The increasingly long lives of old Macs

2009 octo mac pro with only 8 GB of ram ... still using it daily for all rsync.net work related duties (which includes at least 2 vmware fusion VMs running at all times). Works perfectly. Is fast. Runs snow leopard without a hitch.<p>2008 Macbook air was in (hard) daily use and travel from end of 2008 to beginning of 2015. Would still be using it if not for 2 GB of RAM becoming insufficient for a browser with many open tabs.<p>I&#x27;ve owned a lot of computers of many different form factors and it&#x27;s hard to think of anything that comes close in terms of physical design and durability. <i>Maybe</i> SGI workstations from the Octane2&#x2F;Tezro years ... and current model supermicro rackmount servers.<p>I&#x27;m worried, however ... the new 12&quot; macbook with a <i>single</i> port (which gets used up by the power adaptor) is a fatal flaw. I&#x27;ve wanted a retina MBA for years now and now that there is one, there is no way I can use it. I predict buying a max-spec 11&quot; MBA[1] just before they go out of production and using that for many years.<p>[1] with two full-sized USB ports in addition to thunderbolt.<p>EDIT: also, I haven&#x27;t checked recently, but I <i>think</i> there now exists a <i>bootable</i> PCIe SSD for 2009 Mac Pros ... which means if I max out my ram and switch to PCIe SSD I could very easily run this Mac Pro for <i>another five years</i>. I think there is a 4k capable video card available for it and the lack of fast SATA is obviated by the pcie SSD ... really the only thing missing would be USB3, but I can live without that...

Adorable! I&#x27;ve got a Dell E1505 laptop that I bought refurbished in mid-2006 for $650 that is currently running Windows 10. The biggest bottleneck was the hard drive, which I&#x27;d swap out to an SSD if I really intended to give it any heavy use. The Dell came with XP, I upgraded to the Windows 7 preview and let it sit, upgraded to the Windows 8 preview and let it sit, upgraded to the Windows 10 preview, and now it has full-fledged Windows 10 - so I ended up with a completely free OS upgrade path, too.<p>You can&#x27;t run new Mac operating systems on old hardware, and for a few iterations now, you can&#x27;t upgrade Mac laptop hardware. That&#x27;s great that the writer thinks functioning computer hardware from 2008 is old, and that Apple hardware is that much better than alternatives. Working for a company where everyone&#x27;s on Macbook pros (myself included since last August), the reality of Apple hardware reliability is quite different than what articles like this project.

I think this article is a little misleading. I&#x27;m running a 2010 Macbook Pro that still works great. But the only reason I&#x27;m able to do so is because of its upgradability. Over its life, I doubled the ram and swapped in an SSD.<p>The Macbook Pros sold today do not allow HD upgrades. (I&#x27;m not sure about ram.) I doubt they will last as long as my current one has.

My current daily work machine is a Thinkpad X61; according to the corporate property tracking system, it was acquired in October of 2007. It&#x27;s never been upgraded, but with a dual-core 64-bit processor and 4 GB of RAM I can run most things I need and even start up a VM if necessary. I&#x27;ve been using it for several weeks now because I don&#x27;t have a proper desk at my new location yet.<p>There&#x27;s nothing magical about a Mac, you just have to pick something comparable instead of a $300 Best Buy HP.

It&#x27;s not a unique property of Macs. I&#x27;ve got the cheapest laptop I could buy in August 2001, a Toshiba that still runs...and runs fine with Wary Puppy or Win2k despite it&#x27;s CopperMine 800mhz Celeron for many tasks. I&#x27;ve got a Dell workstation from 2008 that still has more cores than I can light up unless I try...and this Thinkpad, bought used, is 2010 vintage.<p>Computers tend not to go bad. Instead, jumping on the feature bandwagon that drives the product line model to profitability makes us feel that 800 million cycles per second is useless. In the early aughts, out in my garage I had bootlegged Windows Advanced Server running on a 40mhz 486DX2 with 8 megs of RAM full time to serve up the occasional file off the 340meg disk.

