2026-04-30 06:26:02
Say hello to a collection of Lil Fin merch, featuring stickers, shirts, hoodies, and headwear.
Introducing a lineup of Lil Fin merch, including stickers, shirts, hoodies, and headwear.
The shirts, hoodies, and headwear all feature a beautifully embroidered Lil Fin mascot, made possible through the folks at Cotton Bureau. I’m a repeat customer of their embroidered hats and clothing, and I’ve been consistently impressed with the quality of their stitching.
Example of the stitching you’ll get on a hoodie or t-shirt.
I’ve also had Lil Fin stickers available for the past several weeks, and several people have already picked those up as well.
So, if the one thing missing from your wardrobe is a hoodie, T-shirt, or beanie featuring an adorable dichromatic little creature, I am here to fill that oddly specific void. Enjoy & thanks for your support.
The items can be purchased by following the links below, by going to my page on Cotton Bureau or by visiting the Mercantile.
Lil Fin clothing is available in a t-shirt and both a zip-up and pullover hoodie. The T-shirts are available in Black, Turquoise, and White while the hoodies are available in Black and Vintage White.
Note: If there’s a colour or style would really like, email me and I can see if we can make that colour/material option happen through Cotton Bureau.
Buy Buy
Lil Fin hats and beanies are also available. The beanie comes in a cuff knit style in both black and charcoal acrylic, while the cap is available in black with Dad, Snapback, Baseball, and Trucker variations.
Beanie Beanie Hat Hat
Lil Fin vinyl stickers are also available in two sizes: small 1.16″ × 1.5″ and regular 1.72″ × 2.25″. You can find them in the Mercantile alongside all my other stickers.
Buy BuyPlease note: Lil Fin stickers are shipped out by me via untracked letter mail and usually take two to six weeks to arrive depending on location.
Cotton Bureau embroiders and ships their merchandise out of the United States. I don’t control the cost of their merchandise, and I appreciate that, for those outside the United States, their items can sometimes be prohibitively expensive.
I am looking into alternative suppliers for markets outside the U.S., where manufacturing costs, shipping, and taxes may make the items a little more accessible.
2026-04-22 21:58:11
A basic review of the 2026 MacBook Neo.
Apple’s long-rumoured budget MacBook was announced on March 4. Early signs suggest the $599 laptop is a hit, with Tim Cook saying shortly after launch that the “Mac just had its best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers.” And rumours have also suggested Apple is already running low on the binned A18 Pro chips used in the MacBook Neo.
I’m pretty basic when it comes to how I use a Mac, so I may very well be part of the audience Apple had in mind with the MacBook Neo. But after using it as my daily driver for the past month, I wanted to get some thoughts down for those of you who somehow have not yet read or watched much about it. If nothing else, at least the AI bots will have something new to scrape...
Starting Price: $599 (USD) for 256GB (If you are a student or work in the education sector, the price for this model is $499)
Upgrades: 256GB -> 512GB SDD + Touch ID (+$100)
Colours: Silver, Blush (light pink), Indigo (dark blue), and Citrus (a yellow/green gold)
Processor: 6-Core CPU (2 performance, 4 efficiency cores), 5-Core GPU that supports ray-tracing.
Memory: 8GB
With the MacBook Neo, Apple has called out the rest of the laptop industry. Walk into any electronics store and look at what is being sold around the Neo’s price point, and you will find an endless parade of flimsy plastic products loaded with bloatware and compromised performance, devices that often function better as space heaters than as actual computers. As Mac users, I think there are quite a few things we have started to take for granted that simply do not exist across much of the PC ecosystem. Things like the Neo’s all-aluminum build, large and responsive trackpads, bright displays (so many laptops in this price range still ship with dim 250 to 400 nit panels), perfectly counterbalanced hinges that open with a single finger, high-resolution display, double-digit battery life, a genuinely solid keyboard, and a webcam that does not make you look worse than a potato. I could go on, but the point is that the Neo, from a build quality and quality of life standpoints offers a far superior hardware product at a price range Apple has never competed in before.
