I owe my faithful MacBook an apology. I forgot her birthday. I was thinking that it was about now, and when I shuffled through my computer receipts I discovered that, sure enough, I bought my computer on June 8, 2008. So my MacBook is four years old!
Prior to moving to the Mac, I had been a Dell user for a while. My Dell’s were pretty good tools. Sure, Windows crashed every week or so, but I only had a frightful crash about once a year. I am faithful about backing up, so I never lost any significant data, and a serious crash was a good excuse to do a “nuke and pave”, reinstalling Windows and all my software. While it wasted the better part of a day, the process usually resulted in a much faster computer, at least for a while. But after about three years, it didn’t matter what I did, the computer was just slooooow, and the battery only lasted for an hour or so. Okay by me, I like new toys, and a slow computer and crappy battery was a good excuse to upgrade.
Which brings me to the reason that I HATE Apple. Last week, Apple released their latest family of new machines. The new MacBook Pro with Retina display is a sweet machine. I want a new computer! But I don’t need one. My MacBook runs just fine. I’ve never had to do a nuke and pave, I have the latest versions of the software that I use regularly, and it all runs just fine. Even my battery, while not as good as new, gives me a solid couple of hours of use before I have to dig out the charger. Damn you Apple!