I am a computer geek; you have to understand that before what you’re about to read will make any sense at all. It started when I was twelve years old, when the idea of having a computer in my home was nearly as frivolous as having my own butler, or money to bribe some other kid to do my chores. It would be two years before my dream became a reality on a blistering cold Christmas morning, when my dad unveiled the TI99/4a – my very first home computer. During those two years, I kept myself distracted at arcades, read programming books (so I’d be ready when the computer finally did arrive in my house), plastered my bedroom walls with gaming posters and pictures of a young Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and advertisements for the Commodore 64. I’ve practically given away my age now, but like everything for me back in the day, it’s still all for the technology.
And it’s not just about me and technology – it’s about everyone and technology, together. If you ask anyone who knows me, they’ll tell you that I get just as excited about their new gadgets and upgrades as I do about my own. It’s true. Granted, I tend to upgrade more often than most of my relatives and friends. Since 2000, I’ve been through four Mac laptops – the first white iBook, a G4 Powerbook, another iBook around 2004, and in 2009, a Macbook Pro. This wasn’t because there was anything wrong with any of my Macs, but because I love to experience new technology with some regularity. There are people worse than me, and better than me about this – but my point is, I’ve upgraded several times in the last decade. I’ve been through 3 iPhones in as many years. I was one of those devout Apple fans who pre-ordered the original iPad and waited in a quarter-mile line outside the mall’s Apple Retail Store to pick mine up on “Launch Day” in April, 2010. To me, the only thing better than a personal recent upgrade is helping someone else with their new stuff.
Flash forward to the present. Well, last week. My cousin, who has been using her 2004 G5 iMac since it debuted, decided to invest her tax refund in a new 27″ iMac. I’d helped her through earlier migrations: from the original, white iBook she bought at the same time I did to this G5 iMac, from one iPhone to the next, and now, I was called upon to ensure that her old iMac was thoroughly backed up to the Lacie drive I’d encouraged her to get a few years ago. Backing up was simple, as expected, and took less than an hour despite the thousands of photos, songs, and video files we transferred to the Lacie. After it was finished and I’d restored it to factory settings, we boxed up the old iMac and shipped it off for recycling. She was too tired to go through with loading the old media files onto her new iMac right away, so it was a couple of days before she got around to plugging the Lacie in.
Or, I should say, until she tried to plug the Lacie in.
I was so excited to get the new iMac set up for her that I had failed to notice one elementary obstacle: the old iMac had FireWire 400 ports, and the new one has FireWire 800. Here is the text message I received while I was sitting in the bathtub:
“Hey, cant fit the plug into my new Mac. need some other cord?”
After delicately setting my iPhone 4 aside, I did a bubblebath faceplant. How could I have overlooked such a thing? I, with all my history, had failed to foresee this impediment to my dear cousin’s total bliss. Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t entirely sure I even knew whether the current iMacs still supported FireWire at all. So I immediately began surfing for adapters. Fortunately, what she needed could be ordered online for less than $10 – the simple, yet utterly brilliant FireWire 400-to-800 adapter would soon arrive, saving the day.
The moral to this story, if there is one, is this: as we approach the point at which new technology will stop being so new – when most devices begin to so resemble one another in features and form that little will remain to distinguish them – the meantime can still trip us up if we aren’t paying attention. A brief chronological setback is all this amounted to, rather than a full-blown FireWire Fiasco. The next time I help a friend or loved one set up a new computer, you can be sure I’ll be checking out the ports with great attention.
