A few weeks ago, M decided it was time to upgrade his hardware (stop laughing at the back). He's had his laptop since 2002, and the desktop is even older than that, though has had various bits replaced, including the motherboard, so who knows how old it is really. Given that he works from home, spending half his time developing software on his laptop and the other half recording and mixing music on the desktop (which strictly speaking belongs to the household, but which has been in his room ever since I got my laptop two years ago) I think it was about time. Everything's creaking, sometimes literally. He had a good year last year, and the boiler man said there's a few years in the old Vaillant yet, so there was scope. I think the balance was tipped when he won a copy of Windows Vista in some geeky competition or other and realised there was nothing in the house that could handle it.
But I do not know what it was that first prompted him to think Mac. To my knowledge, he's never had one before. I think it may have been GarageBand, combined with Boot Camp, combined with the sheer undeniable beauty of the new iMacs. My sense of Macs is that they've always done what they do very well, but there was so much you couldn't do on them. With Leopard, all that seems to be ebbing away.
Anyway, he booked himself an appointment at the Apple Store on Regent Street last Friday, and called me at work to ask him if I'd be able to pick him up from the station, as he had something that wouldn't fit on his bike.
I got there in time to see him coming through the special wide ticket barrier lugging a big white box and a little white box. The big white box was his 24 inch iMac. The little white box was a present for me.
Which means I am now the proud (but if I'm honest still rather embarrassed) owner of a shiny new MacBook. I pride myself on being a thrifty and low maintenance kind of girl, so I didn't know what to do with myself for a while, but I hope I have now accepted this alien life form gracefully and gratefully: my laptop came from the thrifty and low maintenance end of the scale and using it has rarely been a pleasure and often been a chore.
But this thing, this is one of the loveliest things I have ever had my hands on. Things happen in strange and sometimes disconcerting ways, but they are efficient and beautifully designed ones. It's like going on holiday to Finland. Thank you, lovely boyfriend.
joella
1 comment:
I think he'll like GarageBand a lot.
iphoto is really good as well. You can make your own books with it. That you can hold in your hand and just look at! At not too much expense! I think you'll be liking that.
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