“This Is Not the Computer for You” ⇥ samhenri.gold
The consensus is reasonable: $599, A18 Pro, 8GB RAM, stripped-down I/O. A Chromebook killer, a first laptop, a sensible machine for sensible tasks. “If you are thinking about Xcode or Final Cut, this is not the computer for you.” The people saying this are not wrong. It is also not the point.
Nobody starts in the right place. You don’t begin with the correct tool and work sensibly within its constraints until you organically graduate to a more capable one. That is not how obsession works. Obsession works by taking whatever is available and pressing on it until it either breaks or reveals something. The machine’s limits become a map of the territory. You learn what computing actually costs by paying too much of it on hardware that can barely afford it.
This is such a good essay. It takes me right back to the first computers I used when I was a kid, trying everything and finding whatever limits exist. And they do exist, but they are far beyond what most people will even attempt because technology has far outpaced our typical use. Apple can make a full-on Mac with “a phone chip” because that phone has a display with nearly as many pixels as were in the 30-inch Cinema Display you used to need Apple’s most expensive Mac and a specific graphics card to run.
People are going to use this Mac like a Mac.