The Empty Soda Can

Six years ago, Anna and I got a very nice birthday present from my grandmother: a brand new iBook (then Apple’s consumer-grade laptop). We named her Candace, and she was a great little machine. Although she did have a few minor problems, Apple was very good to take care of us whenever something went wrong. From the time the hard drive died to the letters wearing off of a few oft-used keys, they always replaced everything quickly and free of charge. Their customer service was, in a word, impeccable. Then, just over three years ago, with only a week left on our extended warranty, I brought our little Candi in for a checkup. I told the Genius on staff to look her over, see if there was anything wrong with her, and if so, fix it. (If by chance there were something wrong, I was not going to have to pay for repairs, if I could help it.) He took her into the shop, and a few days later I got a call: some part I’d never heard of, that did who knows what, was indeed broken. Unfortunately, it w...

wuy So here are my thoughts: The most obvious option is what Eddie has already suggested: something that will last me another six years. Given the fact that desktops are, in my experience, more reliable than laptops, that would probably be a Mac Pro. It has all the power I could ever want (for the moment), but uses less electricity than my G5. It has room for four internal hard drives, which will make for easy RAID building; and plenty of room for expansion (Firewire 800, PCI Express 2.0, up to 32GB of RAM, etc.). The big down side is the price: a Mac Pro costs $2,499 or $3,299 with no upgrades, plus whatever else I’d like to spend on a new display (and no, my old display won’t work with its new-fangled ports, so I’ll need to upgrade that, too). It’s really not a bad deal, for what you’re getting, but do I really need that much? If I were constantly doing graphics or video, sure; but as a developer, I’d actually probably be better off with something simpler—if for no other reason...