When It’s Time to Upgrade
I’m not the kind of person who needs to have the latest, greatest electronics. It’s more my style to hold onto something for as long as possible. I have to have a really good reason to upgrade my device. But sometimes the device tells you when it’s time to be upgraded.
I bought an iPad Pro in 2018. I was about to start a 3-year term on the national Board of Directors of my professional association, NAPO. Since I use a desktop computer, I couldn’t bring along a laptop to the multi-day meeting. I decided that an Pad Pro would be a good substitute, and a lot lighter, too.
Once I had the iPad Pro, I found that there were a lot of other things I could do with it in between board meetings. For example, I had been reading books on a Kindle since late 2011. However, the iPad Pro had a Kindle app that was smoother than the clunky Kindle interface. In 2020, when the pandemic prohibited in-person visits, my personal trainer and I started meeting via FaceTime. We have continued to do our workouts via FaceTime, since he never moved back to New York City.
It was FaceTime that first alerted me that it was time to upgrade, although I didn’t realize that this is what my iPad was telling me. Suddenly, FaceTime didn’t work anymore. I did some internet searches to troubleshoot it, and I tried everything that was recommended. I put hours into trying to get it functional again.
Finally, I admitted defeat and took my iPad to the Geek Squad at Best Buy. The tech expert told me that my iPad was running an older operating system and that’s why Apple wouldn’t allow it to connect to its server to run FaceTime. I was puzzled, as I always kept my iOS and my apps up to date. He explained that my 8-year old iPad was not capable of running a higher operating system.
I saw the handwriting on the wall and went to the Apple Store the next day. I bought an iPad (not even an iPad Pro) and I’m amazed at how great it is. First of all, the camera on this device is fantastic. The quality of the picture and the wide angle of the lens have greatly improved my communication with my trainer. Second, the Kindle app displays so much more of my book than the old iPad did, even though the devices are about the same size. Third, the new one actually remembers my fingerprint, which the old one had stopped doing.
I had a similar experience last year when I bought a new Apple TV box. I bought my first Apple TV box in 2013. It was a great interface for streaming. But over time, the channels I liked started disappearing from my device. I did some research on the newest generation of Apple TVs and decided that I needed to upgrade. Once I had it set up, I was kicking myself for not doing it sooner. The new box is so much easier to use, as is the remote. I held on to that old one for 12 years, which is probably a few years too long.
The guy at Best Buy told me that 6 years is a good time to think about upgrading a device. In retrospect, I realized that I’ve upgraded my iPhone every 4-6 years. Because the iPhone is in my hand every day, doing a lot of different functions, I’m more aware of when it could be doing a better job.
After replacing my iPad, I took my old iPad Pro, an even older iPad Mini from 2013, my Kindle from 2011, and my husband’s recently replaced Apple Watch over to Staples for electronic recycling. I reset them all to factory settings first. I also was able to recycle a bunch of cables that I no longer need.
Here’s an amusing coda to this story. The day after I took the bag of e-waste over to Staples, I got an e-mail from Amazon saying “we are discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier.” In other words, the Kindle I just recycled was about to become obsolete anyway.