![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Trauma at the Apple Store
Sep. 4th, 2006 08:36 pmTitania is dying. This is sad, but not terribly surprising. After all, she's 5 years old, which is pretty old for a computer. And we have had to duct tape her CD drive closed for months now. So we knew this was coming. When her hard drive had a fatal error, we were willing to hang with her and figured we could just re-install the necessary programs. It was only when we realized that we couldn't install Mac Classic on her that we gave in and went to the Apple Store.
This did not feel all bad: after all, we could still use Titania for the Internet, giving us three computers for three people. And a new computer would mean more wireless. So we were fairly optimistic as we headed for the store (even if it is located at the dreaded Legacy Village).
Then disaster struck. After asking all sorts of questions and figuring out that we could buy a computer very similar to Ni, I asked the fatal question (almost as an afterthought): "We will be able to run Mac Classic on this, right?" Argghhhh! It turns out that there is not a single computer in the entire store which will still run Classic! The poor salesman tried to be helpful, but he clearly was not prepared for the level of upset this information caused. We were all upset, Zan in particular. This means we could not run her favorite version of Word, the graphic programs she loves, many of our favorite games, etc. Since the main reason we were buying a new computer in the first place was because Titania could no longer run Classic, it didn't make much sense to buy a new computer which still couldn't run Classic.
The patient and knowledgeable salesman tried to gently encourage us to move with the times - but we are clearly not ready for such a drastic move as of yet. This whole issue raised all our existential concerns about corporate America, planned obsolescence, etc. It will take some deep soul-searching for us to figure out how to handle this.
This did not feel all bad: after all, we could still use Titania for the Internet, giving us three computers for three people. And a new computer would mean more wireless. So we were fairly optimistic as we headed for the store (even if it is located at the dreaded Legacy Village).
Then disaster struck. After asking all sorts of questions and figuring out that we could buy a computer very similar to Ni, I asked the fatal question (almost as an afterthought): "We will be able to run Mac Classic on this, right?" Argghhhh! It turns out that there is not a single computer in the entire store which will still run Classic! The poor salesman tried to be helpful, but he clearly was not prepared for the level of upset this information caused. We were all upset, Zan in particular. This means we could not run her favorite version of Word, the graphic programs she loves, many of our favorite games, etc. Since the main reason we were buying a new computer in the first place was because Titania could no longer run Classic, it didn't make much sense to buy a new computer which still couldn't run Classic.
The patient and knowledgeable salesman tried to gently encourage us to move with the times - but we are clearly not ready for such a drastic move as of yet. This whole issue raised all our existential concerns about corporate America, planned obsolescence, etc. It will take some deep soul-searching for us to figure out how to handle this.
