Other Starting to appreciate some bits of the Intel-Mac era.

[throAU]

I really dislike this attitude.

If people are using older Macs for stuff, like me, and they love them. Leave them alone. Don't try to tell them to throw it out and buy the new thing (which will be uncool in a few years anyway, that's just how tech is).

And of course a 13-year-old computer with a ~45nm chip will be slower than a modern 5nm chip. Of course. That's just how tech is. It gets better/faster. *the better part is debatable btw*. So using this argument is kind of silly.

And to reply to your message directly, I use a 2010 15 MBP with 8gb ram and a SSD, and it is just fine for browsing the web imo. It's not even very slow. And when I put linux on it, it FLIES. And, I get the bonus that if something goes wrong, just replace a SSD or RAM, or one capacitor, and I'm good. This bonus cannot be overstated.

Wasn’t telling anyone to throw out anything.

It was in response to an assertion that there’s no performance difference.

 

[MBAir2010]

Go browse the internet on a machine from 2010 and a modern iPad and get back to me.

This reply is not to stir controversy

I'm here posting this just to defend the macbook air 2010 11" 4GB ram and SnowLion browser on Snow leopard.
so far the experience is great better than firefox legacy and opera, as I am typing on that now

i have not tried streaming or playing videos but that is not necessary for today's usage on this vintage macbook.
this macbook was sitting in a box for several months 
and now is a important tool since CS4 performs graphic design far better that Affinity Design2023.

I hope this was an encouraging post!

 

[HawkTheHusky1902]

Wasn’t telling anyone to throw out anything.

It was in response to an assertion that there’s no performance difference.

Clearly there's a performance difference. But I am just making it clear, that, older Macs are just fine for some people.

 

[millerj123]

I beg to differ...

About what, exactly?

 

[HawkTheHusky1902]

About what, exactly?

There have been quite a lot of Apple products that have had problems, and some even from the factory almost. For example, my 2010 MBP works, but after fixing it with a software fix. Years ago, people would have brought it to the apple store for its gpu issue. So, I dont think it is true that Apple laptops don't have a lot of problems. A lot of them have (looking at you 2011/2016-2018 MBPs).

 

[Lesimac]

Unless the laptop you bought had been stored, pre-sale, in extreme conditions, which is unlikely, then you probably have a sub-par battery, chemically speaking. Non-usage over time tends not to be what robs a battery of its charge capacity.

To wit, I remember my surprise when the original battery in my unibody MBP, one purchased almost a dozen years after it was made, still reported 93 per cent capacity despite, obviously, seeing limited usage by its previous (and probably original) owner (at, like 290 charge cycles after all that time). Since, I’ve added about 150 charge cycles of heavy use, and the battery holds in the 87–88 per cent range. Prior MBPs — unibody and retina — I’ve owned never came close to this.

I have come to conclude that the OEM battery with this particular unit happens to come from a chemically high-quality batch. That said, you might want to check in with Apple about their current criteria for in-warranty battery replacement.

ive checked with Apple and unless its under 80% there not even willing to discuss it

 

[B S Magnet]

ive checked with Apple and unless its under 80% there not even willing to discuss it

As viewed by Apple: that’s the way Apple do things and you, the hapless consumer, will like it or else you can take a walk.

As viewed by strong consumer advocacy: Apple are derelict in looking after their customers whenever an OEM component — even a consumable like the flagging battery you’re dealing with — falls shy of the high standard of quality on which Apple ride their brand. Apple should do better. Yes, battery chemistry quality from their preferred vendor may vary by manufacturing lot. Apple have changed battery vendors and even run different vendors in parallel to meet demand. But battery chemistry problems happen. With the Apple name on their OEM battery, Apple should do their level best to deliver a consumable which meets their oft-touted quality. You shouldn’t be seeing that kind of drop so soon, but you are far from the first to describe this problem.

Instead, Apple have a long track record of shirking, deflecting, and customer-blaming instead of a) making things right with mandatory recalls for all impacted, no questions asked; b) finding a way, on the spot, to remedy cases when their rigorous standards fall short on a particular copy of their product (such as the OEM battery in your laptop); and c) being up-front by taking immediate responsibility for their errors and quality assurance shortfalls by releasing subsequent revisions absent of those flaws. Think Staingate. Think Radeongate. Think the keyboard debacle. Think glued battery packs which bloat prematurely. I’m probably forgetting a few, and I’m not even considering flaws with their non-Mac hardware.

