The news is too depressing to merit comment, so I shut down the MacBox briefly to install a new-used AGP video card to deliver the evil tidings faster, and on two monitors at once. I will never be smart.
Truth to tell, this is part of the reason I’m reluctant to pull the trigger on a new Mac — this old G4 450MHz “Sawtooth” Power Mac is absurdly easy and cheap to expand. I scored it for the cost of shipping from the offices of Bicycle Retailer & Industry News in California some years back, and since have added a 1.1GHz processor upgrade, a DVD burner, an Airport wireless card, a second internal hard drive, a four-port USB 2.0 card, 2GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro video card, which replaces an ATI Rage 128 Pro and thus brings my video capabilities up to, oh, 2002 or thereabouts.
The old beast even has a Zip drive, in case I need to tap some of my archived wisdom from the previous millennium, and a brand-new 250GB external HD for saving the latest and greatest brain droppings — including the entire boot volume, which gets copied over every week using SuperDuper!
Maybe tinkering with this dinosaur is my penance for being a complete retard in junior-high shop, where I couldn’t even forge a suitable cold chisel. Or for skipping auto shop in high school. Or for buying that 1978 Toyota Chinook pop-top camper, which had all the positive qualities of being trapped in an elevator with Glenn Beck.
Whatever. All I know is this hot-rodded Sawtooth from 1999 is still running on the original drive, unlike a certain newish MacBook I could mention. A guy could get a hernia fetching the 10-ton sonofabitch around from coffee shop to Internet café, but as Boris the Bullet Dodger once noted in the Guy Ritchie film “Snatch”: “Heavy is good, heavy is reliable. If it doesn’t work you can always hit them with it.”
Late update: Good God, it’s snowing again. I am so moving to Arizona. Maybe I can get a gig chauffeuring Big Jonny from barstool to law school.
Mad Blog Media 
Wow. TWO “Snatch” references in one post! I’m impressed, O’Grady! Turkish and Boris! Nicely done, sir!
You telling me that Big Jonny is joining C.P. in law school?
Harlan and I both support your move to Arizona.Please don’t take that in any financial cents.
Charley
We love that movie around the DogHaus, Jef … and yes, that is the source of Turkish’s name. He’s part Turkish Van, an oddball breed that hates wind, loves water and will occasionally swim.
Khal, Big Jonny is already nose to grindstone in law school, down Phoenix way (yes, he has fled Flagstaff for the clusterplex). He frequently tweets about his misery on the DC website.
Charley, are you still encamped at McDowell? Damn, I’m jealous. If I get out today it will be for a very short run indeed — it’s alll of 18 degrees right now. Say howdy to Harlan for me.
Patrick, how old is that Power Mac? With the upgrades, it sounds like you’ve been able to keep it fairly up to date. Maybe those Power Macs are good investments after all if one can keep them upgraded longer than an iMac.
Hey, Craig — the MacBox dates to 1999. You can pick ’em up for pennies from various resellers, and swapping parts is easier than playing with Legos. A flip of a latch and the entire right side of the box folds down to provide access to the guts.
I suppose that if I were doing a bunch of video/audio editing I’d need something with a bit more zip, but I’m just writing and editing text or scanning and coloring cartoons here. So I’m guessing I can get by for a while longer while Apple tosses various notions at the wall trying to get one to stick.
I should’ve read your post a little closer. I see that you said the Sawtooth dates from 1999. 10 years out of a computer?! That’s un-American! Don’t you know you’re supposed to buy a new computer every three years? We gotta keep those third world countries polluted with our e-waste.