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In my experience Apple laptops tend to hold their value pretty well so I'm guessing a $500 machine was 4-5 years old when purchased. So the fact OP could use it

In my experience Apple laptops tend to hold their value pretty well so I'm guessing a $500 machine was 4-5 years old when purchased. So the fact OP could use it for 3 more seems about right. Personally I upgrade around every 4 years and the laptop is still in great condition for most people and sells for well over half what I paid for it.

gaius 10y ago
8 years from a laptop is still more than you would expect from almost any other manufacturer, save maybe IBM/Lenovo tho' I have heard the build quality of Thinkpads has really deteriorated lately.
- vetinari 10y ago
  2009 Thinkpad T400 still working fine, although with updated RAM and SSD. Another 2012 T430s also working fine. Refreshing current Apple computers won't be that easy. Even if you are capable of opening it, compatible M.2 drives won't be easy to find and you won't be able to swap soldered RAM. I'm not sure that my 2015 rMBP will be able to serve so long as that T430s will.
Matt3o12_ 10y ago
Unfortunately this seems to be less and less true over the years. When I got my MacBook about 4 or 5 years ago, it only had 4GB of ram and a pretty slow hard disk. If have upgraded it to 12GB Ram and a pretty good SSD, this is why I can still use such an old MacBook. For the new ones, I have to decide the RAM, and disk upfront and can't replace them anymore (this is especially worrying with the small lifetime with SSDs). I wish Apple made their pro products more bulky so we can upgrade the hardware and let the air products be the sexy, thin ones for Starbucks hipsters.
- csydas 10y ago
  As a long time mac user, I do agree that the lack of upgradability in their Pro line is a problem, and it probably should be the defining factor of Pro versus the Air/Straight Macbook line. That being said, Apple has gone to pretty crazy lengths to ensure that it's modern OSes work on legacy hardware; I was a bit shocked to hear from my parents that they were able to install El Capitan on my dad's 2008 iMac, as I was wary about putting it on my 2012 Macbook Air due to performance concerns. I don't know if this was a conscious decision by Apple to cater to the idea of "Apple = Longevity", but it's very nice to know that a single purchase takes you pretty far. I think Apple could take it a step further and really win over more people if they added the millimeter or two to the Pro line and allowed for the upgrades. It's really a back and forth thing for me; on the one hand, I wish I had more options and the ability to customize later on. On the other hand, since ~2010, the appliance like nature of the portables has worked so seamlessly that my only complaint comes from the lack of an option to upgrade, not the need for an upgrade. For my previous Apple laptop, my own incompetence when trying to do a repair hurt the laptop's longevity; had I not had butterfingers when working on the insides, I'm sure that I could have had another 3 years with my already 5 year old Macbook.
  - douche 10y ago
    Performance has essentially plateaued for the last decade in laptops - aside from sticking SSDs and more memory in them, there isn't a ton of difference in specs. I have a 2006 Windows laptop that runs better now on Win 10 than it did originally on Vista. Except for power consumption, it's the same as my two year old laptop. Of course, with a Windows PC, you've got a variety of options, and can buy something that is actually upgradable, rather than being locked into what Apple deigns to give you.
    - matt4077 10y ago
      I believe the SSD is a pretty large aside, isn't it? GPUs have also vastly improved, I believe. It's just CPU that stagnate at the "good enough" level.
  - Matt3o12_ 10y ago
    While I do agree with most things, there will be a need to upgrade something in the future. When I bought my MacBook, 4GB of Ram were plenty but it is not anymore. Chrome takes to much ram and with 16GB, I don't have to worry about anything. Furthermore, apples new laptops are all dual core (until you buy the bigger one). This is also dealbreaker for me – quad cores are really awesome when using VMs. Sure a CPU cannot be updated on most laptops (and certainly not on apples but I can't blame really). My point is that I'm afraid apples pro series has drifted into a state where their lifespan will shorten while the prices go up. And apple's OS performs really good until you use third party applications that expect better performance then your sad 5-year-old MacBook.
    - gaius 10y ago
      The question is why the software takes up so much more. Firefox is the pain point for me on my 2008 Macbook, for everything else, it's perfectly snappy. I block ads, don't play games or look at animation heavy sites, but even doing nothing but displaying pages, it sits at 2.5G RAM (out of 4) and 100% of one of my two CPU cores. I'd run an old version if it wasn't for the security updates. Utterly ridiculous.
- phamilton 10y ago
  I think this sentiment (pro users want to upgrade their hardware) is inaccurate for most professionals. Hobbyists and freelance/self-employed may want to upgrade their hardware but a professional generally doesn't care. They just want a machine that works and a reasonable path to a new machine that doesn't affect their productivity. That upgrade path is really smooth on OS X. Migration assistant plus thunderbolt cable plus target disk mode makes it really easy.