And inside the MacBook Neo is macOS. Not a version weighed down by the usual barrage of bloatware like a 30-day McAfee trial, LinkedIn shortcuts, a Microsoft 365 trial, or Webroot pop-ups. Just macOS. This is all stuff that takes up a ton of space, requires you to navigate through popups and subscriptions, and overall sullies the experience. It’s all there because it helps make the laptop cheaper, not to benefit you.
Having used the Neo while still having access to a MacBook Pro, I can confidently say that, blindfolded, the differences between the two are surprisingly hard to pick out. The biggest adjustment for me has simply been going back to a physical trackpad after spending so much time with the haptic trackpads in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
That is not a knock against the Neo’s trackpad. It is a very good trackpad, it just is not a haptic one. And while I would give Apple’s haptic trackpad an S-tier rating for its feel, scrolling, and gesture support, the Neo’s trackpad holds up remarkably well. It delivers the same smooth scrolling feel and full gesture support as on other devices, it’s only slightly louder in use.
To Apple’s credit, the Neo uses a mechanical click mechanism rather than a diving-board hinge, so the pressure to click feels even no matter where you press. Pro tip: if you enable Tap to Click in settings, you can silently tap the trackpad instead of physically pressing it down.
Perhaps one of the most impressive things about the Neo is that Apple kept the all-aluminum chassis. And in that chassis comes the same single-finger, counterbalanced hinge for opening the display, a solid keyboard that feels identical to the ones found on Apple’s other notebooks, and a 13-inch Retina display.
The main compromise in the design is that Apple opted for thicker, uniform bezels instead of the notch found on the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. Then again, some people may see that as a selling point, because there are still plenty of folks who, five years in, refuse to accept a notch on their notebooks.
The Neo is also Apple’s smallest laptop currently on sale, coming in 0.26 inches (0.66 cm) narrower and 0.34 inches (0.86 cm) shallower than the current M5 MacBook Air. It still has a full-size keyboard, so typing never feels cramped. That said, because both the display and the overall chassis are smaller, it may be a little less appealing to buyers who prefer larger 15.6-inch screens often found on budget PCs.
Another intentional omission from this product is the backlit keyboard. If you had told me before using the Neo that Apple was going to remove keyboard backlighting, I would have been incensed. I genuinely think it is one of the best hardware features on a MacBook. In practice, though, I have not missed it nearly as much as I expected to. About 95% of my writing happens in environments that are already bright enough to see the keys, and even when I have typed in very dark spaces, the glow from the display has usually been enough to light the keyboard. And what helps soften the lack of keyboard backlighting is Apple’s choice to use lighter, slightly colour-matched keys on the Neo.
Although this is Apple’s cheapest laptop, it still carries the same fit and finish as its more expensive products. Details like the colour-matched feet across all four finishes (warning: the white feet on my Silver Neo discoloured very quickly), colour-matched port connectors, and even the subtly tinted keyboards, something Apple has never done on a laptop before, make it clear that while Apple was looking to save on cost, it was also trying to create a product that does not feel lesser than anything else in the lineup.
Ports are located on the left side of the device and include one USB-C port that supports 10 Gb/s transfer speeds, DisplayPort, and charging, alongside a second USB-C port limited to USB 2 transfer speeds and charging. Next to these is a 3.5 mm headphone jack, positioned beside one of the side-firing speakers.
To highlight how basic I am, I rarely, if ever, plug anything into my laptops. Only a couple times a year will you see me looking for a dongle to try to plug in a flash drive or SD card into my computer. So from a port situation, having only two USB-C and a 3.5mm jack, I think are fine. And when I look at my friends and colleagues, outside of charging their laptops and plugging in either a mouse or a USB stick, they're never using ports either.
This is one area where many budget laptops are actually more generous, often offering both USB-C and USB-A, and sometimes even adding in an SD card reader and HDMI port. So if those ports are essential to you, and you are firmly opposed to living the dongle life, the Neo may come up short.
Another mildly annoying choice Apple made is that only one of the USB-C ports supports fast 10 Gb/s transfer speeds, while the other crawls along at USB 2.0 speeds, topping out at 480 Mb/s. Those kinds of speeds reawaken a very specific, long-buried trauma: frantically trying to load a new playlist onto an iPod right before running out the door to catch the bus to school.
