About my next computer: insert words in mouth, commence chewing

Since I wrote about how I have been moving to a desktop setup, I have been telling everyone that my next computer would be a Mac Mini. The specs looked good, and it would force me to walk away from my computer instead of lugging my computer around with me. Despite being on the computer more than half the time, I pretend to appreciate reality as well and want to step away from computers as much as possible*.

As of Monday morning, however, I feel as though I can no longer do that. That morning, all of the engineers were following live blogs of the WWDC keynote as they announced the new hardware. We moved on as soon as they moved onto software updates, but we were anxious to hear all about the new hardware. Apple announced a new Macbook Pro, a hybrid between the beefiness of the old Macbook Pro and the slim shape and the Macbook Air. The specs are great for a laptop, the retina display is by all accounts amazing, and it is on its way towards manilla envelope size. I admittedly don’t follow non-Apple hardware much, but I haven’t seen anything with the industrial design of this computer, and the specs are almost a kicker.

The skinny kids who didn’t get picked to play on either team during recess, however, were the Apple desktops, including the Mini. A few months ago, I was certain that the specs on it would last me long enough, but there’s truly no comparison with what the new MBP has. The difference in the specs is significant enough to my gaming experience that I think I need to go back on my commitment and get a portable computer.

It ruins my attempt to prove I’m “better” than a computer, but it is clearly the right choice. Except for price, it has the Mini beat in every respect. Thinking back to when I first got my current MBP, it had the slickest case design and the best specs. And it lasted me 5 years. I would give the same opinion of the new MBP and would certainly hope that it would also last 5 years.

The price will be what it is, but the surprising criticism of the new MBP is that is, in some sense, too well engineered. Kyle Wiens, co-founder of the popular ifixit.com that shows you how to do repairs on your own hardware, describes it as the “least repairable laptop” in this opinion on Wired. Read for yourself for some contrarianism against the hype, but his main point is that Apple sacrificed repairability and upgradeability in literally gluing together the most compact internals ever, and by buying it, we’re supporting a future of light, thin computers with planned obsolescence as the battery slowly drains itself. If you don’t like that, the older MBP design is the way to go.

Most of the comments seem to dismiss this opinion, but I have taken it surprisingly seriously over the past few hours. On the one hand, I haven’t upgraded my MBP. If it were truly modular, I would have, but the graphics card alone is too specialized for me to want to swap parts. And of course, the new MBP is very thin and light. On the other hand, my hacker instincts tell me that I want the flexibility, and it actually has been useful. The battery in my model happened to be defective, and it was a simple exchange at the Genius Bar to get it fixed. And earlier this year when I thought my computer was dying, it was pretty easy to open it up and clean out the fan. Most of the wins of the new design don’t benefit my outlook, either. I have since purchased a 23″ external display that makes the retina display unimportant, and I think my desk can withstand the difference of a pound as my computer hopefully spends most of its time immobile.

At the moment, though, I’m having a hard time resisting the specs of the new MBP. The older design is cheaper, but it might need a few additions to bring it on par with the new specs. As Julie helpfully pointed out as she just saw me on the Apple Store, “[I] don’t need to decide by the end of the blog post.” And in truth, I actually really enjoy thinking about what hardware to buy. After waiting months for the newest revisions, I’m still uncertain.

At this rate, I might as well just savor the prospect of a new computer as long as possible and wait for a new Mac Mini.

*At some point recently, I sarcastically said something like, “Well, the physical world is just a substrate for the virtual world we actually live in.” That might be the scariest, most honest thing I have ever said.