Things We Saw from the Cheap Seats

Most people aren’t buying computers with their heads. They’re buying computers with the image they have of themselves in mind. That person edits 4K video all the time and games relentlessly, so they shell out $2-3,000 for a MacBook Pro and then reality sets in. They have a very expensive Facebook machine.

Let me tell you the reality of buying a computer that tech companies will not dare disclose. Most people don’t use compute like rendering large textures for gaming and video editing. It’s just not their thing, even if in their heads they are that person. Most people edit photos several times a year and call it a day. You do not need a MacBook Pro for any of it. You will have buyer’s remorse when you realize that you can do everything you need on a Raspberry Pi or a sophisticated Android tablet.

I have a Windows machine, but it is not ridiculous. It cost less than a thousand dollars and it has discrete graphics. But if I wasn’t playing Skyrim and installing local AI models that need CUDA for faster token processing, I would have stuck with my HD Fire.

My use case is different than most people, but I survived on my Amazon tablet for many, many years. And I like it so much that I upgraded to the Max for when I don’t want to drag my big ass laptop everywhere. The secret sauce is using XDA Fire Toolbox to add the Google Play Store to the Fire. It is unsupported, but it is completely necessary. Most apps just flat will not run on Android without Google Services Framework. However, if you do not know how to do all that, Microsoft apps will run just fine and you’ll have access to Outlook and Edge.

I don’t know how many of you know this, but Edge is actually an open source version of Chrome in disguise. Therefore, it really doesn’t matter which one you use and some people like Edge better. I do because of the Copilot button and split screening Mico with everything else.

And that is perfectly possible on a 10- or 12-inch tablet because Mico doesn’t need a local processor. Microsoft does all that on the backend. The web versions of Office all work very well, but if I need a full desktop word processor there’s AndrOffice, an Android port of LibreOffice that’s both free and open source (free as in free speech and free beer).

The Android is a workhorse. The iPad and the MacBook are theater.

I do not have anything against Apple products in the slightest, I just think you ought to know that you’re paying for everything to be silver, and you’re paying a lot for it.