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Anyone who buys a Macbook Pro today, before they're updated in the fall, will be able to use it for the next 3 years without issue. My Macbook Air was purchased

• tim333 10y ago
  Seconded from a 2012 Air. Still works fine.
  • dejv 10y ago
    Same here, but I had to replace battery last year.
  • enraged_camel 10y ago
    Thirded. It still works like a champ after 4 years. No issues.
  • slowmovintarget 10y ago
    Whether it "works fine" (and my Pro works fine) is not the point. When you can now buy more powerful laptops with longer battery life for less money than current Macs, it becomes hard to justify the premium price for a Mac. It seems like Apple is hoping the consumer won't notice and still buy the brand as though it's a designer item and not electronics. I suspect that this is not the primary motivation for their current lack of new tech. I think that the largest part for this regression from the cutting edge is a consequence of no longer having Steve Jobs pushing every part of the company for its utmost. Apple, when you anthropomorphize the actions of the company as a whole, comes off as arrogant. They had earned this by actually delivering the best you could buy. The best laptops, the best phones, the best music players, the best tablets. With the exception of tablets, this is no longer true, in any category (not even phones). And that is the issue. Not whether the device is still good enough. It ought to be the best, because that was what we came to expect from Apple. The premium ought to be a no-brainer because you get what you pay for. It isn't like that anymore and if you're a fan of Apple (and I have been since the Apple IIe) then you really wish it were.
    • IOT_Apprentice 10y ago
      Exactly. Apple could offer more RAM and innovation on the GPU side. And more ports.
  • wlesieutre 10y ago
    2011 Air here. Audio hardware is all dead (speakers + mic + headphone jack), but it works for development. If I can only expect to get 3 years of use from a laptop, that's pretty disappointing. Especially one that starts at $1300. Or $1550 if you want the warranty to actually cover it for that period.
    • PeterisP 10y ago
      So it's $43 / month or $10 / week. Is that really a big number for a primary work tool?
      • ksk 10y ago
        Yes, that is completely unreasonable. I expect hardware to last atleast 10 years. Nobody wants to be on some kind of constant upgrade treadmill. Not to mention the enormous environmental impact of un-repairable computers that you have to trash every X years.
      • wlesieutre 10y ago
        If it were the only computer in existence, probably not. But it gets measured relative to all of its competitors, which get updated more than every two years and have their prices go down when they're old. Also it's not my primary work tool. If your company wants to buy you one, great, but spending my personal hobby budget on outdated gear is a harder sell. And yes, $43/month over 3 years is a lot of money. $1550, in fact. Breaking it down like that to make it feel like a smaller number is a shitty trick that only works because we have bad instincts at math.
• brightball 10y ago
  I've still got my 2010 17 inch. Upgrading to an SSD removed all of the performance issues I was experiencing and personally I'm not buying another Mac until they have a new 17 option. If this thing ever dies on me I'm just going to switch to Ubuntu.
  • CydeWeys 10y ago
    I don't think anyone is expecting them to ever release a 17" laptop again. Looks like you'll be putting Ubuntu on a Windows laptop whenever this one dies.
  • patrickmay 10y ago
    Hey, I'm on my 17 inch right now! I've just about given up on Apple releasing another laptop in this size. I'll probably upgrade in the next release cycle -- I love this machine but it just can't run the number of Docker instances I need for work.
  • paulcole 10y ago
    > I'm not buying another Mac until they have a new 17 option. You are in for a long wait. I can't imagine they'll ever release that size again. Apple's definitely shifting quickly to the 2 or 3 options that cover 95% of the market.
  • gumby 10y ago
    Why do you want the 17? I switched to a 15 retina which has more pixels than my 17 did. What mattered to me was how many characters I could get on the screen so I simply run it in non-retina mode. And it's a lot lighter. If you want the absolute screen size: indeed, I doubt there will be another. But if it's all about the pixels, you can already do better than the 17.
    • Nullabillity 10y ago
      I'm not the GP, but I imagine I'll be in that situation in a few years. Well, except for that I'd never buy anything from Apple anyway. No matter how good your eyes are, you can only go so small without stuff becoming blurry. Personally 15"/1080p is about as small as I can go without text becoming unreadable without HiDPI scaling, and some of my friends complain about reading text on my laptop as it is. So, for me, switching to a higher-DPI screen is not an option since it just means a higher cost, awful blur for the many applications that don't support DPI scaling, and somewhere between no and very diminished benefits. At the same time I'd never want to give up on all the extra screen real estate so 17" (or bigger!) would inevitably be the only option for me.
• mhurron 10y ago
  That's a if they're updated in the Fall. Rumour had it several lines would have been updated this past spring. Anyone who buys a MacBook Pro today, before whenever it is the line gets updated, will be happy with it, which is of course a good thing. (Outside of being hit by hardware issues or something) When the line is updated, you probably won't notice a performance difference between the current model and whatever the next one is. The time of huge improvements with every processor upgrade has long since past, the RAM speed will not be that much different and it will be using solid state storage at again about the same speed as the current model. This is why people will keep their hardware longer. A lot of hardware upgrades are now coming from when the hardware no longer supports the latest OS. Sierra will work with MacBooks going back to 2009, and they had upgradable RAM and storage so even those laptops will be able to run the latest OS with performance that is acceptable to most people. All of this means that Apple is going to have a slower cycle for hardware bumps since the cost of a rapid cycle probably doesn't bring the revenue spike it used to.
  • emn13 10y ago
    Laptops are still getting a little faster, because TDP issues are less pronounced on newer, less power-thirsty models. And of course, battery life expectancy may get better. But the real upgrade would be to models that either already had integrated graphics (and now will have much faster integrated graphics), or that had GPUs (and with the new pascal/polaris generations, will likely have much faster and less power hungry GPUs). You might also notice improvements in SSDs, though I'm skeptical that despite large relative improvements most workloads really benefit much - after all, any semi decent SSD will have largely moved most bottlenecks out of the I/O subsystem, and then it really won't matter much if you reduce those last few milliseconds of latency even further. Some people will notice, however, and what you will notice is that you don't need to choose between fast or large as much anymore - a 1TB ssd is pretty affordable, and smaller SSDs might even be classified as "cheap" by macbook standards. Still, I last updated (my non-mac laptop) just after haswell was released, and discounting SSD size and GPU, modern laptops seem very unattractive. Due to the glass screen fetish nowadays; most are heavier and more fragile to boot - my 13-inch, more than 3-year old laptop weighs 929g, and the battery still lasts many hours. It's fallen a few times and has a few nasty scratches and one nicked corner, but... upgrades still seem kind of pointless. Are you really going to upgrade for a crappy-but-less crappy iGFX or a larger SSD?
• nextos 10y ago
  Incidentally, the MBA 2012 is a great Linux machine. It was used by Linus himself for pretty long. Near flawless support, except for a somewhat unstable wireless probably due to a bad quality antenna and/or Broadcom driver. So when software support gets phased out, you might be able to get a few extra years on Linux if you wish to do so.
  • Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
    I've got a 2008 13" alu Macbook that's still going strong, dual booting Snow Leopard and Ubuntu. Heat is an issue, but with upgraded RAM and a SSD, it's gets the job done.
    • petemc_ 10y ago
      Any reason you've stuck with snow leopard? I know it was pretty solid but I'm using same laptop and mavericks runs great on it with ssd and ram maxed.
      • Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
        IIRC I has some issues with Lion around when it came out, so just kept it at Snow Leopard. I've also been put off by the general sense that newer versions of OS X are progressively worse, but I haven't bothered to find out for myself. Mainly, I mostly use it as an Ubuntu machine at this point.
• justinlardinois 10y ago
  > Anyone who buys a Macbook Pro today, before they're updated in the fall, will be able to use it for the next 3 years without issue. It kind of depresses me that three years is considered a long lifetime for a computer.
  • CydeWeys 10y ago
    Three years is pretty long for a laptop that sees daily use. That's just the reality of having a physical device that you bring with you everywhere -- it gets beaten up. Also, don't forget that there are basically no user-replaceable parts left, including most importantly the battery. Three years of daily use is enough to significantly degrade batteries. Meanwhile, most of the components in my desktop are older than three years, and it's doing just fine.
    • toothbrush 10y ago
      > Also, don't forget that there are basically no user-replaceable parts left, including most importantly the battery. That, to me, is the real tragedy/travesty. There should be some eco-EU-law or something against that, a bit like the micro USB charger standardisation. I say this typing from a 2008 (or was it 2009?) MacBook on which i've been able to replace the RAM (8GB), disk drive (SSD, single biggest improvement) and battery (lasts longer than when new from factory now), and all of those upgrades weren't expensive at all. Of course i run Linux and XMonad and pretty much the only graphical app is Firefox with NoScript, but still, i can't see myself forking out hard $$$ for a non-maintainable machine. The upgradability isn't even the big deal for me, because as someone else pointed out these days computers are "fast enough", it's the fact that certain components are just going to fail (especially the battery). And it absolutely sends sickly shivers down my spine that people are being forced to landfill perfectly okay hardware because of a battery becoming worn out. Seriously Apple, where have your holistic eco-friendly principles gone?
      • will_hughes 10y ago
        From a physical engineering perspective I don't know how you'd go about making an ultrabook's battery replaceable short of breaking the entire case open.
• djhworld 10y ago
  I had an early 2011 MBP from 2011-January 2016, worked fine. I've since upgraded to whatever the latest model is, and I've donated my old MBP to my parents, who are happy to use it
• SunShiranui 10y ago
  Is 'fast enough' worth it for an expensive laptop such as a MacBook Pro? I'm not sure. Personally I'd really like to see more powerful GPUs in MacBooks...
  • ViViDboarder 10y ago
    Right. I think that's the bigger point. The author says you used to pay a lot for Apple because you knew you were getting "the best computer". Now it's not so simple.
    • Nullabillity 10y ago
      > The author says you used to pay a lot for Apple because you knew you were getting "the best computer". Must be rose-tinted glasses. Apple has been about peddling (what would otherwise be) low-end budget computers to fashion enthusiasts for massive markups for at least a decade.
      • Retra 10y ago
        The only reason I bought an MBP is because it was the only aluminum-bodied, non-touchscreen laptop with a reasonable keyboard layout and quality touchpad that I could find on display in 2012. For the last 10 years, most laptops have been plastic, gimmicky, and loaded with dozens of pointless buttons and stickers.
        • motrine5 10y ago
          This. I don't have the budget for a new Macbook, but everytime in the past couple of years I've wanted to buy a new laptop, I go off to Best Buy, take a look at the plastic, gimmicky touch-screeny windows things they have for sale and end up going to craigslist to buy an almost new Macbook even though it costs a little more (ok sometimes quite a bit more)
        • TACIXAT 10y ago
          Did you not prove the parent comment's point? You were mostly concerned with aesthetics, the case material, keyboard layout, and stickers. I'm personally not a fan of the vendor lock in with Apple. You can spend similar money and get something that isn't difficult to replace the ram on, with slightly better specs, more disk space, etc. As long as you're cool with a plastic case ;)
• cm2187 10y ago
  Plus the changes are toward more battery life not more power. Except for integrated graphics (more pixels) and SSDd (bigger). Many macbook pro are left permanently plugged in.
• franze 10y ago
  > Macbook Air was purchased in 2012 this is a great machine! or in my case: it was a great machine, sadly there was an accident with a kid and some coke so I bought a late 2015 mac book, which is the worst computer I owned ever (see my review here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12165132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12165132 ) hope your mac book air stays with you for a long, long time, I miss mine....
