I bought this laptop in Paris in 2012: it has the French keyboard layout (AZERTY instead of QWERTY) even though I use it with the Italian layout by memory (👀).
It's probably one of the last models Apple made that you could open up and upgrade yourself. I did, a long time ago, with 16 GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.
It's starting to worry me: the fan makes weird noises sometimes.
I can say that daily programming with Rails activates the fan quite often (damn you Rails system tests 😂), it didn't when a couple of years ago I was writing a web app with Go (not a fair comparison, I know).
Having held on to a "slow" computer (well, it wasn't the first few years 😝) also had the side effect of me becoming really interested in performance optimization in programming 🔥
It's also the only computer I own.
Eight years with a portable computer is pretty amazing in my opinion. It was great hardware or I got super lucky or both!
Here's to another 8 years. Just kidding 🤣
Top comments (57)
Honestly, the new macs are not much better. I have a 2011 Macbook Air and a 2018 Macbook Pro and I have fewer problems with overheating and performance with my old laptop.
Maybe you will get another 8 years.
I stubbornly held on to my 2009 Macbook Pro with a ton of swapped parts until late last year. I had a 2015 and 2019 already but used the 2009 still for travel. My boyfriend took it on a work trip and I told him it has a case of explody battery and it was time to decommission it. I'm only willing to replace an old battery so many times haha
I am certainly with you on how they've been getting worse with overheating and performance, though. I really wanted more than 4 years of primary use out of the 2015, but it wasn't cutting it. And now I don't have a borked ruby installation, so yay
Some people say the 2015 MBP is the best laptop ever, maybe you got really unlucky :(
Glad you found a plan B!
My issue mainly was running games. "Quieter fans" may be true, but it's still an airplane taking off and clunky when Guild Wars 2 is opening/running. I ended up barely installing games on the new Mac, though, so whoops. I got a dedicated PC for Fallout games and have been playing my Switch more.
I'm not a gamer at all so take everything I'm going to say with a grain of salt but I have the feeling there's not much investment in gaming for Mac and the few games that are developed for it are less performant than their PC or console versions as you are hinting at, partly because of the size of the market and partly for other reasons (console gaming guarantees you that everyone has the same hardware?).
Anyway, I tried a couple of times to run things like Civilization (don't remember which version) and it wasn't so bad but it wasn't great either (performance wise).
The only thing I do know is that gaming and 3D are literally part of the benchmarks on which new hardware is measured/developed so I'm not surprised that it gets obsolete pretty quickly if measured in those terms.
I also held on for so long because Macbooks after 2015 until the new one with the decent keyboard seemed a bit less solid.
In theory I'm waiting for a 13" model with the new keyboard, but if all new models are delayed until 2021 for the supply problems due to the global pandemic, I might have to get the 16" if this stops functioning.
We'll see...
8 years is a lot, breaks down to a mix of luck + care, congratz 😁
I have an ASUS that I bought in 2015
Intel i7-4720HQ 2.6 GHz, 12GB RAM, 1TB HDD + 128GB SSD, Nvidia GTX 960m (helps a lot with any heavy apps)
5 years old, and it's still like new... can't be happier!
Seems like a solid computer you have!
The good thing about the new limits of computers is that the raw speed doesn't increase as much, they usually increase the number of cores and other optimizations and you have an impressive graphics card (well, I think, don't know anything about graphics cards anymore hahahaha)
I'm definitely going to get a dedicated graphics card as the builtin I have is really subpar.
I'm sure you can squeeze 8 years out of yours too! See you in 2023 :D
Do you have a thunderbolt? Have you considered an eGPU?
Heck yeah 🤟
Yeah, one Thunderbolt port up to 10 Gbps (at least according to Mactracker).
Any ideas?
Perfect... what kind of heavy stuff you plan on doing? design work like Photoshop? rendering? ML or so?
Ah ah a generic one? I do use Photoshop but I don't do 3D stuff :D
A generic one would be a gaming one that runs most games, and of course an AMD card since Nvidia is not supported from Apple in general.
