So. A new Mac Pro is being birthed as we speak.
Got me thinking about the nature of laptop vs desktop computers. My Mac Pro only differs significantly from my laptop in the number of drives it’s got stuffed in it, and the fact that it’s immobile. The new Mac Pro removes one of those distinctions – you’d be connecting drives with thunderbolt – so really it’s a question of: do I need a computer that is specifically immobile?
I think I do.
I spent 7+ years working purely off laptops, big 17″ kick-ass back-killing motherfuckers that could suck a pound of Li-Ions dead in 20 minutes. I thought I loved the flexibility and mobility but realised later that it left me feeling strangely … well, itinerant. I could work anywhere, so I didn’t have a workplace. On a random whim (I think they’d just released some game I couldn’t run), I built a desktop machine and put the laptop aside for a little, and bam – it hit me how much I psychologically needed a home machine. Something immobile that would stay on, stay online, 24/7. My place on the net and my place in the home [office]. Gave me an overwhelming feeling of liberation, which I still feel now when I think about it.
It’s a weird psychological thing. Not sure I entirely understand it. And no, a plugged in laptop is just not the same thing. Dunno why. And I love having a laptop too, but it just can’t be my main machine.
So I’ll probably end up having to get one at some stage o_O
(and okay, the lights on the ports at the back (so you can see what you’re plugging into) are cute. But the whole machine swivels round towards you, and that’s what triggers the lights. But then I wouldn’t need the lights. But, I can’t turn it towards me cos all the other wires are already connected up to it. So now I do need the lights. But they don’t come on cos I’m not rotating it. Gah)