  • usaphp 10y ago
    From your review: "I do a lot of presentation so basically the adapter is part of the machine". If you knew that you need extra sub port all the time - why did you purchase this model? You could have easily get the mba or the retina 13" if you need more ports and longer battery life. I have the retina MacBook and I bought it only to be used as a web dev machine during my travel since I don't need sub ports and I can get 6 hours of work in sublime text + Apache running with no problem. I think a lot of people who have issues with MacBooks are just not using a correct tool for the work, if you need a work machine with sub ports - don't buy the MacBook in the first place, it's not meant for that.
    • toyg 10y ago
      The guy used to have an MBA, which was not exactly rich with ports either; but the new MB is so crap, that port scarcity is now unsufferable. The MB is garbage. It's aimed at the Kardashians of this world. I'm starting to think the delay in refreshing other Mac lines is a desperate attempt to coax people into buying MBs which would otherwise go unsold.
      • usaphp 10y ago
        Calling something "garbage aimed at the Kardashians" just based on a number of ports and not fitting your usage narrative making you sound like Kardashyan yourself. My parents use MB daily, it's a perfect machine for browsing Internet and Word work on the go. I don't get the people who go buy a MB knowing that they need more ports and better performance and them starting now complaining, it's not like you expected MB to grow new ports after you purchased it. What I like about apple laptops and computers is that each of them is aimed at specific work type environment, and when people choose a wrong tool for the job they should blame themselves not the tool.
• chestervonwinch 10y ago
  I still use my 2008 white Macbook, running Snow Leopard. The battery is crap, but it stills runs many (older, non-supported) softwares great. I use mostly a couple of Linux machines now. The only thing that keeps me popping the thing open now and again is Ableton Live, but I've been meaning to give Bitwig a shot. So, it might get retired for good soon.
  • Yhippa 10y ago
    Mine has been relegated to the bin of forgotten hardware at my house. The plastic where your wrists rest keep breaking off and stabbing me. Battery doesn't hold a charge even after being replaced. Slow as a dog and can't get the latest OS updates.
  • stuartd 10y ago
    Mid-2007 white MacBook here, 2GB RAM, SSD, on it's third or fourth battery. Running Lion. DVD drive died long ago, plastic on the front split after a couple of years but has been stable ever since. Been used every day of it's life by me and my kids (who were 3 and 1 YO when I bought it). Although now I am the only one who uses it. The main problem now is finding a browser that's supported and updateable - Chrome gave up ages ago, and FF48 is the last version to support Lion. Hates Flash though so I've long uninstalled that.
  • wyclif 10y ago
    I still use mine as well. Mostly because SL is OS X done right. It's super stable compared to the newer versions of OS X. I never have to restart it. Of course, the caveats you mentioned are still in play. But I do most work in iTerm2 and Firefox, so it's fine for that.
• deleted 10y ago
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• jghn 10y ago
  This. I have an iMac from 2009 which is totally fine for day to day basic stuff, the kind of usage your average person requires. I have a 2014 rMBP which is far more than enough for an average user. I use it as my primary development machine and push it pretty hard. Would I like something faster? Sure. But it's not too bad in that capacity. I also have a 2016 rMB which is more than enough for basic usage and it's not too bad as a development machine. I prefer coding on my MBP but the difference is small enough that I've stopped bringing my work computer home with me. Long story short: Except for a relatively small group of people with niche needs, people don't need new hardware anymore.
  • exadeci 10y ago
    It's not about the need of new hardware, it's about a company selling you 4 years old computer for the price of a 2016 device. The Iphone 5 is good enough for the job but you wouldn't you buy an Iphone 5 for $800, would you? The thing is that if you take today a 2012 MBP the last ones that were upgradables you can, for a few hundred buck make it much more powerful than and 2016 MBP
• andrepd 10y ago
  Hmm I'm sorry but this sounds like trying to rationalise blindly the fact that Apple sells old computers. It's irrelevant if they are "fast enough" or not. What about energy savings with each generation? What about graphics performance, where Moore's law is undoubtedly still alive as well (~2x gains in the last generation of GPUs)? And no, PC sales are not declining because of the slowing down of Moore's law, but obviously because of smartphones and tablets.