This is a general idea about what's gonna be like: support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208544
I'll hop in to the DM to talk about the rest 😁
In the UK there is a classic sitcom called only fools and horses. There is a character called Trigger who works as a road sweeper for the council. He has had the same broom for 15 years but it has had 7 heads and 4 new handles. My laptop is the same, 4 screens, 3 keyboards, 2 chassis and I recently replaced the hard drive. The only original component is one of the memory sticks. Still less work than installing all my tools on a new machine it was originally purchased in 2010
Ah ah nice that it stayed with you all of these years! I'm bummed to know that my next mac won't be upgradeable. I might have to pay a bit more to ensure it lasts another 8 years :D
mine is a Thinkpad T420, 9yrs old but I bought it used around 6yrs ago; and yes, it make you value CPU and RAM, my current system at boot eats about 150MB in RAM and with usually 40+ tabs open, 15 terminals, Docker, some videos and music, Telegram and some other ocassionals like Gimp, Inkscape or Kicad I rarely use more than 7GB of memory and run smoother than most new PCs with Win10 that I've seen. You have to keep a tight ship with an old PC :) , Rust compiler is giving me a hard time tho.
9 years! Amazing!
Old PCs and compiled languages are a good combo, though Rust is famously a bit slow and resource hungry. Fortunately the product, the binary, is as lean and fast as they get ;-)
I'm using so many command line tools in Rust I stopped counting: bat, fd, broot, delta and obviously my favorite: ripgrep.
I'll never stop thanking @dmfay for showing me the way :D
Wow yeah, me too! My 2013 MacBook Air still going strong, no matter how many times I drop it! 😂
Honestly, having this thing for so long has really helped me develop a love of the Unix CLI, and it's great to know that you don't need a massive PC powerhouse to do a lot of development work. It's the best for travel!
I'm tempted to get a new Macbook Air if this one ever dies, but at the same time I know there are probably more updated computers out there these days. Who knows??
Ah ah don't drop it too much. Glad it's still going!
Apple recently updated the Macbook Air: buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook...
Yes, I saw that. It's not much different - which might be alright! - but I imagine I should also look into other options when the time comes.
Getting eight years from a laptop is outstanding. Those were great years for MacBooks. I don't think you can expect that much from the next laptop you buy.
Apple will eventually stop providing OS updates for that model. What will you do then?
Here is a Youtube of a guy who opened up his MacBook and cleaned it up. It ran cooler after that. youtube.com/watch?v=zC-0MhPsCmk&t=... Seems kind of fragile and fiddly.
yeah, I too have that feeling, like Apple hardware has become a little less robust
I opened it up once to clean a bit but I didn't go as far as the person in the video goes, that's a lot of DIY. I'll take some inspiration :D
My first two laptops both lasted 10 years.
I have a MacBook Air in mid-2012 with the same specs but 8gb of ram. I bought this 2 years ago, and I am very impressed with the performance it still has! for heavy use of programming, web browsing, 3-4 applications all day long, multiple windows open in brave not bad! Maybe by the end of the year, I'll switch to a new 2014 macbook pro
Nice! :-) 2 years in 2 years :D
This one is refurbished (forgot to mention it), you can find really good deals if you don't want the latest models, and sometimes a few months later you can find the latest ones as well. They just need to match your "mandatory" requirements
Wow 8 years is impressive! I kept a very basic Macbook air (11inch, the cheapest option) for I think 5 years before I finally gave in and bought a new one. After college I briefly switched to PC laptops for the sake of saving money, but Macs always last me longer so I think they're worth it. I've had my current Macbook Air for 3 years and I still use it every day!
5 years is a lot for a MB Air! They are less powerful usually (though the latest incarnation would be perfect for many developers too) so that's a possible reason why they got too slow faster.
It's true that Macs depreciate at a slower rate. It's a good investment if you are planning to resell it down the line.
Congrats! Like others have said you're not missing out. I have a pretty highly configured 2017 Pro for work and the fans are always going off and the touchbar is probably one of Apple's greatest design mistakes imo.
Yeah, I still think to this day that the touchbar is useless in the best of situations or slows down people in the worst of situations. But I don't think they will backtrack on it. They had to do with the esc button as the tactile feedback from it is so integral to many people.
Good think we can still use external keyboards :D