Sam Henri Gold:

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.

He has decided he’ll be fine.

This computer is not for the people writing those reviews — people who already have the MacBook Pro, who have the professional context, who are optimizing at the margin. 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.

This post is the most beautiful thing posted to the internet this week, and I had to link to it. It’s compulsory reading — a tear-jerker for sure.

My article about the MacBook Neo earlier in March discussed it purely from a market analyst’s perspective. I don’t think I fully articulated the true meaning of this computer. As MacBooks Neo landed in people’s hands throughout the week, I scrolled past photos of people on Threads — teenagers, adults, the elderly — discovering the beauty of the Mac. The colorways delighted them. They noticed the color-matched accents throughout macOS 26 Tahoe, which reminded them of their iPhone. They were delighted that, for the first time, they were the proud owner of a Mac.

It’s no surprise Apple is a lifestyle company as much as it sells computers. Nerds have decried this tenet of the Apple experience for so long, but it’s what makes the company so great. The MacBook Neo represents the true definition of Apple when it’s at its best: the intersection of technology and liberal arts. Apple is the only company in Silicon Valley that has permeated the boundary between nerdery and living. What I mean by this is that Apple products represent opportunity — the opportunity to use technology to shape the human experience. That kid somewhere will do great things, and that MacBook Neo is the first step in getting there.

The liberal arts, to me at least, have always been about getting people to do great things, and the Mac is no exception. That kid, as Gold writes, will download Blender and not know what to do with it; they will fiddle around with iMovie and eventually Final Cut Pro; they’ll try Photoshop and Lightroom and Pixelmator Pro too. They’ll try writing and coding and photography; they’ll make their first website — they’ll make their mark on the world. The MacBook Neo represents the opportunity — both literally and mentally — to make something wonderful. This opportunity ought to be at the core of technology.

As a technologist — someone who studies computers, writes about them, spends their whole life thinking about them — I find myself coming back to this point: technology ought to be about making something wonderful. Steve Jobs’ Apple really did have it right. The MacBook Neo and the opportunity it represents show us at our very best. Over the last year, the world has soured on us — artificial intelligence is favored less than Immigration and Customs Enforcement, among many things — and for good reason. I think the MacBook Neo is the first stepping stone to regaining our presence as the people who encourage the world to make wonderful things. I hope it is.