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Late 2008 MacBook - upgrade? replace? Please help!
- Thread starter TricksyFox
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Would you trust a mechanic who fixed a problem with your car by disabling the airbags and removing the seatbelts?
Not sure you'd go over very well in the PowerPC forums where our Macs have no SIP and we tend to run Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and Leopard. Now how secure is that?!
If we were all that concerned about security with these old Intels then we'd own the latest Macs and it wouldn't be this subforum wer're posting in.
Maybe you could have read what I wrote about the functionality of SIP.
But if you really want a car analogy:
Using a current browser version without SIP would be like using a car with working brakes, airbags and seatbelts.
Using an outdated browser with SIP would be like using a car without brakes, airbags and seatbelts, but when a crash happens and the driver has died, the car magically repairs itself (but the driver remains dead).
Linux doesn't have System Integrity Protection. Never had it. Have you ever heard computer experts warning against Linux because it's so insecure? (You have probably heard many warnings against Windows 7. That's no because it has no SIP, but because it does no longer get security updates.)
...run fully updated Linux or Windows.
I'm gonna go back to my HTC Touch Pro now…Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro for the security win.
Security by obscurity, or what?I'm gonna go back to my HTC Touch Pro now…Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro for the security win.
Pretty much. The device is mainly useful now as a clock and weather monitor.
Not sure you'd go over very well in the PowerPC forums where our Macs have no SIP and we tend to run Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and Leopard. Now how secure is that?!
If we were all that concerned about security with these old Intels then we'd own the latest Macs and it wouldn't be this subforum wer're posting in.
This will no doubt spark outrage from the security zealots but I feel far more comfortable with going directly online using a PowerPC Mac with Tiger or Leopard than I ever would with my Windows XP box.
Realistically, how many script kiddies and computer crackers are actively targeting PPC platforms at this stage though? Wouldn't they all be focusing on x86 because of the substantially greater user base and thus availability of potential victims - especially in the case of WinTel?
I've pointed this out on numerous occasions but given the nature of this discussion it's worth reiterating - computers with superseded operating systems can be put behind an old PC with two network interface cards (or whichever setup you prefer) running open source firewall software and then protected during online usage.
1) the analogy made by @Lars B. is more apropos, if such an analogy is to be made, and
2) I know you have never worked on a car before. Which is OK, but maybe try another analogy on which you have some experience.
SIP is tantamount to being able to ride your bike as you would ordinarily, but only with training wheels affixed to the rear dropouts, and your options for where you may ride are confined to a closed venue designed for indoor riding: you may ride wherever you want, just so long as you stay inside and keep within the prescribed lane lines.
If that’s your jam — and for some folks, maybe it is! — then have fun.
Wow, so many responses! Thank you all so much. I'm going to try to go back through everything more slowly, but after a quick skim I wanted to make a few clarifications in case it helps:
1) I have a late-2008 MacBook, not a MacBook Pro. I would guess that the differences here are negligible, but just wanted to make that clear in case.
2) I use Chrome, and am running the most recent version of Chrome, but am still getting the security warnings.
3) I am very very unlikely to resent not having any features that are released next year. If that were my general approach to life I definitely wouldn't still be using the same laptop from 2008.
4) I am on a budget, but (gratefully) in a position to spend a little bit more if it's actually going to help me out in the long term. So I'm not likely to buy a new phone just for the features, but I'm definitely willing to spend extra on more RAM, for example.
5) Partitions may be a bit beyond my capabilities? I'm in that state of "competent at looking stuff up" but not "I do tech things for fun and/or profit", and I am wary of anything that may land me in a "you thought you knew what you were doing but now every scammer in the world has all your info" situation.
6) Similarly, I'm concerned about a patch to upgrade so that I can get the new SSL certificates if that's going to otherwise compromise my security elsewhere? I'm going to have to re-read that part of the discussion a little more thoroughly, but thought I'd toss this much out there for anybody following along.
1) I have a late-2008 MacBook, not a MacBook Pro. I would guess that the differences here are negligible, but just wanted to make that clear in case.
2) I use Chrome, and am running the most recent version of Chrome, but am still getting the security warnings.
3) I am very very unlikely to resent not having any features that are released next year. If that were my general approach to life I definitely wouldn't still be using the same laptop from 2008.
4) I am on a budget, but (gratefully) in a position to spend a little bit more if it's actually going to help me out in the long term. So I'm not likely to buy a new phone just for the features, but I'm definitely willing to spend extra on more RAM, for example.