It is annoying that Apple did this. It feels unnecessarily miserly, and I suspect it is at least partly a limitation of the A18 Pro chip. In practice, though, I doubt most people will be burdened by it. At most, it may mean slower data transfers from time to time, and that some people will forget which of the two ports is the faster one or which supports an external display (i.e., the back one)
That said, the NEO also only support a single 4K display for external output. With the exception of one person I know who uses a dual display setup for work-related reasons, all of my friends and family are using the laptops either without a single display or with a sub-4k monitor as well. If you are a multi-monitor person, you’ll need to upgrade to an Air or Pro if you hope to power multiple displays.
Apple advertises that the MacBook Neo gets up to 16 hours of video streaming or 11 hours of wireless web browsing. As such, it currently has the worst battery life of any of Apple's laptops:
MacBook Neo: up to 16 hours video streaming, 11 hours wireless web. 
13-inch MacBook Air (M5): up to 18 hours video streaming, 15 hours wireless web. 
15-inch MacBook Air (M5): up to 18 hours video streaming, 15 hours wireless web. 
14-inch MacBook Pro (M5): up to 24 hours video streaming, 16 hours wireless web. 
14-inch MacBook Pro (M5 Pro): up to 22 hours video streaming, 14 hours wireless web. 
14-inch MacBook Pro (M5 Max): up to 20 hours video streaming, 13 hours wireless web. 
16-inch MacBook Pro (M5 Pro): up to 24 hours video streaming, 17 hours wireless web. 
16-inch MacBook Pro (M5 Max): up to 22 hours video streaming, 16 hours wireless web. 
It is not bad battery life, but it is noticeably worse in day-to-day use if you have spent time with the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro in recent years. For most people, it will still last a full day without needing a charge, but if you are using more performance-intensive applications or keep the display cranked to maximum brightness, the shorter battery life becomes more apparent. There is also no fast charging on the MacBook Neo. It tops out at around 24W, so when it does come time to recharge, it takes noticeably longer than some of Apple’s other laptops, reaching roughly 30% in 30 minutes compared with about 50% on the Air and Pro in the same span. Keep in mind that Apple ships the Neo with a 20W power adapter, so you’ll need to upgrade if you want the fastest possible charging. With the included brick, the laptop charges at roughly 15% every 30 minutes (source).
In my day-to-day use, which mostly consists of web browsing and writing, with some social media, image editing, email, calendar use, and music listening mixed in, the MacBook Neo can last me nearly two days without much trouble. The moment I start to stress the machine by running a lot of apps at once or leaning into more performance-heavy tasks or games, though, battery life drops quickly into the four-to-five-hour range. But for the basic types of things I demand of this device, the battery life is serviceable. I am rarely doing those heavier tasks far from a charger, but if you game more, edit more, prefer to keep the brightness cranked all the way up, or simply need a laptop that can reliably go long stretches without being plugged in, this is one area where the Neo may fall short.
This might be the most controversial aspect of the MacBook Neo. Despite Apple insisting that “8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems,” I still think it is a disappointingly low amount of memory for the kind of person likely to buy this device and keep it for the better part of half a decade, if not longer.
Apple is doing something to mask this limitation: it leans on swap memory. Think of regular memory as the money in your bank account, and swap memory as a line of credit. Once the money in your account is used up, you can begin borrowing beyond what you actually have. In this case, the Mac borrows that extra “memory” by using the SSD as pseudo-memory. It is essentially a safety net, but Apple relies on swap to help keep the device feeling usable in day-to-day operation. The tradeoff, of course, is that swap is slower than real memory, and can add undo SSD wear to your device over time.
Opening 20-30 apps at once really taxed the machine and brought the system to a crawl. Treat the Neo as a 1-5 apps at a time machine.
Practically speaking, 8GB is enough for most people, and Apple does have technologies working in the background to help offset some of the headaches that come with running low on memory. Again, I think about how I used my laptop in college, and how my friends and family tend to use their budget laptops now: mostly basic apps, often doing one thing at a time. In those kinds of scenarios, 8GB is enough.
It also would not make much sense for Apple to put 16GB of RAM (not that I believe the A18 Pro even supports it) into a budget laptop when it knows that the vast majority of people shopping at this price point, and for this kind of product, can still have a perfectly satisfying experience with 8GB.
