Aside from the ever-present challenge of keeping new book design and layout projects coming in, both to keep working and just to stay fresh, I find the thorniest issue to be the question of when to upgrade. This pertains to both hardware and software.

Without even considering the obvious question of whether my finances will bear the cost of upgrading, for years the first question I asked myself concerned the continued existence of Apple Computer (now simply Apple, Inc.). There was a time when predictions ran rampant that Apple could not possibly survive much longer on their own thin share of the P.C. market.

Ignoring the annoying attitude I continue to sense occasionally that one’s chosen computer platform is akin to one’s religion, I always believed that a computer is simply a tool, like a wrench or a saw. If I worked as a plumber or a carpenter, and Sear forever closed its door and Craftsman tools were no longer available, I doubt that would cause me to quit my trade. Instead, my tool company of choice would probably change. So I remember a time when I thought the next computer I bought might, of necessity, be a Windows machine. I began preparing myself psychologically. Thankfully, it never happened that way.

That said, it was back in 1990, that I first found that—at least for page design, typesetting, and layout—the Macintosh and the peripherals I needed to use were in sync from the time I plugged them in and cabled them together. They just worked properly together right from the jump. I turned the computer on, began learning to use the software I would use, and started to work productively. Every Windows machine I saw back then seemed to require technical expertise to get peripherals such as printers and scanners to work with that platform and to perform all the supporting tasks to making books: opening, copying, and saving files; printing; and otherwise using page layout software.

Currently, I work on a G5 PowerMacintosh. My G3 PowerBook laptop died over the winter, so when I can, I plan to purchase a 17-inch MacBook Pro. That will mean beginning the switch to Intel processors in my production environment. Not being one to pioneer unnecessarily, I just set up my wife on an Intel iMac.

I upgrade software even more cautiously: only when clients let me know the time has come. Until then I don’t fix something that works. For instance, I recently got QuarkXPress 7; no client has requested I use it yet, however. So my work with it has consisted of noodling to this point. I’m ready when the time comes.

Update (the advantage of having been hacked into and lost the blog’s archive, is that now I find myself going through all these posts years later, able to add another word): The past year saw the G5 I mentioned above fry, just months after I finally replaced the laptop with the 17-inch MacBook Pro I had wanted since … forever, it seems. I salvaged the 23-inch Cinema Display I had used with the G5 and now, along with a 24-inch iMac, run a two-monitor system that is everything I was ever told it would be. The MacBook Pro is everything I thought it would be and more. This year I will replace some software, notably Adobe Creative Studio, when CS5 comes out. After I originally posted this piece I got serious about InDesign and have not used QuarkXPress in well over a year. No client ever mentions it to me anymore. Quark is so over.