Those of us in the media who have been around long enough – in fact since the birth of what was once known as the personal computer – are often Apple snobs.
Why? Because Steve Jobs, “the man in the machine”, got it. He seduced us and gave soul, as one journalist wrote, to “a lump of metal”. First it came alive as a hunk of gorgeous plastic on your desk, and then later in the palm of your hand. Today we can confidently say we are wedded to our devices.
It was all so new back then, so intriguing, so liberating, so dizzyingly fantastic with an operating system (OS) so intuitive that you felt it understood what you needed to navigate its innards. Then came the iPhone, the iPod, EarPods, AirPods…
The Steves, Jobs and Wozniak, had been at it since 1977, but Apple only hit the South African mediascape much later, in the 1980s. Young people today might be shocked to learn that, back then, employers provided the hardware to do your job – including transport from a car pool.
First to be replaced were the typewriters, which made way for one of the biggest breakthroughs in publishing. Before Apple (BA), media houses in South Africa were early adopters of Atex, a multi-user OS which weaned newspapers off hot metal.
No longer personal
Oh, how much we have learnt and lost (and gained) since those heady days. Apple has followed so many of us in our careers. We have been locked in, like survivors of a diving accident.
For someone who is basically a writer and who farts around on the internet doing research, the apparently wonderful applications which came installed on Macs lay mostly as dormant as a Diddy scandal.
Every Mac user dreads the beachball. It does not represent fun in the sun. Over the years, failing to update a Mac OS each time some new plugin or instability was fixed could be lethal.
The beachball is the harbinger
Over the years, Apple and also the PC have, in fact, become less and less personal. Now your data is splashed all over the interwebs and being connected could cost you your life or your savings.
Hacking, security breaches, viral attacks, identity theft – these are some of the risks connectivity brings. Never mind the stupidity in the echo chambers of conspiracy theories and fake news.
It was time for cold turkey.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/P27-thammRID.jpg "The first iMacs, hunks of gorgeous plastic that had soul. (Photo: Apple). Google Chrome logo. (Image: Wikipedia). Graphic: Jocelyn Adamson")
The cyber-landscape has altered inexorably since those early days when the white Atex cursor would blink on the green screen as you inserted your floppy disc. Now, it is all in the cloud, remote.
And so it came to pass that my Mac began to beachball. Luckily, the iPhone is as adequate a device to use in the meantime.
Read more: Global IT outage highlights the hazards of technology software concentration
Away from home, stuck in Potchefstroom, the laptop was left in the guesthouse, updating the system and doing whatever it needed. Three days later, the beachball was still spinning.
The mental anguish and growing frustration, coupled with the ridiculously expensive quote to fix what everyone hinted was basically “unfixable” and therefore one required a new laptop, were the turning point.
Was there an alternative to Mac that wasn’t Android? We Mac users can barely bring ourselves to even look at a Microsoft logo, it feels so alien.
Did my Mac divorce me before I divorced it?
Finding a way out
The Chromebook made its debut in 2011 and has since been widely used in education, taking about 10% of the market. It is a Google OS that is optimised for web access, but it can run Linux, Android or progressive web apps, which enable you to work offline.
Replacing my MacBook Air would have cost at least R15,000 for the basics. Replacing a battery is in itself a financial nightmare. What to do?
Few working individuals have easy access to R15,000 on the spot. No can do. And the deadlines were calling. Lots of them, every day.
The lightening of the unbearable heaviness of Big Tech
Enter Chromebook. Various brands offer a version and the model I bought cost me R4,000. The cheapest would set you back R2,000. Let that blow your mind.
But what about my stuff on iCloud, I fretted. Well, the iPhone, which we all do love and which also costs the same as a modest funeral nowadays, was still up and running.
Truth is you don’t need a MacBook to access your iCloud. ChromeOS can do it just the same. You have an Apple account? You are good to go.
And guess what? Chrome is one of the most secure web connectors you can find, plus, it never gets a virus. And here I am, up and running, discovering all sorts of new, way cheaper tricks.
Thank me later. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
