Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells

102 点作者 daigoba66超过 9 年前

22 条评论

I'm writing this from a late 2008 Macbook (the first Unibody Macbook, and the direct ancestor of the Macbook the article talks about). On this laptop, I finished school, develop, Photoshop, store all my pictures/videos/music. It is my only machine. It's great. I'm about to purchase my third battery for it (they decline dramatically at around 1300 loadcycles); replacement is very simple (there's a door on mine), even though Apple no longer sells replacement batteries. I've maxed the ram to 8GB, put in a 256GB SSD.So what happens when I finally purchase a new laptop, use it for 5 years, and Apple no longer supports replacing the battery? Then I'm spudgering out glued-in batteries with iFixit's iOpener. And I'd eventually like to upgrade to 512GB, but $700 up from the base price of the 13" Macbook Pro is not how I want to do it... I'd rather wait and upgrade it myself. Will OWC make the SSD card to do it? Hopefully. It's just... disappointing. I'd like a way to get the bulletproofness (just over 7 years on this one without issue) of a solid aluminum unibody but not give up the upgradeability.Perhaps I'm a dinosaur.Guess I'll shoot for another 3 years with this thing until the base Macbook Pros are a significant upgrade. Oh well.

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gruturo超过 9 年前

One additional reason it still makes sense as a product: last 3-4 years have been... Quite underwhelming, from a CPU power perspective. A little bit of power efficiency, which does have its place on a laptop, but other than that, hardly anything noticeable in day to day use.Intel is clearly not feeling the heat from competition and their pricing, minimal improvement and feature fragmentation clearly show it.Giving up on AMD ever going back to making them feel a bit of heat again.So wishing for Apple to release an ARM MacBook, just to put some fear into Intel, and return some health to the market.

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shirro超过 9 年前

I have an ancient mid-2009 MacBook. I walked out the Apple retailer and straight into a cut-price PC parts shop and upgraded the ram and hard drive to avoid some Apple tax. I am probably overdue to replace my second battery but I haven't been travelling much for awhile. My second or third HDD was swapped for an SSD quite some time ago.It wouldn't be fast enough for some jobs but as long as I have browser and terminal I cope ok. I have been going to replace it for years but Apple keep on making more and more unserviceable hardware.I am a very satisfied Apple customer who will never buy another Apple product. When this machine dies I will buy a quality laptop that isn't disposable and run Linux again.

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soared超过 9 年前

> It’s very inexpensive, even when specced up. $1400 buys the fastest CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB disk from AppleI had to laugh a little at this. $900 bought me a 5th gen i7, 16gb RAM, 1TB SSD and 256gb SSD. I do have to suffer through w10 and a lenovo backdoor though.

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petemc_超过 9 年前

The built-in ethernet is the biggest selling point for me. My work often requires me to plug into various devices via wired ethernet and it's almost guaranteed I would forget/lose an adapter one day.If the 2008 macbook I've used every day since I bought it new fails, and the spare I got from a rich client who felt the need to upgrade also fails, I would probably consider buying 2012 version.

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cooper12超过 9 年前

One reason not mentioned is that you can actually replace the disk drive with a caddy to put in another hard drive. I replaced mine with an SSD. I also upgraded the RAM so I could finally appease Chrome because I would get a lot of swapping to disk previously. I'd say it's quite competitive to the later models and does everything I need. (Just don't look at a retina screen or you'll be jealous) Repairability is a huge feature that is being lost, so I'm very grateful to iFixit for advocating for it and putting out such valuable guides. Sadly, there's an issue with mine where the hard drive cable breaks after a few months and I've had to get it replaced about 4 times already. The thermals also aren't very good so under heavy CPU load it heats up, though that doesn't happen for me much unless I (rarely) play a game or use all my cores. The added ports are just a bonus, even if I don't use them often like the Ethernet port.Edit: Just noticed that it is mentioned in the first footnote.

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dkrich超过 9 年前

The short version of this is that there is a lot of money to be made from enterprises by selling them outdated technology because enterprises are almost always slow to adopt new technology. That's how Dell and Microsoft Sharepoint still make a lot of money.It's not necessarily a bad thing when taking into account the economics of training IT personnel and the added costs of supporting cutting edge technologies. But I don't think many individual buyers would argue that the 2012 MBP is a better computer in pretty much any way than a 2015 MBP with Retina display.