The problem: at present, consumer and regulatory might, much less leverage, over a company the size and might of an Apple or a Microsoft is lacking. When smaller, a successful company seeks to take a wrong and make it right, so to win back repeat business and long-term loyalty. Apple haven’t been there for at least a baker’s dozen of years. Apple now coast on brand cachet and shareholder loyalty, just as Eastman Kodak once did.

It worked for Kodak for most of the 20th century. Their coasting, however, caught up with them — as scrappier competitors cranked out truly competitive, high quality products; friendlier products; consumer-responsive products; and by taking tech pioneered originally by Kodak and absolutely devastating their entire business model with innovative ways of using that tech. Kodak stopped responding to external complaints and just soldiered on as they saw fit, thinking their customers would always be there, ever loyal. Ultimately, this landed them in bankruptcy.

Apple are well on their way to that place. They just don’t realize it yet. They can zealously try to patent everything and enforce those patents with IP lawyers as a tool to douse competition (as well as blithely absorbing scrappy start-ups like the giant capitalist amoeba it is), but in the end, if it alienates the customer, then the customer, en masse, will begin to look elsewhere. A river begins in raindrops.

 

[millerj123]

They do occasionally but far less often than you might think inside of 5 years.

If they aren’t DOA (I.e. failure on delivery), and aren’t physically damaged by accident they generally last 5 years or more, but the failure rate does ramp significantly after that.

Capacitors die, batteries die and swell etc.

Right, and generally, it's either accidental damage, or one or two parts start failing. Nothing like needing a backup computer with you at all times.

 

[DCBassman]

At the end of the day, you're happy throwing a couple off thousand dollars at a new Mac every two or three years, or you're not. Nobody on remotely average incomes, anywhere on earth, can afford to do this. Apple don't aim at them. Just like every ad for any product that might show a phone, it's an iPhone, because Apple will pay for that, if it can. To a lesser extent, laptops are Apple too.
Outside the US, the market share of Apple is much smaller, with odd exceptions, one of which, I believe, is Sweden. No idea why.
Lots of people like me, a retired engineer, don't like to see this plethora of unrepairable e-waste, and we don't like it because there is not the slightest reasonable excuse for it. Not today, when we should be doing the most we can never to waste ANYTHING, EVER. Apple is a company that has signed up, fair and square, to flip the bird to the planet, and it's happy with that if the execs and shareholders like it.
To put it in raw terms, computers etc are what Apple uses to extract wealth from whomever it can. The fallout is simply of zero importance. They're alright, Jack...

 

[B S Magnet]

Apple is a company that has signed up, fair and square, to flip the bird to the planet, and it's happy with that if the execs and shareholders like it.
To put it in raw terms, computers etc are what Apple uses to extract wealth from whomever it can. The fallout is simply of zero importance. They're alright, Jack...

I spent a solid sixty seconds deciding whether to use a ❤️ or reaction for this post, but especially so for the above-selected passage.

There’s a subset of those who, happily, throw filthy lucre at a corporation which, as their Senpai, will never notice them — not even if they’re holding some of Senpai’s shares. Said subset believe they are, in part, what they choose to consume — that that conspicuous (or conscious) expression of consumption, whatever the brand, telegraphs to others who they believe they are as a person.

I’m aware of this when I reflect on when I bought my first, new-in-box Mac in 1999 (a Power Mac G4), at a time when I was working in the very industry to infuse that mentality into consumers: advertising and marketing communications. That psychology was not only an objective we brought into every creative brainstorming session for client campaigns, but it was clear each of us, in some part, also bought into that fallacy. (I was not exempt.)

As a tech-oriented company, Apple always grasped this psychology — possibly better than any other corporation in existence — and they have exploited it more aggressively than any other brand in any market I can think of. Their first taste of how to do this began with hiring Ridley Scott in 1983, picking up once again in 1998 and never stopping since.

Then I left the industry, went to uni, delved into environmental science and urban sustainability, and came to grasp just how deep this mess we’ve made for ourselves and, more key, nearly every other extant species on this planet. ⚰️

This thread no longer belongs in the Early Intel Macs forum. It belongs in the Community Discussion forum.