5) Partitions may be a bit beyond my capabilities? I'm in that state of "competent at looking stuff up" but not "I do tech things for fun and/or profit", and I am wary of anything that may land me in a "you thought you knew what you were doing but now every scammer in the world has all your info" situation.
6) Similarly, I'm concerned about a patch to upgrade so that I can get the new SSL certificates if that's going to otherwise compromise my security elsewhere? I'm going to have to re-read that part of the discussion a little more thoroughly, but thought I'd toss this much out there for anybody following along.
I actually posted in "Mac Basics, Help and Buying Advice" because I wasn't sure where to put it. I assume a wise moderator moved it for me, but thought that might warrant clarification.
Exactly. In fact, now I am writing to you with Yosemite and Safari 9 that never had SIP and maybe later I will write with Mavericks, which doesn't have it either, and I've never needed it.Not sure you'd go over very well in the PowerPC forums where our Macs have no SIP and we tend to run Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and Leopard. Now how secure is that?!
If we were all that concerned about security with these old Intels then we'd own the latest Macs and it wouldn't be this subforum wer're posting in.
But this absurd disquisition comes from putting a patch of magical origin and made by godmothers to circumvent a rudimentary security system that I distrust as a system. And it won't work better.
The benefit / risk ratio is not worth it. That's all.
I am the guardian of my kingdom! 🎇
Partitions are regions of a hard drive (or SSD) where data is stored. You may have more than one partition or the entire drive may be one partition. Drives with two or more partitions are seen by the OS as two or more drives - even though there may only be one drive.
When you create a partition you are creating a region of storage space on the drive equal to the size you designate. For instance, I can hypothetically have a 500GB hard drive. I can:
Make one 500GB partition and the OS sees ONE drive.
Make TWO 250GB partitions and the OS sees TWO drives.
Make multiple partitions, equal to the full size of the drive and the OS sees a number of drives equal to the partitions I made.
You cannot make a single partition larger than the actual size of the drive and if you make multiple partitions they must together equal the full size of the drive.
Partitions have a type. Windows/PCs require a certain type and Macs require another type. There is some leeway between the types. Common types are MBR (Master Boot Record, Windows), GUID (Globally Unique ID, Intel Macs) and APM (Apple Partition Map, PowerPC Macs). Each type creates a specific map so that the OS knows how the drive is partitioned and organized.
Once you have partitioned a drive, you have to format it. Because while the OS can see that there IS a drive, it needs to know HOW to write data to that drive. The formatting you choose, typically HFS+ Journaled for spinning hard drives and APFS for SSDs tells the system how to store the data you want to write to that drive. FAT, FAT32 and NTFS are Windows formats.
If none of this makes any sense to you, think of it this way…
A partition is a box. There are many types and sizes of boxes, so a partition determines what kind of box you have and if you like how many OTHER boxes you can have inside that first box.
Formatting is what you store inside each box - the data.
Hope that helps.
That was extremely informative without being patronizing - thank you!!
You’ve got good gear which has stood the test of time, as you can attest.
That MacBook was the first of all the unibody models — and first with that degree of physical durability (amazingly, one was on my person, in a backpack, when I was struck by a car running a light; I came out worse for wear and the unibody MacBook Pro was bent slightly, but I woke it from sleep right afterward and it was unaffected otherwise).
The only meaningful minus, relative to the 13-inch MacBook Pro which succeeded it immediately, are the slight bumps in processor speed, the (re-)insertion of FireWire, and (if running the 2.0GHz version) the absence of a backlit keyboard. There were no known issues with the unibody MacBook GPU and, as with the early 2008 MacBook Pro, will run practically whichever OS you’re wanting to throw at it — whether or not you want to use patches to run macOS releases of the past three or four years. The 8GB RAM is a legitimate limit, but considering how I still run an early 2011 13-inch MacBook Pro at 8GB and others are running up to Big Sur on early 2008 MacBook Pros (whose cap is only 6GB), this really isn’t going to be straw which breaks the camel’s back.
As already said by others, as well: you’ve got good gear. Your MacBook will still run most of what you throw at it, and you’ve made all the key upgrades along the way. And as @eyoungren described, you can partition your SSD to let you switch between two different OS X/macOS versions as you desire.
If you’re insistent on parting with what you’ve saved for the sake of buying something newer and/or quicker than your MacBook but aren’t fully aboard with the idea of buying brand new, your best bet might be to forgo a Silicon Mac and explore something like an early 2015 MacBook Pro with the maximum RAM configuration (something like this) and which will allow you to change/upgrade the far faster SSD blade within (with NVMe specs and speeds from High Sierra onward). That way, you’d have more current gear with a better display, Thunderbolt expansion options, a backlit keyboard, and it is still supported by Apple’s Monterey. You’d then have a model which is the last following a long series of generational refinements and is, by most counts, a pretty solid setup.
