Good riddance to the upgrade bug

It took some time, but I finally went cold turkey. In the best traditions of cold turkey I wasn't even particularly aware of the monkey I removed from my back. For the longest time my fix was the next computer hardware upgrade that would turn my computer into the powerhouse I needed. Of course I never really needed that last ounce of power but upgrading was a habit, and I was in it's grip.

In early 2005 that habit started to change. There had been several occasions when I'd looked into replacing my Windows PC with one of Apple's offering. There were numerous reasons why I had resisted in the past, mainly related to my investment in PCs - managing PC and their associated infrastructure was how I had earned my salary in the past - but after purchasing my first iPod in 2002 I started to the look at Apple more seriously, It still took me another three years to build up to actually buying my first Mac, but in 2005 while on Holiday in the US I purchased a 12" PowerBook G4. At this time Apple were still using the Power PC architecture which made running Windows on Apple hardware a painful thing to do, so I still had my trusty Windows desktop as a fall-back, but over time I realised that on more and more occasions I was choosing to use my PowerBook rather than my Windows PC. 

This is were it started, my 2005 Apple 12" PowerBook G4

In early 2006 I was starting to suffer 'PC upgrade' withdrawal symptoms. In previous years this would have resulted in me looking at the available options for new processors, motherboards, graphics cards and memory. But this time was different, In the summer of 2005 Apple had announced, to much surprise, that they were transitioning away from the Power PC architecture to Intel's x86 architecture. In essence, Apple's OS X and Microsoft's Windows operating systems could now run natively on the same hardware. I could now buy a Mac and if it turned out that I still couldn't make the transition to OS X I could run Windows on the Mac hardware. So in June 2006 I unplugged my Windows PC and replaced it with a Mac Mini, still unsure if the great Apple experiment would work I bought the cheapest desktop Mac available. I never plugged the PC back in, and I never did install Windows on my Mac, in Apple parlance, I had become a switcher.

The basic Mac Mini remained on my desk until May 2008 when I replaced it with a top of the line 24" iMac. It was only as I packed the Mac Mini away that I realised that it was exactly the same machine I had purchased two years earlier, nothing had been upgraded or replaced, I had never gone two years without upgrading something. In previous years I had watched as the latest and greatest processor or graphics card approached the price were I could justify the upgrade, but this little Apple PC was retired in the same state it had arrived. The same is true of that 24" iMac that followed it. It remained on my desk for over three years without seeing the sharp end of screw driver. When it was replaced in July 2011 I hadn't upgraded my home desktop in over five years, and I strongly suspect that the 27" iMac that now sits in it's place will finish it's service in the same condition. I no longer had a detailed knowledge of which processor was the best, and I no longer had a box full of useless computer parts whose original purchase price prevented me from simply disposing of them. Those Apple Macs may have cost more to buy, but they had been cheaper to run. 

And then this Christmas the unexpected happened, for the first time in over five years I found myself upgrading a desktop computer. Upgrading is probably the wrong word as my brother in law's iMac had developed a terminal problem with it's hard drive, but rather than dispose of it I offered to replace the offending drive, and for a lot less than the EUR400 the local Apple retailer wanted. Even though I've never needed to open up an iMac I knew it wasn't going to be the easiest job I'd even undertaken. I'd replaced hard drives in PC that don't require any tools and could be completed in minutes, but the tools and effort required to get to the hard drive in the iMac surprised me. It wasn't especially difficult, it just involved lots of steps, detailed knowledge of what you are trying to do (thank you iFixit.com) and keeping track of the parts removed, and it was my first upgrade which required the use of heavy duty suction cups!

Apple's iMac, pretty on the outside, nightmare on the inside

My desire to upgrade has undoubtedly dulled over the years simply because I have less interest in it, and I'm getting older. I may have installed a new Hard Drive in my MacBook Pro when I needed extra storage but it's clear that the upgrade Monkey had left for pastures new. I have no doubt that the experience of owning and working on Apple products has removed my need to get the toolbox out and take my computer apart, and I don't miss it.