My MacBook Pro is from late 2008. Except of upgrading to an SSD and a new battery not much has changed on the machine since I bought it. It’s about 7 1/2 years old now. While the MacBooks sold by Apple have improved a lot within these years, my requirements on a computer hasn’t changed a lot. Even the updates of the operating system from Mac OS X 10.5.5 to the up to date OS X 10.10 had no negative effect on the computer’s performance.
While still wanting a new computer I was wondering why.
I might have to say that I own a second Mac underneath the TV acting as a Server. This machine is a 2011 Mac mini. I use it as local storrage for my photo and media library.
Back to my wish to buy a new computer, I was thinking about what I need and what I want. I checked my requirements on what I’m doing with it and discussed with some friends and colleagues. Besides the speciallity that I do some iOS development, my other requirements are photo and simple video editing (from my GoPro) and surfing the web. Quite simple. Only the iOS development can (currently) not be done on one of my non-Mac-devices. Photo- and the simple Video-editing I do can be done on the iPad on a very good level – I did this during my last holiday. During that 6 weeks trip, I only took my iPad and my iPhone. I edited photos, wrote blogposts and edited video coming from the GoPro and my EOS M3.
Speaking to my colleagues I found that most of them don’t even do that, but own a PC mostly to surf the Internet / do Facebook and connect it to a TV to watch videos. Both can be done on a smartphone very easy, if not much better than on a PC with keyboard and mouse connected to a TV. If I wouldn’t have restared development or if Apple would provide a development environment in iOS, I would not need a Laptop or Desktop machine.
The need of managing your own music library is, with Apple Music and Spotify not needed any more. TV Series and movies are coming through iTunes, Netflix and Amazon Video (the last is not include in amazon premium in france, which is really sad). After realizing this, I believe the promissed post-pc era is already there. But it’s not the tablet replacing the PC, it’s the phone. We just haven’t realized it. And I would include myself in this. I guess even though I could do everything I do on my device, I still would buy a new Mac. I don’t know why. I guess we are just not ready for post-pc eventhough our environment and all the services we use are. Maybe this upcoming Retina MacBook Pro will be my last ‘real’ computer.