When the laptop arrived a few days later, it appeared to be a real beauty. I also picked up a Mini-DisplayPort Adapter from MacMall for the few times I might want to jack the laptop into my 23' Cinema Display.

The only major upgrade the new laptop needed was a 16 GB RAM upgrade from Crucial Technology. It shipped with Mac OS X Lion (10.7), but according to the Low End Mac site, could be downgraded to Snow Leopard, preserving all my old PowerPC applications. With the refresh to new models possibly less than a month away, I went ahead and bought the then current 13.3' MacBook Pro, stock off the shelf, from Amazon. And as you might guess, it really didn't take very long to find one. After looking around a bit at used MacBooks, I went shopping for the most affordable new MacBook Pro I could find.

My hand got forced in May when the G4 PowerBook finally refused to take a charge. The used Mini and all the software and hardware upgrades and additions I purchased cost just a tad under what a well equipped, new Mini would have cost! The other consideration that drove the decision was that I wanted a machine that could still boot to Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) that supported my old PowerPC applications via the Rosetta emulator.

I should add at this point that my choice to move to a used Mac Mini was only partially driven by price. If I could nurse just another year out of my Slab-O-Mac, I'd be in much better shape to shop for a new laptop. While I was following the discussions, I wasn't especially flush with cash for a new laptop, as I'd just finished a conversion to a mid-2010 Mac Mini as my main computer after toasting two G5 tower motherboards inside of six months. It was dented and dinged, the battery held about a twenty minute charge, the screen was dark in areas at times, one key was missing, and it was fickle about taking a charge. I happened to be avidly following those discussions, as my 12' G4 PowerBook was on its last legs. Rumor had it that the new machines might have Retina displays (some did), no Ethernet port or optical drive, and.the speculation went on and on. In the spring of 2012, the Mac web was abuzz with talk about what the imminent release of new MacBook Pros would be.

Old mac emulator for mac book pro