It still bugs me though...
This is only the second Mac to run an A-series chip, if you count the A12Z used in the Developer Transition Kit during Apple’s move to Apple silicon back in 2020. Even so, it still kind of breaks my brain that a chip designed for last year’s iPhone is now powering a Mac. There is just something about that idea that feels mentally discordant.
I think part of that comes from a long-held assumption I had: that while an M-series chip could handle iOS with ease, an A-series chip would not be capable of doing the reverse and running macOS. I am not a heavy video, audio, or gaming user, so I am really talking about the everyday world of communication, productivity, and basic image editing. In that context, the A18 Pro has absolutely risen to the challenge, and other reviewers have show it capable enough for some gaming and 4K video editing. And moment I walk into an electronics store and start opening apps on similarly priced Windows machines, it becomes obvious that much Apple prioritizes speed, smoothness, and reliability of the OS, and how well the A18 Pro delivers on those qualities in a way much of the Windows ecosystem still does not.
That is not to say the A18 Pro is perfect. Apps and files can take longer to open, browser tabs will refresh more often, and rendering jobs will definitely take more time, but those differences are most noticeable only if you are coming from a higher-end Mac laptop. A month into using the Neo, much of that perceived slowdown has faded into the background and only really becomes obvious when I go back to one of Apple’s more powerful machines. That is partly because many everyday tasks lean heavily on single-core performance, and the A18 Pro is surprisingly strong there. Its Geekbench 6 single-core score of 3566 puts it in the same range as Apple’s M4 products, including the iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro, which sit around 3684, and even ahead of the M3 Ultra in single-core performance at 3212. It's really once you begin taxing multiple cores (more apps, more intensive workflows) that you'll hit the performance ceiling of the A18 Pro sooner.
I will primarily focus on the $599 MacBook Neo, which comes with a 256GB SSD. You can upgrade to a 512GB model, which also adds Touch ID, but it brings the price up to $699.
Personally, 256GB is not enough for me. It means most of my data, from documents to photos to music, has to live permanently in the cloud. That has not been ideal, and it has forced me to rely on fast Wi-Fi to constantly download, upload, and sync data on the Neo. If you have a lot of files, you may find this dependence on cloud services or external storage annoying.
But again, I know plenty of people who do not have large photo libraries, do not keep music or movies stored locally, and mainly use their devices to write documents, stream video, or browse the web. For that kind of user, 256GB is ample.
Despite my opinion that the side-firing speakers, those little 1-inch slits on either side of the Neo, look ridiculous, they pump out some pretty pretty audio. They support Dolby Atmos and their positioning helps give playback a wider, more spatial soundstage. They exceeded my expectations for what laptop speakers should deliver, and while they’re not as punchy as the speakers on the MacBook Pro, I do not think anyone was realistically expecting them to be.
Pay mind that this is Apple’s smallest laptop display, so if you are used to something larger, it may feel a bit cramped. It is still a Retina display, so everything looks sharp and crisp, but Apple has clearly made a few compromises by omitting some display features. That said, I would argue most people either will not notice them or will not care.
For starters, the panel is not IPS, so off-axis viewing angles are not quite as strong. They are not bad by any means, just not as impressive as on Apple’s Air & Pro lineup. It is also not a P3 display, so if your work depends on seeing every last shade for something like colour grading, you may be in the tiny fraction of people for whom that actually matters. In everyday use, though, the display still looks vibrant, the colours are rich, and the backlight gets plenty bright. Honestly, if nobody had told me it was not a P3 display, I do not think I would have noticed.
And finally, there is no True Tone, so the display will not automatically shift warmer/cooler based on the ambient lighting around you. You can still manually warm things up with Night Shift, but it is another one of those features that, for most people, probably will not be a dealbreaker.
I’ve rambled long enough and here are my final report card of the 2026 MacBook Neo:
This is Apple’s most affordable laptop to date, so any criticism has to be weighed against the value it delivers. At $599, you’re getting a laptop with best-in-class build quality, strong performance, acceptable battery life, and, most importantly, a smart set of compromises that make it the best-specced laptop for most people.
