"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and stealing Macs…"

by Suw on July 16, 2004

Ok, so maybe not stealing one, but certainly buying one. I’ve suffered Mac-lust since I saw my very first, in the Marine Geology post-grad office at Cardiff Uni some 14 years ago. I used it to edit the department newsletter, and lusted over it in the same way that I lusted after Dyson vacuum cleaners: From afar.
I got my Dyson a few years back but have been stuck in a state of perma-lust over Macs, never quite having the money – or even a half-decent excuse – to get one.
Two things have changed the Mac from being an object of unrequited desire to being something that I now actually have a need for. The first is the fact that I am likely to be spending a lot more time travelling now, and my current laptop is built of bricks and requires winding up every ten minutes. You didn’t know that they used to make clockwork laptops but it’s true. I need something lighter, more reliable, nicer to use. Something that won’t cause my vertebrae to creak and crack when I lift it up.
The main reason I have changed my mind, though, is SubEthaEdit. SubEthaEdit, in case you haven’t been paying attention, is this groovy app which allows more than one person to edit a document simultaneously. That might not seems like a killer app to you, but to me it’s gold dust. It’ll allow me to collaborate with work colleagues, write papers with Steph and anyone else I want to write papers with (Joi? You reading?) and generally Get Things Done.
Is this worth me getting a Mac for? Absolutely. I shall be down the Apple store just as soon as my bank balance allows.
Hm, might be in for a wait then.
(Note: Any accusations that this is a feeble excuse just to buy a new toy will be vigorously denied, regardless of any actual supporting evidence presented.)

Anonymous July 17, 2004 at 9:02 am

Any excuse is a good excuse for a new toy. I am currently trying to think of reasons for justifiably upgrading my 1.8Ghz proccessor: the only one I can come up with is that it would speed up all my audio.music apps and would allow me to run more plug-ins simultaneously. Of course, I would then have to justify why I need more power to do what is currently only a hobby.
Anyone need some tunes written for them?

Anonymous July 17, 2004 at 6:42 pm

Maybe, depends on the kind of music.

Anonymous July 18, 2004 at 4:15 pm

You do know that there was a wind-up laptop demonstrated some years ago, right?

The South African firm FreePlay, noted mainly for its Baygen wind-up radios based on technology developed by the English inventor Trevor Bayliss, and Apple demonstrated a laptop computer, the Apple Newton eMate, being powered by the generator inside a Baygen FreePlay radio.

Anonymous July 19, 2004 at 12:09 pm

I can do stompy electronic stuff to moody, atmospheric, er, electronic stuff. I also like doing simple mellow things with strings and piano.
Won't do cheese. Would probably struggle to do rock/guitar based stuff unless I found some good axe samples.

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