Even the i5 2012 minis are fantastic too! I have one of those as well that I’m planning to bring into my office at school since they’ve proven to run Monterey so solidly
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What have you done with an early Intel recently?
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Do you think its faster than 11.6.8? I avoided 12.x on my 2012's Macs to avoid the root patching after every update.Even the i5 2012 minis are fantastic too! I have one of those as well that I’m planning to bring into my office at school since they’ve proven to run Monterey so solidly
I wouldn't say that it's any faster or slower, but the root patching only takes a minute and a reboot to do. I've got it on the Quad 2012 mini, an i5 2012 mini, and an i5 2012 13" MBP, all of which it runs delightfully on.
Finally got one of my wish list Macs, a Mid-2012 non-Retina MBP! It's a 2.5ghz i5 with 8 GB of RAM and a 120 GB SSD. I always wanted one of these back in the day and now I finally have one! It is in good physical condition, except the area of the casing around the Ethernet port is bent. I can still get a cable in there, but it is a tricky fit. The MBP came with a clean install of Mountain Lion on it, which while nice, I knew I wanted to do some OS experimentation, which I of course did. I wanted to try out Sierra on here since it is the only version of OS X I have never experienced, but the previous owner did not provide the password for the Mountain Lion install, so I wiped the SSD, installed Mavericks, and upgraded to Sierra from there. Sierra looks nice, but the disk utility was being difficult. It took two tries before I could erase the flash drive I wanted to use for Monterey, a flash drive which I know works. Anyway, I put Monterey on here using the latest OCLP and it is so much smoother on here than it was on my early 2009 Mini. For example, I wasn't having to fight with the mouse to set up the time zone during setup. The issues I had with Monterey on the Mini such as the no video issue in the TV app and Parallels Desktop not booting seem to have gone away too. Overall, this Mac is much better at running Monterey than the 2009 Mini.
Speaking of the Mini, I just spent some time with it fixing album covers and reorganizing my library. Part of me wants to move the library to the MBP, but the rest of me just wants to keep the library where it is because of the time I spent on it and because I don't feel like having to erase and sync my iPod touch all over again. Though I also find myself not trusting iTunes 12 since it is starting to show one of the problems I had with the Windows version, namely the part where I have to sign in two times every time I start the app.
Regardless of what I do with my music library, I definitely want to put a bigger SSD on this MBP, so I can do a multi-boot setup. I'm thinking Mavericks, Monterey and Ubuntu. Also plan on maxing out the RAM too.
Speaking of the Mini, I just spent some time with it fixing album covers and reorganizing my library. Part of me wants to move the library to the MBP, but the rest of me just wants to keep the library where it is because of the time I spent on it and because I don't feel like having to erase and sync my iPod touch all over again. Though I also find myself not trusting iTunes 12 since it is starting to show one of the problems I had with the Windows version, namely the part where I have to sign in two times every time I start the app.
Regardless of what I do with my music library, I definitely want to put a bigger SSD on this MBP, so I can do a multi-boot setup. I'm thinking Mavericks, Monterey and Ubuntu. Also plan on maxing out the RAM too.
Made about an inch of progress bashing my head into the three foot concrete wall of "openSUSE on the MacBook". rEFInd now sees and knows the install media is openSUSE after reflashing, this time with unetbootin, and dropping a bootia32.efi in there. At first, I used this one which didn't work at all and would just spit me back at the main menu, and then I switched over to elilo ia32 and it still doesn't work but it instead of spitting me back to the main menu starts threatening to load and then my boot stick stops showing any activity and it stays at a black screen with an underscore at the top left effectively forever probably.
I'm already downloading Fedora KDE to see if that works, I just found that out today. At least it also has a ppc64le port... not that it wouldn't given its relations to RHEL.
I'm already downloading Fedora KDE to see if that works, I just found that out today. At least it also has a ppc64le port... not that it wouldn't given its relations to RHEL.
