I bought my current home desktop computer, a Mac Mini, in 2012. I bought it on Father’s Day, and I sprung extra for the newly released version. It has reliably served my needs. I write, blog, pay my taxes, record podcasts and music, and play copious amounts of Crusader Kings 2 on this machine. It has been a solid investment.

This past week, I nearly destroyed it.

The new iOS on my phone is now sufficiently advanced that I cannot upload photos to my machine from it (I don’t use the cloud. I don’t trust the cloud. The cloud is a lie). In order to fix this, I needed to install the new MacOS, Catalina. Which I did.

I immediately regretted this decision.

In the first place, a bunch of apps that I regularly use won’t work with Catalina. Like Scrivener, which I use for writing. Like Microsoft Word. Like Garageband, which I use to record podcasts.

So Scrivener I can upgrade at a discouted rate by sending the developer an email with my receipt from the Mac App store I bought it from. Annoying, but doable. Microsoft word I can download for free, but they want $70 a year for an Office subscription. I feel like I can do better.

Garageband took some figuring out, but by deleting the old app I was able to download the new app, for free, and used it to record a podcast on Saturday. So far, so good.

But

the

computer

is

now

so

…

slow.

Now, a new MacMini costs $800. And my wife’s computer is older, so she gets dibs on a replacement. Me shelling out that kind of cash because I let Apple shove me down the obsolescence treadmill is… well, it’s just dumb.

But, that generation of Mac Minis was designed to be user-upgradable (I know, is it even an Apple product?). So upgrading the memory will be really easy. I can do it myself for the price of some new RAM, which is currently on its way via Amazon.

And if that doesn’t work? I can try installing a new hard drive, which would actually be even cheaper. I didn’t go with it because there’s plenty of disc space on my existing hard drive, so I figured RAM was the problem.

The point is, I have options. I can gain expertise and understanding. I can do for myself instead of just chorfing the next part of the product cycle. I can, in short, act like an actual rational human.

And be silently thankful that Apple actually made choosing that option easy.