Christopher Schroeder

Tag: digital devices

  • The Neo Danger

    The MacBook Neo by all accounts is amazing.

    This newest Apple laptop, which consists of MacBook Air compromises for a much more affordable price, has been praised for its performance, build quality, and value. The demand for this “perfect compromise” even surprised Apple, and reportedly contributed to a record number of new customers.

    MacBook Neo website screenshot

    The Neo has few competitors among Windows budget laptops at least at the moment although it could motivate Lenovo for example or HP to improve its offerings. It has next to none among Chromebooks, which are little more than surveillance browsers without the Linux virtual machine option, and still nowhere close with it activated.

    For these and other reasons, the Neo laptop will attract individual users, especially those who already have iPhones and AirPods or Apple Watches but before now couldn’t justify a thousand dollars or more for an Apple laptop. It will also likely have an increased appeal to institutions, such as schools and small businesses, as a result of the same reasons, including the network effect.

    With it, Apple is extending its reach into hardware, which has always been its focus, and adding this extension to its software, platforms (FaceTime, e.g., or iMessage), and services (iCloud, e.g., or Apple TV). As a result, Apple is consolidating its control, and slowly but surely becoming the primary portal through which people access digital networks.

    Such a consolidation challenges adversarial interoperability, or the cooperative potential of different devices and platforms even without the consent. This condition, which has long been considered a threat by Apple, is both central to the invention of the internet (Berners-Lee 2025) and possible remedy to its chronic devolution (Doctorow 2025).

    This consolidation also promotes its colonization of psychological, social, and cultural spaces, which should be increasingly evident. More and more people are walking or worse driving for example while messaging, surfing, or talking as a result of Apple devices. Too many if you ask me seem enthralled with immersion, subjectivity, and other cultural immediacy features that have been promulgated by these devices.

    Some might be more or less alarmed about a human future that increasingly exists within digital networks. Regardless, all of us can be concerned with the way that Apple has positioned itself to exert the greatest control and make the most money, which only compounds its control.

    None of us can dismiss this dependency no matter how much Apple promotes user privacy for example or environmental stability or otherwise presents itself positively to the world. We cannot be confident that it will continue to promote these or other prosocial practices, especially if or when sales start to slump.

    The Apple MacBook Neo in other words might be amazing but upon second thought is also alarming because it contributes to the degradation of digital networks and encourages digital dependency.

    Equally alarming is that such second thoughts might not disqualify the MacBook Neo as my replacement laptop when I need a new one or worse before then.

  • The Dope on Kids and Their Parents Today

    Michaeleen Doucleff’s (2026) new book Dopamine Kids offers an alternative account of challenges confronting kids and their parents today.

    Doucleff, who has a physical chemistry PhD, was surprised to learn that dopamine isn’t a pleasure hormone as it is commonly regarded but a wanting hormone, or one that initiates cravings or urges. For her, this insight explained why would feel worse after acting on urges to surf social media for example or indulge in junk food.

    These together form the basis for this book, which is her second one about parenting. In this one, she criticizes the ways digital tech and processed food industries manipulate kids and adults, which she observed in her own home, and offers an account of her efforts, including her research reviews, to change these conditions.

    From these, she outlines a process for other parents and people who also want to disrupt their dependencies upon digital technology and processed foods. This process begins with identifying their values, selecting specific alternatives, and reinforcing these replacements and efforts.

    Central is recognizing the difference, and often the gap, between wanting and liking. The former figures centrally to the development of cell phone apps for example and snack foods, and is why such changes shouldn’t be seen as will-power problems. Regardless, this distinction Doucleff maintains can be hijacked to support such changes by reconfiguring the connection between these.

    Parents in Doucleff’s approach lead these efforts, which requires them to challenge their own choices alongside those of their children. Together, kids and their parents can disrupt their dependencies not by depriving themselves but by replacing these choices with more satisfying ones — closing the gap in other words between wanting and liking — and thus change their homes and their lives.

    This book seems to resonate with many reviewers, who like its mixture of personal anecdote, scientific research, and practical processes and strategies. I too appreciated the insight that kids and their parents aren’t surfing social media or eating junk food because these activities make us happy and the suggestion that these changes needn’t result in additional conflict or herculean sacrifices.

    I also welcome the inherent challenge that parents must confront their own behaviors and model better ones. I no longer have children at home but think this challenge nonetheless applies for anyone who lives with people whom they love and support.

    I struggled with the prominence of the personal experience throughout this book. I can see how it humanizes the author, and could even reduce any sense of superiority or arrogance. Still, I found it excessive at some points and even condescending at others.

    I more disliked its unconventional structure, which intersperses principles and practices. I again understand the argument for such an approach. At the same time, I struggled to rehearse the prior reasoning at the outset of the next theoretical, and research, section.

    Nonetheless, I think this book was well worth the effort. I wondered before I started it whether it would contain enough insights for someone whose children left years ago, and whose challenges reflect a more senior age group, but I can attest that I certainly got more than I needed and and even more than I hoped.

  • A Little Privacy Please

    My kids cannot understand what I’m sure they would consider my obsession with privacy.

    They technically didn’t grow up with cell phone, and got their first in middle school. Still, they’ve spent most of their lives with these devices, and the cultural changes created by these, and they insist upon the death of privacy.

    I often ask in response why they don’t post their iCloud passwords on social media, or even give these to me. They obviously don’t and won’t but also don’t consider such stances as pro-privacy choices.

    I still advocate for the use of Signal for example as our messaging app of choice and ask about the more than 700 trackers, and almost 1,900 ads, blocked by my VPN over nine hours. They mostly ignore me.

    I was reminded this week of these different expectations in of all places a public bathroom at a prestigious private research hospital.

    I noticed the person at an adjacent urinal using his cell phone. I overheard another in a stall having a conversation, which continued at the sink — the phone was wedged between his shoulder and his ear — and as he left.

    Such experiences are surprisingly commonplace, and have been so for some time. I actually was once debating whether to ask someone to stow his phone as I watched him drop it in the urinal he was using and then fish it from the brackish water.

    I can understand why some think privacy no longer exists. At the same time, I fear the intrusion of these devices into all areas of human experience, and the absence of informed debates about these intrusions throughout everyday lives.

    We need to talk more about the recent Apple iCloud encryption changes for UK users or Amazon Alexa changes for everyone who uses its Echo devices. Otherwise, we are relinquishing freedoms and rights that we might wish one day, and perhaps in the not too distant future, we still had.

    Perhaps we can start with what should be obvious, and thus easy, agreements, such as cell phone in public bathrooms.