Chai's Blog

I’m writ­ing this on the iPhone 7 I bought in Octo­ber 2016.

The first gen­er­a­tion iPhone SE I bought in April 2016 still works just fine.

I have a first gen­er­a­tion iPad Air I bought late 2013. It works for my lim­it­ed needs.

My lap­top is my employ­er-bought mid-2015 Mac Book Pro; it is still going. Although I must add I got a free bat­tery and key­board replace­ment in 2019 on Apple. I’m long eli­gi­ble for an upgrade. I can buy and expense the high­est-spec lat­est Mac Book Pro right now. But I’d like to get the cur­rent mid-2015 lap­top going for at least anoth­er 12 months and then some more if I can. By then I’m hop­ing Apple Sil­i­con will be main­stream so I can get the most of my next Mac Book Pro and get it going for anoth­er five or so years.

I think I like to buy the lat­est stuff at the time I need it. And get them going as long as I pos­si­bly can.

The YouTube app in my third-gen­er­a­tion 2011 Apple TV just stopped work­ing very recent­ly. I am also restart­ing the Apple TV fre­quent­ly these days. So I think I will need to upgrade it.

You don’t need to upgrade Apple devices every year.

Don’t fall for tech com­pa­nies’ mar­ket­ing tac­tics. The lat­est gad­gets won’t make you any cool­er as their mak­ers will want you to believe. But if you are not mak­ing sen­si­ble buy­ing deci­sions you will be out of pock­et by thou­sands of dol­lars.

I love being fru­gal with gad­gets. I think being fru­gal is gen­er­al­ly good for our over­all well being. When times are bad, and good.