The hacker is strong in this one. Keep it up.
“This is not the computer for you”
91–100 of 390 posts
Re: “This is not the computer for you”
#92> The kid who tries to run Blender on a Chromebook doesn’t learn that his machine can’t handle it. He learns that Google decided he’s not allowed to. 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…
The bootloader isn’t locked. Asahi’s developers have written about how Apple specifically built support for third-party OSes into the bootloader.
The same Asahi developers also wrote about how Apple didn’t document anything and especially, Apple never talked in public about this. Apple betting Apple, If they had cared a single second about this, they would have called this Bootcamp 2.
Honestly I’m pretty convinced that this « open » bootloader was just there to avoid criticism and bad press from specialized outlets when they presented the M1 because, for once, they needed specialized outlet to benchmark the M1 performance and not have anything bad to say about anything else.
They constantly break everything year after year without documenting any change which effectively makes Asahi unusable in anything recent.
I’m betting that they are just patiently waiting for Asahi to die by being too late of several years (which is already the case) to announce « The most secure Mac ever » silently releasing with closed bootloader when nobody and especially the press will care anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Asahi and I even have it installed on my M2 Air, the project is doing incredible quality work. But I don’t believe it will last long. Hope I’m wrong, though.
Re: “This is not the computer for you”
#93Depending on your process, there is nothing wrong starting with this tool (Neo) first. It's a classic dilemma. For your first tool, buy the cheapest one possible to get the job done. Once the tool becomes understoond, it's limits reached, it's place in the process discovered, then, buy the most expensive one you can afford.
The Neo is the right first tool for many people.
Re: “This is not the computer for you”
#94I liked this not because it's a good story. It is, but that's beside the point. I liked this because it's my story. Not literally so, but the shape of it is. He's struck a nerve at the heart of growing up eager and curious and seeing a computer as a pathway to your dreams.
Re: “This is not the computer for you”
#95Sometimes I feel privileged for being in the generation that learnt to program BASIC on a C64 when it was the coolest thing around at the time. Being that much closer to the metal is a whole different experience of learning what a computer is and can do. 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 wh…
Most child of every generation don't care about those things. Most of the few that cared about the C64 just used it to play game. You are in the minority who got interested in the C64 and the minority within that minority who also was interested with BASIC. It's good you tried with your kids but the odds were against you.
Meanwhile, some other kid in your area probably got scolded for installing F-Droid. Oh well...
Re: “This is not the computer for you”
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't install a different OS on these? Are they different from the M series? Because those have Asahi Linux.
Asahi linux effectively only supports the M1 and M2 chips, so even a modern macbook air won't work, and even on "supported devices" you can't use thunderbolt or a usb-c display yet. These use the A series chip, and even supporting new M chip revisions has been enough of an undertaking that I wouldn't really expect this to get Asahi linux anytime soon.... And apple can lock down the bootloader to be closer to the iPad…
By “past actions”, do you mean doing extra work to make the bootloader support other operating systems? https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/introduction/
Re: “This is not the computer for you”
#97I'm sorry to say that those kids are a lot fewer and farther between than they were even 15 years ago, and much, much fewer than 30+ years ago. When I was working my most recent corporate job (as a people manager, natch) there were new hires even in 2019 that had never owned a computer that wasn't a phone, and just used whatever laptop or other system was supplied by their school or (now) work. This experience blackp…
Why do you think they're fewer and farther between? It's almost certainly at least partially because of Chromebooks and the save-the-user-from-themself design philosophy.
Re: “This is not the computer for you”
#98When 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?
Oh no argument on that.
I have a typical yuppie software job with decent pay, so generally I will buy the right tools for a job now instead of trying to make due with whatever I can scrap together. I'm not that busy of a person, but I certainly have more obligations than I did when I was sixteen, and now sometimes it really is worth it to spend an extra grand on something than it is to spend a week hacking together something from my existing stuff.
Still, I look back at the hours I spent making terrible YouTube videos with my terrible computer really fondly. I was proud of myself for making things work, I was proud of the little workarounds I found.
I think it's the same reason I love reading about classic computing (80's-90's era). Computers in the 80's were objectively terrible compared to anything we have now, and people still figured out how to squeeze every little bit of juice possible to make really awesome games and programs. The Commodore 64 and Amiga demos are fun to play around with because people will figure out the coolest tricks to make these computers do things that they have no business doing. I mean, the fact that Bad Apple has been "ported" to pretty much everything is something I cannot stop being fascinated by. [1] [2] [3] [4]
[1] https://youtu.be/2vPe452cegU
[2] https://youtu.be/qRdGhHEoj3o
Re: “This is not the computer for you”
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really not that hard. Someone who can follow a tutorial can do it. 5 seconds of googling will get you an answer to "install blender on a Chromebook"
I used to be the cool tech guy in school because I memorized the tutorial to jailbreak iPhone or to cheat in games with a memory editor. You know, stuff like "when you see this screen, click that icon", "find row 5 and change the second value to 0", or "open terminal, copy paste this command and hit enter". I don't think I learned anything useful from those.
Well, sure. Maybe you're the kid in the article who opened Xcode and Blender and Final Cut, but it didn't click for you. Of course not everything is for everyone, but it doesn't prove exploring the limits like that is a bad thing.
Re: “This is not the computer for you”
#100My first computer was a hand-me-down Compaq LTE laptop, several times removed from the original owner, with a 700MB hard drive and Windows 95 a decade after those were leading-edge specs. It had only Word and Access, of all things, and little room for more.
But it was mine, I tinkered with it forever, learned databases enough to turn Access into a basic quasi-Excel for my needs, cataloged things that really didn't need to be tabulated, and generally learned as much as that little machine would let me.
That was a limited computer, one that couldn't possibly have let me do what I needed to do when I hit university. But it got me started, taught me to tinker, and I'm prety sure pushed me to learn more than a state-of-the-art for the time computer would have.
And so I do wonder, at times, if it's the nostalgic look back at early computing that makes people inclined to say "my god that would have been an amazing computer to start out with" when you look at an entry-level computer. I'm inclined, even, to say man that's going to be an epic $100 computer on the second-hand market in a half decade or less.
When at the same time, it's actually a solid machine for more of us than us geeks with our inflated expectations of computers have than we'd like to accept. That, too, is pretty cool.