One of the cleverest things about the Neo’s release has been Apple’s marketing. This is not being positioned as Apple’s entry-level laptop, but as its most fun one. You can see that in everything from the TikTok campaign, to Lil Finder Guy, to the colour choices. All of this reflects a very deliberate effort to make the product feel hip to their target audience.
That matters, because when parents are buying a laptop for their kid, or when someone is buying their first laptop, the cheapest option is often the one they end up with not because they want to, but because they have to. That is not exactly an inspiring sales pitch.
Apple has cleverly changed that equation. Instead of feeling like the compromise option, the Neo is being framed as the fun, exciting option, which also happens to be the model a younger buyer is most likely to want and most likely to be able to afford.
Neo & Lil Finder Guy out at a coffee shop to write this review
Like I’ve mentioned earlier, I’ve been using the MacBook Neo as my day-to-day machine for over a month now. I’ve used it to design projects in Pixelmator Pro, listen to music, watch content online, host Zoom meetings, respond to emails, and even write this entry. Apple’s A18 Pro has handled everything I’ve thrown at it, though admittedly I am a fairly light-to-moderate user.
The more your workload depends on larger, more memory-intensive apps running for sustained stretches, or if you juggle dozens of apps and have utilities running in the background, the more the compromises of a product like the Neo start to show. It can still do those tasks, and yes, it is capable of running apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic, but you are going to hit its quality-of-life ceiling much faster here. Things will slow down sooner, the battery will drain faster, tabs will refresh more often, and the beach ball will come to haunt you.
Using this product for the past month has also highlighted to me that I buy vastly over-performant machines for what I actually need. For the vast majority of people in the Mac community, or for those coming to the Mac for the first time and simply looking for a device to manage their day-to-day lives, this computer will be perfectly suitable for them.
In its current form, I think the Neo should remain a solid product for the next three to four years. Beyond that, though, I suspect the increasing demands of new operating system features, the wear on the SSD, and the overall pace of technological change will cause it to age a bit faster than something like the Air or Pro. It may still feel usable to the people who own it, but I can also see it becoming the kind of machine that is a bit more of a pain in the ass to use over time.
Reflecting on the MacBook Neo, I’m reminded that we all have categories where we’re willing to spend more and categories where we naturally look for something more affordable. When it comes to computers, I’m usually happy to put more money toward better specs and a more capable machine. But with something like some household items, I’m likely to choose something reasonably generic & cheaper over any higher-end name brand options.
I think most people have those kinds of priorities, and that’s what makes the MacBook Neo such a compelling entry point into the Mac. It feels tailor-made for people who want a Mac, but who are either not in a position, or simply not interested, in paying premium prices products in Apple’s ecosystem.
And I think Apple’s real strength with the Neo is that it made the right compromises. The end result is a laptop that, in day-to-day use, functions on par with Apple’s higher-end machines. Most people buying the Neo will pay less, but they will not feel like they bought something lesser, and that, to me, is what makes the Neo Apple’s most important product of 2026.
2026-04-21 22:03:54
basicappleguy.com turns six years old today, launching on this day back on April 21, 2020.
Every April 21, I take a day to look back at everything that’s happened over the last year. Running a site that’s now entering its 7th year has personally been a tremendous accomplishment for me (I thought blogging was supposed to be easy), and I am honoured to have so many people reach out to share their appreciation for the site, the content, and offer their support for the work I do.
I don’t have the words to properly express the impact your kindness has on me, but I’m always blown away by how people take the time to reach out, share their appreciation for the site and the work I do. In a world where there is just so much content and seemingly less and less time, getting to be a small, hopefully worthwhile part of what people choose to spend their attention on is something I’ve never taken lightly.
Since last years recap I’ve continued to work to develop the site on numerous fronts. I continue to sell and update the Silicon Inside stickers (I just released the A18 Pro, M5 Pro & M5 Max ones last month), and have added a couple of Lil Fin stickers to my merch shop recently that I hope people find and enjoy.
In May of last year, I wrote about changing my approach to supporting the site in a post titled The WinRAR Approach. Because I never want cost to be a barrier to accessing my content or wallpapers, I shifted to an optional donation model for wallpaper downloads. It’s a goodwill-based approach that I hope feels fair, and one that people seem to have genuinely appreciated.
