The Mac I Didn't Buy

After weeks (months, really) of loading up MacBook Pro configs in my cart, defecting to an ASUS GX10, then coming crawling back, I decided to buy. It had taken so long I’d actually saved the money for it. Paying cash for a $6,500 laptop felt wrong, and putting it on our joint credit card was out of the question: obvious to anyone whose significant other isn’t into Macs.

My own card’s limit wasn’t high enough, so I applied for an increase. Three payslips required. I don’t resent the due diligence.

It was the middle of the night. The payslips were on my work Mac, not the iPhone in bed (where a disturbingly high number of my significant purchases happen). It could wait until morning.

First thing next day, I logged into payroll for the payslips. Error. Tried again. Error. Tried again half an hour later. Error. Slack confirmed I wasn’t alone; someone had already been told to raise a case.

I save support cases for real emergencies, like the time I spilled water on my laptop mid-trip, the night before a big presentation. This wasn’t that. I raised one anyway.

Acknowledged. Then nothing. By end of day, still nothing, and Slack was full of grumpy people confirming it was a system-wide outage. Fine. Tomorrow, then.

That was June 25 (in Au). That outage cost me about AUD $1,700, or it would have, if I could have justified it. No new Mac. Back to my trusty M2, three years old now: possibly the longest I’ve ever kept a personal laptop. More irony.

Epilogue. Payroll came back the next morning. I downloaded everything, submitted it, and — just to make the joke complete — the credit increase came through within the hour.