It's understandable that people upgrade to the latest smartphone or computer every year or two, but I think there's a certain magic in waiting much longer.

I am terrible at replacing my stuff before it breaks or falls apart completely. I have always been that way. The more essential an item, the more likely I am not to replace it with something that won't fall apart.

My two work-essential devices, my iPhone and MacBook, were seven and eight years old, respectively. They did their job, but I needed newer hardware to unlock more capabilities. So I traded in my (comparably) ancient iPhone 6S for an iPhone 12 Pro, and my even older 2014 MacBook Air for a MacBook Pro. The sudden leap in hardware quality and OS features felt like getting slapped in the face by an ice-cold Starship Enterprise.

Technology quickly becomes outdated after just a year or two, so this was a huge change for me. My old workhorses got me from A to B with little fuss, but the difference in performance after almost a decade was far more than "an improvement."