Did I hear someone say "dosdude1 patchers" or OCLP ?
(No, I did not because I didn´t skim through all 200 posts of this thread).
(No, I did not because I didn´t skim through all 200 posts of this thread).
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Why are so many people using out of date Macbooks?
- Thread starter tonyr6
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Holy mother of stupid threads. Do you think a laptop is a consumable food item that has an expiration date?
The new Apple ones fully soldered, glued and hard to repair, YES. The expiration date is just a bit variable, but build to die. That’s why they are still using the old ones which were somewhat repairable, and not fully build to die.
I use my 2015 for writing specs and light development work. But if it will make you happy, an M3 Max is coming next week. In space black. Next to my iPhone 15PM. At a coffee shop where if you show up, you better at least have an M2 Max.
Like almost everything else you buy.
Possibly jewelry is the only product that can outlast generations of humans. Perhaps pottery also but people tend to break those.
I’m sure I’m just repeating ideas that have been done to death over the past nine pages, but you have to understand that for most people the computer is a tool, not a hobby.
I am 100% certain that you have something in your house (coffee grinder? toilet cistern? can opener? shower head?) that for you, is perfectly fine, but if an enthusiast came to your house, they would be thinking "Dude...this guy is still running an XB-250? In 2023? Umm..."
I am 100% certain that you have something in your house (coffee grinder? toilet cistern? can opener? shower head?) that for you, is perfectly fine, but if an enthusiast came to your house, they would be thinking "Dude...this guy is still running an XB-250? In 2023? Umm..."
I usually don’t browse the web with it, but when I need to, I use Pale Moon.
I have 3x older macs, 2012, 2015 and 2018 and it’s actually not that easy to notice much difference in writing emails, making spreadsheets or surfing random websites.
Outside of watching high-res YouTube they’re basically all the same for daily stuff.
(And the 2018 still runs circles around the 2021 PC I received from work).
Outside of watching high-res YouTube they’re basically all the same for daily stuff.
(And the 2018 still runs circles around the 2021 PC I received from work).
I am reminded of that Twitter (?) screengrab that was doing the rounds from last year:
"I was on the train and saw this guy, he was SOOO fine, but OMG he still had an iPhone 6!
😭😭"
To which someone famously responded:
"And you're on a train."
"I was on the train and saw this guy, he was SOOO fine, but OMG he still had an iPhone 6!
😭😭"To which someone famously responded:
"And you're on a train."
I do wonder how many people are using non-soldered Macs these days - when was the last time you could update the ram or hard drive/SSD on a MacBook? IIRC you'd have to go pre-retina, which is more than 10 years ago. I truly doubt that repairability is a significant factor.
New Macs are so expensive that the sheer cost is the incentive to keep an older one going. Sure genuine Pros (as opposed to wannabes) will have a business case for frequent upgrades, but normal people?
Speaking for myself, part of me would love a 15 inch Air with 512gb SSD and 16gb ram but for what I use a laptop for, my 2013 Retina 13 inch with 8gb and 256gb SSD still works as well as ever!
They don’t feel the excitement of getting a newer os.
Normal people does not pay attention to the new icons, redesigned apps, refurnished interface, useful features that they never use and is not interested in them anyways. There is a lad I knew who bought an iPhone 14 last year and now his software is 16.0.1
Normal people does not pay attention to the new icons, redesigned apps, refurnished interface, useful features that they never use and is not interested in them anyways. There is a lad I knew who bought an iPhone 14 last year and now his software is 16.0.1
Yeah, I've got an old MacMini 2012, and the latest it can run is OS 10.15.7; I wasn't aware it could run anything later than that. Certainly not Sonoma.
MacRumors members only need 8GB RAM, so an old Intel MacBook Pro is overkill for them even.
I think I kinda get it. Maybe “future proof” really isn’t the right term although it is the one people generally use. The sentiment is about wanting to have a longer life for the device. It can’t really be future-proofed. There’s no such thing.
One thing I do find very odd is that it seems many people who say they want to future proof a device say they’ll keep it for about 4 years. That’s the extent of extending the life of a device that they’re thinking of? Only 4 years? That’s not future proof to me. That’s at least what I expect a device to last, if not more. So-called future proof is more like seeing the device go on for 7+ years, to me. Even then, 7 years seem short.
I feel like those of us who came of age in the 80s/90s saw machines really did have much shorter life spans, not necessarily because they broke down but because upgraded software and functions slowed down the machines or the machines really couldn’t run them. It felt like back then, a machine saw about 4 years of useful life generally and then it really couldn’t keep up with more modern software.
These days, that no longer seems to be the case. I’ve made this same point elsewhere but older machines still generally seem to run many typical daily-use software just fine. The life cycle for a computer for general use seems like is longer. I remember there times when I bought a new computer about every 3.5 to 4-ish years. That’s no longer the case for me.
Last edited:
Lol. I wonder what would happen if I went to your cafe and sat down with my “old” 2017 MBP with touch bar and replaced battery.
Do I immediately get sent to leprosy island?
I buy a new Mac about every four years. I've got two laptops -- one from 2014, which still does most of what I use a laptop for, and a 2015-era model I bought in 2017 when it was the last pre-butterfly-and-touchbar-but-no-magsafe model sold and it looked like it would take half a decade before Apple made another laptop worth the price. That latter one was more about future-proofing my way around the disastrous 2016-era models than actual need.
I moved to the mini around 2010 just because it makes it easier (i.e. cheaper) to keep the desktop tech updated. The price of laptops makes that harder to justify.
I moved to the mini around 2010 just because it makes it easier (i.e. cheaper) to keep the desktop tech updated. The price of laptops makes that harder to justify.
Using and taking care of old equipment is not a vice, it's a virtue. "A penny saved is a penny earned." -- Benjamin Franklin
I hear ya. Desktops are generally the better value. For me, I've owned only laptops since 1999 because I do need the mobility. In the earlier years, I needed the mobility all the time. In these later years, my laptop mostly sits docked, but every now and then I do need that mobility, so I'm still "stuck" with a laptop which admittedly is overall not as good a deal as a desktop and probably has more delicate components.
This might shock you but I too have worked as an apple reseller and repair/upgrade a couple decades ago. In fact I worked in a store in NYC that was often referred to as “the first apple store”, long before Apple had their own stores, and reportedly some parts of the process created for the first Apple stores had been based on us.
So, with that credentialing out of the way, have you ever heard of selection bias? The percentage of people that visit a shop to upgrade is absolutely dwarfed by those that dont. Apple sells *millions* of machines, the people you saw were concentrated because of your job but they arent representative.
Reminds me of a cop I used to know to whom I had to explain that a specific section 8 housing project wasnt dangerous and crime ridden all the time, because he never considered that the only time he was ever called to that housing complex when there was a problem
FWIW if you want native boot consistency Asahi Fedora Remix runs nearly flawlessly on M* hardware, it’s actually been the main boot on my M1 Mini for a bit now (gives me an incredibly fast local ARM64 linux system to test some side projects on)
OCLP would be the best way to do it.
Looks like SOME machines as old as 2007 can upgrade to Sonoma :O
Last edited: