Hardware refresh goes on order

In the end the decision was mostly about the quality and characteristics of the hardware, and in particular the mouse pad which I use for vector editing and page layout. It needs to be large and come to hand immediately. I also thought hard about the OS and I will be installing Ubuntu alongside (plus countless virtual machines, to be sure…). But even in its weird coding ghetto and even if my Adobe applications are DOA, I still have to acknowledge Apple is the only operating system provider, proprietary or otherwise, that can get me working as happily as it does. And the current machine has been staunchly reliable in the face of serious maltreatment. I thought for over a year about a new machine, then waited till money was tight, so I hope I made the right decision.