Well, sir, I guess I showed that Tim Cook feller where the bear shit in the buckwheat.
After Apple decided to jack up its prices, instead of buying a new MacBook Air suitable for walkabouts (if only around the house), I finally got around to bumping up the storage in my 2014 MacBook Pro.
This is the 13-inch model, and I was pinching pennies when I bought it Back in the Day®, going for the base configuration: 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5 processor; 8 GB SDRAM (which could be doubled at purchase but not afterward); and just 128 GB of flash storage.
What the hell, I thought. I’ll be using it during road trips. How much storage does a dog at large need?
More, as it turns out. That bargain-basement SSD got stuffed like a holiday turkey in fairly short order, throwing a significant hitch into the old MBP’s gitalong. After road trips became a less-frequent thing it wound up parked in my “studio” as a dedicated podcasting/video Mac, with a 24-inch LG display, Bluetooth keyboard/mouse, mic, headphones, audio recorder, and a couple of external drives to handle the internal overflow.
Not exactly a mobile unit. More like up on blocks.
But then so was its big brother, a 15-inch MBP, also from 2014. Once my Main Mac, it has 16 GB of SDRAM, a 500 GB SSD, and a dead display thanks to a local Apple “Genius” who FUBARed it a couple years back while replacing a dying battery.
“Due to the complex nature of this installation, OWC recommends that this battery replacement be performed by a trained professional,” advised Other World Computing, my go-to source for Apple bits and fix-it tips. I followed their advice and took it to one, but shit, I could’ve fucked it up myself and saved a few bucks. More than a few.
The botched MacSurgery turned my baby into a 500 GB SSD with a keyboard and trackpad, sharing another 24-inch external LG display with a 1999 G4 AGP Graphics Power Mac, and the less said about that Rube Goldberg clusterfuck the better because I don’t wanna jinx it. All this stuff is old, like me, but none of us is dead. Yet.
Still, the inexorable march to the grave seems like more of a sprint these days, so in a moment of weakness I acquired a modern MacBook Pro for what little heavy lifting I still do. It’s a 14-inch M4 Pro model from 2024 — 24 GB of memory and a 1 TB SSD — plugged into another LG display, with external keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc. So it’s likewise a desktop that can become a laptop if need be, which mostly it doesn’t.
But sometimes I get sick of the office and want to move around the house without stripping that beast down for travel. Maybe I want to stand for a while in the kitchen come morning, tsk-tsking the news with a cup of joe next to the Mac on the counter. When I get tired of standing there’s a comfy couch in the living room. Also, a chair with footstool facing a picture window that takes in the backyard maple and a slice of the Sandias. A large table in the dining room. Patio furniture for when the back yard isn’t overrun by terrorist skeeters.
So the other day I finally bit the bullet, dug out the 1TB SSD I bought from OWC — what, two, three years ago? — and replaced the stock drive in my old 13-inch road-tripper from 2014, installing a fresh copy of the “newest” OS it can handle, Big Sur (11.7.11).
I am no Genius, as all y’all already know. Shucks, I will never even be smart. But I’ve gotten under the hood of almost every Mac I’ve ever owned, starting with that SE from way back when in Santa Fe.
The things were easy to wrench on for a few years, even for a guy with five thumbs on each hand. Which was good, because I was often far from an actual Apple mechanic and/or too strapped to pay him. Thus I installed drives (disks, DVD, Zip), added memory, plugged in Airport cards, upgraded processors and video cards, and like that there.
I can afford professional assistance now, when and if I can find it, and even new machinery (see “14-inch M4 Pro” above). But frankly, for the kind of “work” I do these days — blogging via browser using DSL, some basic image capture and manipulation, etc. — the ’spensive new machinery just isn’t that much better than the old gear long since paid for.
Plus I like to assign myself these little penances from time to time, gauge whether I have any mad skillz left to me atall atall or have I finally become a doddering old fool, one slip-and-fall away from a lumpy cot with a thin blankie in The Home.
So it’s reassuring to learn that I can still manage a bit of simple MacSurgery without electrocuting myself, burning down the house, or killing the patient.
Of course, if I did botch the job, well … there’s still the 11-inch 2012 MacBook Air.