Unless one is insistent on budgeting for bleeding edge Macs (something I once did — Yikes! — and later came to regret), recent-used may be a viable next step.
I have Catalina running on 2GB!
Only one of my Macs was purchased brand new - and considering the amount of money that it cost, I'm annoyed at how quickly some of its components either failed or developed faults.
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@TricksyFox I hope this may help - it's the way I did things with my stuff (early and late 2008 MB(P))
@eyoungren has told all about partions...
It's really no rocket science to become familiar with DiskUtility-App, where You can separate Your SSD into smaller pieces (=partitions), that can serve different purposes.
My first step would be to reduce the size of the system's partition (the partion, macOS runs off) to a reasonable size, that matches the size of a pair of external-(USB)-backup-drives. Since a 1TB SSD replaces a smaller drive, the size of that drive would be the size of the (first) system partition. With either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper! it is possible to schedule automatic cloning of that (first) system partition to any of those dedicated external drives e.g. triggered by just plugging in the external USB-drive.
After You have separated the 1TB drive into two partitions (one for the running system, the second for the rest), You are free to separate that second partition into other smaller partitions:
- e.g. one for a bootable copy of your current system (= first partion), which You can use to try out any PatcherUpgrades etc.
- e.g. one for big chunks of data, that don't nessesarily need to be shoveled around with any upgrade/backup-process of the system-partition.
- and e.g. for one/some for different versions of OSX - maybe Leopard/SnowLeopard to run some software-gems, that require Rosetta (in my case to run a certain fax-software with the old Apple-USB-modem or iMovie'06 and special filters)
[By holding ALT-key on booting, You can choose, which system-partition to boot from.]
- and finally a tiny 12GB partition at the very end, where You may install @dosdude1 's patched macOS-installer of Your choice (Sierra,HighSierra,Mojave //end of 32-bit & HFS+ -support // Catalina). You can boot from this tiny installer-partition to install/update any of the chosen patches. If You have a clone-copy of your current system-partion on any other partion of the 1TB-drive, you can securely try out the result of a patcher-update prior to directing it to your original system.
Before trying all that stuff above please make sure to have a function-proof backup of your system, which is IMHO only a bootable clone-copy to an external drive.
Here's how I partitioned my 1TB SSD. 2nd partition could also be separated to get extra-space for a Leopard or Snow-Leopard installation (40-60GB should be sufficient).
It's important to put temporary/experimental partitions beyond any important steady partion, so that they can be deleted and reintegrated into the proceeding partition.
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Thank you all so much for your help and insights. There's definitely a lot to consider here, but I will be sure to keep you all updated on what I end up doing!
One final question, for anybody who has time:
There seems to be agreement that the newer models just don't last as long as the older ones do. If I were to go for the refurbished route, it would follow that there's a sort of ratio of age (read as: how much time I have before I run into the same problems I have now) vs quality/longevity (read as: how functional is the base system and how likely I am to be able to keep it running).
I'm guessing if I aim for a 2015-ish model, I'd probably split the difference (half the age between my 2008 and now), but that's operating under the assumption that with each subsequent year, the trade-off of "age" vs "quality" is pretty consistent. Does that strike you as a fair assumption, or is there sort of an agreed-upon "cliff" where the longevity/quality/resistance-to-planned-obsolescence takes a significant dip?
One final question, for anybody who has time:
There seems to be agreement that the newer models just don't last as long as the older ones do. If I were to go for the refurbished route, it would follow that there's a sort of ratio of age (read as: how much time I have before I run into the same problems I have now) vs quality/longevity (read as: how functional is the base system and how likely I am to be able to keep it running).
I'm guessing if I aim for a 2015-ish model, I'd probably split the difference (half the age between my 2008 and now), but that's operating under the assumption that with each subsequent year, the trade-off of "age" vs "quality" is pretty consistent. Does that strike you as a fair assumption, or is there sort of an agreed-upon "cliff" where the longevity/quality/resistance-to-planned-obsolescence takes a significant dip?
If that means a 2015 Retina MacBook Pro, I'd say that is a solid choice as it's not plagued by the butterfly keyboard reliability issues that were introduced with the 2016 and later generations, but try to get one that doesn't suffer from staingate and still has a decent battery (I'd definitely stay away from ones with a swollen battery). I'd probably stay away from the higher-end 15" models with their integrated AMD GPUs too, but that's just because I've generally become paranoid about that GPU failing and stick to Macs with iGPUs or bullet-proof dGPUs.
