Parting with a Noble Workhorse

 

Wiping the hard drive of my trusty iMac

In my December 4, 2025 post, Part 2: Is Quality an Issue Again? , I wrote about my appreciation for quality of my iMac desktop computer.  I bought this when I joined the full time faculty at North Park University in 2014.  I wanted a large screen desktop computer for course, development, grading, and general use.  The version I wanted cost me $1,500 or 1,600 and I remember contemplating the purchase for several weeks because of the high price.  Ultimately, I decided to splurge and bought the PC in November of that year. 

It was one of the best decisions I ever made.  I admired the sleek design of the machine and the Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad.  I really loved the large 27 inch screen in which I could have a student assignment and the answer key open and visible at the same time for grading.  The large screen was also helpful in course development when I would have an MS Word or PowerPoint that I was creating open at the same time as a reference document.  I loved it for watching YouTubes for either education, music, or entertainment.  I also used to the iMac for creating posts for this blog, articles for the Armenian Weekly, and for sorting through and editing the myriad photographs and videos I take for both the articles and general family use.  During COVID, all my courses and the two task forces I was part of moved online.  I was on the iMac most of the day working from home.  It was the perfect home set-up during those pandemic times.

The iMac was a workhorse and, even more importantly, a durable and reliable workhorse.  In the 11 years of usage, I had one issue with a virus for which an online session with Apple’s help desk got it all cleaned up.  There were myriad upgrades of the operating system, the various apps I use, and the MS Office suite of applications that all happened seamlessly. 

In 2018 in a blog piece, Old Car - New Car, I wrote the following praising my 2002 Toyota 4Runner:

I remember hearing a Toyota executive address us in the study mission to Japan that, and I paraphrase, their goal was to have their customers happier with their vehicles with each year of ownership. I was really surprised to hear this as cars and truck wear out. They start losing value from the moment you buy them. Repairs simply become more expensive as components wear out. To achieve their vision, they would have to have excellent engineering and precision manufacturing…

My iMac had this same quality attribute.  My happiness and satisfaction with this product increased with each year of ownership.  In the same period, I have had four university issued laptops which all died in 2-4 years.  My cost per year for the iMac was less than if I had paid $500-600 for each of those laptops.  Computers aren’t cars, but they do age and in their own way ‘wear-out.’  Electronics in phones and computers are made of perishable components.  The are not in the same category of fruits and vegetables which are truly perishable as they can rot and need to be trashed in a matter of days.  Electronic components are different.  They are  perishable in the sense that innovation of newer and more capable components render older components useless even though they are still perfectly functional.  This is what happened to my iMac.  It works perfectly.  But because of the age of the CPU, I can no longer update the operating system, and many apps includes the MS Office Suite of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on which ~80% of my work is built upon.  Within a matter of a few months, the performance of my iMac began to wane requiring more frequent reboots and I simply had to make a change.

This morning, December 21, 2025, I wiped the hard drive of the best computer I have ever owned, shut it down on last time, drove it to the town refuge center, and gingerly deposited it in electronics bin.  There were no tears or swells of emotions, but it was a somber moment.