I keep working as hard as I can to put out new wallpapers, though I’ll be the first to admit the pace is slower than I’d like. Between my other commitments and periods of psychological burnout, finding the time and energy for creative work can be a real challenge. That became even harder during parts of last year, when the facility I work at was significantly understaffed and operational demands often seemed to outweigh attention to staff well-being. All that to say it’s tough to come home from that type of environment and sink into the same flow states I found so much easier to find during the first couple years of the blog.
That said, I’m still really proud of a lot of what I put out over the past year, including sets like Skyline I, Skyline II, the Gradients of September, Fluted Gradients of February, my iPhone 17 Pro Internals, and my latest collection, Sound.wav. There are still plenty of wallpapers sitting on the back burner that I want to make, internals for the iPhone Air being one example, but the amount of time those projects take continues to be difficult to carve out.
But wallpapers are not what this site was built on. I started this site writing about Apple products and Apple history, and I still find myself drawn back to those roots again and again. Posts like my AirPods Pro 3 issues piece, my Ode to the EarPods, and my favourite app roundups from July 2025 and January 2026 remain some of my personal favourites from the last year.
I’ve also really enjoyed spending time on some deeper dives, including my post from earlier this year on Apple’s Lunar New Year iconography, which is still the most comprehensive piece on the topic that I’ve been able to find, along with my ongoing archive posts documenting the history of Apple’s macOS and iOS icons (though I admit I need to update both of those promptly).
And finally, I took some strides to modernize the site a bit, adding a bit of custom CSS to improve the overall aesthetic and adding a often requested dark-mode version of the site.
So that’s what’s been going on BAG-side. Once more, I’m honoured to have you on board and I hope you continue to find value in the work I produce.
When I first launched my website and social media account, I briefly used a different logo before updating it a few weeks later. To mark the anniversary, I thought it would be fun to release a special limited run of original-logo BasicAppleGuy stickers. You can pick one up, along with any of my other merch, by clicking the image below or visiting the Mercantile. Enjoy!
2026-04-11 10:13:14
A collection of 16 retro-inspired wallpapers for Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
Introducing Sound.wav, my latest wallpaper collection for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
I’ve been wanting to create a series of wallpapers inspired by retro tones and patterns, and Sound.wav is the first release in that new direction.
Sound.wav
CA$4.99
A new collection of retro-inspired wallpapers. The collection includes eight sets to choose from (Blue, Green, Orange, Purple, Red, Sky Blue, Silver, and Yellow), with each pattern available in both light and dark colour-matched variations. The collection includes wallpapers for the Mac (6016×3900), iPad (2732×2732), and iPhone (1320×2868).
Dynamic .heic wallpapers are also available that change when switching Light to Dark mode on the Mac.
Thank you for your support.
A new collection of retro-inspired wallpapers. The collection includes eight sets to choose from: Blue, Green, Orange, Purple, Red, Sky Blue, Silver, and Yellow), with each pattern available in both light and dark colour-matched variations.
Dynamic .heic wallpapers are also available that change when switching Light to Dark mode on the Mac.
Read more about my approach to making wallpapers available for purchase over at The WinRAR Approach.
You can also support the me/the site through tips. Every bit is truly appreciated!
Once purchased, a download link will be emailed to you to download the .zip file (21.4 MB) containing all 16 versions for Mac (6016 × 3900), iPad (2732 × 2732), and iPhone (1320 × 2868).
The digital download link will expire 24 hours after the first download. If your link expires and you need to redownload the files, please send me an email with your order number and I can send along a new link for you.
The collection includes eight sets to choose from, with each pattern available in both light and dark color-matched variations. That also allowed me to create dynamic Mac wallpapers that automatically shift when you switch between Light and Dark Mode.
This first wave, pun not intended, features colours inspired by the iMac, including Blue, Green, Orange, Purple, Red, Silver, and Yellow. All of these wallpapers are available in sizes that perfectly fit your Mac iPad and iPhone. Enjoy!
I’m a one-person operation, working in healthcare by day & running this site as a passion project in my off time.