 

[XboxEvolved]

The OP's post doesn't make sense to me. You bought a M1 Mini and like a year later you replaced it with a Thinkpad but also got an older Intel computer? What? Anyways if storage is really that big of a deal, external SSDs in the newer Macs in general are fast, and RAM in most laptops are increasingly rare to be able to upgrade. I had 2 Intel Macs, a 2010 24' iMac and a 2017 basic MBP. The iMac was great, the MBP kind of sucked. I got a M1 MBP and one-first (and I guess only) MBP I've had with the Touch Bar, and quite like it, and two it makes the 2017 MBP look completely stupid.

 

[eyoungren]

I spent a solid sixty seconds deciding whether to use a ❤️ or reaction for this post, but especially so for the above-selected passage.

There’s a subset of those who, happily, throw filthy lucre at a corporation which, as their Senpai, will never notice them — not even if they’re holding some of Senpai’s shares. Said subset believe they are, in part, what they choose to consume — that that conspicuous (or conscious) expression of consumption, whatever the brand, telegraphs to others who they believe they are as a person.

I’m aware of this when I reflect on when I bought my first, new-in-box Mac in 1999 (a Power Mac G4), at a time when I was working in the very industry to infuse that mentality into consumers: advertising and marketing communications. That psychology was not only an objective we brought into every creative brainstorming session for client campaigns, but it was clear each of us, in some part, also bought into that fallacy. (I was not exempt.)

As a tech-oriented company, Apple always grasped this psychology — possibly better than any other corporation in existence — and they have exploited it more aggressively than any other brand in any market I can think of. Their first taste of how to do this began with hiring Ridley Scott in 1983, picking up once again in 1998 and never stopping since.

Then I left the industry, went to uni, delved into environmental science and urban sustainability, and came to grasp just how deep this mess we’ve made for ourselves and, more key, nearly every other extant species on this planet. ⚰️

This thread no longer belongs in the Early Intel Macs forum. It belongs in the Community Discussion forum.

I…just ended up on Mac 'cause it worked. I stick with it because it still works. At some point it might not. Then I'll leave.

I was given a TiBook for Christmas 2001. It was largely unused until mid-2003 when I flashed the wrong BIOS to my homebuilt PC. And then I lost all my data because I couldn't recover it through a drive overlay. Finally, my PC formatted USB ZIP 100 disks got wiped because the drive faulted.

So by that point, four years of working in the newspaper business as an Ad Compositor had shown me that even a crippled Mac could still get work out. With only the TiBook at that point, Mac was it.

After that, I got used to it and made it work. I buy and use the stuff I want and I usually hold on to all of it for extreme lengths of time. I still have a box of fan-fold computer paper I've been working through since I was 15 and I'm 53 now.

So for me it's more about liking what I bought rather than being what I bought. I own, use and enjoy lots of things that would set others into fits (and does). Whatever it is, it's because it works for me and I wanted it for whatever reason - not because I am that.

 

[B S Magnet]

I…just ended up on Mac 'cause it worked. I stick with it because it still works. At some point it might not. Then I'll leave.

I was given a TiBook for Christmas 2001. It was largely unused until mid-2003 when I flashed the wrong BIOS to my homebuilt PC. And then I lost all my data because I couldn't recover it through a drive overlay. Finally, my PC formatted USB ZIP 100 disks got wiped because the drive faulted.

So by that point, four years of working in the newspaper business as an Ad Compositor had shown me that even a crippled Mac could still get work out. With only the TiBook at that point, Mac was it.

After that, I got used to it and made it work. I buy and use the stuff I want and I usually hold on to all of it for extreme lengths of time. I still have a box of fan-fold computer paper I've been working through since I was 15 and I'm 53 now.

So for me it's more about liking what I bought rather than being what I bought. I own, use and enjoy lots of things that would set others into fits (and does). Whatever it is, it's because it works for me and I wanted it for whatever reason - not because I am that.

Indeed. I know this about you, and you know I know this about you. And you probably also know what I wrote above was not about you, directed toward you (or me or anyone else who doesn’t look to a product brand they buy or to which they declare loyalty as a way to affirm some part of their self-worth, or to emote to others a part of who they believe they are as people — i.e., folks who think, consciously or no, “I am what I consume”).

 

[eyoungren]

Indeed. I know this about you, and you know I know this about you. And you probably also know what I wrote above was not about you, directed toward you (or me or anyone else who doesn’t look to a product brand they buy or to which they declare loyalty as a way to affirm some part of their self-worth, or to emote to others a part of who they believe they are as people — i.e., folks who think, consciously or no, “I am what I consume”).

