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(What follows is entirely personal and in no way an attack or attempt to demean anyone else's personal choices.) I'm a longtime Mac user currently considering

(What follows is entirely personal and in no way an attack or attempt to demean anyone else's personal choices.) I'm a longtime Mac user currently considering switching away from the Mac. I'm a little sad about it and I don't feel entirely like it's by choice, but it is what it is. This switch is partly in response to the direction Mac OS is heading, but mostly due to hardware cost. I genuinely dislike Apple's emphasis on thinness in their laptops. I genuinely can't afford to spend a minimum of £1,200 on a 13" laptop that's essentially glued shut and has no upgrade path at all. Previous Macs have given me ~10 years of use each because I've been able to buy a configuration I could afford then gradually upgrade the RAM and replace the hard-disk as I needed. Add to that the fact that the cheapest 15" laptop (the size I prefer) is £1,900 which is totally galling and puts it way, way out of my price bracket. As a result, I'm actively looking for where to move when my current MacBook, a 15" from 2009, eventually dies. So far the best options seem to be a modern-ish ThinkPad, which I can get relatively cheaply second-hand and upgrade as I see fit. The ThinkPads are definitely not in Apple's league in terms of fit and finish but they're pretty hardy and give me options within my price range. I'll be sad when I finally leave the Mac, but not heartbroken. There are lots of things I'll miss, but getting to know a new OS -- and hopefully switching platform for the last time -- will be an adventure.

mf2hd 9y ago
Why don't you buy a used mid 2012 MBP instead? For 5-600 pound you can get one with a still good quad core i7 cpu and you can upgrade/replace everything, removing the ODD gives you extra space for additional HDD/SSD, can handle 16GB ram, easy to replace the battery (I just did, it was about 30 quid from amazon), it's perfect. I'm still using mine and not planning to replace it until it dies.
- tinbucket 9y ago
  That's an option I've considered, but it's only really a temporary solution and might not be a viable one when I come to need a new laptop. My 2009 machine probably has another year or two in it, meaning that a 2012 machine will likely be a minimum of six years old when I get it, which means it may only have a usable life of three or four years from that point on. Even being optimistic and assuming the hardware lasts 10 years from when I buy it, Mac OS support certainly won't. The real kicker is that those are the last machines that I'll really be able to buy that meet my needs and preferences. Come 2022 or whenever it's time to upgrade again, I don't know where I go from that 2012 machine. I certainly don't expect Apple to have backtracked on their sealed-box design. There's no easy answer really, and all of them involve compromise somehow. I'm now treating it as a matter of 'when' I switch, rather than 'if'. Maybe it's best to get it over with sooner rather than later?

mf2hd 9y ago

Why don't you buy a used mid 2012 MBP instead? For 5-600 pound you can get one with a still good quad core i7 cpu and you can upgrade/replace everything, removing the ODD gives you extra space for additional HDD/SSD, can handle 16GB ram, easy to replace the battery (I just did, it was about 30 quid from amazon), it's perfect. I'm still using mine and not planning to replace it until it dies.

tinbucket 9y ago
That's an option I've considered, but it's only really a temporary solution and might not be a viable one when I come to need a new laptop. My 2009 machine probably has another year or two in it, meaning that a 2012 machine will likely be a minimum of six years old when I get it, which means it may only have a usable life of three or four years from that point on. Even being optimistic and assuming the hardware lasts 10 years from when I buy it, Mac OS support certainly won't. The real kicker is that those are the last machines that I'll really be able to buy that meet my needs and preferences. Come 2022 or whenever it's time to upgrade again, I don't know where I go from that 2012 machine. I certainly don't expect Apple to have backtracked on their sealed-box design. There's no easy answer really, and all of them involve compromise somehow. I'm now treating it as a matter of 'when' I switch, rather than 'if'. Maybe it's best to get it over with sooner rather than later?