July 1st, 2008
Confessions of a Closet Apple Geek
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Quick Summary: I fell in love with the MacBook Pro and discovered that I’m a closet Apple geek.
The third place in my life is not a coffee shop, but my laptop.
This was true even before I stared my off consumption experiment and this has become even more true in the last three months.
My laptop is never switched off. Literally.
I wake up in the morning, flip open my laptop, and connect it to the net. My laptop moves around with me as I get ready for office — it’s in my bed as I drink my first cup of green tea, it’s on my dining table as I eat my breakfast, it even accompanies me to the loo. On bad days, I only manage to read a few of my feeds on Google Reader. On a good day, I manage to write a post or two before it’s time for office. In the evening, it’s a rewind + replay of the same routine, and I have often fallen asleep with my laptop next to me.
That’s when I don’t even like my Thinkpad all that much. It’s excruciatingly slow, it crashes all the time, and the battery barely lasts an hour. As a result, I talk to my ThinkPad —
Come on! Don’t do this to me again!
– I tell it, a dozen times everyday.
So, it’s not really about how cool “my laptop” is, it is about the role “the laptop” plays in my social life, the role of the third place –
Ever since I started blogging three years back, my blog has been at the core of my social life. I have met some of the most fascinating people I know through my blog, or, in the last year, through Twitter. Some of my closest friends, including my last three girlfriends, are bloggers and some of my most important professional connections were made online.
As a result, I have always thought of myself as an “ideas geek” instead of a “gadget geek”. That is, until I fell in love with the MacBook Pro.
The funny thing is that I didn’t even go to the Apple website for the MacBook Pro, I went there to gaze at the uber-sleek MacBook Air. I had “held it” at a friend’s place last week, and, since that moment, my hands haven’t stopped yearning to hold it again.
In any case, I won’t have my office-issue Thinkpad from next month and a new “personal” laptop will suddenly become a necessity. So, I told myself that if I have to buy a laptop anyways, I might as well buy one I’m already in love with, and headed over to the Apple website to psyche myself to shell out the slightly steep price for design perfection.
Then, I realized that while the MacBook Air is design perfection, the MacBook Pro is perfection taken to another level.
After I had finished customizing “my” 17 inch MacBook Pro, it came equipped with a 2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a 4GB 667MHz 2X2 DDR2 SDRAM, a 300GB Serial ATA hard drive, a 17-inch hi-resolution LED widescreen display, and a second 30″ flat panel cinema HD display. With the iWorks ‘08 and the AppleCare Protection Plan thrown in, it added up to… well… $5670!
Well, it would actually be $500 less, if I factor in the $200 college rebate and the free iPod Touch I’ll become eligible for next month. 
[…] my fantasy, the backpack contains a customized 17″ MacBook Pro, a Seagate FreeAgent 1 TB external hard drive loaded with movies, songs and audiobooks, an iPhone […]
Er… aren’t you off consumption??
[Reply]
Sorry mate, you’ve actually broken your commandment. You invested in a luxury item which ever way you look at it. (Of course you could justify it by saying it’s a necessity)
But shelling out 5k + is luxury spending in my opinion, even here in the US.
Eating food is a necessity, but you wouldn’t eat at a 5 star would you because you are off consumption?
Buying a Macbook Pro with that sort of config amounts to that.
Sorry to say this, but in my eyes, you have broken your commandment.
[Reply]
@Shripriya/ Aditya: Well, I have only configured it, not bought it, so no rules are broken (yet). Except that, even thinking of sin is sinful etc.
I think I’ll end up buying a 15″ MacBook Pro without some of the bells and whistles. It will still set me back by about $2000, but compared to the dream machine I had earlier configured, it would be asceticism itself.
[Reply]
If I were you, I would go for Ubuntu, and pay only for the hardware. But then, you are not me.
You would be in good company if you do decide to go for Ubuntu.
[Reply]
Lol. Ok, I can give you that. Settling for a basic Mac is asceticism. I’ll tell you this though - even the 15MBP is heavy as heck. It barely qualifies as a laptop - I struggle when I have to lug it around constantly. The 17 is a lot worse. So, stick with the 15 or better yet just a Macbook. Now THAT would be truly committed to your goal
[Reply]
Fair enough mate. I bought a mac book (13.3 inch, 4GB RAM, 2.4 Ghz) and had friends of mine contribute $400 of the $1500 [b’day gift you see].
Who knows, with your off consumption experiment your friends could even buy you a Pro. Now that would be perfect.
[Reply]
MBP or a MB are amazing machines. The have a MBP and the beefier graphics card really helps with video editing and 3D graphics, but the basic MB is excellent. If you put 4GB RAM in to it and get a 250GB hard disk, you can throw in a copy of VMWare Fusion for Mac and run Windows Vista (for that all important cross browser and platform testing you’ll need to do *cough* of course) and also run Ubuntu, like I do
Sweeeeet!
[Reply]
You make me wanna blog, i think i should get back to it, i’ll love it.
Thank you Gaurav, all the best for your trip
[Reply]
Confessions of a Closet Apple Geek - Macbook Pro Resolution ♦ Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro News…
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[…] thing was that, along with the other stuff, someone also took away my iPod Nano! But, it’s okay. When I buy my MacBook Pro, I’ll get an iPod Nano free with it. So, maybe, I wasn’t meant to have […]
[…] weeks later, I’m telling myself that I’ll get an iPod Nano free, when I buy my MacBook Pro, so, maybe, I wasn’t meant to have […]