My new Mac has been purchased

Tonight was a big night.

My current primary personal computer is a 1.25GHz 15" PowerBook G4, with 2GB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. I bought this at the end of 2003 shortly after this model was announced. When it came out, this computer was the first 15" aluminum PowerBook, a model that was long anticipated and which shipped much later than the 12" and 17" aluminum PowerBooks that came before it.

This computer has served me well for the past five years, though it's been augmented in recent years by my work laptop- a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro- and my wife's laptop, a 1.83GHz Core Duo (not a Core 2 Duo) white MacBook.

Over the past year or so, my 15" aluminum has really started to show its age, most dramatically in regard to Flash-based web video, which often does not play reliably (particularly larger, higher definition video), and H.264 video clips shot using my Kodak Zi6, which essentially don't play back at all on this unit.

I've been content to use my 15" PB less and less, since I've got the MacBook Pro at work and my wife's MacBook on the sofa at home. Documents in the cloud make shuffling back and forth between computers less of a chore than it used to be. I was hoping to keep this routine up for a while longer, but the reality is that the cloud doesn't do personal media storage very well, and Apple's new iLife '09 has some extremely impressive features that make me want to use it with my personal photographs and videos... and to do that, I really need to bite the bullet and upgrade the hardware that supports my personal media libraries.

I've been almost ready to do this for a while. Shortly after the unibody aluminum MacBooks were released toward the end of last year, I went to an Apple store and tried to purchase one, only to discover that I couldn't walk out with a custom-configured unit (I wanted to bump the RAM and hard drive size up to the max). On the ride home that night, with my need for instant gratification doused, I decided to cool it for a while- particularly since there were rumors at the time that the new glass trackpads weren't working properly, and who knew what other first-generation gremlins were lurking beneath the hood. I resigned myself to hold off on purchasing a new computer until the first round of updates- however trivial- came out for the MacBook.

Weeks went by and I began to consider the iMac. Why try to replace my current unit with another portable that could do everything but with compromises, my thinking went. My 15" PB sits on my desk at home and never moves. I've got my work laptop and my wife's laptop to use as needed. So if my goal is to replace the computer on my desk at home with something more suited to media, why not go for an iMac, which would get me a much bigger screen and more hard drive space- at roughly the same cost? I'd still have the others to fall back on for portability. And besides, a little voice said- you can always get an Air if you really need to go portable. Heh. And I smiled.

This line of thinking lasted for a while, and then I went back and forth over subsequent weeks, and even considered the new 15" unibody aluminum MacBook Pro for a while, because- damnit- I deserve a bigger screen than the 13" for my media tasks, and the MacBook lacks a FireWire port, which would suck for me because I have several FireWire drives that are an important (but not absolutely critical) part of my workflow. The 15" seemed like the ideal compromise.

Until today, when I felt a bolt of inspiration, made a decision, sat on it for a few hours, and then made my purchase.

The white MacBook.

The lowest-end Mac, save for the Mini.

The value holdover, so easily passed over in comparison to the shiny new unibody MacBooks.

Surely I'd never consider something like that.

Except that... a few weeks ago, Apple quietly upgraded it. They replaced the integrated Intel graphics chip with the same NVIDIA GeForce 9400M chip used on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros (which is supposedly five times faster than the Intel chip previously used). They upgraded the front-side bus to 1066MHz. And they kept the magical FireWire port.

So there you have it. It's not sexy. It's not a powerhouse. But it's brand new, highly evolved, and more than powerful enough for iLife and the multimedia web. 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor. 4GB RAM. 320GB hard drive. FireWire port.

$1399.

This is going to give me everything I want for now, with a nice head-start toward funding the next Mac...

The new white MacBook is a unique value in Apple's lineup and I think it will earn a place in the classic Mac hall of fame. I don't think it's going to be around much longer, but as long as it's here, it's a great deal.