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 (π).
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 π), 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 π) also had the side effect of me becoming really interested in performance optimization in programming π₯
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 π€£
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My first two laptops both lasted 10 years.
Every laptop I've had has had an overheating problem. First I was on AMD Athlon 64, then Intel Pentium, then Intel i3. I am buying a laptop with Intel i5 this week.
As your laptop still lasts after 8 years without being broken, you have a good laptop. I thought the build quality of mac laptops are good so they don't slow down over time.
8 years is quite a long time for any laptop I think. What slows them down, other than wear and tear is software which gets more resource hungry over time.
I'm right there with you. I'm still rocking my 2012 MBP 15". I also bought a 2012 Mac Mini a few years ago. I upgraded to SSD and added more RAM on both. The only thing I'm really missing out on are the nice retina screens of today's MBP.
Ah ah living the 2012 life I see :-)
Still rocking my early 2011 MBP, only upgraded to 16 GB RAM and changed battery, everything else still humming along.
Ahah amazing! :-)
Wow, it's amazing 8 years! I have one since 2015 and still work. I hope it works 3 more years because in this model I cannot change the memory π
It looks like the MBP 2015 once was the "best laptop ever made": marco.org/2017/11/14/best-laptop-ever
Don't know what's the current situation, the reviews of the latest MBP seem very favorable.
I want the magsafe back though, and all sort of ports :D
9 years!! That's one more. Who knows, maybe in a year's time I'll make another post :D
If I were to only do graphics and editing I'd consider switching back to Windows too, but I really don't like the operating system and I don't want to deal with WSL2 :D
Glad you're happy though!
I have a Lenovo IdeaPad Z470 and it will be 8 years this October. Was partially retired from programming duties after a year and was mostly a secondary dev & primary gaming device for most of its years. while it really has slowed down a bit, I never had to replace any of its part.
It's my first laptop. And truly if you take good care of your possessions, they will surely take care of you as well. Cheers to more years! π
Nice, well done! :D
I think that if we I were a regular "surfing the web user" I could keep this until it phisically breaks but as I work with it I might take a shortcut at some point but I'm going to wait for the factories and shops to reopen.
8 years is impressive! I think the 2012 was my first introduction to a Macbook Pro. I have such fond memories of how over the moon I was when I started using it.
I sometimes miss having some ports on my laptop, and being able to have more than one usb plugged in at a time π
"Fun story": I bought my first Macbook (non Pro at the time) with money that I got with Google's Summer of Code. So I have to thank Google for me becoming a Apple customer (I had zero Apple devices back then) π€£
That one time I tried to type something on an
AZERTYkeyboardGreat choice on going with the i7 model back then!
Ah ah same here. First thing I did was to change the keyboard layout. I can type with the US layout and the Italian one. That's it. I tried a few times going back to
AZERTYbut my head exploded too :DMy personal laptop is still a ThinkPad X1 Carbon 1st gen which works perfectly fine! (except maybe an issue with the "B" key which starts wiggling a bit). I don't use it so much lately but it has definitely a loooot of mileage.
That's amazing because before that I had much less money to put in laptops and they broke after 2~3 years or so. In the end, it's much more cost efficient:
All that for something literally 3x lighter, with much better screen and performance.
The bottom line is: invest in a computer that's going to be nice to use and last long, it's actually cheaper and better
I don't remember exactly how much I paid for this but I think it was around 1500β¬. So we're around 187β¬ per year, plus the SSD and the memory plus adjusting for inflation :D
Anyway, a good deal though.
My old post about how 2018 Macbook Pro were overpriced is not holding the test of time well (though the MBP 2020 prices are steep in absolute terms)
I have no complaints with mine. No noise. Nothing. I just had to replace the keyboard 1 year ago.
Ah, the keyboards :D Fortunately they fixed that!
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
I feel you, that's really hard to deal with, with the software we have today!
Wow yeah, me too! My 2013 MacBook Air still going strong, no matter how many times I drop it! π
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.