I trashed my old iBook G3 today. Of all the computers I have owned this was my favourite. I bought it when I started working in Tokyo in 2002, and it was my primary machine both privately and at work for about three years, after which I switched to a procession of Mac minis at home (and a procession of Dells at work). I would have loved to use it longer, but it was unfortunately not a very healthy little computer. I had already replaced a faulty logic board, a crashed hard-disk, and a cracked keyboard, when it was acting up again, in the end refusing to boot.

Apple had just announced their switch to Intel, and I wanted to wait for an Intel iBook, so I got a G4 mini as temporary fix. But in the end it took another four years for me to finally get a portable again. My old iBook was so perfect (except for the unreliable hardware) that I feared a new one would not hold up to it. Sure, the specs of a newer computer are always much better, but I did not like the small changes made to the later revisions. Why did they have to get rid of the cool transparent polycarbonate casing? Will not some scratched DVD or oddly-shaped CD-ROM get stuck in the slot-loading drive? Who came up with that terrible name MacBook? Is not 13.3 inch too big? Can I really do without Firewire? No removable battery ?

Before handing it over to the Apple shop (which hopefully takes care of recycling and proper disposal), I wanted to erase the hard disk. That was not an option, though, because the iBook refuses to boot. And so we spent the morning together in a final session, me taking the case apart to remove the drive (and the RAM while I was at it), which with this particular model is quite an undertaking.