My Mac …Speedy!

The time had come, and I was not sure how to feel? I mean, this was my little buddy! I felt like I was betraying him!

Wait, let me back up a bit…

I bought a new Macintosh. And while I am ecstatic about it, I am also saddened. You see, this is the second computer I have now owned. I guess you could acquaint it with your first car? (I would have said girlfriend, but I think anyone who holds a machine in that kind of regard needs some professional help). I cannot speak for everyone, but for me, my first car was a life changing event. No longer was I held sway to where my father and mother were willing to take me. I could go anywhere I wanted! Of course, I pretty much went the same places where I rode my bike, but the point was I COULD go! And my first Mac was very much like that, too. (Of course, it was not a chick magnet like the car, though!) The first night I sat down with the Mac, I dialed in to America Online. (With a blazing fast 2400 baud modem no less, at a time when a 14.4 was unheard of). And like that first car, my life was changed.

Years have passed, and me and my LC have been through much. With it, I learned how to type, something I never thought I could learn after flunking my eighth grade typing class! I learned that with a few clicks of a mouse, I could talk to someone on the other side of the country. (Why this was appealing is still a mystery to me? I have been using phones since I was two years old!). And, of course, I started an electronic magazine that I never thought would actually be read by that many people, and thus did not put much effort into it at the beginning.

Sure, my LC had many nights when it would act up, and I found myself awake all night learning why you should not have two hundred extensions. But while doing that, something happened. I learned. Learned something that, just a few years ago, would have been almost impossible for me to fathom. That I like computers, and was actually good with them. I understood my LC in a way that I had never understood an inanimate object before. And in the span of that first year, my LC developed a personality.

But like my first car, there came a time when it was time to move on. Sure, that LC still works perfect! (Unlike the car. Did you know you should NEVER downshift into third when going 120 MPH?) In fact, I already have a new home picked out for the LC, though as I write this, it sits on a table above my desk, looking down a bit upon me and the new Mac with loneliness. Or is that just my imagination? Whatever the case may be, my feeling are real enough. As I said, on one hand, I am loving the new Mac speed and power. On the other, my little 16mHz friend is still usable, and yet here he sits, unwanted and unneeded. He may not have a big hard drive (80Megs), he may not have much of a memory (6Megs), and he may not be able to communicate as fast (14,400 modem), but he does still work. (And I just called it a “he”, didn’t I?) But in a way, I am also content. Content in the fact that the little guy will soon have a new home with someone who has never used a computer before. So is it with anticipation that it sits on that table, waiting to possibly change someone else’s life as it did mine? Or is it with sadness, as he looks upon his former master and his new machine, becoming accustomed to it as I did him? Does it know that he is only 1/10 of the computer the new mac is? That to work and use him is like going back in time, such as driving a horse drawn buggy after owning a Porsche?

Or is it simply an inanimate object, unable to feel or think, only waiting to be used? Regardless of the truth, the only thing that matters is how I feel, and what attribute I ascribe to it. Without me, it is nothing. A box, wires, plastic, and chips. But because of me, it has a personality. It has transcended that which it was, and became more.

What make it what it is? The software? If so, a large piece of it lives on in the new machine. And in a lot of ways, the new machine is much like the old, though it has yet to develop a personality of it’s own, or even been named yet! (Naming a new computer takes time, as the name must fit the machine. I mean, “speedy” was good for the LC, but is kind of a cruel moniker after using the new one. And there is only ONE speedy!)

So, as with my first car, so to goes my first Macintosh. Was that first car the best car I have ever owned? Of course not, far from it! Nor will my first Mac be the best computer I have ever owned. Logic dictates as much. But it was the first, and as such, will always hold a special meaning in me. Years may pass, but like that first car, there will be times I will miss it. Times I will have wished I had not sold Speedy, though I would never had used him much, other than for reminiscing. But Speedy has a new home he will soon go to. A home where someone will learn what it means to own a Mac for the first time. Someone like I was, when I first brought Speedy home. And for that someone, Speedy will make a fine teacher. He will show her what being a Mac means, and change her life as he did mine. Speedy may not be much when compared to the new Mac’s out there, but Speedy still has a job to do. And I am confident he will do that job well.

Goodbye, Speedy. I will never forget you.