lol.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#199

Post by herrherrmann »

orbital-decay wrote: post #197

>Somewhere a kid is saving up for this. He has read every review. Watched the introduction video four or five times. Looked up every spec, every benchmark, every footnote. He has probably walked into an Apple Store and interrogated an employee about it ad nauseam. He knows the consensus. He knows it’s probably not the right tool for everything he wants to do. Anywhere in the world, the kind of kid that does all this…

Depends on the kid’s hobby and purpose of the computer. I’ve always known that MacBooks are better for music making (especially driver hassle, audio signal reliability, etc.). Could I afford a MacBook as my first laptop? No. Did I buy a second-hand MacBook as soon as I could afford it, and have been happy with it since? Yes. As a teenager, I would’ve loved to buy a new MacBook for 500/600€.

I’m sure most other applications are less Mac-optimized, though (software development, 3d/graphics editing, gaming, …).

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#200

Post by rebolek »

m463 wrote: post #87
tombert wrote: post #63

When I was sixteen I got one of the earlier digital HD cameras (Canon VIXIA HF100) and Sony Vegas Movie Studio for my birthday. It was a neat camera and I liked Vegas, and I was grateful that my parents got them for me, but an issue that I had with it was that my computer wasn't nearly powerful enough to edit the video. Even setting the preview to the lowest quality settings, I was lucky to get 2fps with the 1080i vi…

At some point the limitations can flip around. 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?

It probably depends where you live. When I was young, time was infinite and money were scarce. Now they're both the limit.
Post reply on HN