I recently starting photographing for a new editorial client. My first shoot with them was a fashion shoot for a local boutique. The shoot went great everyone was happy with the images. They sent me three smaller assignments two on Tuesday and one more on Thursday. I also had a test shoot scheduled on Tuesday morning to photograph a local Crossfit gym. My test shoot went well, got some really awesome images and a short video. I had time to swing back home and dump the RAW files on my MacBook Pro. I then left to the next shoot. I got everything setup, opened my computer to shoot tethered, and quickly realized it was taking a little longer to boot my computer than normal.
I've had this laptop for 4 years now. It is a 2012 Macbook Pro. I bought it right before the retina macs were announced *roll-eyes*. When it turn on the only thing on the screen was a blinking folder with a question mark. I did a quick search on my phone and apparently this happens if the computer for some reason can't find the hard drive. The solution was to just do a repair hard drive function from the disk utility menu. I figured I will just deal with it later and shot the shoot the old fashioned way, to a super fast, super high capacity SD card. We wrapped the last shoot for the day around 4. I headed back home and tried to repair my mac. I had high hopes when the disk utility popped up. Then I realized my hard drive was not listed. After some more research apparently my hard drive has bit the dust. Along with all my files. I have backups on backups on backups with an overall cloud backup so I wasn't too worried, just super annoyed. Especially considering that all the photos were due my Thursday night.
After a little panic attack, I fought the holiday traffic and rushed to Best Buy. I was not planning on upgrading my computer hardware until next year, but nothing ever goes according to plan. First instinct was the Apple section. The flashy new, super thin, super "intuitive," laptop looked super nice. I already new about the annoying USB issue (Apple, come on, really? Why? That's not pushing the industry, it's just annoying), and the not so great hardware "upgrades". The model I was looking at for my needs was the 15in, 512GB model for a whopping $2,799. After about 5 minutes using the Mac I decided I'm done. The keyboard sucks, the internal components are years old, there is no port besides the USB-C port. No SD card, no firewire, no Magsafe, no regular USB port. I would even be able to charge my iPhone without having an additional adapter. In order to basically use the laptop I would have to buy about another $100-200 worth of dongles and adapters.