gaius 10y ago

8 years from a laptop is still more than you would expect from almost any other manufacturer, save maybe IBM/Lenovo tho' I have heard the build quality of Thinkpads has really deteriorated lately.

vetinari 10y ago
2009 Thinkpad T400 still working fine, although with updated RAM and SSD. Another 2012 T430s also working fine. Refreshing current Apple computers won't be that easy. Even if you are capable of opening it, compatible M.2 drives won't be easy to find and you won't be able to swap soldered RAM. I'm not sure that my 2015 rMBP will be able to serve so long as that T430s will.

Matt3o12_ 10y ago

Unfortunately this seems to be less and less true over the years. When I got my MacBook about 4 or 5 years ago, it only had 4GB of ram and a pretty slow hard disk. If have upgraded it to 12GB Ram and a pretty good SSD, this is why I can still use such an old MacBook. For the new ones, I have to decide the RAM, and disk upfront and can't replace them anymore (this is especially worrying with the small lifetime with SSDs). I wish Apple made their pro products more bulky so we can upgrade the hardware and let the air products be the sexy, thin ones for Starbucks hipsters.

csydas 10y ago
As a long time mac user, I do agree that the lack of upgradability in their Pro line is a problem, and it probably should be the defining factor of Pro versus the Air/Straight Macbook line. That being said, Apple has gone to pretty crazy lengths to ensure that it's modern OSes work on legacy hardware; I was a bit shocked to hear from my parents that they were able to install El Capitan on my dad's 2008 iMac, as I was wary about putting it on my 2012 Macbook Air due to performance concerns. I don't know if this was a conscious decision by Apple to cater to the idea of "Apple = Longevity", but it's very nice to know that a single purchase takes you pretty far. I think Apple could take it a step further and really win over more people if they added the millimeter or two to the Pro line and allowed for the upgrades. It's really a back and forth thing for me; on the one hand, I wish I had more options and the ability to customize later on. On the other hand, since ~2010, the appliance like nature of the portables has worked so seamlessly that my only complaint comes from the lack of an option to upgrade, not the need for an upgrade. For my previous Apple laptop, my own incompetence when trying to do a repair hurt the laptop's longevity; had I not had butterfingers when working on the insides, I'm sure that I could have had another 3 years with my already 5 year old Macbook.
- douche 10y ago
  Performance has essentially plateaued for the last decade in laptops - aside from sticking SSDs and more memory in them, there isn't a ton of difference in specs. I have a 2006 Windows laptop that runs better now on Win 10 than it did originally on Vista. Except for power consumption, it's the same as my two year old laptop. Of course, with a Windows PC, you've got a variety of options, and can buy something that is actually upgradable, rather than being locked into what Apple deigns to give you.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    I believe the SSD is a pretty large aside, isn't it? GPUs have also vastly improved, I believe. It's just CPU that stagnate at the "good enough" level.
- Matt3o12_ 10y ago
  While I do agree with most things, there will be a need to upgrade something in the future. When I bought my MacBook, 4GB of Ram were plenty but it is not anymore. Chrome takes to much ram and with 16GB, I don't have to worry about anything. Furthermore, apples new laptops are all dual core (until you buy the bigger one). This is also dealbreaker for me – quad cores are really awesome when using VMs. Sure a CPU cannot be updated on most laptops (and certainly not on apples but I can't blame really). My point is that I'm afraid apples pro series has drifted into a state where their lifespan will shorten while the prices go up. And apple's OS performs really good until you use third party applications that expect better performance then your sad 5-year-old MacBook.
  - gaius 10y ago
    The question is why the software takes up so much more. Firefox is the pain point for me on my 2008 Macbook, for everything else, it's perfectly snappy. I block ads, don't play games or look at animation heavy sites, but even doing nothing but displaying pages, it sits at 2.5G RAM (out of 4) and 100% of one of my two CPU cores. I'd run an old version if it wasn't for the security updates. Utterly ridiculous.
phamilton 10y ago
I think this sentiment (pro users want to upgrade their hardware) is inaccurate for most professionals. Hobbyists and freelance/self-employed may want to upgrade their hardware but a professional generally doesn't care. They just want a machine that works and a reasonable path to a new machine that doesn't affect their productivity. That upgrade path is really smooth on OS X. Migration assistant plus thunderbolt cable plus target disk mode makes it really easy.