Age Before Beauty

Yesterday was the day when I decided the time had come to get a new domestic laptop. I have two laptops, one for work that has Maya, Shake, Photoshop and so on, and another consumer spec machine for surfing the net, iTunes and all that kind of thing. My original domestic machine is now nearly five years old and in this high-def, broadband, widescreen world its creaky 800Mhz Power PC chip doesn't really cut the mustard anymore. Having done my research I'd decided upon an Apple MacBook. My feelings about Apple, their stores and their corporate culture have been covered in detail in the past here so you will no doubt be unsurprised that I entered the Apple Store on Regent Street with some trepidation.

I was almost immediately accosted by a spotty emo youth who was, at a guess, about nineteen. Did he have a black MacBook with 2Gb RAM in stock I asked? He consulted his Star Trek tricoder thingy. Indeed he did. Thirty seconds later, and without getting anywhere near a cash register my bank account was suddenly considerably lighter and I had a very pretty cardboard box in my sweaty little hand. The callow youth inquired whether I had used a Mac before? I answered in the affirmative. He then asked if I used any of their professional applications? I answered that I used Shake. He informed me that they did training courses in Shake in the store. This was the moment where I had to bite my aging lip. My desire to say, "Young man, I have been using Shake, in all its many guises, since before you started secondary school" was almost uncontainable, but contain it I did. I smiled and explained that I was quite used to the sofware now and had become reasonably adept. He seemed surprised that somoeone so old should have even heard of their professional compositing application, let alone claim to know a bit about it. Bloody kids.