Vroom with a View.  

30 years ago the original Macintosh was unleashed. Despite the ensuing chaos at Apple, we cannot ignore the revolution it brought to the idea of a “personal computer”. Without the original Mac and all its children, we would probably still be dragging black suitcases to work or typing on beige IBM boxes.

I got my first Mac in March 2007. It was one of the first models after the transition to Intel, and it was an entire revolution for my workflow. Previously, I owned a 15" Compaq, one of the first with integrated Wi-Fi. I was using both Windows and Linux at the time, mostly Kubuntu for university projects. I got some advice from friends and I had tested the previous model for a couple of hours (borrowed from a roommate), but nothing had me prepared for the dramatic changes ahead.

In a heartbeat, I got an OS that was much better looking and much more usable than both Windows and Linux combined. I could run all the Linux-specific stuff and even managed to install Parallels to load a Windows VM, where Visual Studio was always on (my final masters’ project was developed in ASP.NET/C#). The boot time was much faster than what I was used to. I could lift the display lid and start working in an instant. The battery lasted for more than 3 hours. And the apps… I had the Adobe (Dreamweaver mostly) suite running more smoother than on Windows and Microsoft Office was also top notch at the time. I wrote countless papers on it. I wrote thousands of lines of code (most of them in Java). I edited endless flyers, websites, posters and presentations. Getting the hands on it was always a pleasure.

4 years later, I upgraded to an early-2011 Macbook Pro. The SuperDrive was gone, so I bought an external one, loaded Windows 7 on it and give it to my mum. Despite some keyboard layout problems (Bootcamp was still in its early days), it was a reliable machine, running an alien OS, and it performed wonderfully for about 2 years. Then, some battery issues led it to its early retirement. Or so I thought. Indeed there were some issues, but with the charger. Around the beginning of 2013, just to clear my conscience, I tried to boot it again. I connected the Macbook Pro 2011 charger and let it stay plugged for about a day. And then, it booted. 6 years on, and the machine was alive and kicking again. I cleaned it up and installed “its” OS X again. Lucky me, a couple months later, the Macbook Pro I was using had some hardware issues, and this old machine saved my ass for a few weeks.

The last time I turned it on was to install Mavericks. The battery took some time to start charging, but the process completed in about 45 minutes, without a glitch. Can you say the same for any other modern OS (Windows 8 or Ubuntu 13.10) in a machine with almost 7 years?

As an end note, I wrote most of this text in my iPad and finished it in my work Macbook Pro. It’s great to see how things evolved over the last 7 years. I look forward for the next 7, 14, 21…

 
1
Kudos
 
1
Kudos

Now read this

Patterns

We, as human beings, are animals of habit. We easily fall into routines, and even more easily fall into spirals of motivation, depression, angst or cheer. Understanding the way our body and our mind process these habits, our patterns, is... Continue →