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Been encoding a ~TB of television/movies to HEVC.
M1 Pro 14' is doing the heavy lifting but I also have an 2009 27' i7-86 encoding.
24hrs+ vs 1hr 30m (2 max) for an encode. Machine still screaming its fans out to make it work. Long live the original I7 mac. Will be setting it up with an external SSD soon as I'm a bit worried after 12 years the HDD might be getting unreliable.
Edit: Thanks guys! This beast is still screaming its heart out. For some reason a 30HR encode that plays perfect is more amazing than a 2hr Encode. Crazy machine that's giving it all. Terrified this project will kill it but at the same time it's what it was designed for. Everything original beside the warranty HD swap (https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...-covered-under-hard-drive-replacement-program).
M1 Pro 14' is doing the heavy lifting but I also have an 2009 27' i7-86 encoding.
24hrs+ vs 1hr 30m (2 max) for an encode. Machine still screaming its fans out to make it work. Long live the original I7 mac. Will be setting it up with an external SSD soon as I'm a bit worried after 12 years the HDD might be getting unreliable.
Edit: Thanks guys! This beast is still screaming its heart out. For some reason a 30HR encode that plays perfect is more amazing than a 2hr Encode. Crazy machine that's giving it all. Terrified this project will kill it but at the same time it's what it was designed for. Everything original beside the warranty HD swap (https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...-covered-under-hard-drive-replacement-program).
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I gave my classroom server a good bit of love this week. Given that I’m replacing my 2008 24” iMac at my door with a 2014 21”, I needed to keep around the same amount of oldness in my classroom so I decided to bring back a classic character!
My classroom server is once again my trusty rusty 2009 mini. Freshly repasted, 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3, and a cheap little 240GB SSD and she’s ready to handle duties in my classroom once again. Running my lab management software, acting as a file repository, and serving as a time machine server for all the other Macs in the room will be its job again, and it is doing a wonderful job of it again now!
While yes, I actually have a spare 2012 mini sitting around at my home now, I honestly enjoy using these aging machines for productive things and pushing them further than they were ever expected to serve. It’s a wonderful feeling
My classroom server is once again my trusty rusty 2009 mini. Freshly repasted, 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3, and a cheap little 240GB SSD and she’s ready to handle duties in my classroom once again. Running my lab management software, acting as a file repository, and serving as a time machine server for all the other Macs in the room will be its job again, and it is doing a wonderful job of it again now!
While yes, I actually have a spare 2012 mini sitting around at my home now, I honestly enjoy using these aging machines for productive things and pushing them further than they were ever expected to serve. It’s a wonderful feeling
i bought a 2006 MBP a few days ago
dualbooted 10.6 and 10.7, upgraded to 3gb ram (the max) and it has a 256gb ssd. this thing is lightning fast.
(took this picture before upgrading the ram to 3gb, it came with 2gb installed)
best of all, i paid only €30 for this Mac.
dualbooted 10.6 and 10.7, upgraded to 3gb ram (the max) and it has a 256gb ssd. this thing is lightning fast.
(took this picture before upgrading the ram to 3gb, it came with 2gb installed)
best of all, i paid only €30 for this Mac.
lately I have been using my 2006 Macbook Pro (1,1) running OS X Tiger as my daily driver. for light photo editing and as a way to listen to music, some people may think its hell but surprisingly this is a nice little machine
They were built to do powerful tasks back in the day, and they still perform those tasks perfectly today.
My PowerBook G4 does those tasks great still, and I'm sure even a G3 can. There's nothing new under the sun regarding things people use computers for, just less and less optimized programs and more and more JS web appification of things that used to be separate programs. Granted, sure, some of that can't be helped due to compilers writing binaries that use recent instructions and having to halt and emulate newer instructions... but still.
