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This is precisely why I like Apple. The fact that I got 5 years out of my last MBP was totally amazing. I used that computer at least 10 hours a day, every sing

This is precisely why I like Apple. The fact that I got 5 years out of my last MBP was totally amazing. I used that computer at least 10 hours a day, every single day! I don't care about saving $1k or $2k when it comes to a device I use that much. We're talking about a dollar an hour here. I've literally spent more money on coffee over that time.

jandrese 8y ago
I'm typing this post on an 11 year old Dell Latitude D830 running Ubuntu. 5 years is not some amazing lifespan for a laptop, especially these days with such incremental improvements in processors year over year. Unless you're gaming on your laptop your requirements probably aren't that much higher than they were half a decade ago.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  It's an amazing lifespan for anybody who has ever operated a windows laptop.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I have a 10 year old Dell Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz running Windows 10 being used as a Plex Server. It’s only slow when overtaxed because I haven’t bothered upgrading to 8GB of RAM or replace the hard drive with an SSD. Luckily it has a gigabit Ethernet port so it can take full advantage of my gig internet.
  - madengr 8y ago
    That’s an issue with windows, not the laptop. I’m happy enough with the Dell XPS and Linux that I have bought 3.
  - batiudrami 8y ago
    My Asus UX31A is six years old and still going strong. It's a pity the RAM is soldered in at 4GB but certainly not worth replacing the entire laptop for it. And it wasn't top of the line - about $1300 as I remember. Perhaps you just haven't really used a windows laptop recently and only remember the old days when Windows laptops really did only have a life span of about 3 years.
  - axlee 8y ago
    Not really, Thinkpads are known for being built like trucks since the 90s.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    My Windows laptops had a average of 5 years, minimum. Maybe one should take care about where to service them from?
  - p2t2p 8y ago
    My Thinkpad x201 from 2011 is doing just fine. Java dev, webdev, IntelliJ Idea and VSCode just flies on it. Yeah, no 4k for you though.
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  Not only do I occasionally game, I also have a DSLR that generates quite the stream of photos and videos to edit. I also run a bunch of VMs (including one of Ubuntu, my favourite dev environment), and I use photoshop and illustrator for the occasional design thing.
  - shellkr 8y ago
    Me too.. but mostly just personal stuff. I use DarkTable and Gimp for that. I did this on a 13 year old machine running Linux. It is still running but I got my hands on a cheap NUC that I use nowadays. My machines are pretty much running 24/7 all year around.. My impression when it comes to Mac is that people don't want to pay ludicrous prices for repairs e.t.c.. anymore. Also that they can not upgrade because their current machine can't handle the new OS e.t.c..
- avcdsuia 8y ago
  The only stumbling block for old laptops is bad display quality. Switching from classic ThinkPad to MacBook really save my eyes.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    The trick to avoiding this is to buy laptops with good displays in the first place. The D830 has a 1920x1200 display that is a little bit dimmer but just as readable today. It's not a retina display, but it looks just fine to me. I was looking at laptops about 3 years ago and it was extremely hard to find ones that didn't use that cursed 1366x768 resolution.
spinach 8y ago
Is 5 years really that amazing? I had 7-8 years on an Asus laptop I just recently replaced that I traveled with and used all the time.
tormeh 8y ago
My parents are still using the absolute garbage quality Acer gaming laptop I bought in 2009. The durability is awful, the design is not very pragmatic, the less said about software and drivers the better... But it's still working.
gnicholas 8y ago
I have loved some of the Macs I owned, but I don't think that comment was meant as a compliment. It is unfortunate that so many people would rather limp by on 3-5 year old machines rather than paying for what Apple is selling new. The fact that they are able to limp by is better than the alternative — but I count myself among those who couldn't. My MBA gave out last year and I bought an MBP with a compromised keyboard. I wish it weren't so.
xienze 8y ago
Getting 5 years out of a laptop isn’t particularly impressive, especially if your laptop can be upgraded. Perhaps it’s remarkable that a laptop that can’t be upgraded lasts that long, so congrats I guess.
com2kid 8y ago
My Windows PC is from 2012, works great. $1200 in parts total. When (if) GPU prices go down I'll throw a new one and be good for another few years. I expect hardware failure of the CPU or Motherboard to do the machine in before it becomes obsolete. Put all my money into RAM and SSD, upper mid range CPU, mid range GPU, life is good.
mikestew 8y ago
I don't care about saving $1k or $2k when it comes to a device I use that much. I said nothing about price. You don’t want to know the eye-watering numbers attached to that iMac I sold. And it’s great that you and I can get such life out of our machines. But in the context of the topic at hand, its not great that you and I sit on five year old machines because Apple makes nothing so compelling so as to make me say, “Shut up and take my money.” Because I own shares of AAPL, too.
tunesmith 8y ago
I agree. I used my 2013 MBP heavily for compiled programming and music production. Just upgraded to the 2018 MBP and am very happy with it.
saagarjha 8y ago
Five years for a Mac isn't all that long. You're still getting software support!
slantyyz 8y ago
>> The fact that I got 5 years out of my last MBP was totally amazing. No, it's not. A 15" _2011_ Macbook Pro with a quad core i7 is still more than usable today. If you bought a Macbook Pro with a powerful CPU (i.e., CPU model not ending with a U), you should easily get 10 years out of it.* [edit] * At least until Apple decides not to support it with OS upgrades, but you can always run the latest Windows on it. And Windows generally runs faster in Boot Camp on Macbook Pros than OSX does natively.
- IntelMiner 8y ago
  "you can always run the latest Windows on it. And Windows generally runs faster in Boot Camp on Macbook Pros than OSX does natively." When did this happen? The last time I used Bootcamp, it seemed almost specifically designed to make Windows feel like a sub-par experience compared to OS X Using a then-brand-new 2012 MBP with the latest version of OS X at the time (I believe Lion?) with Bootcamp. Some of the bizarre omissions I witnessed were - A buggy BIOS implementation instead of EFI (rEFInd at least let me try and boot Linux under EFI) - SSD set to run in IDE mode, instead of AHCI, resulting in utterly crippled performance (required issuing dd commands to the disk from within OS X to fix) - No GPU switching. Only the Radeon card was enabled, leaving the system running insanely hot and guzzling battery The final straw was when I ran some test VM's on it, and under a sustained load, had the CPU hit an eye watering 117 degrees celsius. Shutting it down almost immediately and then asking on tech oriented IRC channels I was in if this was a bug simply yielded dismissal from Apple acolytes at the time "Oh it's DESIGNED to do that, the whole system is a huge heatsink!" "Just make sure it's getting plenty of airflow, it's fine"
  - slantyyz 8y ago
    This is anecdotal - on my 2008 Macbook (not Pro) and on my 2011 MBP, Windows 8+ always felt snappier than the latest version of OSX (ymmv based on what you do). I have seen other people on HN report similar.
xaldir 8y ago
My thinkpad x220 is my work laptop since 2011, with a few upgrades (ssd, 16gb ram, battery, because you can actually upgrade it) it performs quite well to this day.
pjmlp 8y ago
My 10 year old Asus is still working quite well, already went through Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and all releases of 10. The GPU is a GT200M with 1GB dedicated RAM, still pretty much in shape versus the toy Intel GPUs. In those 10 years extended it to 8GB and replaced the HD with a SSD. Original sales price, 1 000 euros.

