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RESOLVED: Geez...my spoiled daughter was disappointed when I gave her a new 11" MBA!

To the OP, I like how you let her evaluate which laptop to keep. And she chose for practical reasons not newness, price tag, or cool factor.

Also, to be fair to your daughter, your title is misleading. You didn't just "give" her a new MBA, she had to give up her fully working MacBook to keep it. Like telling her you're upgrading her teddy bear and to hand over the old one. Hence, you got the reaction you got. Next thing is to teach her to be more diplomatic, but I say just enjoy this stage right now when she is able tell you what she really thinks.
 
rworne said:
You do the upgrade and hand-me-down thing too?

My 9 y.o. was given a 24" iMac C2D Extreme last year. I upgraded to an i7 and her old iMac G5 bit the dust (power supply issues). She'll have to put up with that for the next 2-3 years, or whenever my wife decides she wants to upgrade her iMac.

She got an iPad the same way this year - when we went to the iPad 2, she got my wife's old iPad, the other iPad going to the grandparents.

She's spoiled by us, but she doesn't really act that way. The only issue we have is making sure she puts the tech away when appropriate (these devices are not allowed in her room - only family areas).
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We usually buy at least a couple new Macs per year so they tend to accumulate. The kids come out really good in this deal. At the moment no one is using a hand-me-down. They oldest machines still in the house are all 2010 models. Anything older than that have been given away to relatives. That way I don't get calls asking me to service their PCs anymore. The few computer related calls I do still get are usually either very pleasant/easy to handle or thank you calls. :)
 
AppleDApp said:
what does your 12 year old use the MP for?
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Honestly, that Mac Pro tends to get a lot of diverse use. I use it for scientific applications (mostly Elektra and Morate). My wife is a geographer/professor and uses it for GIS related work. My 12-year-old uses it for gaming, and usually does more routine computing on a MacBook Air. That said, the 12-year-old uses that Mac Pro more than anyone else by a country mile as my wife has another machine (Mac Pro) at work where she does most of her stuff.
 
Dragynfyre said:
You mean the regular Macbook? All that has over the 11" Air is screen size and really a 13" screen is not optimal for a primary computer. A 11" Air + External monitor would be a better setup.
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Faster processor, more potential ram, bigger hd, more ports, optical drive AND screen size are all things the 13" mb has over the 11" air. I know plenty of people that use a 13" mb as their only machine and they wouldn't be happy with a 11" air.
 
Glad the OP worked it out. It's nice your daughter was being rational instead of switching just because it was "new"

I'm loling at all the "When I was 7 i didn't have [...] and your daughter should be thankful" comments. Things clearly aren't the same anymore as they were many years ago.
 
Get her an Alpha or Ultrasparc workstation! Kids these days with their graphical user interfaces! (waits for guy to talk about altair and monitors)
 
cleric said:
Get her an Alpha or Ultrasparc workstation! Kids these days with their graphical user interfaces! (waits for guy to talk about altair and monitors)
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There was a time when I collected all that great old workstation hardware (DEC, SUN, SGi, NeXT). Those days came to an end a few years back, but it was fun while it lasted. I do still keep a handful of old 8-bit machines.

Anyway, I homeschool my kids and I do make them run the gauntlet, technology wise. They build machines, load obscure operating systems, network everything, and code in at least a half-dozen languages. I also have them manage a handful of scientific computing programs. At first they hated it. Now that's all they want to do.

Here is a great resource for studying the inner mysteries of an operating system...

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
 
Seems like many people have a "burnt in" image of how parenting is supposed to work.

I think far too many in here underestimates what 7 year old children are capable of, I mean, when I was 2 (or 3, that's 16 years ago), I was taught by my father how to access the games on his DOS system, where I'd have to make a few consecutive keystrokes to access the games I wanted to play.

This girl is 7 though, and is obviously well fit for operating a computer, she should be able to read by now, which is really all it takes, I don't see what's wrong with giving her a computer for $1000, sure it's more expensive than the playstation I used to have, but children that age are able to take care of their stuff, albeit some are better at it than others (my playstation still works, not that it's been used for years now though).

However, if you want her to appreciate the air I think you should show her the good things about it, start up time, teach her about the SSD and all that, and get her that external drive, and show her how to use it, that way she gets both the snappier lighter MBA as well as her dvd drive.
Otherwise give her an external harddrive and show/help her how to rip her dvd's and music and tell her about how physical media is soon-to-be obsolete.
 
She will wake up one day and realize that she should have gone for the small and elegant 11" while she is stuck with the cheap plastic because you freaking sold off the MBA. Isn't it your duty as a parent to help your daughter make the right decisions in life? She's obviously not old enough to make this type of decision yet, seeing as she chose the plastbook because she thinks that she needs CD's/DVD's. You should have just transferred all her stuff to the MBA while she was in school and said she got a new laptop, she probably wouldn't have cared either way. Instead you chose to let her make an uneducated guess as to what she needs. I'm happy you're not my dad, what a tragic story!