MacBook Linux update: Fedora works if dd'd! I was using unetbootin and it didn't work at all. Well, works Kinda™. Fedora KDE has a bugged Wayland on the ISO, so you need to do a bit of finagling to switch over to X11 before it freezes forever. It works once you do, though. I feel I've earned my masochism cred with this whole endeavor. This was such a nice sight to see, and it doesn't run... absolutely horribly. I can't say for sure since it's booted off a USB 2.0 device. I'm currently imaging my SSD onto an external hard drive and going to reformat and use the whole drive for Fedora. While I'm doing this I can't help but think about getting a black 4,1, switching out the cases but keeping the bezels and keyboards, maxing out the 4,1, and selling that one off. I can't help but imagine a reverse panda MacBook would look nice.
MacBook Linux update: Fedora works if dd'd! I was using unetbootin and it didn't work at all. Well, works Kinda™. Fedora KDE has a bugged Wayland on the ISO, so you need to do a bit of finagling to switch over to X11 before it freezes forever. It works once you do, though. I feel I've earned my masochism cred with this whole endeavor. This was such a nice sight to see, and it doesn't run... absolutely horribly. I can't say for sure since it's booted off a USB 2.0 device. I'm currently imaging my SSD onto an external hard drive and going to reformat and use the whole drive for Fedora. While I'm doing this I can't help but think about getting a black 4,1, switching out the cases but keeping the bezels and keyboards, maxing out the 4,1, and selling that one off. I can't help but imagine a reverse panda MacBook would look nice.
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playing some minecraft - 16 chunks, bsl shaders ultra preset, 1920x1200
this thing gets the same fps as my ryzen gaming pc that cost over twice as much :O
With a modern gpu these Mac Pros are still great for gaming. I use mine as archive and main gaming system. Recently I played Cyberpunk 2077 and Horizon Zero Dawn on high settings at 2560x1440. Not bad for a 12 years old machine.
One of my favourite Macs ever is my 15" early 2008 MacBook Pro. I don't have another machine that's been in active service for that long - 14 years vs. 12 years with my Mac Pro. I got a great deal for it just after the unibodies were released, it was leftover stock at a local store. Since I prefered the classic design at the time I thought now or never. It was my main work machine for graphics and video work until I bought my Mac Pro in 2010, which then was my main system for 10 years.
After that I shared the early 2008 MacBook Pro with my wife, she used it daily and I took it whenever I needed a laptop. From 2014-2015 on it became our media center in the living room, connected to a cheap 32" 1920x1080 screen, without battery, since that stopped working around that time. And that's the job it's still doing today. We use it to watch DVDs and stream Amazon Prime, Netflix and Youtube. Since streaming got more demanding in recent years, I just remembered that these books would downclock without a battery, so I ordered a new one and now everything runs rather smooth again.
Inspired by this thread I decided it's time to fully revive it. The DVD drive stopped working a long time ago, I used an external one but that was never pretty in the living room. So I found a broken book with a working DVD drive for € 20,- locally. Today I put it in, and now I have a fully working 2008 MacBook Pro again. I also replaced the 240gb SSD with a newer 1TB one. I plan to run Snow Leopard (for backwards compatibility), El Capitan (best official supported OS) and Big Sur or Montery with OCLP on it. Currently installing Snow Leopard.
Made the decision to move my music library over to my 2012 MBP. It's a Mac I have always wanted and it does have advantages over the early 2009 Mini, namely USB 3 and a faster and more recent CPU, which should be beneficial for DVD ripping. After moving all of my files over to an external drive, I decided to take the opportunity to do an OS experiment on the early 2009 Mini. I figured out that the Big Sur and Monterey versions of the TV app (when installed on the early 2009 Mini) have an issue where a video will play, but with the audio only and nothing on screen. I decided to see how the Catalina version of the TV app would work on the early 2009 Mini. I discovered that the Catalina version has no issues at all on the 2009 Mini. With that said though, Catalina feels quite sluggish, just like the last time I had it on that Mac. It is tolerable, but I would rather have another OS on that Mac if I could. While I have decided to make the 2012 MBP my main Mac, I don't have any plans to get rid of my early 2009 Mini. Not sure what I am going to do with it, but I don't want to get rid of it.
