My Obsolete MacBook Pro

“You know,” I said to my wife, “I think I’m going to buy that new MacBook.” We were driving down the road to go grab something to eat. It was the summer of 2012. I was still working at the Maryland Department of Health, but I was picking up more and more side gigs writing. I wanted to have something a little more “robust” than the MacBook Air I had at the time. As much as I loved that computer for its portability, it had a very rough time keeping up with all the different programs that I used to edit documents, images and video.
“Who are you kidding,” my wife replied. “You already bought the son of a bitch.” She was right. I already had.

It wasn’t a cheap computer to buy, but I figured that I could write it off as a business expense since I was going to use it a lot for all the writing/editing gigs. And I did. It proved itself to be a good companion for those adventures, and then some. It traveled with me to Colombia and Puerto Rico. When dad got sick with colon cancer, it came along with me to Mexico. I wrote much of my dissertation on it when I traveled to and fro.

I have another MacBook Pro that is newer and more powerful, but it is strictly for work I do at home. Anything else I do on the go — and is not related to work at the health department — gets done on the 2012 MacBook Pro with Retina Display… A computer that just got designated as “obsolete” by Apple. I’m planning to keep it going as long as I can, hopefully until 2022. A ten-year-old MacBook? Who has heard of such a thing?

I mean, I have no doubt that someone has a running MacBook from 2006. It’s just kind of neat that this thing is now at eight years of age and runs modern software on it no problem. It can edit a video, albeit slowly. It can have several programs running simultaneously, albeit slowly. And it can take a beating… This aluminum construction is quite durable.

So, here’s to all the old things — and people — who have been deemed obsolete and the people who use them and make them contributors to the work that needs to be done every day. Here’s to the toys you bought to help you get your work done by making it easier and more enjoyable. And here’s to the women in our lives who can read us like an open book and know when we’ve already spent a good amount of cash on something. (How does that work?)

Most of all, here’s to midnight rants on your personal blog, illuminated only by the light of your retina display on a quiet night while the loves of your life sleep soundly.