By Graham K. Rogers

I was slightly surprised to see an email earlier in the week (Wednesday) from Apple to tell me that the my Mac was on the way. Delivery is slated for next Monday (11 November). I had not expected this for at least another week. When I checked later in the day, I saw that the shipping process had started and that it was on its way to the airport.

When the latest Apple MacBook Pro models were announced by Apple last month, I took a few hours to think about which model I would buy. With my current 15" MacBook Pro now 3 years old, I knew that I would be buying a new Mac, but exactly which one made me think carefully. I would have preferred to stay with the 15" screen size, but the cheaper of the two versions only had the 256 GB SSD and I needed more than that. The top of the range MacBook Pro was not going to be within the budget I had.

There were similar restrictions with the 13" MacBook Pro. The lower level model had limitations in terms of specifications and options that I was able to order. The choice was therefore the top 13" model. This came standard with the 2.6 GHz i5 processor and a 512 GB SSD, which would do me for a while. I am already thinking about offloading some of the data onto external disks. These are cheap enough nowadays and I already have several at home and the office. I may have a few more soon.

The major option that I did go for was an increase in RAM. My current MacBook Pro has 8 GB, upped from the initial 4 GB. I did this a few months ago and wished I had done it a long time before. With the new Macs, I know that I will not be able to make an upgrade later, so took the option to take delivery with 16 GB RAM installed.

It took me a few more hours after making the decision to actually press the "Purchase" button, but the credit card took the strain and the information I was sent online told me that the delivery was expected "Mid-November". With orders to be filled in more important places, and the need to have the Thai government officials permit the use of the wireless technology (in the same was as the FCC does in the USA), there are usually small delays like this.

When I ordered the new Airport Extreme Router in June, there was a similar delay. As the new MacBook Pro uses the 802.11 ac standard that the Airport Extreme router supports, I will be at least partway to having a faster home network.

Unusually for Apple products coming into Thailand, this was not shipped out of Singapore but from Shanghai: straight from the factory. Another slight oddity was that this was via DHL. Although Apple had used DHL here for several years, the last couple of items I had ordered from the online App Store were delivered by UPS.

We will see whether a yellow or a brown truck arrives at the office next Monday.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.