I bought a 1 TB SSD and 16 GB of RAM for the 2012 MBP. I already installed the SSD, still waiting on the RAM. The upgrade process was easy and I was careful while moving the SATA cable. The SSD works great. I did indeed end up going with a triple boot of Mavericks, Monterey and Ubuntu, though I had forgotten how to do a multi-boot with Linux and Mac OS, so it took a couple tries to get this right. I tried manual partitioning with the Ubuntu installer, but the results were wonky. Finally, I remembered that I had to format the part of the drive I wanted to use for Ubuntu as "free space" in Disk Utility instead of anything else. I also discovered that I don't need rEFInd now that I have Open Core installed on here. All 3 OSes are running smoothly.
I bought a 1 TB SSD and 16 GB of RAM for the 2012 MBP. I already installed the SSD, still waiting on the RAM. The upgrade process was easy and I was careful while moving the SATA cable. The SSD works great. I did indeed end up going with a triple boot of Mavericks, Monterey and Ubuntu, though I had forgotten how to do a multi-boot with Linux and Mac OS, so it took a couple tries to get this right. I tried manual partitioning with the Ubuntu installer, but the results were wonky. Finally, I remembered that I had to format the part of the drive I wanted to use for Ubuntu as "free space" in Disk Utility instead of anything else. I also discovered that I don't need rEFInd now that I have Open Core installed on here. All 3 OSes are running smoothly.
Seems like I wanted to much from my 15" early 2008 MacBook Pro with the 1TB SSD. I got 130 mb/s read but whatever I tried, reinstall, new formatting, target disk mode, different OS, ... I never got more than 12 mb/s write. Seems like either the 1TB SSD is too new, too big or the controller can't handle it. I reinstalled the old 240gb SSD and now I have the expected 130 mb/s read AND write again. Anyway, I have time right now and enjoyed tinkering with the MacBook Pro again. Now back to reinstalling El Capitan and Snow Leopard. After all this, I guess I'll wait with the Big Sur or Montery experiment a little bit.
those have Sata 1 controllers, it probably can't handle it...
Yeah, that's most certainly it. Too bad, I really wanted to pimp that book as good as it can get.
By the way, I love your avatar - that's Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony right? I'm watching it with my daughter, nice series with good message for the little one ... friendship is magic!
hell yeahBy the way, I love your avatar - that's Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony right? I'm watching it with my daughter, nice series with good message for the little one ... friendship is magic!
Probably an incompatibility with the particular SSD's controller (what SSD was it?) and the MacBook's SATA controller, given that another SSD gets 130 MB/s write.
1 TB SSD is a SanDisk Ultra II (actually 960gb, but what's 40gb +- these days
). The working SSD is a OCZ-Vertex 3 240gb.I use 240GB Crucial BX500s in my 2007 MacBook Pros (same SATA controller) and they work fine there, so a 1 TB BX500 may be worth trying.1 TB SSD is a SanDisk Ultra II (actually 960gb, but what's 40gb +- these days
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So it has nothing to do with the size, just with the brand of SSD. My uneducated guess was, that it might also be the size, since there were no SSDs that big back then, as far as I remember. Maybe I'll find a 1 TB BX500 in some black friday or whatever sale in the future to try it.
@bobesch has several Early 2008 MacBook Pros and is using a 1 TB SSD in one of them IIRC. I'm sure he'll be happy to tell you what SSD it is
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I have a Zheino 500GB SSD in my 2008 MBP and a Sillicon Power 500GB SSD in my 2009 Mini. Both work fine.@bobesch has several Early 2008 MacBook Pros and is using a 1 TB SSD in one of them IIRC. I'm sure he'll be happy to tell you what SSD it is
The boot drive for my 2009 MP is a 1TB Zheino SSD if you want to count that.