Enforced Post PC experiment

Fully iOS for a week or two

Last week the hard drive on my iMac died. I bought a Thunderbolt hard drive to use instead of the internal drive that had given up the ghost. Then I bought another drive to back up the Thunderbolt drive. Then I was able to continue on my merry way computing as I had done before. I didn’t expect to be thinking about having to do a Post PC experiment.

LaCie Thunderbolt Drive

Yesterday the broken drive started making some weird noises. It began with clicking followed by screeching sort of noises from the hard drive. It was necessary to turn the computer off because the noises were quite annoying. This morning when I turned the computer back on again the noise of the hard drive was still there and was accompanied by the fans of the computer running at full blast.

I thought I had solved the problem of the broken hard drive so I could continue using my excellent iMac computer. Now I find I have to get that internal hard drive replaced so I can return to using it. It’s going to cost me more money. I’ll probably have to buy another hard drive because the one I’ve already bought is not going to fit in the computer. I could ask when I go to the Apple Store next Wednesday if they can put in my recently bought new hard drive. The other possibility is for me to buy an SSD drive to have as the internal drive for the computer.

With the iMac being five years old I don’t want to spend too much money on it even though it’s still got plenty of life left in it. One of the possibilities that has crossed my mind is to ask Apple what they will give me for this old computer and for me to get a new one to replace it. It would be great to have a new computer, but that’s going to cost me a good bit more money. Considering the cost of buying a new Mac it’s a good idea to save up some money to have a fund for buying new gear. Over the last couple of months I have put some money to one side ready for buying the next computer. I wasn’t expecting to have to use it quite so soon. There’s not enough in the fund yet for buying a new iMac and it would be better if I could wait another six months to a year before getting the next computer. I will probably go for another iMac and if I get one tricked out the way I would like to, I could quite easily get to nearly 3000 Euro spent on the computer. Seems quite a lot to spend though I do use my computer every single day and I will get the value out of the money I spend.

A trip to the Apple Store in Barcelona

I have to go to the store in Barcelona to get the hard drive upgraded. I have toyed with the idea of opening up the computer myself. It is quite difficult to get to the hard drive in order to change it. I am still tempted to take the computer apart and to see if I can find a kit where I could change the optical drive and replace that with one of my hard drives as well. I think if I had an SSD drive as the main drive within the computer plus another two or 3 TB drive alongside it would be happy enough. The computer would last me for another three or four years probably and I’d have more time to save up for the next computer. If I go down this route of going to the Apple Store to get the job done, then the computer will be away from me for at least a week. I will take it in on my day off which is a Wednesday and then go back the following Wednesday and hopefully be able to pick it up. I can’t really get much use out of the computer as it is at the moment so I have six days to wait before I can take it to the Genius Bar and then another week before I can get it back. This means I’ll have two weeks of using just my iPad Pro and my iPhone as my only means of computing. I quite like the idea of going post PC for a couple of weeks.

What will I miss of Mac OS?

What I know I am going to miss the most, is the use of DragonDictate. I use the latest version which is Dragon for Mac version 5. I dictate just about everything into my Mac. I can also do dictation using the iPad and the iPhone with Siri dictation. It isn’t anywhere near as accurate, but it’s still pretty useful at the same time. Basically it’s going to cost me more editing time to go through what I’ve written to make sure it’s okay to post to my websites. On account of not being able to use my Mac I will use my Apple Bluetooth keyboard as a way to type into the iPad.

Applications for the Post PC experiment

There will be one or two applications that I prefer to use on the Mac. I have an application called Hemingway that is not available on iOS. I like to use MarsEdit it as a way to publish to my websites. I will have to use Blogo instead or the other one on my iPad which is Blogsy. I have recently made a blog post using Blogo and the experience wasn’t too bad at all. I also like to go into the WordPress back office of the blog using Safari. This is because I am using plug in to get my posts properly set up for SEO. It might work out best if I do the blog posting first using one of the blogging applications and then go in to the Safari view of the site after that.

For general purpose writing I do have the Ulysses application.

Anything I’ve put into the application on my Mac I have available anyway on my iOS devices. I’m using it at the moment to write this article. When I’ve finished it I’ll move it into the Blogsy as part of my Post PC experiment.

How well could this Post PC experiment go?

What about if I do so well with this Post PC experiment of only using iOS devices for my computing for the next couple weeks and it goes without any hitches. It could in the end save me lots of money because maybe I won’t want to buy another Mac computer. I must admit I do like to have lots of screen space to work with. I am used to working with a pair of 27 inch screens in front of me. On the other hand, a small screen closer to the eyes gives a similar effect to having a large screen in front of you. Perhaps I would be better to save some money by buying the Mac Mini instead of another iMac. I could do most of my stuff with that connected to the 27 inch screen. The thing is, is that a Mac Mini can also get quite expensive when you add sufficient memory and hard drive space. So let’s watch this space to see how the Post PC experiment goes. We’ll see what the genius people at Apple say when I take the iMac in and see how much it’s going to cost to get the hard drive replaced.