The Best Day of My Life
By Ani Simhadri
August 2019
I was about the age of 13, maybe a couple of months before that, when I started to develop a keen interest in technology. All of the different types of devices fascinated me, especially laptops. I noticed how there was so much engineering and thinking involved in the design of this type of machine that I use just about everyday. For the first time in my life, I started to become more aware and just how complex a laptop truly is. So, just like any five-year-old that finds out about dinosaurs for the first time, I too, became obsessed with this technology. After a little bit of time, I became more fascinated by how much power I had at my fingertips in such a small, rectangular package compared to gargantuan PCs! I guess that’s why they say, “Big things come in small packages.” In addition to finding out about the power of laptops, the first thing that came to my mind was Apple. The reason for this is because Apple, although they have expensive products, they come with a great value and reliability, which is fantastic when buying anything from this powerful company. So there I was, hopping onto Apple’s website and looking at the MacBook section. As I was looking at the specs and other qualities, I was thinking to myself, “What? How can a laptop be this good and also still be able to embrace the slim and light weight that it is being able to hold?” Then I started to look at the compromises that I had to make, which was to buy one of these laptops. I had to completely empty my bank account because the lowest price for a MacBook Pro was $1299, and that is with an 8th generation i5 processor, was well as an 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM. Plus, the machine only came with a measly 128GB of storage, which for most light users is good because of iCloud Storage options. However, for anything other than that, you had to at least upgrade your Mac to a minimum of 256GB of storage, which increases the price by $200. Now a buyer would be sitting at $1500. Then there is the more expensive model that starts at $1800, and it comes with a 5% increase in performance, 2 extra thunderbolt ports, 256gb at minimum, and also a little bit faster SSD read and write speeds. During that time, I was also taking coding classes at Bayer just after they bought Monsanto. I needed an upgrade from my brother, Rishi’s, 3 year old laptop that had an i3 and 6gb of RAM. Don’t get me wrong. You can still code on that machine, but by the time everyone else was on the designated coding apps that they were supposed to be on, my brother’s laptop was basically just turning on, and so because of this delay, I lost a lot of valuable recap time and even some code at times. Also, my brother and I had been fighting over who can use the computer, and so we both made a deal that basically says, “I won’t use his laptop if he won’t use my computer.” (I had my own computer that he tends to use a lot) I also wanted a place other than the same place that I sit to do my work, and I wanted to work at my desk so that I could have more space and so that I won’t be cramped up just trying to lay the composition notebook down and use it without getting wrinkles in it. At this moment in time, I was deciding on a good computer to buy that had at least an Intel Core i5 Processor, 8gb of RAM, and and 128gb of storage if I was thinking about a MacBook and 256gb if I was going to get a Windows machine. If I fast forward a couple of days, we get to the part where my brother gets his own new phone. He was complaining because his last phone only had 8gb storage on it, and that basically means that he can only download one small app, and then no matter how small the next app was, you couldn’t download another one. Anyways, when my brother got his phone, I was feeling happy for him and all, but I also got really sad that he gets a phone when he is not even a teenager, but at the age of 10, I didn’t think that he should have a phone. At that moment, my mom comes to me and tells me to come into a separate room, and she tells me something that got me really excited and really pumped. While my brother was getting a new phone, I was going to get a new laptop. This laptop was not just any laptop, it was the MacBook Pro, the laptop that I liked the best. Well, the laptop that I liked the best except for the price tag on it. The laptop was so expensive that the minimum price for a laptop that was actually worth it costed about $1,799 US. That is really expensive, where as if you look at something like HP’s Envy 13, it has better specs, better design, and it costs about $400-$500 dollars less. Anyways, I was thinking about getting a Microsoft machine because it was a little bit cheaper alternative than a MacBook, so I looked at some reviews, and I shied away from it for one and only one reason. The trackpad. Yes, the trackpad had Microsoft precision tracking on it, and yes the trackpad is