[Editorial note … Friday’s updates have been superseded by this piece. It began as a comment on another site, but roiled into a full essay. Most of you eWillys readers won’t care, but it was something I wanted to say and this is a place where I can say it. Next updates will be Saturday morning.]

I have read with immense interest the stories of the MacBook Pro 17 inchers, those folks that are waiting, against all odds, for another 17” MacBook Pro to appear, something that will require nothing short of a miraculous conception (the comments by these folks are just an example).

I have felt your pain for several years. The recent release of the underwhelming new MBPs, better described as Macbook Airs with MBP colored lipstick, added to my growing frustration with Apple. That event, along with other 17 incher stories, inspired me to write this, not for Apple, but for those folks, in solidarity of their anguish. I feel at this point, we are the true crazy ones, not for any genius we might have, but for holding on when hope seems so far away.

I still use a mid-2010 17 incher I purchased in January 2011. It’s one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. At this point I am hard pressed to believe there is a better, more stable, more flexible, and more dependable laptop ever produced. I use it seven days a week (I am a workaholic, sorry honey). I have authored three books (last one over 500 pages), written 30,000 posts on my (not all gloriously rich, but still …), received and answered over a hundred thousand emails (not including spam), manipulated tens of thousands of images, created videos, and built dozens of websites.

I’ve done all this without having a single issue with my mid-2010. Even though my fifty-one year old eyes have aged (I now need reading glasses to see the screen), my laptop still feels as useful as the day I bought it.

At this point, I don’t need another laptop; yet, I would greatly appreciate one that is newer, just for dependability sake.

But, that’s my beef. The product I want no longer exists. I keep asking myself why I came to this dead end. Unsure of how it what happened, I decided that since Apple looked back during their recent presentation, so will I. I’d like to believe that having used Macs since 1986 (my first was a Mac 512ke), I may have some perspective on the history that landed me at this no-man’s land.

I won’t bore you with the Classic II and Quadra 610 computers I once owned, both very useful during my college days. I want to fast forward to the mid 1990s when I was in grad school. It was the dark days of Apple, its future unclear. It was then I made the poor decision to buy my first mac laptop, the PowerBook 5300c. It was an awful product (far worse than any of the recently announced MBPs). Built from cheap plastic, both it’s form was poor and its function, especially speed, made it nearly unusable. That purchase, coupled with Apple’s dumb decision to license the MacOS, made me concerned about the Company’s future (and I was not alone), so much so that I bought peripheral products that could be used with the PC and the Mac (I used both at the time), just in case I had to switch …..

Then, out of the blue, the sound of church bells rang. A real life deus ex machine event took place. Steve Jobs magically returned to Apple. He wasted little time shaking up the company, frankly in ways I doubt anyone else could have. As the fat was slashed, simplicity, new products, a new OS, and pride returned. “Think differently” was the mantra. Two years later, in 2001, I nervously dipped my toe back into the laptop world by purchasing a Powerbook G4 TI.

Wow! I was hooked. It truly was a “supercomputer in a laptop”, as Jeff Goldblum argued in the introductory commercial:

It was the first laptop I’d ever used that could replace a desktop. At the time, I was flying all over the US. The TI had everything I needed to be productive on the road.

Apple soon revised the Pro laptop line with a faster, bigger laptop: the first 17” Power Book G4 (2003). It was the best laptop made, as argued by Jonathon Ive himself in the commercial.

For me, it was love at first use. I could work on enormous spreadsheets, build websites—all things that were part of the business I was building at the time. I felt there was nothing I couldn’t do using it.The screen felt huge and I relished every pixel.

Subsequent rounds of updates brought on better 17 inchers. I bought one in 2005, 2007, and finally a mid-2010, my current workhorse.

Along with the upgraded laptops came the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Also along the way, some standards were ditched in place of others. Sometimes they were inconvenient, but there were good reasons to keep some and ditch others.

I could even relate to the marketing of the time, the commercial of the silhouette dancing to the iPod. Not that I listen to music often, but I was jitter-bugging-happy with the company and products. It was the golden age of Apple IMHO. They hooked me and I was a junkie. Then, I hooked my family members. iPads and Macbook Pros were purchased. They used them for communication, games, and light work, and remain happy with them.

My current mid-2010 17 incher has served me exceptionally well, despite a couple drops that have damage one side. It still keeps chugging along. Moreover, I keep it with me at all times when travelling. I have carried my computer (using a laptop backpack) for countless hours in New York City on multiple occasions, hiked with it through the deserts of Utah (think I am leaving it in my jeep?), and worked from hundreds of locations (I travel at least two months out of the year in many places without connectivity).

Why do I carry it all over? Because, again, I work nearly every day. The weekend is a bygone concept. Therefore, I have NEEDED a portable desktop, weight be damned. That’s what Apple successfully produced during the late 2000s: a portable desktop. Rather than whine at its weight, I have kept myself in shape. I don’t want some light machine that I need to hook up to a display. I need a portable desktop with a large display!

