It's not a matter of the OS version, it's a result of unplugging a drive while data is being written to it.

I'm honestly surprised the titanium PowerBook survived a drop like that at all. They fell apart from normal use.

Yes, and even though I've only forgotten to eject it a few times, one of those times was enough to corrupt the drive to the point where I had to reformat it and lose my backups.

A computer with 16GB of memory is going to remain useful longer than one with 8GB memory. That was pretty obviously my point. Please spare me your misguided pedantism.

You would be fine with an Air. 16GB of memory would future proof it so it lasts you longer. What you described is definitely not a "Pro" workflow though.