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centizen超过 9 年前

This 2012 MacBook has been a cult hit amongst doctors and other medical professionals that I support, largely because patient information is still transferred via CD or DVD.

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bbody超过 9 年前

I am also still on the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro and I love it. I have added an SDD, moved HDD to DVD slot, replaced the battery and added an extra 8gb of RAM (will upgrade to 16gb when I can justify it).I love my MacBook Pro and am dreading when I have to upgrade, the price of buying a new one doesn't seem worth it considering just a moderate spec upgrade.

Negative1超过 9 年前

Writing this on mine right now. I went with the mid-priced model figuring the HDD size and extra RAM would basically cost me about the same if I bought and installed them myself.After a year I took out the DVD drive and replaced it with a 512GB SSD giving me over a TB of storage. That hurt the battery life (and increased the weight) quite a bit but it dramatically decreased startup time, made everything a bit faster and made sure I wasn't constantly hurting for storage.Next up is the battery which is definitely not holding the same charge anymore.At work I have the latest and greatest and it is fantastic but most of that is just cake for most users. Biggest things I like about newer Macs? Retina and a thinner/lighter profile. For the really hefty stuff (games, graphics programming, 3d modeling...) I have a custom built PC from the same time that blows it away performance wise.In the end, right tool right job.

yuhong超过 9 年前

I have been thinking about Apple and EPEAT for a while now. Why not make MacBooks with removable batteries etc that are not outdated for governments etc that need it?

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bluedino超过 9 年前

The 13" Air can often be had for $799 which makes it that much more appealing.I have an i7 2012 13" Pro loaded up with 8GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. It's a pretty potent machine but the screen resolution holds it back somewhat - I wish they had put a 1440x900 screen in it like the Air.

tomcam超过 9 年前

All the bad things people are saying/ implying about the new MacBook are completely right! But the truth is, I wouldn't trade mine for anything, because I love the fact that it's incredibly light and does not have a fan. I have many, many, MacBook Airs and mac pros, but the MacBook Air has always seemed to have a problem with the fan going on at random. Now that there's no fan, I'm a very happy developer.

Overtonwindow超过 9 年前

An excellent write up. In 2013 I was afraid they were going to get rid of the 101, so I bought it. Still using it today, and I just purchased a hard drive upgrade to put in it. It will probably be my last MacBook for many years to come. Upgradability, is the most important feature in my book. I still have A 2009 model running Snow Leopard, and it works great. I see no reason to go to a retina machine

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discodave超过 9 年前

I hear that a large Seattle based software company known for being 'cheap' gives their developers the oldest/cheapest Macbooks that they can...:)

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secondtimeuse超过 9 年前

I just realized that this is the one that I use and love. Given the ample number of ports USB/Ethernet/Thunderbolt and SSD I have never felt a need to replace it. The lack of non-Retina screen does not bothers me much since I use it with an external monitor. Having read this article I am now worried about breaking it since it seems Apple has no better options yet.

jtcond13超过 9 年前

Writing this from a mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro (2.26 Ghz processor). I've also upgraded RAM/HD over the years, as well as replacing the battery. It's mostly for internet with some occasional programming and sound editing. It runs the latest Mac OS.Is there an obvious reason to upgrade that I'm missing?

mindo超过 9 年前

I have late 2011 MBP 13. I did upgrade it with 16GB ram/512SSD and 32GB MiniDrive (SD). Don't see any reason to upgrade ATM. Looking at MBP 12'' single port insanity im scared to even think about it...

doggydogs94超过 9 年前

I needed a Mac to write iPhone apps using XCode. I found a 101 on eBay for about $750; 256GB SSD plus 4GB memory; upgraded to 16GB memory for $80. The 101 was perfect for what I wanted.

ddingus超过 9 年前

This is my favorite model. Just suffered a spill and I'm debating whether to fix it, and I have once before, and it was not easy, or get another one...

rileymat2超过 9 年前

I love my current 17 inch 2011 MacBook Pro for a lot of reasons outlined in the article and will not be happy when I need to replace it.

mschuster91超过 9 年前

13 inch is SMALL. Does a MBP exist with the same features (user-accessible disk/ram/battery/optical) in the 15in range?

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