A Change

I'm not sure what made me decide to purchase a new laptop to replace my early 2011 model Macbook Pro.  I suppose it was the realization that it wasn't performing as quickly under the weight of the latest edition of Mac OS X.  Or perhaps it was the fan spinning away madly while I was playing some game.  Nonetheless, the decision was made a few months ago.  I let a co-worker know that I was looking for a buyer for the old machine and he expressed interest in it.  So the die was cast, so to speak.

Once the new 2015 Macbook Pro models were announced about a month ago I signed onto the Apple Japan online store to place my order.  I checked the option to pay in 6 interest free installments.  With that I was led to a website to submit a loan application.  I dutifully started filling out the form but by the fourth page the questions were getting more difficult to interpret and the information requested harder to obtain.  So I ended up phoning Apple to cancel the order, make changes to what I had ordered, and resubmit it.

Unfortunately there was a problem with the payment option I had chosen.  The e-mail telling me about the issue was delivered to an e-mail address I check somewhat infrequently.  Thus I failed to take action in time and the order was cancelled.  Once more I submitted the order.

Today I'm working away on my new purchase.  It's an interesting example of computing hardware evolution.  The machine has no optical drive and the mass storage device is a flash memory drive.  So it's dead silent.  I had it customized by having it assembled with a US keyboard and additional RAM.  The assembly work was done somewhere in China.  That I know from the tracking information of the package it was sent in.

I had some issues transferring my data from my old machine to this one on account of the smaller capacity of the mass storage device on the new machine.  The initial attempt to transfer the data using Apple's migration assistant failed to complete successfully in spite of the fact that there was ample space on the new machine.  So I ended working on it until the early hours of the morning.  After waking I went about restoring the old machine to its initial condition: Mac OS X Snow Leopard and no user accounts set up on it.  I shot a video of the "Welcome" video and shut down the machine down for the last time. Thus I parted with a machine I had hauled back and forth across the Pacific Ocean five times.

Footnote:  When I was shopping for the original Macbook Pro a friend suggested choosing a Macbook Pro.  I thought about it but decided not on account of the slower processor speed, smaller mass storage device capacity and lack of an optical drive.  The Macbook Pro I purchased this time around is like a Macbook Air...on steroids.  Faster processor, more memory, and the mid-size mass storage device which is the top-end mass storage device on the Air.