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John Harvey's avatar

Won't get any argument from me! Like a lot of visual creators, I started with the Mac 30 years ago because nobody else had anything affordable to do page layouts, and later Photoshop. Still later, Final Cut. Apple takes image quality seriously, which is why I had to get the iMac: literally no one else makes a competitive display at that price.

If I just wrote stuff, or worked with numbers, I could use almost anything. For me, word processing was solved decades ago. That old Osborne with the tiny display was enough to cover the basics. What on earth more does anybody need Word to do? You just need digital "cut and paste." Most people don't need fancy software, they need to learn how to write! Cut out the words that don't advance the point. If we all wrote whole pages perfectly in our minds, a typewriter could do it, but a computer makes editing (the soul of writing) much less painful, so encourages it.

We have pretty much arrived at the final sizes and forms for laptops, tablets, and phones, so no need to replace them so often. They should last a long time, they are not "fashion."

John Bogle, who started Vanguard, wrote an unfashionable book called "Enough." He died with an estate worth eighty million that could have been 8 billion had he been more selfish. He realized he actually had enough. He wasn't driven to accumulate endlessly.

People mistake "minimalism" of the $$$$ variety for actual simplicity, which may be cheap or expensive, but is no more or less than it needs to be.

Anything that really needs to be efficient tends to have a certain beauty also, like sailboats or aircraft. Aerodynamics require smooth shapes, usually.

Appropriateness is beautiful, whether a diamond or a paperclip.

I used to fly gliders, and believe me they require that you get intimate with the air you are flying in, or you will be on the ground again pretty soon. While aloft you might run into a hawk, or see a cloud forming. Plus you got to smell the grass on the field you took off from, and you didn't have to talk on the radio unless you went near other planes. Bliss, except you were working so hard all the time to stay up!

I ran my old iMac for 14 years, but it became obsolete. Last new car I bought, a Honda CRX HF, I drove for 360,000 miles, then it got stolen.

I like Shaker style. It never indulges, it requires and teaches discipline. I like honest design, and people. Don't like waste.

A paid-for computer, like a paid-for car or home, is a thing of beauty.

Good luck with that Lenovo!

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