By 2014, I had reached the three-year threshold that normally meant I would replace my laptop. However, Apple offered nothing that interested me. The MBPs were not large enough and what was there didn’t have enough hard drive space (No, I refuse to rely on a “cloud”, partly because I still have periods of non-connectivity).. So, I remained patient, still happy with my computer.

In 2015, I began to notice the NFL was using the Surface. I don’t have a need for writing on my screen, but what I did take stock of was the commercials. Specifically, I noticed  that Microsoft’s commercials had become increasingly aimed at professional users like me—they looked and sounded like Apple a decade earlier. That’s when the realization hit me: I couldn’t remember the last inspiring Apple commercial for Macbook Pros (or Mac Pros) aimed at professionals.

Perhaps you can name one? I can’t remember any. Yet Apple says they care? Where is the marketing proof? Frankly, where is the marketing for any Apple products worthy of its pedigree? Maybe I am too old and they aren’t aimed at me any longer? Maybe those bad eyes of mine are just too poor? I don’t know and, frankly, I don’t get it.

Worse, what iIS front and center in my mind was the misstep regarding the use of the term “courage” to describe the removal of the headphone jack from the iPhone.

That IS something I remember quite clearly.

Courage? Seriously, COURAGE?

Let me describe courage. It is what I see every morning when my 100% VA disabled wife is forced to absorb the pain she feels when she climbs out of bed, her forty-six year old body having been prematurely aged from the bombing at Khobar in 1996. Between the damage caused by the event and the resulting surgeries, she moves with frequent pain, along with a headache she has felt every day since the event ….. every single day ….. She doesn’t complain. She doesn’t blame. She doesn’t surrender to her dilapidating body. She soldiers on.

She is the definition of COURAGE!

Let me explain it more plainly. What you Apple execs did is called a tough business decision. That’s why you get paid shitloads of cash and stock …. to make tough business decisions and live with the results. And, full disclosure, I’m fine with the decision itself, but calling it courageous as if it is some big sacrifice on your part or the company’s part is utter bullshit. You all are smarter than that. At least, I thought you were.

Courage my ass.

Speaking of my wife, she owns a 15” retina display from 2013. It’s not something she uses all that much, except to edit raw images from her Nikon (she loves photography). She would have preferred a 17”, since focusing on the smaller screen exacerbates the daily headaches, but it was all Rosemary, her mother, could get new at the time.

Rosemary owns a 2011 17” MBP that she uses every day. She is seventy and her eyesight is poor enough that she needs that large screen. She doesn’t use it for anything too serious, but she enjoys it immensely and would gladly buy another one. She too laments what she will do if/when her laptop dies.

I know my mid-2010 MBP will die some day. So will I. I discovered that’s what happens when you write a book about your ancestors like I have. You face your own mortality and wonder about your legacy. I have prepared for it. My computer has helped me prepare for it.

Fortunately, I expect that my computer will die before me; but, I HATE that I have no upgrade path to buy another 17” professional grade computer from Apple. I wanted one in 2014, 2015, & 2016, just in case this one died. To bide my time and for security, I have two hard drives, both with operating systems in case one hard drive has a problem (1.5 terabytes total).

The future of Apple to me looks like a 15” laptop or less. Maybe that’s the tough business decision the kingpins of of Apple feel they have had to make, but I just don’t see that being the case.

What I do get is that the 17” will never be a big money maker on its own, but that isn’t the point. It sets the tone. It should drive other sales. It is a statement about what is possible. That shit matters. Perception matters!

I realize that I am just yelling into the wind. I get that, too. As I said, this is for my brethren, not the kingpins of my dealer.

As for me, I see one path: a slow detox out of the Apple eco-system. This disappoints me, because I enjoy using my computer. I get things done without the computer getting in the way. It helps make me useful. Thank goodness I have all the software I need to write new books, manage my websites, and everything else. All my peripheral devices are USB and, just last month, I had to use my ethernet connection to service my router.

I know, how quaint. It still has ethernet.

Therefore, the only purchase that makes sense for me is to get the latest used 2011 17” I can find, install bigger hard drives, and max out the ram. Hopefully, that will last another four or five years. In the meantime, I will have to cycle out of my iPhone since it will be constantly demanding an iOS upgrade (and therefore an OSX upgrade) and move to the Android phone my wife uses (Motorola Turbo), which takes much better photos anyway, something necessary for my website.

This isn’t some threat. I know that I don’t spend nearly enough at Apple for the company to care about me. I just see no other practical path before me. I know I’m not alone. Just look at this parody of the recent Macbook Pro release:

At least I have an option and, at this point, don’t have to keep up with the OS upgrades to function effectively. After all, I know at some point OSX will no longer support the 17 incher, which makes perfect business sense. But, not all 17 inchers will be so fortunate as I.