Over the years I have had a number of Macs (I was late to actually own a Mac - my first one ran OS9, despite having been a Mac user for many years before that).

I’ve already talked about my heavy heart as I freecycled my iMac (G3, 500Mhz).

But last night, my 12″ Powerbook G4 died. It had been my workhorse machine for four and a half years, spending the last six months in retirement as my daughter’s DVD/Youtube/iPlayer box. She woke it from sleep, it clicked, clicked, died. Repeat. Click, click, died.

The reason it was retired was because it was bruised and battered to fuck. Four and a half years of being lugged about, every single day, to and from work, to and from clients, upstairs, downstairs, all over the shop. The combo-drive didn’t work. The hard drive had been replaced once, as had the (removable) memory chip. The clasp was nearly unusable as the metal was buckled around it.

It was replaced late last year by a shiny (refurb) Macbook Pro. An Intel dual-core 2.3Ghz job. Appearance-wise, not too disimilar (although this was a 15″, not 12″). Spec-wise, it beats the pants off the Powerbook (1Ghz G4). Rails tests took seconds instead of minutes to run on large applications. Nothing seemed to beachball. Multi-touch scrolling on the trackpad is fantastic (and something I really miss when I use other computers).

But (and it’s a big but) - the Macbook Pro does not feel anywhere near as nice. I don’t know exactly what it is.

The Powerbook was personal, intimate - it was mine. The MBP is just another, expensive, computer.

The Macbook Pro has no soul. The Powerbook had bags of it.