Yes, pun intended. Bored while I'm hitting F5 on the Applestore waiting for a new Air.
 
She'll be bummed to learn her next Apple computer will not have an optical drive unless you decide to buy a mac pro or iMac for an 8 year old :rolleyes:
 
mac jones said:
I'm having difficulty following this. Maybe I should see somebody?
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nah. i am with you. however, particular keywords are in the op post which contains "MBA," "knowing what she wants" and "spoiled" in the same paragraph so, the confused look on ya right now is warranted.:p
 
dmk1974 said:
My daughter has a 2010 white MacBook (latest model...as of today) that has the warranty expiring soon. So, instead of buying the AppleCare, I thought I'd be a great Dad and surprise her with a new 11" base model MacBook Air (and then sell the MacBook).

I give it too her yesterday thinking she'd like it (since she said she thought they were cool at the local Apple Store last week), but after like 15 seconds, she says she doesn't want it because there's no disc drive in it for music and DVDs. I told her that I can rip those and just put the file on the MBA or whatever, but then still said that she needs that (despite all the other benefits of the newer and lighter MBA).

For my use, my 2011 MBP is better than an MBA, but clearly I'm not listening to the voice of the customer/user in this case! But geez...she's SEVEN! She is really smart and detailed and knows what she wants, but I see myself taking my son on weekend getaways every month starting in a few years or so from now :)
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My kid's will never be allowed to use a CD. Too inconvenient :p
 
Thing that bothers me is kids these days including my younger sister-in-law have all of this technology...but none of them use dvds or cds anymore so why would that be a determining factor in this kids mind
 
At the age of 7... She seems smart, but really, she's still 7. Yes she's technically "spoiled" but I don't think she's a brat. It's just how kids are, they don't know the real value of things. Years from now when she sees her friends struggling to pay for their computers, she'll appreciate what her dad's been giving her all these years.

On a side note, I hope that when I'm a dad I can afford to do things like that for my daughter. That'd be pretty great.
 
Yumunum said:
At the age of 7... She seems smart, but really, she's still 7. Yes she's technically "spoiled" but I don't think she's a brat. It's just how kids are, they don't know the real value of things. Years from now when she sees her friends struggling to pay for their computers, she'll appreciate what her dad's been giving her all these years.

On a side note, I hope that when I'm a dad I can afford to do things like that for my daughter. That'd be pretty great.
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I disagree with ya there. On a psychological level and teaching at my University I've seen a digression of the youth coming in at an alarming rate. They dont know the real value of things because we dont teach them that way of thinking. They don't learn to appreciate something years later, instead they get a sense of entitlement. Sorry to get on my soapbox.
 
harmonica01 said:
I disagree with ya there. On a psychological level and teaching at my University I've seen a digression of the youth coming in at an alarming rate. They dont know the real value of things because we dont teach them that way of thinking. They don't learn to appreciate something years later, instead they get a sense of entitlement. Sorry to get on my soapbox.
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I was thinking about that, how they could get a sense of entitlement and just end up like stuck up, snot-nosed, prideful people. I'd think it could depend on how you were raised though.

I know that my family's earnings are definitely above average, and I've had a lot of perks in my life. My father's always told me how everything we have is a blessing from the Lord and shouldn't be taken for granted.

And that's stuck with me, I don't feel like I deserve all of the things my dad's given me, and I don't act prideful to the people I know when I see them with less than me. So yeah, that's just my personal experience... I don't know what kind of dad the OP is. Well, besides the fact that he's obviously a MacBook-giving one! ;O
 
dmk1974 said:
My daughter has a 2010 white MacBook (latest model...as of today) that has the warranty expiring soon. So, instead of buying the AppleCare, I thought I'd be a great Dad and surprise her with a new 11" base model MacBook Air (and then sell the MacBook).

I give it too her yesterday thinking she'd like it (since she said she thought they were cool at the local Apple Store last week), but after like 15 seconds, she says she doesn't want it because there's no disc drive in it for music and DVDs. I told her that I can rip those and just put the file on the MBA or whatever, but then still said that she needs that (despite all the other benefits of the newer and lighter MBA).

For my use, my 2011 MBP is better than an MBA, but clearly I'm not listening to the voice of the customer/user in this case! But geez...she's SEVEN! She is really smart and detailed and knows what she wants, but I see myself taking my son on weekend getaways every month starting in a few years or so from now :)
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I don't understand why you thought replacing a 2010 machine was necessary. It's hardly old or out of date! Did you really have nothing else to spend your money on that a laptop that was clearly not needed?
 
chaosbunny said:
Faster processor, more potential ram, bigger hd, more ports, optical drive AND screen size are all things the 13" mb has over the 11" air. I know plenty of people that use a 13" mb as their only machine and they wouldn't be happy with a 11" air.
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So funny I dont miss any of those with my air 11".. :cool:
 
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