John Gruber: By default, the MacOS accent color in System Settings → Appearance defaults to a color that matches the Neo’s hardware — a fun trick Apple has been using for decades. David Deller: This is the first I’m learning that System Settings sometimes has a special accent color only available to a Mac with a particular […]

Tech Re-Nu, on YouTube:

That leaves us with a fully disassembled laptop. We’ve done this in less than 10 minutes, which is absolutely amazing for an Apple laptop. I can’t say we’ve ever had a Mac that looks as repairable and as modular as this one. No sticky tape, no tricky adhesives, modular parts, minimal parts as well, no hinge covers or anything like that. It’s just super straightforward, elegant design.

The aspects of the Neo that make it less expensive also make it simpler, and thus easier to service. Apple’s iPhones, iPads, and higher-end MacBooks that use a lot of glue and tape and pack components together in hard-to-disassemble ways aren’t designed that way out of spite or carelessness. They’re like that because that’s what it takes to make devices ever smaller, and ever more lightweight. By allowing the Neo to be a bit thicker and heavier, it’s also a lot simpler.

Marcin Wichary:

There are fun things you can do in software when it is aware of the dimensions and features of its hardware. [...]

The rule here would be, perhaps, a version of “show, don’t tell.” We could call it “point to, don’t describe.” (Describing what to do means cognitive effort to read the words and understand them. An arrow pointing to something should be easier to process.)

I just learned the word proprioception a few weeks ago, in the context of how you can close your eyes and put your fingertip on the tip of your nose. Perfect word for this sort of hardware/software integration too.

Jason Snell:

So here we are: Six Colors now has three Jeopardy! players as contributors.

Come on, Moltz, get your shit together.

When I re-read my 2006 piece “And Oranges” today before linking to it, I paused when I read this:

And while it is easy to find ways to complain that Apple is not open enough — under-documented and undocumented security updates and system revisions, under-documented and undocumented file formats — it would be hard to argue with the premise that Apple today is more open than it has ever been before. (Exhibit A: the Web Kit project.)

It’s not often I get to fix 20-year-old typos, and to my 2026 self, “Web Kit” looks like an obvious typo. But after a moment, I remembered: in 2006, that wasn’t a typo.