Waiting for Aria
Last November, frustrated and desperate for answers, my wife asked what I wanted for Christmas.
I’m not an easy guy to shop for. I don’t want a lot of things, and at this point in my life I can buy a new book or some music without much thought. I’m enjoying this late middle-age comfort; in a few years I’ll retire and we’ll be as poor again as we’d been in our 20s, only with medical bills.
First, she suggested a riser for my desk, so I could stand sometimes. Working from home in this pandemic year hasn’t been easy on the body or on the spirit. And a standing desk would be nice; I used one at the office almost daily. But who wants a practical Christmas gift? It’s like finding clothes under the tree when you’re a kid.
So I looked her straight in the eye, put on my cheesiest grin, and said How about one of those new M1 MacBook Airs?
I figured, why not go for it? She won’t divorce me over a Christmas wish. She’ll laugh, consider the things that can happen to a husband’s mind when he hasn’t left the apartment since March, and remind me I just bought a new Dell laptop a year and a half ago. That’ll be the end of the discussion. I’ll be unwrapping a new standing desk on Christmas day.
Ten minutes later she remembered that when one of us asks for something a bit outrageous, we often find a way to make it happen. She started brainstorming. Why not sell the Dell? Twelve months interest free on the Apple card looks doable.
Two days later, my MacBook Air was on its way. Slowly.
Why now?
I was already well into the Apple ecosystem at this point. I’ve owned an iPhone for a couple of years, iPads for even longer, and I’ve left a lot of iPods bobbing in my wake. We even owned early MacBook Pros for a few years in the mid-to-late Aughts (she wanted one; I had to get one of my own to provide tech support when she needed it). Despite flirting with Linux more than a few times, I’ve been a Windows guy since 1995 and I’m tired of it. The time had come to embrace my inner Apple, and the new M1 Macs were the siren song that lured me in.
And I had no qualms about getting the newest of the new. I enjoy being an early adopter. I’d endlessly installed and upgraded Windows 10 betas. I’m aware of the risks, I back up everything, and I’ve been pretty lucky with tech. (Or careful. Or both.) Beta testing operating systems is fun, though I have to be physically restrained from installing iOS betas on my phone. (My whole life is on my phone. What could go wrong?)
Meanwhile…
December wore on while I waited for that slow boat from Taiwan to ease into Long Beach. Computer journalists and bloggers trampled each other to praise the new M1 chips. Flying benchmarks struck down Intel CPUs and people who’d bought new Macs six months earlier howled in pain. Developers recompiled critical (hot-selling) pieces of software. I paged through books about MacOS Big Sur, restless, and refreshed my inbox, waiting for Apple to reveal my delivery date.
Two days before the New Year a masked, exhausted FedEx driver delivered a parcel from Apple. I thanked him profusely, slammed the door in his face, and attacked the box with a dull pocket knife. Soon my new MacBook Air booted up. I fell in love at once and named it Aria. My wife looked on, smiling, maybe a little jealous, knowing better than to disturb me when I’m getting to know new hardware. (She bought her own Air three months later, but still spends most of her time with her iPad Pro.)
And finally
Now that half a year has passed, the shine and novelty have worn off and layers of fingerprints have built up around the edges of the screen, do I still love my new computer? Is Aria still better than a Windows machine?
Yes, and yes.
My computing needs are not complex. There is no video editing, music production, or web development in my life. I write, I browse, I email. I manage collections of music, ebooks, and photos. For years I’ve had to do those things on Windows machines that never seemed to have more than a couple of hours of battery life, whose fans always pushed hot air, and who never met a virus scan or update they wouldn’t roll over and wag their trails for.
But Aria, bless its Apple Silicon heart, sips daintily from its battery and tolerates the power cable’s infrequent attentions (“Lie back and think of Cupertino,” I say). It’s a joy to flip up the lid, watch the screen come awake instantly, and work silently, as I am Aria’s biggest (and only) fan. The machine stays cool even when the room is hot. It doesn’t constantly beg for updates, and gives me a Unix command line without needing anything extra bolted onto its sleek operating system.
It just works, which is how I like it.
