It’s an early Happy New Year for Herself …
Herself has been upping her MacGame this holiday season.
First she scored an iPhone 13, a Christmas present that replaced a beat-up 7 (unlike Your Humble Narrator, Herself works a phone like a rented mule).
And now, with the New Year climbing in our window with a dagger between its yellow teeth, she’s acquired a new M1 Mac Mini to supplant her 10-year-old MacBook Pro.
… assuming the migration goes as intended.
The MBP still functions. I had long since maxed out the memory and dropped in a 512GB SSD, but this was like adding a spoiler and a flame paintjob to a Datsun B210.
A rat’s nest of cables hooked to this, that and the other — an ancient ViewSonic monitor, USB hub, label printer, and so on and so forth — the MBP took up more space than a fat cat but rarely purred.
Neither of us is exactly a power user these days. I get by with a pair of 2014 MacBook Pros and in my Golden Years don’t really need anything with more oomph. But Herself is a big earner with her eBay sideline, and who wants to watch The Spinning Beach Ball of Boredom when you’re busy trying to skin some bargain hunter?
So, after briefly considering a pricier iMac, we pulled the trigger on the Mini. What the hell, someone has to keep Tim Cook in NFTs and Krugerrands.
Tags: Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, New Year's Eve 2021
Mad Blog Media 
December 31, 2021 at 12:14 pm |
Our 2012 iMac gave up the ghost the day before Christmas. I’m convinced it’s a deliberate marketing ploy, their response to me marking all of their solicitations as junk.
It used to be my wife’s primary design machine, but her corporate overlords got everyone new 16” MBPs when quarantine started. So it has just been a homework station for the last four semesters.
The crazy thing is, the kids hate using it, cuz the screen is so big they can’t hide their goofing off from mom and dad. Those 11” chrome books are the preferred device for playing Minecraft when they’re supposed to be writing an essay about Grover Cleveland or trying to remember all of the quadrilateral names.
December 31, 2021 at 12:38 pm |
My 2009 iMac didn’t survive the “upgrade” to Mavericks. The auld beastie was never the same after that.
It was only a 21.5-incher, so it wasn’t overwhelming, screenwise.
For the Mini I gave Herself one of my 24-inch LG monitors, which should just barely fit in her giant weirdo desk with all the slide-outs, cubbyholes and drawers.
I won’t be able to tell if she’s eBaying, Minecrafting, or downloading porn, though. Ain’t no way to sneak up from behind.
December 31, 2021 at 1:32 pm |
Don’t you have an old Mini hooked up to the TV? I thought about a Mini instead of my last iMac. But, I would have had to buy a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and the thought went away. After the last iMac, we were no longer will to give up space to a desk top, so we ended up with two MacBook Airs. Seems I now spend most of my intertube time on an iPad.
December 31, 2021 at 1:35 pm |
Yessirree, I do, but it’s even older than Herself’s MBP. The new Minis are a lot more lively — Jason Snell at Six Colors says they’re basically the same computer as the iMac. And I like the portable aspect of the Mini. The foothills catch fire, you snatch the Mini and the MBP and run. Good luck doing that with an iMac.
We have keyboards, mice, and monitors out the wazoo, so accessories were not an issue.
December 31, 2021 at 1:04 pm |
Congrats to Herself on the new Mac Mini M1! Quite the machine.
Congrats to PO’G on the “this was like adding a spoiler and a flame paint job to a Datsun B210” literary perfection. I almost choked on my slobber and drool when reading that!
Happy, safe, and healthy 2022’s to all! 🙂
December 31, 2021 at 1:41 pm |
Thanks, JD. Everyone has a Datsun B210 story, and that was mine. Happy, safe, and healthy back atcha.
December 31, 2021 at 7:10 pm |
“It was only a 21.5-incher-”
ONLY?! My 12 year old iMac crapped out on New Year’s Day 2021 (an early insurrection, perhaps?) and while I wanted to get guaranteed Apple support by buying at an Apple store (there’s no price saving shopping anywhere else) due to those supply chain issues there were none to be had.
My local Best Buy had one though. Since I have a Time Machine drive, the migration was easy, although there were problems migrating all my Smart Mailboxes. And I was forced to upgrade to Catalina.
“only a 21.5-incher…” sheesh; do I feel inadequate.
January 1, 2022 at 12:37 am |
I’ve seen a fixed up B210 around in my area. It’s a lot more intriguing now. I think during one starving student repair job I did, that I replaced the carrier bearing on the driveshaft of a B210. Of course, after I was done I had to go out and rally test it on the snowy gravel roads of Fairbanks. Since I owned a front wheel drive car, it was fun to kick the back out in a rear wheel drive car.
POG, you must pass along a link to your better half’s ebay site. Perhaps one of us will stumble across something that we really don’t need but know that the funding of, may indirectly contribute to a house of Mexican cuisine in Al-B-Cue.
Did you know that if you view a 21.5″ monitor from a distance of 6 inches that it’s the same as viewing a 80″ monitor at a distance of 28 inches?(1) Of course, it may result in coke bottle glasses eye correction in the near future.
(1) Reference: Harvard School of Medicine Manual of Pure BS.
Hey! It’s a new year in your neck of the desert. Happy New Year !