MY APPLE, Part 3
Since buying my PowerBook G4 in 2005, I ‘upgraded’ to a MacBook in 2011. In 2015, the MacBook came down with some minor malfunction, so I decided to buy a 15″ MacBook Pro, but I kept both of my ‘old’ laptops (‘old’ Huh! …because 5-10 years = old!). They still worked.
When I brought my MacBook Pro home and unpacked it, I made an amazing discovery that injured my ego, BIG time! I had bought a laptop without noticing that it didn’t have the slot to play CDs or DVDs. I wanted to blame the Apple salesperson for not telling me, but it’s very possible that he just presumed that I knew what I was buying, because I didn’t ask any questions that might involve explaining such a big change in design. I had to swallow my pride and accept the fact that it was MY OWN fault. If that was the latest development in laptop design—making them slimmer and lighter—then maybe I just needed to get with the times. I was still able to use my 2011 MacBook or my PowerBook G4 to watch videos and download CDs, so I settled for that.
That brings me to another extension of my education in technology—the hard drive. With all the photos I was taking, after buying my digital camera, and all the recordings I was putting on my iPod, I had to find out about saving all that stuff, in case something went wrong and I might lose it all. That meant that I needed a back-up device, so I bought a 300GB LaCie external hard drive—Apple wasn’t in that market. It stood 7″ x 6″ and was 1.5″ deep, but it weighed a ton! I didn’t believe that I’d ever have enough stuff to fill it, but over a few years, backing up my laptop with photos and recordings, I actually did. To date, I’ve bought smaller and lighter external hard drives—at greatly increased capacity and greatly reduced cost—compared to my first one. And in so few years!
There is no physical limit to the amount of ‘stuff’ I can collect on my computer or even on a bigger external hard drive. It’s not like the space in your house or apartment—when you’ve reached the four walls of the room, that’s it. You can’t buy an ‘external house’ to hold more stuff and still live there. (Ha-ha! Enter 1-800-GOT-JUNK!)
I’m beginning to think that I’ll need to prepare to buy another laptop in 2022. Why? Because my MacBook Pro will be 7 years old in 2022. Should I continue to use it, until it ‘gives up the ghost’? What a shame! It’s a wonderful computer, and it’s kept me sane through 2020 and 2021, watching webinars and connecting with family & friends over Zoom, not to mention saving recordings of special events. Maybe Apple will become more climate-conscious and decide to open up Apple repair shops… I can dream, can’t I?
Fiona