jandrese 8y ago

I'm typing this post on an 11 year old Dell Latitude D830 running Ubuntu. 5 years is not some amazing lifespan for a laptop, especially these days with such incremental improvements in processors year over year. Unless you're gaming on your laptop your requirements probably aren't that much higher than they were half a decade ago.

toasterlovin 8y ago
It's an amazing lifespan for anybody who has ever operated a windows laptop.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I have a 10 year old Dell Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz running Windows 10 being used as a Plex Server. It’s only slow when overtaxed because I haven’t bothered upgrading to 8GB of RAM or replace the hard drive with an SSD. Luckily it has a gigabit Ethernet port so it can take full advantage of my gig internet.
- madengr 8y ago
  That’s an issue with windows, not the laptop. I’m happy enough with the Dell XPS and Linux that I have bought 3.
- batiudrami 8y ago
  My Asus UX31A is six years old and still going strong. It's a pity the RAM is soldered in at 4GB but certainly not worth replacing the entire laptop for it. And it wasn't top of the line - about $1300 as I remember. Perhaps you just haven't really used a windows laptop recently and only remember the old days when Windows laptops really did only have a life span of about 3 years.
- axlee 8y ago
  Not really, Thinkpads are known for being built like trucks since the 90s.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  My Windows laptops had a average of 5 years, minimum. Maybe one should take care about where to service them from?
- p2t2p 8y ago
  My Thinkpad x201 from 2011 is doing just fine. Java dev, webdev, IntelliJ Idea and VSCode just flies on it. Yeah, no 4k for you though.
3pt14159 8y ago
Not only do I occasionally game, I also have a DSLR that generates quite the stream of photos and videos to edit. I also run a bunch of VMs (including one of Ubuntu, my favourite dev environment), and I use photoshop and illustrator for the occasional design thing.
- shellkr 8y ago
  Me too.. but mostly just personal stuff. I use DarkTable and Gimp for that. I did this on a 13 year old machine running Linux. It is still running but I got my hands on a cheap NUC that I use nowadays. My machines are pretty much running 24/7 all year around.. My impression when it comes to Mac is that people don't want to pay ludicrous prices for repairs e.t.c.. anymore. Also that they can not upgrade because their current machine can't handle the new OS e.t.c..
avcdsuia 8y ago
The only stumbling block for old laptops is bad display quality. Switching from classic ThinkPad to MacBook really save my eyes.
- jandrese 8y ago
  The trick to avoiding this is to buy laptops with good displays in the first place. The D830 has a 1920x1200 display that is a little bit dimmer but just as readable today. It's not a retina display, but it looks just fine to me. I was looking at laptops about 3 years ago and it was extremely hard to find ones that didn't use that cursed 1366x768 resolution.