  • moloch 10y ago
    I really want the GPU performance, my mid-2014 MBP can only output to a 4k monitor @30hz
    • DigitalJack 10y ago
      You should look into thunderbolt external GPUs. The discrete GPUs in apple laptops have traditionally been out of date, out of the box. Good enough for a lot of people, but if it matters to you, and you really want a mac, perhaps the external GPU is the option for you.
      • andrepd 10y ago
        The technology is really not there yet. I have been considering changing my setup to a 13.3 light notebook with long battery life + an external GPU, but I'm still waiting on the technology to become mature.
        • elmigranto 10y ago
          Have you looked into Razor thing? They claim full PCI utilization, if I'm not mistaken.
          • toyg 10y ago
            You mean the Razer Core? It looks like it's announced on their website but not actually on sale. EIT: It is actually on sale, but US-only (hence why I couldn't see it with UK settings).
• op00to 10y ago
  My MacBook Air is a mid-2012, and will be good for me for at least another year or two. Very likely when it dies I'll replace the Air with a big iPad Pro and be done with having a personal (rather then work) computer altogether.
• pfarnsworth 10y ago
  I bought a mid-grade PC desktop at the beginning of 2012, and I chose every component myself. The only thing I'm missing is USB 3.0 ports at the front of the computer because that's the one thing that has gained popularity in the last 4 years.
• rainsford 10y ago
  There's nothing wrong with 4 year old computers. They are fast enough for many tasks and have some life left in them. The issue is that Apple is pricing them and marketing them as brand new computers. It's true that people are keeping computers longer than they used to, but that doesn't change the fact that Apple is asking new computer money for something that's way more than 50% of the way through its useful life. Anybody trying to sell a 2012 car for the same price as a new car would be laughed out of town, and cars still last quite a bit longer than computers.
  • Sophistifunk 10y ago
    Car companies do exactly this! Sometimes they might make slight changes to things like bumpers or lights for fashion's sense, but go down to a Mitsubishi dealership - They're still selling the Lancer that's almost 10 years old. A 2012 car isn't cheap because it's behind in technology, it's cheap because somebody else has driven it around for 4 years.
    • OJFord 10y ago
      It's not quite the same with cars though - (and maybe this won't be true going forward, but) there's not really significant savings for the manufacturer in the technology getting cheaper over the years, sure it's cheaper due to scale and as they recover the initial cost of setting up for production - but a lot of the raw components in a laptop just get cheaper.
• prawn 10y ago
  As gaming increasingly tends to happen on consoles and mobile devices, the demands placed on general purpose machines is reduced.
• GreaterFool 10y ago
  I bought a Macbook Pro when it came out and still use it today. 1025 battery cycles and counting. However, I want a new laptop, top of the line with the fastest CPU available today. Is that too much to ask? I want to throw money at Apple but they rather sit on their asses than take it.
• OJFord 10y ago
  > Anyone who buys a Macbook Pro today ... will be able to use > it for the next 3 years without issue. My Macbook Air was > purchased in 2012 and is still fast enough Some people may be able to. I really don't think you can say "anyone". I've had my Air since 2013, and it's really starting to struggle. With Docker, especially.
• WayneBro 10y ago
  OK, but if I buy a Pro level PC laptop today I'll be able to use it for the next 5 or 6 years. That's 2 or 3 years more than the Macbook Pro that I would have undoubtedly paid more for.
• lamontcg 10y ago
  Uhm, some people are really doing tasks that require more computing horsepower. 4k video editing and rendering, 360 video, etc. Even more mundanely the 8k textures for Real Solar System on Kerbal Space Program don't even load on my MBP because the GPU RAM is too low for them. My Hackintosh has a Geforce 980 in it which is leaps and bounds above what I can buy directly from Mac and solves a lot of these problems for me, but it is occasionally finicky and doesn't like to boot up and I wouldn't recommend it to a friend of mine who has an actual dayjob that involves a lot of video editing.