glass, but it just didn’t feel like the quality trackpad I would get on a laptop that I am using about $1000 to $1500 to purchase. I do understand that apple makes the best trackpads, and I was not expecting that kind of quality on a trackpad, but I was hoping that I could get a little bigger trackpad, and also a trackpad that wasn’t as mushy. Then, I found the HP Envy 13. It had a good trackpad that I was satisfied with, the keyboard was good, and the specs and OS met my expectations too. At that moment, I was thinking, wow! This might be the laptop to purchase. Then, I started doing more research on this laptop, and along the way, no other laptops caught my attention. All except one. The Lenovo Yoga c930. The Lenovo Yoga c930 has exceptional speakers, almost as good as a macbook’s, the keyboard is one of the more preferred keyboards out of the Lenovo brand which makes it one of the best keyboards, and also the trackpad is as good quality as I wanted it to be. Everything about it was just great, including the hinge that lets the laptop become a 2 in 1. The bezels were exceptionally thin all round except for the bottom, which is a little bit annoying. Now my father wanted to get the best laptop for me as long as it had a maximum price point of $1,500, and that was without tax. The laptop he had in mind was the MacBook Pro. He wanted this because MacBooks are the most durable laptops. That is a given. It also has all of the things that I look for in a laptop. The keyboard makes for a good typing experience, and the trackpad eliminates the need for a mouse. The sleek design would also help with traveling, although while minimal, it still is a factor. Last of all, MacOS Sierra. The operating system is just one of the best out on the market, and I truly wanted to have a go at it instead of using the windows operating system, which after a while got kind of boring. But anyways, that was the reason that my father wanted the MacBook. He was thinking, if we were going to buy something that was about $1,400, it at least had to have some top-notch build quality so that it wouldn’t break if I set it down on a workstation right away.
Fast forward 2 months and we get to the part where my father says, “Hey Ani. Want to go and buy your new MacBook?”
I respond, “Sure!”
At the time that he asked me, I was wasting some valuable sparring time in taekwondo class. So we get there to the mall that has the apple store in it and we go towards the Mac systems. I was accompanied by my 21 year old cousin and my dad, along with my dad who drove us here. My brother broke away to look at the phone section of the shop. For a decently long time, he was asking my dad for an iPhone, and my dad said that he would buy my brother one, but for now, just look for a phone that won’t break the bank and I will choose if it is OK for you to get it or not. After Rishi says OK, the rest of us and myself go to look at the MacBooks after we signed up for an assistant. The assistant came and we started discussing about the differences in the MacBooks and which ones are the better ones for college, and how everything would work out. We also talked about the different models and how much of a difference the more expensive ones are compared to the less expensive ones. Then we started talking about all of the upgrades that we could do and how they would affect the performance, and how much storage we need even when there is iCloud available to store all of my documents that I will possibly use. After about another 15 minutes of deciding which laptop out of the 2 to choose, we decided to get the less expensive one because the performance boost to the next model was not that much. We also upgraded the storage to 256gb instead of 128 because since you can’t upgrade the storage in the future, he just thought that we could upgrade instead of having to face the consequences later on. So we got the laptop and everything, and I got it and came home. We got a free pair of beats and $100 off because we took the education pricing because our cousin was doing college at the time. Getting back to the point, we got the MacBook and used it for a week. On the 8th day, the MacBook started turning off automatically when it got to 50% battery, and so when we took it to the Apple store to return it, the apple attendant said that the problem did not always appear with customers that purchased the newer models. He said that it might have been because the system was gauging the battery differently, which meant that the laptop would show 50% battery, but then think it is at 0% battery, so it shuts off. They just said that they are going to give us a new model and see what is going on with the one we purchased before. At this point, on the date of August 25th, 2019, I have a MacBook Pro 13.3inch, that might have some problems with it, but other than that, it is my favorite laptop.
Notes to Self:
Typed on my first MacBook Pro that I got on August 15th, 2019