How not to buy a new Mac
I remember a university friend telling me about the combined sensation of solemnity and joy he felt on those rare occasions he bought a new violin; the edginess of bidding in the auction house, followed by the celebratory drink.
Ideally, I would have a similar sensation when buying a new Mac. I’ve been using the machines for a long time, partly because I hate PCs, but largely because I instinctively went for the underdog in the computing world. I used Mac Classics to type up my degree dissertation, and since then have always used Macs at home and almost always at work (bar two short intervals). For the last two and a half years I’ve been hammering away on a very early MacBook Pro (you know - the ones that overheated, made hissing noises, had faulty batteries and power leads that caught fire). It even has scratches and dents either side of the trackpad where my cufflinks have chipped away at the paintwork.
Needless to say, I love the thing. And that’s why I was less that delighted when, after taking my 22 month old son to Southend on Friday, he rewarded me by pouring juice over the keyboard - taking out much of the left hand side.
It still works. I just can’t type without useful keys like the letters ‘a’ & ’s’. And, frankly, I think the whole point of a laptop is negated if you have to plug in an extra keyboard and find a way of sitting close enough to see the screen properly.
I’ve ordered a new internal keyboard to put in it, in the hope that might fix the problem. But, to make sure I could still work, I bit the bullet and went and spent a load of money I hardly had on a beautiful new iMac. That’s it at the top of the page. It has got a robust, wireless keyboard and I have put barbed wire round my working area.
And that’s why I’ve spent most of my weekend transferring crap from one machine to another, to the accompaniment of frustrated yells from a toddler who is desperate to destroy explore the new addition to his home.
I’d rather have saved the money and kept my laptop. You have to be happy to buy a Mac, not in a rage.
I also turned 34 this weekend. There’ll be kids out there, born on my 17th birthday, who are busy taking driving lessons. I’m feeling old. Old.
Published on 10th August, 2008
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