• apple watch,  lifestyle,  refurbished

    Back Market Saves You Money and the Planet Too

    Earlier this week, Back Market – a refurbished electronics reseller – had an interesting ad campaign that really caught my attention. As part of their “Hack Market” advertising effort, Back Market, in essence, AirDrop spammed customer and demo devices inside Apple retail locations with a link to their website that promotes the purchase of used devices.

    Back Market’s purpose is to purchase used electronics, “renew” them, and then resell the used equipment at a substantial savings to customers. By promoting the purchase of used devices is that it keeps perfectly good devices from becoming e-waste and going into a landfill. In my opinion, this is a win-win for gadget fans. It allows you to get a recent device at a great price and helps the planet. But more on that a little bit later.

    According to Romain Dillet and Ingrid Lunden, writing for TechCrunch.com Back Market, based in France, is a marketplace for customers to sell their used electronics and offer them to customers who are looking to save money by purchasing used equipment at varying price points. The company has been established in Europe for several years. Buying used electronics extends the useful life of the device. This use, sell, reuse process has become known as the “circular economy.”

    In 2018, Back Market opened an online store front and began operations here in the US.
    They offer a wide range of electronics including laptops, gaming consoles, cameras, home appliances, and yes, Apple hardware. They even offer a student discount. That’s a pretty cool company if you ask me.

    I hadn’t heard of Back Market before this week. Previously, I had purchased used and refurbished devices either directly from Apple, Gazelle, or eBay. So, I watched the YouTube video that is part of the “Hack Market” campaign.

    Naturally, I had to check out their website and ended up buying something. Mission accomplished.

    I started by looking at refurbished iPads and MacBooks, but I really didn’t have a need for one. I thought that I might buy one and leave it at the office so I had a personal device that I could tether to my iPhone to check email, surf the web, and those sorts of things. But, after some thought, I could just do that on the iPhone 13 Pro Max that was already in my pocket. Then I took a look at renewed Apple Watch Series 6 stock. I immediately gravitated to the Series 6 44mm Stainless Steel Watch. I had been considering trading in my Series 6 44mm Aluminum Nike+ edition towards the purchase of a Series 7 45mm Stainless Steel model. But, wow, the new price even with the trade in was a bit steep given that I have a new Mac Studio and Studio Display on the way.

    Back Mark, on the other hand, was selling an Apple Watch Series 6 44mm Stainless Steel watch in excellent condition for $299 plus tax. The refurbished Stainless Watch was on sale for less than a new Series 7 Stainless with an Apple trade in for my current Aluminum 44mm. I thought about it for a couple of days, and I purchased the new-to-me Stainless on Thursday. I picked 3-day shipping. It arrived the next day from New York.

    The Watch that I received was, indeed, in excellent condition. Looking closely at the used Watch, I was not able to detect any scrapes, scuffs, dents, scratches, or knicks. Clearly this Watch’s previous owner took as much care of their gadget as I do.

    Back Market ships their devices is a standard bubble back mailer. Inside the mailer is cardboard box that has some bubble wrap that contained my Apple Watch, a knockoff Sport Band, charger, and power brick all in inexpensive plastic packing. My first impression was that there was a lot more plastic than I was expecting, but I didn’t think it was excessive. Conversely, Apple’s use of paper packaging is remarkable, however, their refurbished devices are more expensive. I’m chalking up Back Market’s packing methods up to overall operating cost reductions.

    I have purchased a lot of Apple bands over the years since the introduction of the original Watch. I also have at least two Apple Watch chargers and power adaptors. So, I set the Back Market accessories aside. I probably will bring the charger to the office incase either I or one of my coworkers forgets to charge their watch overnight.

    Overall, I’m pretty happy with my purchase and I would definitely buy more renewed electronics from them again in the future. The Back Market website was easy to use. I felt that the prices were reasonable, and as I get older, the idea of refurbishing and extending the service life of our electronics makes a lot of sense.

  • apple,  apple silicon,  m1 max

    I Bought a Mac Studio and Studio Display

    Mac Studio and Studio Display at my local Apple Store

    After my comin’ in hot Mac Studio rant last month, I finally broke down and ordered a Mac Studio and Studio Display.

    I’m still more than a little sore that Apple cancelled the 27-inch iMac rather than have it make the jump from Intel to M1 CPU. I really don’t like that I am going to be spending more than double of what I paid for my iMac. My 2015 iMac has been a great machine and I really love it. My M1-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro is also a fantastic machine and I was really looking forward to working on a large screened M1 iMac.

    By all accounts, the Mac Studio is going to be a great machine when it arrives in July. (My Studio Display arrives a few weeks earlier in late June.) The configuration I ordered is the base model M1 Max CPU with 10 CPU cores, 24 GPU cores, and 16 ANE cores. I bumped the RAM up to 64GB and the SSD up to 2GB.

    That’s a lot of machine. I can comfortably fit all of my stuff on a 2TB SSD because I’m doing it now on a 2TB Fusion Drive. With Mac Studio, I am doubling my RAM at 64GB from the 32GB on my iMac. It’s a $400 option, but I like to run Windows and Linux virtual machines and I think that 32GB is just too tight for all of the Mac software that I have running and have enough RAM left over to run one or two virtual machines. My main driver for the 64GB of RAM is the hope that Microsoft will offer a legally supported way to run Windows ARM on an M1 Mac.

    I really don’t like having to spend the money on Mac Studio and Studio Display. Don’t get me wrong; it is a great machine, and I will enjoy using it for years to come. But I’m a simple IT guy. I won’t be writing a single line of code in Xcode. I’m not a graphic artist making incredible artistic pieces. I’m not composing music or creating breath-taking cinematography. I want to tinker around with virtual machines to play with operating systems and databases. I want to run emulators. To have a legal way to use Windows and Windows Server, Visio and Project. (Microsoft, that’s your cue! It’s time to release the retail SKU for Windows on ARM.) In other works, what I really want is that mythical Mac that sits between the M1 iMac and Mac mini and the Mac Studio.

    Maybe, one day we will get there. The rumor mill suggests that the M2 Macs are on their way, possibly later this year. There’s also a larger screen iMac that is rumored for next year. But there will always be a new thing right around the corner.

    What I want is a machine that has enough techie without making me feel bad about buying it. But I know that I’m going to love it. Starting in July.

  • apple,  lifestyle

    Stay Foolish

    Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs overlooking Apple II computers

    In 1976 Apple Computer, Inc. – now officially Apple, Inc. – was founded on April 1 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne.

    It seems fitting that Apple would get its start on April Fool’s Day given the “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” quote that is often associated with the late Steve Jobs.

    As it just so happened to turn out, my career in the information technology field started today too. At 8:30am on April 1, 1996, I showed up to work, clutching an Apple PowerBook 100, not sure what to expect. Just like someone traveling down that country road Jobs spoke about on the back cover of the final issue of The Whole Earth Catalog.

    Source: VitoaBrusci.net

    In some small way, I’m glad that Apple and I can share this date. The Apple //e sparked my interest in computers and that interest grew into a satisfying career for my family and I.

    Stay Foolish, indeed.