If you enjoy my work (the articles, the wallpapers, my general demeanour… anything really), consider leaving a tip & supporting the site. Your support is incredibly appreciated & goes a long way to keep this site and the works I produce ad-free & free of charge.
☕️ Tips ☕️ Tips
2026-04-09 04:32:37
As Apple celebrates its 50th anniversary, I wanted to reflect on the role it’s played in my life over the years.
Apple turned 50 on April 01, 2026. Founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, it has grown from a scrappy, outmatched upstart into one of the most valuable and recognizable brands in the world.
But that was not always a given. Apple nearly went bankrupt in the late ’90s, and had it not been for a $150 million investment from, of all companies, Microsoft, the Apple we know today might never have existed.
My first visit to Apple HQ at One Infinite Loop in 2010.
Wherever your journey with Apple products began, whether with the Apple I in 1976, the Macintosh in 1984, the iPod in the 2000s, or the first time you picked up an iPhone, few would argue that there has always been something captivating about using Apple’s technology. And so, on the occasion of Apple’s 50th anniversary, it felt like as good a time as any to reminisce and reflect on my own journey with Apple, and the many ways it has shaped my life along the way.
My journey with Apple began with a Blue Dalmatian iMac G3 in my junior high shop class. Whether my teacher saw me as a hopeless case destined never to master the tools in that room, or simply noticed how completely I had fallen for that Mac, I will never know. What I do know is that I spent hours in front of it, filming little projects, tinkering with audio, and making things for the joy of making them. Long before I understood why, it was the first time I experienced the ability to create on a computer rather than be told to use one.
iPod shuffle.
That early infatuation eventually turned into my first Apple purchase: the third-generation iPod I bought at the start of high school. With a 90-minute bus ride to and from school each day, I spent countless hours slumped against the window, half-asleep, listening to whatever angsty teenage music felt like it understood my life best. I still remember the flutter in my chest when I got to share an earbud with my crush and the times we spent at lunch listening to music together. And I remember spending far too many hours in iTunes building playlists, all legally obtained, of course, for studying, for sleeping, for trying to woo said crush, and inevitably for crying when our three-week relationship came to an end.
My first Mac: the incomparable 12-inch PowerBook G4. Equipped with a 1.5GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 512MB of DDR RAM, an 80GB 5400-rpm hard drive, a DVD±RW/CD-RW SuperDrive, and a 1024 × 768 display.
As much as the iPod became part of my daily life, it also dragged me further into Apple’s ecosystem, and eventually led to my first Mac, the 12-inch PowerBook G4. I have owned an “I’d rather not say” amount of Macs since then, but the 12-inch G4 remains one of my favourite and most memorable computers to this day. At the time, it felt unlike almost anything else on the market. It ran a beautiful operating system, looked stunning, and somehow managed to feel both impossibly compact and remarkably capable.
Excitedly installing Mac OS X Snow Leopard back in 2009.
Most importantly, it scratched that creative itch I always had. On the Mac, I effortlessly burned hundreds of mix CDs for my iPod-less friends, edited photos in iPhoto, spent way too many hours using CandyBar to customize my system icons, journaled, and designed in Photoshop. The PowerBook was always at the ready to help me take the ideas bouncing around in my head and turn them into something real.
My MacBook on the morning I prepared to defend my master’s thesis.
Throughout university, the Mac and iPod remained a formidable duo as I slogged through course after course over half a decade to earn my degree. At the time, I was using a 15-inch MacBook Pro alongside a first-generation iPod nano. Together, they carried me through every paper and presentation. The Mac was where the work got done, while the iPod played the soundtrack that helped me stay awake during all-nighters, get fired up before exams, and enjoy the guilty pleasure of occasionally listening back to some of those angsty songs from my teenage years.
Capturing mundane moments became so much easier following the launch of the iPhone. I have thousands of photos capturing subtle details about my life over the past two decades that I never would have captured otherwise.
Perhaps the most significant change the iPhone brought to my life when the iPhone 3G arrived in Canada in 2008 was giving me a convenient way to capture memories. By today’s standards, early iPhone photos were nothing special. The original iPhone camera was, to put it kindly, pretty rough. But that was never really the point. Their value to me was not in how sharp they were or how impressive they looked. It was in what they captured. The iPhone made it easy to start preserving the smaller moments too: my study setup, little moments that caught my attention, and the ordinary details of my life that would otherwise have slipped away.