Every version of OS X prior to Tiger (2012) dropped support for something (e.g. x86, PowerPC, G4s, G3s, !Firewire etc). Every version of OS X since Tiger has supported Macs as far back as 2009. The only systems supported prior 2009 by post Tiger OS X are the Core 2 Duo units were only in the high-end. If you happened to buy an x86 ( not x64) Mac then you got upgraded once from Leopard to Snow Leopard and that was it. iOS has even spottier support for hardware with older versions dropped at almost every release.<p>The reason for this period of longevity isn&#x27;t that Apple dedicated itself to supporting these legacy systems, that&#x27;s a decidedly unApple thing to do. When Apple adopts a new technology that changes something fundamental about their operating system (e.g. PPC-&gt;x86, 32bit-&gt;64bit), they dump support for legacy systems in 1 or 2 versions. The reason for this long period of stability is that hardware performance reached a plateau and the focus shifted towards smaller and lighter systems with increasingly longer lasting batteries.<p>Let&#x27;s also remember that if you counted up every Apple Mac regardless of OS, they would account for less of the PC market than the number of machines running Windows XP (a 14 year old OS that Microsoft still supports). Or that Microsoft Windows 10 can run on any x86 or x64 CPU 1Ghz with 1GB RAM made in the last 15 years.

I have and use a 2006 MacBook Pro 17&quot; which Apple treats in a bizarre way. Latest version of Mac OS X works on it fine as do things like Photos (which sucks but that&#x27;s another story) and iTunes.<p>But they don&#x27;t support the hardware. It is considered (their word): obsolete. The battery died long ago (Apple actually replaced it once years ago when it swelled up) and needs replacing (the replacement battery also swelled up) and they won&#x27;t replace it.

My parents still use an old G4 tower of mine I got in 1999&#x2F;2000. They mainly use an iPad but they use it from time to time for accounting things and basic tasks an iPad can&#x27;t handle.<p>Honestly, the case is still unbelievably cool looking. I want it when they eventually decide to get rid of it.

<i>Good for you, good for me, good for America</i><p>In some ways this is good, but in others—a la Peter Thiel in <i>Zero to One</i>[1]—it isn&#x27;t: if so many computers are &quot;good enough,&quot; that indicates that innovation in the sector has slowed and that many people don&#x27;t find the newer models compelling.<p>Another reading could be, &quot;No killer apps take advantage of much faster processors and interconnects.&quot;<p>[1] My thoughts: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jakeseliger.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;09&#x2F;24&#x2F;zero-to-one-peter-thiel-and-blake-masters" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jakeseliger.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;09&#x2F;24&#x2F;zero-to-one-peter-thiel-an...</a>.

One of the reasons I think is the magsafe connectors. I have recycled a stack of other laptops where the power port (and PCB underneath) were ground up from the inherit abuse and prybar leverage of a traditional connector.

&quot;If you look at the system requirements for the upcoming OS X El Capitan, for example, you’ll see that it’ll run on computers as old as a mid–2007 iMac. More to the point, you’ll notice that those requirements are unchanged from its predecessor, Yosemite&quot;. Wrong. I updated my 2007 iMac to Yosemite and it was unusable. Each clicks takes seconds to respond. That is after I added RAM. I replaced it with Mint which works just fine. While hardware is durable, their system requirements are misleading.

I got a white MacBook in 2006. My school bought it for me because they had to burn some money budgeted for disabled students (I&#x27;m deaf) and I was doing a correspondence course that required a computer. I bought it off the school minus depreciation when I graduated and used it for several more years. When I upgraded in 2011, I gave the white MacBook to my brother, who is still using it to this day. I replaced the ram, battery, hard drive and power cord (twice). The trackpad and screen hinge are a bit tired. But as a netflix&#x2F;email&#x2F;facebook machine, it&#x27;s still providing my brother with reliable service after 9 years. I&#x27;m awestruck. Neither my brother or I is particularly gentle with our electronics, either.<p>The 2011 MacBook Pro is also still running fine.

I&#x27;ve got a free mac from a friend who upgraded to a latest retina model - it was a 2009 Core2Duo 15&quot; MacBook Pro. I&#x27;ve put a 128GB SSD in(cheapest kingston one), bought a new charger, cleaned it throughout and it works perfectly well. It&#x27;s really impressive.

At our company we are normally not allowed to order Mac laptops. An argument similar to the one in this post while pointing to my 2007 MBP that I was still using convinced my manager to shell out the extra $500 or so compared to the crappy HP laptop last year.

As a hobbyist I have always been frustrated with the price of used Macs, even ones that weren&#x27;t even usable anymore. I just wanted an old G3 or Quadra to goof around on, and guy still wanted $600 for them. C&#x27;mon!

