Mac Love, Part Dois (e Três)
October 19, 2005

If you'll remember Part Um of our Mac Lovefest, you'll remember that my sweet nightingale of an iBook was a little shy at expressing her love for me in this foreign country. She just wasn't comfortable here, where she had no Mac friends and nobody to take care of her when her insides hurt. The first few months were indeed difficult, but we made it through, me and my lovely white iBook. She came around.

And then her screen went schizo. I was at Roberta's parents' lovely estate in São Paulo, enjoying some bread and coffee, setting up a little Excel system to help me with my Portuguese verbs, and my baby's screen got all Up With People, turning gray lines into rainbows and pulsing ever-so slightly.

"What's wrong, baby?" I grasped. She hinted at sanity after a nice cooldown and re-opening, but she relapsed within the hour.

I was losing her.

A few desperate postings to the Apple support discussion boards uncovered a few possible diagnoses: either my baby would need a $50 cable or a $500 display. As my AppleCare insurance had expired, I was hoping for the best, fearing the worst.

Massaging her svelte exterior, I managed to torque her display back into place, temporarily easing her pain and resolving the problem. But I knew she would need some major work.

And major work is what she had. On my trip back to the States, I shipped my beauty off to TechRestore for their 24-hour quick repair service. Within 2 days she was back in my arms, screaming down the internet superhighway, feeding me pages of tasty sweetness.

[Fast-forward 2 months]

I'm lying down with my baby in bed, running my fingers through her digits, her red-hot battery sending waves of warmth through my legs, when she says the equivalent of those feared words: Stop, No, and Don't. Immediately I know something's terribly wrong. She reboots without warning, sending shivers through my spine. I pray that it's not fatal, but sense tells me otherwise.

First Aid calls for placing her prostrate on the floor, fan fanning her fit frame. I let her rest, hoping she'll be herself after a nice rest. An eternity and 30 minutes later, I gently pry her open and hit her power button.

She responds with the softness of a reboot, but somehow I know it's her last.

Within hours my baby is in shock, her spasms coming too frequently to be called irregular, too violent to retain hope. I relinquish in my efforts to resuscitate and concede. She's gone.

Epilogue

After I closed my girl's case for the last time, I lay in mourning for an inappropriately short time, but I know that's how she would have wanted it. She was retired to her bubble-wrap swaddle, while I skipped out to check out the Pentium-wielding sweeties across the way at the Internet café. I heard they had webcams, and they did not disappoint. Within months I had found a home for my baby iBook, with a new logic board and a wild-haired, nest-bearded hippie owner, while I moved on to a rental PC coked up on Windows. Her interface clunky, her reboots often, my new girl had none of the style or panache of my baby Mac, but she knew her way around the Web. She would have to do. Like a man about to turn 30 with little hope left, I had settled.