I dearly wish computers would last forever. They can! I’ve had a PC run well for 11 years. Ming the Merciless. He was a great system, but eventually the software grew incompatible, and I had to buy a new PC.
\n
\nThe same thing happened recently to my beloved iMac, Chronos. He was just over 5-years-old, and he ran well. A few years ago I needed to replace his video card. And the system did run hot. So I knew an update was looming.<\/p>\n
The thing that tipped me to get a new Macintosh, however, was the software.<\/p>\n
Like many Mac users, I don’t upgrade OS X every time Apple releases a new version — and they distribute a new version of that operating system annually. So I was stuck in the past, but content.<\/p>\n
The first upgrade denied me was XCode, the Apple development environment. That wasn’t a big deal because I mostly use the C compiler at the command prompt, and the old compiler still worked.<\/p>\n
The second upgrade denied me was Adobe Creative Cloud. The new version came out and I clicked the Upgrade button (I pay for the annual subscription) and — Ta-Da<\/em>! — it was incompatible with the Mac’s old OS X.<\/p>\n The third upgrade denied me was Parallels, the PC\/Windows simulator. I actually paid for and downloaded version 11, so I was beginning to feel more pressure for an upgrade. (Oh, and my OS X was several generations out of date, so I’d need to do multiple OS X upgrades.)<\/p>\n The final upgrade denied me was Word 2016, Microsoft Office.<\/p>\n I was willing to wait until the next release of OS X comes out in a few weeks, but then I said, “Naa!” And I actually said that aloud, if you’re trying to picture this episode in your head.<\/p>\n “Naaa!”<\/p>\n It had three A’s in it, not two as I recall.<\/p>\n With the old Mac getting hot and work needed to get done, I ordered the new Mac.<\/p>\n Again, you can hang on to computers as long as you keep them maintained. All parts can be replaced or upgraded. Providing you have a backup, you can even replace the hard drive. But eventually you’ll either spend more than a new computer would cost, or you run into the software compatibility issue, as I did.<\/p>\n For me, the most delightful thing about getting a new computer is the speed. I made sure my new iMac was the fastest model offered (iCore 7 at 4.0 GHz with “Turbo Boost”) and that it had a higher capacity hard drive (3TB v. 1TV) and more memory (16GB v. 8GB) than the old system.<\/p>\n The computer arrived last week, and after using it for a few days, I must say that I’m delighted. On Wednesday, I’ll detail the file transfer ordeal, which was amazing and smooth but took a dreadfully long amount of time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New computers are always so refreshing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7743"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7752,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7743\/revisions\/7752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}