Is The New Year A Good Time To Replace Your Tech, Maybe, Maybe Not
For most people, the answer should be no
For many, the new year is a time for reflection and renewal. We look at the year that was and decide on steps we can take to make the new year better. You know the saying, out with the old, in with the new.
I spent some time thinking about my life in these terms but also about personal technology in relation to this mantra.
Technology doesn’t move at this cadence, it moves at break-neck speeds ignoring the calendar. What’s new today is obsolete tomorrow. This makes it impossible to ever be state-of-the-art for more than a few months at most.
The days of an 18-month technology refresh cycle are a thing of the past.
A great example of this happened to me. In early 2020 I purchased an upgraded MacBook Air. It had the Intel i5 processor, 16 GB RAM, and a 512 GB SSD. I thought I was future-proofing my laptop and boy was I excited about my purchase.
But my excitement was short-lived. I never dreamt that Apple would relegate my purchase to obsolescence so quickly. Later that same year Apple released the M1-based MacBook Air at the same starting price as the early 2020 model.