One thing to consider though, is that a 2015 MBP uses an Intel CPU (x86-64 architecture), and Apple are currently transitioning Macs over to their custom ARM architecture ("Apple Silicon"). That means at some point in the future which is not yet known, macOS will stop running on Macs with Intel CPUs. So the last version of macOS your new machine will be able to run (assuming nothing else renders it fundamentally incompatible) is the last one compatible with Intel Macs.
One thing to consider though, is that a 2015 MBP uses an Intel CPU (x86-64 architecture), and Apple are currently transitioning Macs over to their custom ARM architecture ("Apple Silicon"). That means at some point in the future which is not yet known, macOS will stop running on Macs with Intel CPUs. So the last version of macOS your new machine will be able to run (assuming nothing else renders it fundamentally incompatible) is the last one compatible with Intel Macs.
There are a couple of “cliffs”, depending on the metric you’re using.
The first is the end of being able to replace or upgrade onboard RAM. This ended with the onset of the MacBook Airs and retina MacBook Pros — so 2012 (omitting the MBAs, which were designed from their 2008 inception with non-upgradeable RAM) is a good cut-off.
The second is parts availability: Apple in the mid-to-later 2010s really got serious about prohibiting its vendors from selling replacement parts to any buyer other than Apple. This is a big crux in the discussion around right-to-repair. A very good case example, relevant here: with the retina displays (they are manufactured by LG), Apple prohibits LG contractually from selling spares to any third-party. This has resulted in the rise of used rMBPs being parted out for working display assemblies (as well as other parts) at profusely inflated prices, as the ability to source new-stock is not possible — forcing a scarcity which isn’t caused by economics or limited resources but by Apple having the power to dictate how the repair of Apple-branded devices shall go (or not, as has been the case and as has also been their wont).
This is partly why you won’t hear as resounding an endorsement around here for buying post-2015-era MacBook Pros: there are fewer replaceable and upgradeable parts (including fixed SSD storage and fixed SSD RAM), and build quality, in their pursuit for “thinness” and product disposability, is arguably not on par with preceding products which do last a long time even if they’re heavily used.
If you ask around here, you’ll likely hear a lot of reverence and respect for the unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros of 2008 to 2016 (yes, the 13-inch model stayed on sale until 2016, despite no updates made after 2012, while the 15-inch model was sold until late 2013): they last a very long time, are rugged, have many replaceable parts, are fairly modular, and they are not deprived of ports (especially so with the FireWire 800 ports found on all but the 2008 unibody MacBook).
Even the rMBPs of 2012–2015 have some wriggle room for selected parts to be easily and affordably replaced, such as the keyboard (which I’ve replaced on a 2015 15-inch rMBP) and the SSD blade (which I’ve done on a 2015 13-inch rMBP). But starting with the post-rMBP era comes the loathed T2 chip, increased cryptography involving hardware components, flimsier keyboard mechanisms, and more soldered-on-board components to thwart any meaningful parts replacement (assuming Apple allows the vendors to sell to anyone other than Apple).
The teardowns and repairability ratings provided by iFixit go into much better detail about these considerations on a per-model basis — which is handy to have if you’re thinking of buying anything pre-owned/used.
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On one upside: once Apple drops Intel wholly, support for Intel’s architecture via other OS platforms is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Sure, it may not be macOS, but macOS is neither the alpha nor omega of running gear.
The late-intel Mac with the then legacy last running macOS are then probably still fast enought, to run latest Linux-distros sandboxed in a virtual machine.
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That’s pretty much a given, yep.
Correct, and if one isn’t interested in running macOS in the first place, there are a lot more and less pricier options that don’t have an Apple logo on the lid.
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Alas, I am well aware that I could get probably a better machine at a lower price if I weren't attached to Mac - but I've only used apple computers since I was a little kid, both personally and professionally. I've gotten around the cost issue mostly by, you know... using the same laptop for an eternity and a half.That’s pretty much a given, yep.
Correct, and if one isn’t interested in running macOS in the first place, there are a lot more and less pricier options that don’t have an Apple logo on the lid.
I figure at some point I'll make the switch, but for now I'd rather just pay for the luxury of not having to dedicate the mental space to 1) evaluating an exponentially larger set of purchasing options and 2) not having to spend some unspecified amount of time feeling like that guy from Amelie, who goes crazy because his home is still perfectly functional but everything is just sliiiiightly different from where he expects it to be or how he expects it to function... which is how I currently feel every time I borrow my partner's pc.