{"id":47075,"date":"2026-02-12T11:19:34","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T16:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/?p=47075"},"modified":"2026-03-28T15:21:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T19:21:21","slug":"forward-to-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2026\/02\/12\/forward-to-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Forward to the PAST!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"New computers are not in the cards for me<\/p>\n

Money’s tight and freelance is sparse making the purchase of a new computer less and less likely. It won’t pay for itself. The necessary evil loses its necessity, and it just becomes evil.<\/p>\n

The major strike against a new computer is that our Silicon Valley overlords have seen it fit that we, their customers, should own nothing. You’re not buying a computer. You’re paying for the privilege of using it temporarily. The software is a rental and most of their hardware will give up the ghost in five years or so.<\/p>\n

You never truly own what you pay for. It’s sort of like real estate taxes.<\/p>\n

That is why I have been pulling out some old Macs I’ve had in mothballs and giving them a new lease on life. Some of them are getting a fresh operating system in the form of Linux Mint<\/a> like the 2012 Mac mini I am typing this article on while others are getting a little surgery and are running a feline-named OS.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It started with a Mac Pro from 2009 which was our “emergency”<\/em> standby in case something went wrong with our newer machines. It had old operating systems on it and an installation of the last Adobe suite of desktop publishing software I had on physical media. What I didn’t realize is that the “emergency”<\/em> already occurred in the form of rental software. Against my better nature, I was renting Photoshop, but a recent price increase made up my mind for me. I was going to lean into that emergency equipment. The old packaged software did everything I needed it to do.<\/p>\n

My future relied on my returning to the past.<\/p>\n

\"Solid<\/a>