At the end he write the setup cost him $20, but the display alone sells for $50 (from the amazon link he provided). I'm assuming he had a bunch of the components already, but that's not really a fair cost comparison.

There's a really small form-factor Mac clone based on the pico-mac on a Pi RP2040. Only available in kit form after Apple complained.

https://blog.1bitrainbow.com/pico-mac-nano/

I'd love to see this shoved into a Mac SE or Classic chassis with a replacement 9" LCD to match. Jeff, if you're reading this, make it happen lol.

The old Macs really were the perfect form factor for a compact desktop computer—you saw them in every bedroom in every 1990s sitcom.

Are there any good options these days that are smaller than a 24" all-in-one?

I wonder why he didn't use a RP2350, it costs practically same as the older RP2040. That way it could have 450 kB or so system RAM, enough to play around with some old productivity software.

I saw someone did the same but with a cool bit of bent plastic for the casing that evoked the original casing in a minimal way.

Edit, this isn't the one I read but looks like the idea is older than I thought as someone was doing it in 2015:

https://www.randomorbit.co.uk/?p=904

IMHO, a Macintosh/Apple product is equally about the hardware that delivers the software.

I dont want to belittle the authors work, but I would call this "building custom hardware for a pico-Mac project."

Very cool! This just needs a little more horsepower so I can emulate my first Mac (IIvx).

This is nice, but I yearn for the day I can run it on my watch. ;)