Mad Blog Media 
As a former user of many Windows laptops (mostly Acer) my last move was to a Macbook. Mostly because I left the work force but also because not one of my Apple devices ever let me down. Sure, the softwear petered out but I can still turn on and play music on an ancient iPod. I wish Ipads were upgradable. I have two old ones that are holding up after much torturous use. I’m not crazy about the Apple Watch. It’s wonky and feels like Apple went somewhere else to build them and has a cheapness vibe. I only wear it while hiking or riding or xc skiing.
I was rocking an old iPod just yesterday.
My iPad, alas, is unrockable. I lowballed that purchase too and now the thing doesn’t have enough storage for its own software.
No matter. I dislike iOS anyway. Herself makes that mutt hunt on her iPad and iPhone, but it’s not for me. Far from intuitive and I just don’t like the look of it.
That old iPod, though? It’s the shit, especially when things get noisy around here.
One human year equals 7 lap top years.
My 7th generation iPod Touch is the bomb for music playing wherever I am. It was the last generation of iPods, has 128GB of storage, and is 4 years old. I send Apple an email occasionally asking them to produce it again. Seems that used iPods are in big demand along with wired ear buds and head phones. Young folks are getting tired of streaming. I bought a pair of Apple wired ear buds that plug into the usb-c connector for our iPads that don’t have an earphone jack. I didn’t know they made them.
The Atlantic has a recent piece (gift link) about going analog in which the iPod Nano features.
Interesting read. I think my oldest tech is the 1999 G4 Power Mac. But we still have our iPods, a Blu-Ray player for the DVD library, a couple external DVD/CD players that have USB cables for the Macs, a Zip drive or two, and even one USB floppy drive. Plus plenty of the floppies for it to drive.
Yea, we have a land line, DVD/Blu-ray player, iPod, new Canon Elph 360 HS A camera, and a collection of DVD, Blu-ray, and CD, many purchased used. We rarely stream movies or buy music from Apple. We also have an Onkyo stereo receiver hooked up to a pair of JBL tower speakers.
PS: Patrick, I really like that Canon Elph. It has much better low light performance and higher photo and video resolution than the 14 year old Elph it replaced.
Just as an aside, is it just me or is there a whole lot of stuff that you just flat can’t buy anymore because it’s out of stock? Cameras, bike parts, cycling shoes, you name it.
Just as well for me, because the last thing I need is more shit piling up around here. Especially pricey shit like Italian-made Sidi cycling shoes, which, Holy Mary, Mother of God, have them sumbitches ever dollared up on the hoof.
• Addendum: However, OWC has the 7th-gen 32 GB iPod Touch available for $199.
Because I haven’t purchased much of anything new recently (a contribution to the wonderful economy of the biggest loser president), I haven’t noticed a difficulty in acquiring new trinkets. I wonder if it may be an affect caused by the earlier tariffs imposed by the loser. I do know that the fun stuff that I try to move via my ebay account is significantly down (55% YTD) from last year, which wasn’t a banner year in itself. I have significantly fewer international buyers these days. It’s a wonderful life living in the top 10%.
Interesting. It’s not just you — Herself, her eldest sister, and a friend also have eBay sidelines, and all three likewise report steep declines in sales.
I’m not buying much of anything other than food and beverages, as the designated grocery shopper. Bikes and Macs I don’t need. I’d like a new pair of Sidis, but thanks to tariffs — and redesigns, changes in fit and sizing, no local retail availability, and shortages in what would ordinarily be my size — I’m not pulling that particular trigger anytime soon.
Oddly, I see a lot of new vehicles on the road lately, especially Subarus. And eejits sitting in them, motionless, in parking lots, with engines idling, as though gas were 25 cents a gallon as in The Good Old Days®.
I guess some people have money to burn. …
Best Buy still sells the Canon Elph digital cameras. They also stock some Sony models. My experience with Sony cameras has not been good. I occasionally think about a video camera with quality microphone(s) to record live performances. Then I realize it would spend 99% of its time in a drawer.
I’ve had bad luck with Sony cameras too. Wildly overrated. Pricey with short lifespans, in my experience. My Canons were all solid.
And I still have one, a desktop camcorder with its own stand that was an early entry in the vlogging game, called the VIXIA Mini-X. Also a more traditional camcorder, a Panasonic HC-V770, and a couple of GoPros, all of which I used for Adventure Cyclist videos and some dicking around at Live Update Guy.