Just after the 618 shopping festival, I finally bought a new MacBook.

The old computer had not become completely unusable. It simply could not support the AI workflow I now wanted to build: Codex, everyday software with AI features, and even the latest version of something as basic as WeChat. Not being able to use certain features was getting in the way.

This is not a review of specifications. It is more a record of a painter's first week moving from an old MacBook to a new one.

Why a MacBook from 2013 lasted thirteen years

I bought my MacBook in 2013.

In thirteen years, it had three battery replacements and was cleaned of dust once or twice. Both speakers started crackling long ago. Last year I bought replacement speakers and planned to install them myself, but when I opened the computer, it looked far more complicated than changing a battery. I gave up.

If I actually installed those speakers, the machine could keep going for quite a while. Browsing the web, reading, organizing material: it was perfectly adequate. The screen is still excellent.

Most of the time, I left it plugged in with the lid open, without shutting it down. It went to sleep automatically after more than two hours. I would get up, move the mouse, enter the password, and carry on.

I rarely took it out. It sat on the desk like an unremarkable piece of furniture.

I connected a scanner, a printer, or a camera for livestreaming through Tencent Meeting. For me, its main jobs were organizing material and learning.

I had no need to edit 4K video or run demanding software, so it continued to be enough.

Until recently, when the screen began flickering badly at startup and took an hour or two to return to normal. Last year, it might have settled down after a few minutes.

It was not an occasional flicker. Staring at it made my eyes ache, like looking at a faulty fluorescent tube.

I knew it was reaching the end.

But honestly, without this year's wave of AI, I might still have put up with it a little longer.

What really prompted the upgrade was AI, rather than speed

This year, I subscribed to several paid learning communities, where everyone was talking about using AI to work more efficiently.

How to use AI for research, how to write with it, and how to turn one person into a team.

I understood every item I read, and could put none of it into practice. My MacBook's operating system was too old to install many of the AI tools.

It felt like standing outside a glass door. There was a lively scene inside. You could see it, but could not push your way in.

I had mainly been using Dedao Brain on my phone and iPad. It had already shown me what it felt like to have AI as an amplifier: I put in my ideas, and it helped extend them, explore possibilities, organize them, and fill in gaps.

But that was still tapping on a phone, rather than working at a computer. For intensive collaboration, I needed to sit down at a computer.

Over the past few months, I learned that the experienced people I followed were using Codex to automate video editing. The obstacle that had kept me from acting could apparently be crossed with a tool. I could no longer hold back the feeling that it was time to move. Finish first, perfect later. For me right now, being able to make something at all was enough.

The computer was not inadequate for my old tasks. The world had moved forward, and the hardware was keeping me outside the door.

In the first week with the new MacBook, I installed Codex first

I have had the new MacBook for a week. I bought it before a price increase. I missed the 618 discount but found a retailer's offer that still saved me two or three thousand yuan.

The first thing I did after turning it on was install Codex.

Then came the state I was in over the past few days: using up the allowance in every usage window and installing any Skill someone recommended. If I saw one on Xiaohongshu or Bilibili, I installed it.

Like someone with a brand-new phone, I installed things indiscriminately first and planned to remove them gradually later.

NTE and Wuthering Waves both had Mac versions in the App Store, but I resisted installing them. Playing alone did not sound fun, and there was too much to learn.

I only downloaded Don't Starve, which I had already bought on Steam, to play occasionally with online friends and relax a little.

Work remains the new laptop's priority.

The clearest feeling this week has been that the real bottleneck was never speed. It was whether things could run at all.

The new MacBook has not primarily brought "how much faster." It has brought "things that would not run before can run now."

AI is beginning to enter my creative workflow

Research, for example.

In the past, if I saw a watercolor I liked and wanted to know who else painted in a similar style, I had to browse Instagram accounts one by one. I could spend ages and still miss people.

Now I give Codex Instagram accounts I have collected before, or a description of a style, and ask it to find twenty similar artists with more than ten thousand followers, listing their follower counts too.

Once it finishes, that list makes collecting material for my WeChat publication dramatically more efficient.

In the future, I can prepare material and schedule posts before a short trip, without worrying about missing updates.

The same goes for editing.

I have now posted daily for 22 days. Previously, I only used Dedao Brain to review the text after I wrote it. After buying a ChatGPT Plus subscription, I began sending it to two AIs:

  • Dedao Brain checks the logic.
  • Codex checks the writing.

After a few tries, this division felt the most natural.

I ask them to read like editors of online writing: is the hook strong enough, does the emotional tone work, and are there contradictions?

With both sets of comments in front of me, the judgment is still mine. But an extra pair of eyes makes me feel much more secure.

For research, AI does the legwork. For editing, it helps check the work. Two directions, one idea: let AI do what it does well, while keeping the judgment myself.

There was another small surprise: macOS Tahoe feels almost as intuitive to use as a phone. The settings menus and the location of Control Center are familiar.

Even coming from an operating system thirteen years old, it stopped feeling strange after a few days.

The old computer has changed jobs, rather than retired

The plain reason my old MacBook lasted thirteen years is that I have always been a light-duty computer user.

My core abilities are in my hands: painting, sketching from life, and reflecting on creative work. Most of what I make is drawn or painted by hand.

For me, the computer mainly turns things on paper into digital resources and helps organize them.

I missed the waves of short- and long-form video production, so I never needed to edit 4K footage or render video. Naturally, I never pushed its performance hard.

For the new machine, I went straight to 48 GB of memory.

After a week, it is meeting my needs very well. But I do wonder whether I might try pushing its limits over the next couple of years.

Then again, expanding my needs just to match the hardware's limits does not seem quite right either.

Working out what I want to achieve matters more than working out what the computer can run.

Once I had thought through the new computer, I also found a place for the old one.

Yesterday, I organized the old MacBook and cleared out the last remaining things. With 170 GB of space left, it can still be useful.

It has not retired. It has simply found a different way to live.

Its 15-inch screen is a little larger than the new machine's 14-inch one, and the USB ports make it easy to connect a camera or scanner. Tencent Meeting, organizing photographs and references: it can still handle these jobs that do not demand much from the hardware.

Although I bought a new monitor, having both computers running still works nicely: one runs Codex while the other shows a folder of reference material. Each has its place.

One day, when I install those new speakers, my mom could use it too.

Until then, it will sit beside me, continuing to be that unremarkable piece of furniture.

This series begins with the first week

This is the first entry in "A Painter's Mac Weekly."

Why I changed computers, what I installed, and how it feels to use. I plan to publish once a week, recording the process from the first week with this new MacBook to gradually settling into it.

Later entries will cover:

  • What Codex can actually do for someone who paints.
  • Which AI tools are worth installing on a MacBook.
  • How to build a one-person workflow on a computer.
  • How the old MacBook can remain useful.

For the next entry, I plan to write about the first AI tools I installed on the new MacBook, and which ones actually became part of my everyday work.