Why I Didn’t Buy a New MacBook (Yet) - A Room of My Own

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I currently use three laptops: a work-issued Windows machine that I use every day, a personal 17-inch Windows laptop that I used at my previous job (and subsequently bought from my employer when I left the company more than five years ago), and my trusty MacBook Air.

My Mac is a 2017 MacBook Air - Intel i7, 8GB of RAM, and a 500GB SSD.

It’s almost nine years old now.

The battery gives me a few hours at best, it’s occasionally sluggish, and it doesn’t support multiple external monitors the way newer Apple Silicon Macs do. That’s particularly annoying because both of my Windows laptops connect to my home setup through a single dock. I have two home desks with almost identical setups because I work from home a lot, and my son and husband also use the docking stations to connect their laptops - it’s literally a case of plugging in one cable and you’re away. It’s seamless.

My Mac doesn’t do that, but throughout its entire life with me I’ve mostly used it as a literal laptop on my lap - for writing, browsing, and general personal use.

And of all the laptops I own, my old MacBook Air still feels the nicest to use. It’s light, comfortable, quiet, and just plain elegant. Despite its age and limitations, I still reach for it when I want to sit on the couch and write.

So recently I started thinking that maybe it was time to update that experience with a new MacBook.

The laptop I’ve been looking at is a 13-inch MacBook Air M5 with 16GB of RAM. On paper, it’s a massive upgrade. Better performance, all-day battery life, support for multiple monitors through a single dock., and a machine I could probably keep well into the mid-2030s.

It would fit seamlessly into my existing home setup (apparently).

The problem is that my current one still works. Pretty well. It’s not frustrating. The battery isn’t great, but I mostly use it at home or in a coffee shop for an hour.

The more I sat with the decision, the more I got annoyed with myself. This has happened before.

A few years ago bought an iPad Air and an Apple Pencil. I spent a huge amount of time on that decision - comparing models, watching reviews, mapping out use cases. I bought it. Then a few months (of agonizing over it) later I decided it would probably be even more useful with a keyboard, so I bought that too.

I barely use either of them now.

The problem was that I’d been buying a future version of myself - someone who would take notes in meetings or while reading, journal on an iPad, and create things. And for a while, I did. But it was never as seamless or friction-free as I’d imagined. At least not like it was in my head during those hours and hours of research.

Or my new Kindle Paperwhite. I bought it to replace my very old Paperwhite, and yet I still use the old one most nights because it performs better in bed, in the dark, which is when I use it most. It’s smaller, the light is gentler in the dark, and somehow it just does the job better.

What I’ve come to understand - and never really articulated to myself before - is that research creates its own momentum. The more time I invest in a decision, the more I start to feel like I should buy something, if only to justify all the effort I’ve already put into researching it.

The MacBook Air replacement conversation was starting to feel very familiar. And exhausting.

I don’t need a new MacBook. Not yet. I want one. I can afford one. I could even frame it as a reward for all my hard work or whatever. But should I? Round and round it goes until eventually I buy the thing and then feel disappointed because the purchase never solved the problem I thought it would.

My MacBook is old, but it’s still good enough. Whatever I’d gain from a new one doesn’t feel like enough to justify the cost (and effort). If the battery or performance eventually gets bad enough that it genuinely gets in the way, I’ll replace it without guilt. Maybe I’ll replace the battery now and get another year out of it. It still feels great to use. I’m typing this on it now.

What I keep coming back to is the difference between wanting a device and wanting the life you imagine you’ll have with it.

In my case, I wasn’t really buying a MacBook. I was buying the fantasy version of myself who would finally finish that novel. The person who would take advantage of 18 hours of battery life to write for hours in cafés, on planes, or on top of some mountain somewhere.

Never mind that my actual life doesn’t really allow for 18-hour writing sessions in the first place. Maybe I get an hour. Maybe two if I’m lucky. But would I use them for writing anyway?

If I don’t on one of the three laptops I already own, why would I on a new MacBook Air?

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