According to this blog post, my little MacBook Air has been trucking along now for nearly a decade.
…and boy oh boy, is it starting to show…
I mean, it’s been on it’s last days for a while now. The battery lasts about five minutes if it’s not plugged in and most of my main apps have stopped updating years ago because they’re no longer supported. Funny enough, I never upgraded my OS past MacOS 10.13 (High Sierra) because Catalina ended support of 32-bit apps, which posed an issue because I rely a lot on Macromedia Fireworks – a legacy 32-bit app that (used to be) included in the Adobe suite.
I say used to be because now Adobe doesn’t even support it anymore, either, so I literally have a list of actions not to take when I’m using it that will cause the thing to crash, and I’m trying to learn how to do everything in Photoshop instead, but there were some things that my simple mind just liked better in Fireworks!
Anyways, today’s reminder that my computer is getting old came in two parts…
One was with OneDrive not being able to login anymore because apparently it auto-upgraded to a newer version that isn’t compatible with my old-ass machine. I discovered this upon learning that some files I had created for Sara weren’t showing up on her computer because mine wouldn’t sync. Luckily, I was able to temporarily solve this by deleting OneDrive and finding an older version that was still compatible, though we’ll see how long it lasts or if it will try to update itself again and kick it back offline.
The other was in the hands of this shiny, new 32″ monitor that I decided to splurge on with a bonus I got from work for being there for 20 years (?!). I didn’t even think about it when I picked it out, but it turns out that my old-ass machine can’t handle 4K resolution! The main display can do 1080p and it’s supposed to be able to go somewhere up to 2560×1600 for an external monitor, but right now it’s maxed out at 1600×900 via Mini DisplayPort -> HDMI.
I ordered a different cable to try Mini DisplayPort -> DisplayPort because apparently just like HDMI, there are several different versions, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I’m stuck until I upgrade the laptop itself.
…which I’m honestly hoping to do in the next couple of months anyways if I can make a couple of things work with our budget. It’d be nice to finally run the latest security updates for Chrome again, and I’ve been wanting to experiment with Vellum for creating books, but this laptop is just too old.
All in all, I think ten years is a pretty good run for technology – particularly for computers that are constantly growing and improving! I’ve probably been through three or four iPhones since I got this thing, though partially because it’s a bit harder to drop an entire laptop in the toilet, but I’ve gotten a good amount of work out of this thing over the years … written a ton of words, built some websites, and wasted a ton of time that could’ve been spent doing even more of the former two!
If I can just squeeze a couple of more months out of it until I’m actually ready to pull the trigger, that would be wonderful. We’ll see…