I’ll also repeat what I wrote earlier: this thread now belongs in the Community Discussion forum.

You know when you're with a group of people and just talking and you say something? And then some other person just kind of chimes in with a not really relevant comment in a lame attempt to be funny/clever?

And then the rest of the group just ignores the comment and moves on because the person was really lame?

Yeah, that's me here.

 

[B S Magnet]

You know when you're with a group of people and just talking and you say something? And then some other person just kind of chimes in with a not really relevant comment in a lame attempt to be funny/clever?

And then the rest of the group just ignores the comment and moves on because the person was really lame?

Yeah, that's me here.

Nah, that ain’t how I saw it, and factoring this observation, is not how I see it.

Now, as for all the, uh, guests to this thread who brigaded, passed giant stinks, and saturated a lot of breathing air by defec9’ing (8+1) on the original post (of what was intended to be a personally revelatory moment they wanted to share with the regulars around here)… now that was basura, dechets, pure 🚮. It was needless, with a lot of self-congratulatory takes (in contravention to the EIM remit) littered throughout. It did not lend to a convivial, collegial, or civil atmosphere. And once it went in that direction, it no longer was a discussion about Early Intel Macs.

 

[Jack Neill]

I have a stable of 20+ Macs that range from 2002 to 2020, including some M1's and I love the AS. Excellent machines. I keep finding myself going back to my 2018 13" i7/16/1TB for around the house. It's a machine I put some anxiety ridden effort into as I turned broken Macs into a near perfect one and it still feels so premium to me. Sonoma still runs great and while it's only half as fast as my M1 I can't seem to put it down.

Side Note: A late Intel forum would be amazing..

 

[VirtuallyInsane]

Anyone else here returning to Intel Mac's or still using early/late Intel Mac's in 2024? What's your reason?

At the moment, I am daily driving a Macbook Pro 2015 15" because my M1 Macbook Pro 2020 won't let me log in because of a keyboard malfunction. I have tried USB-C keyboards, and nothing is working.

I needed a new Mac laptop to sync stuff and use for daily usage but only could spend around £350. I went on eBay to see how much a MBP 2015 was going for, and to my surprise, one in great condition with good specs was there for £320, so I just got it.

So far it's been great, and although it gets a bit hot it's got a great screen. I didn't want the MBP 2019 because I am planning to upgrade once I save up enough money, and the other models go down more. It's a temporary, not a permanent upgrade, the MBP 2015. It will do for now.

 

[rampancy]

I'm transitioning to an M2 MacBook Air from my stalwart 2017 T2-less 13" MacBook Air, and to my Apple/MacBook-obsessed self that loved to tinker around with A1181s, it feels like the end of an era. I've developed a deep passion for the old post-2009 MacBook Airs, having used the original 11" 2010 model, and an 11" 2013. (And that original 11" 2010 was an absolute champ; despite the anemic-seeming 1.4 Ghz C2D, 2 GB of RAM and 64 GB SSD, it handled everything I threw at it with aplomb.) I replaced my 2017's battery with a great quality iFixit replacement and it's still going strong. And I still may follow through on replacing the SSD, once I figure out what my options are.

The M2 is just lovely to use. The screen and webcam are wonderful, and MagSafe is just one of those things you don't appreciate until it isn't there. But not having the psychological sense that I could easily replace the SSD (somewhat) and battery if I needed to is enough to still give me pause.

Technologically, I get that this is "the future". That putting everything but the mass storage on one package is going to be where chip design is likely going to go for consumer products. I was kind of wondering if the Apple Silicon era would rekindle some of the old-school excitement we had for system specs and speculation during the PPC days, but I'm just not feeling it with AS.

My M2 is going to kick some serious butt, I know for sure. It's nice actually being on the latest-and-greatest version of Mac OS macOS instead of seeing all of the Chromium/Electron-based apps I use slowly wither and die on 10.14 (which I'm stubbornly holding on to because of my old 32-bit games). But I'm going to miss opening up my Intel Mac and actually seeing a computer my aging brain can make sense of, versus something that reminds me more of an iPhone.

In the meantime, can anyone point me to some recommendations on how to upgrade the SSD of a 2017 MacBook Air?