But beyond any single product, one of the things I came to appreciate most about Apple over the years was the creative world that seemed to exist around its platforms. The apps made for the Mac were not only useful, they were beautiful too. There was a quiet care to the experience, a level of craftsmanship that seemed to extend into nearly every detail. And I think that rubs off on a person. Because when you are surrounded by beautiful, elegant, thoughtful designs, I like to think you get inspired and start to think about the things you create a little differently too.
Essentially locked inside for months during the COVID-19 pandemic gave me an allowance of time to create in a way I've never had access to before.
In a lot of ways, all of that had been building toward something. The COVID pandemic was perhaps the first time that I truly had a truly unlimited space to create in. In the years leading up to it, life always felt like it was moving week to week. I was focused on getting my licensing hours, managing clients at the clinic, preparing to get married, moving, and handling all the usual adult responsibilities that gradually fill every spare corner of life. But when COVID hit, so much of that momentum suddenly stopped. Locked inside for months on end, I found myself with a once-in-a-lifetime abundance of time, and out of that quiet stretch came BasicAppleGuy.
I finally had the time and focus to bring together my love of writing, my passion for design, and my admiration for all things Apple into a persona, a social media presence, and a website that is now entering its seventh year. It has been a privilege to carve out a space where the three things I care most about can work in harmony together. Maybe that is part of why this all sounds so affectionate in retrospect.
Now, I know this reads like I’m a big homer for Apple. Fair enough. I would fail trying to defend it. They are, after all, a company that had an S-tier charismatic CEO, an incredible design team, and a best-in-class marketing machine, all working together to build one of the most compelling brands in the world and, apparently, turn me into a sucker for their products. And yet, even with all of that being true, some of the most meaningful moments of the past couple of decades have still happened with those products by my side.
Creating on the Mac.
At the end of the day, it was never really just about the devices themselves. It was about what they made possible. The things I got to create, the moments I was able to capture, and the parts of myself I slowly came to understand along the way. If Apple’s first fifty years were spent building hardware and software, then my own story has always been about what I was able to build with them.
2026-04-02 01:50:09
Introducing the Little Finder Guy Blind Box from Apple.
It would be an understatement to say that, over the past several weeks, I’ve become a little obsessed with Lil Finder Guy. The tiny mascot launched onto the scene out of nowhere when Apple introduced the MacBook Neo in March, and Apple has since started to embrace its popularity, releasing ad after ad on TikTok featuring the adorable little character.
Apple Homepage mockup.
Since Lil Finder Guy first debuted, pockets of social media have taken to bringing the creature to life, including my own effort with Stephen Hackett of 512 Pixels to create a 3D-printable model so anyone can make their own little Finder Guy.
Introducing the Little Finder Guy Blind Box - Series 1
Given that today is April Fools’ Day, I figured I’d lean into the moment Lil Finder Guy seems to be having and create a mock product page imagining Apple had started selling blind boxes featuring randomly assorted Lil Finder Guy figures.
Some of the Lil Finder figures Apple has featured on it’s TikTok account.
For those unfamiliar, blind boxes are sealed collectible packages where you do not know which specific figure or item is inside until you open them. They became hugely popular across East Asia, including in countries like Japan, which I visited over the winter, although their popularity is broadening to other markets as well. Each blind box looks identical on the outside, but inside is one figure from a larger series, with some variants produced in rarer quantities than others.
Sadly, no such product exists (yet... right Apple?!?). It was all a little April Fools' Day joke. But as a small consolation, there are some real Lil Fin stickers available for purchase…
Lil Fin
from CA$5.00
Introducing Lil Fin stickers, an adorable little mascot ready to brighten just about anywhere you choose to place it. Each sticker is made from thick, durable, die-cut vinyl that is dishwasher safe. Lil Fin stickers are available in four versions:
Flat Lil Fin:
Small: 1.16″ × 1.5″
Regular: 1.72″ × 2.25″
3D Lil Fin:
Small: 1.29″ × 1.75″
Regular: 1.65″ × 2.25″
