This is a late 2007 Macbook Pro. More importantly, it’s my first Mac. I think it’s safe to say that this magical machine changed my computing life in a huge way. It wasn’t my first Apple product – I had “taken over” an iPod classic that I convinved my mother to buy “for my father to listen to music on when traveling”.
I’m not really a sentimental person. I’ve never felt all that attached to anything. This is one of the very few things I own that I’m really hesitating to put down. It’s definitely too old to be useful as my primary machine. However, it had been performing alright as a file server. Unfortunately, the power brick is busted (it actually started smoking – gave me a bit of a scare) so it can’t stay on (the battery has a life of around 2 minutes). I’ve just let it lie on my spare desk for the past few weeks (hence the ridiculous amount of dust). I have grand plans to build out a proper server somewhere in the house, but I still think I’m going to go buy a power brick and try to keep this guy running for a little longer.
Here’s my computing life story – feel free to skip this, it’s long and boring. My first computer was a Compaq PC running Windows 3.1. My father had bought one for himself so that he could access his email from home. I pretty much only ever used it to scribble in mspaint. This was then upgraded to another Compaq PC that ran Windows 95. This was when I discovered Road Rash. After that I “built” my first PC. By that I mean I hired a local computer store guy to go buy the parts for me and assemble it in front of me. This ran Windows 98 for a while. By the time Windows XP came out, I was old enough to build a computer on my own. I told my father I wanted to build a new PC. Of course, I wanted to build an outrageous gaming monster and said “I need it for school projects”. My father (he’s always been smarter than me) asked me to convince him. I made a powerpoint presentation with the details of exactly what I wanted to build, and why I needed it. Of course, it was a load of bullshit. Sadly, he saw through it and we settled on some more reasonable hardware. I built it, and it ran great for several years. What I loved about this one was that I was able to convince my father to let me get a huge (for the time) 17 inch CRT. When it had run its course, I built two more similar PCs. This was when we moved to our new house in Ulsoor which meant that I finally got a DSL connection. I ran through my alloted download limit of 500MB in around a day. This was also around the time that I started to play around with Linux.
It became time for me to leave home for college. I bought a Dell Inspiron from the University online store (the coolest thing about it was that it came with a decal for the back that was covered with Michigan Ms.). It lasted me a little over a year. When I came back to Ann Arbor in September, the iPhone 3G had just come out. I really wanted one. I convinced my parents to let me buy one, and they okayed it. I went to the Apple Store and saw the Mac. I just couldn’t not get it. I went back, told my parents that I would continue to use my dumb phone, and that I would instead buy a Mac (which meant I got a free iPod Touch). They okayed that so I went and bought this awesome guy. It took me a few days to get used to it (at this point I was a Linux convert), but I’ve never looked back since. This was probably the best decision I’ve made in my life.