The thing is that this is mostly anecdotal. I had a mid-2010 MacBook Pro and I finally had to replace it at the end of last year after a whole year of trouble with the hard disk - got the cable replaced first (which helped for a while), then tried to put the HDD in the CD drive slot using an enclosure (so I could use the CD drive port) but that failed after a while too. Seems like the logic board is kaputt.<p>I did drop it a few times over the course of its life - that could&#x27;ve had an impact (pun intended!) but that&#x27;s difficult to say.

I&#x27;ve been planning to replace my 2010 MacBook 13&quot; for a few years. Each year it keeps doing everything I need it too, and the new systems don&#x27;t seem like enough of a jump. I upgraded to 16gb of RAM and a 750gb hybrid drive. It hates doing anything computationally intensive, my IDEs take another few milliseconds to respond, but if I am patient it does everything I need.<p>I have no idea how long it will last at this point, I think it could be good enough for a few more years. If I put in an SSD it would give it another life.

My daughter is using my old 2008 aluminum MacBook daily. I&#x27;ve replaced the battery, swapped out the HDD for an SDD and bumped up the RAM from 2 Gb to 4 Gb. It&#x27;s running Yosemite and everything is working great. Keeping my fingers crossed we can get another 2-3 years out of this machine.<p>I had a 2006 MacBook that finally gave up the ghost a few months ago after nine years of daily use.<p>Finally, I have an iPad 3 that&#x27;s still going strong and running the latest version of iOS.<p>I replace my iPhones every couple of years so I can&#x27;t speak to their longevity.

Half of the appeal of using a Mac for me is being able to sell and buy used and keep up to what was up to date a year ago for &gt;100$ annually.

Recently retired my early 2008 mac pro; replaced by... a hackintosh! I used to use that machine as a linux workstation, but I&#x27;ve replaced &#x2F;that&#x2F; by a bigger one still.<p>And yeah, if there was a pro machine that wasn&#x27;t ridiculous like the ashtray, I&#x27;d buy one... Instead, it&#x27;s the first time I don&#x27;t own an apple machine since the SE&#x2F;30 days...

Hah, I still use my 2003 PowerMac G5 Dual 2.5GHz every now and then.<p>The 30&quot; Cinema Display I got with it is STILL my daily monitor, although I generally hook it up to my MacBook Pro instead.<p>I can&#x27;t believe how long they lasted, and the money I spent on them has been absolutely worth it. A lot cheaper than spending $600 every 2 years on a new system.

I gave my kids an ipad 2 and it&#x27;s been through 3 years of hell, but it still works like a champ.

I still use my 1999 Powermac every week to drive my drum scanner, which requires a proprietary card and OS9 drivers. Works flawlessly, with original keyboard and mouse!<p>My other machines are a BTO 2010 Macbook Air and a 2011 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM and two SSDs.

Using same 2008 macbook as article mentions with same upgrades, going great. Same can&#x27;t be said for all macbooks though, 2011 range springs to mind as particularly prone to failure and the newer ones just don&#x27;t feel as sturdy to me.

I still have a 2007 (or 08?) iMac in my office that I use to watch Netflix. I just replaced the HDD with a SSD some years ago. The machine still runs great on OS X 10.10.<p>The only thing that&#x27;s a little off-putting is the screen&#x27;s CFL backlight.

I had an auto mechanic circa 5 years ago that ran his whole business from a System 7 mac, I think it was a Quadra series. The thing was caked in garage soot but seemed to be cranking along quite comfortably churning out estimates etc.

I have a Mac SE&#x2F;30 FDHD (dual floppy) with external LaCie hard drive that still works.<p>Not that it&#x27;s useful but kind of fun to boot up every now and then.

I have an original Apple Macintosh and 512Ke still in working order. Can&#x27;t say the same for most of the floppy disks.

Proud mid-2010 MacBook Pro here. Replaced the HD for a 700 Tb ( or Gb can&#x27;t recall ) for 30 USD. Replaced the top panel for FREE ( love Youth Apple in Taiwan, they used glue on a dislodged key then owned the mistake when the whole keyboard broke and replaced the whole top panel for FREE ). Everything else awesome. Only thing missing is HandOff with my iPhone 5s ( damn old bluetooth ).

I&#x27;m using my Quadra 950 right now, just updating the OS.