iFixit:

Is Apple’s most affordable laptop ever also one of its most repairable? For years, opening a MacBook has usually meant fighting your way through glue and buried parts.

But the Neo stands out, with increasingly good day-one manuals, less-painful keyboard repairs, and a screwed-in battery tray that sent cheers across the iFixit office. This laptop proves that things can be made more affordable and more repairable at the same time.

That conclusion is backwards, I think. I suspect the MacBook Neo is more repairable not despite of its lower price, but because of its lower price. It’s designed and engineered to be easier, and thus cheaper, to assemble. And the aspects that make it easier to assemble make it easier to disassemble.

Regarding the Neo’s 2.7-pound weight:

We were all a bit curious as to why the cheaper and less feature rich Neo weighed the same as a MacBook Air M3, each 13″ laptop weighing in at about 1.24kg. It’s especially puzzling when considering the Neo supposedly uses a lighter chassis, and is, uh, smaller.

Here’s what we found: The Neo’s chassis is actually only barely lighter than the Air’s. Together, its chassis, keyboard, and bottom cover are just 8g lighter than the Air’s. But the Neo’s screen is 48g heavier, and the solid chunk of metal that supports its trackpad makes up 7% of the laptop’s overall weight! The Neo’s full trackpad assembly is almost exactly twice as heavy as the M3 MacBook Air’s, too.

Link: ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-repairable…

there are people in state legislatures right now in the usa – and we mean right now, while you’re reading this – drafting bills that would require your 3d printer to scan every file before it prints. not because you did anything wrong, but because someone, somewhere, might.

let’s be specific about the machinery of this stupidity. you bought a 3d printer. maybe you even assembled it on your kitchen table or your workbench at 2am (because sleep is for people without deadlines). and now some bill drafted by a lobbyist who has never touched a soldering iron or run a slicer says that the machine has to phone home before it is allowed to make anything. yes, every file you design, every prototype you hack together, every broken bracket you replace in the dark because the replacement won’t ship for three weeks will be logged, scanned, and judged by software that cannot tell a trigger guard from a guitar bridge. we have arrived at the point where the tools are expected to narc on their owners, and the owners are expected to say thank you.

nobody demands that home depot bolt a surveillance camera inside every circular saw, and we don’t make drills keep diaries. the principle is not complicated: tools belong to the people who use them. the moment you surrender that, you are not a citizen with a workshop… you are a tenant in someone else’s panopticon, paying rent on equipment that was already yours. because you just know that not only will you have to submit files for review but that the review service will demand a monthly maintenance subscription.

the people pushing these bills are counting on you not thinking about it too hard, but surveillance does not prevent harm, it prevents trust. it tells every maker, every student, every small-batch manufacturer running a shop out of their garage that they are suspects first and citizens second. for what the machine they own is theoretically capable of. and that chill, that slow, bureaucratic frost settling over every workbench in the country, will only deter the creativity and tinkering. the authorization service will go down on a long weekend and now you’re stuck unable to keep iterating on your design: the exact process that built every useful thing you’ve ever held in your hands.

an instrument can create, and it can prototype. it can liberate a sixteen-year-old kid in with no machine shop from not having the right part for their projects, art, and class work. but only if we refuse to let fear turn our workshops into crime scenes.

good night, and good luck printing.

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