spinach 8y ago

Is 5 years really that amazing? I had 7-8 years on an Asus laptop I just recently replaced that I traveled with and used all the time.

tormeh 8y ago

My parents are still using the absolute garbage quality Acer gaming laptop I bought in 2009. The durability is awful, the design is not very pragmatic, the less said about software and drivers the better... But it's still working.

gnicholas 8y ago

I have loved some of the Macs I owned, but I don't think that comment was meant as a compliment. It is unfortunate that so many people would rather limp by on 3-5 year old machines rather than paying for what Apple is selling new. The fact that they are able to limp by is better than the alternative — but I count myself among those who couldn't. My MBA gave out last year and I bought an MBP with a compromised keyboard. I wish it weren't so.

xienze 8y ago

Getting 5 years out of a laptop isn’t particularly impressive, especially if your laptop can be upgraded. Perhaps it’s remarkable that a laptop that can’t be upgraded lasts that long, so congrats I guess.

com2kid 8y ago

My Windows PC is from 2012, works great. $1200 in parts total. When (if) GPU prices go down I'll throw a new one and be good for another few years. I expect hardware failure of the CPU or Motherboard to do the machine in before it becomes obsolete. Put all my money into RAM and SSD, upper mid range CPU, mid range GPU, life is good.

mikestew 8y ago

I don't care about saving $1k or $2k when it comes to a device I use that much. I said nothing about price. You don’t want to know the eye-watering numbers attached to that iMac I sold. And it’s great that you and I can get such life out of our machines. But in the context of the topic at hand, its not great that you and I sit on five year old machines because Apple makes nothing so compelling so as to make me say, “Shut up and take my money.” Because I own shares of AAPL, too.

tunesmith 8y ago

I agree. I used my 2013 MBP heavily for compiled programming and music production. Just upgraded to the 2018 MBP and am very happy with it.

saagarjha 8y ago

Five years for a Mac isn't all that long. You're still getting software support!

slantyyz 8y ago

>> The fact that I got 5 years out of my last MBP was totally amazing. No, it's not. A 15" _2011_ Macbook Pro with a quad core i7 is still more than usable today. If you bought a Macbook Pro with a powerful CPU (i.e., CPU model not ending with a U), you should easily get 10 years out of it.* [edit] * At least until Apple decides not to support it with OS upgrades, but you can always run the latest Windows on it. And Windows generally runs faster in Boot Camp on Macbook Pros than OSX does natively.

IntelMiner 8y ago
"you can always run the latest Windows on it. And Windows generally runs faster in Boot Camp on Macbook Pros than OSX does natively." When did this happen? The last time I used Bootcamp, it seemed almost specifically designed to make Windows feel like a sub-par experience compared to OS X Using a then-brand-new 2012 MBP with the latest version of OS X at the time (I believe Lion?) with Bootcamp. Some of the bizarre omissions I witnessed were - A buggy BIOS implementation instead of EFI (rEFInd at least let me try and boot Linux under EFI) - SSD set to run in IDE mode, instead of AHCI, resulting in utterly crippled performance (required issuing dd commands to the disk from within OS X to fix) - No GPU switching. Only the Radeon card was enabled, leaving the system running insanely hot and guzzling battery The final straw was when I ran some test VM's on it, and under a sustained load, had the CPU hit an eye watering 117 degrees celsius. Shutting it down almost immediately and then asking on tech oriented IRC channels I was in if this was a bug simply yielded dismissal from Apple acolytes at the time "Oh it's DESIGNED to do that, the whole system is a huge heatsink!" "Just make sure it's getting plenty of airflow, it's fine"
- slantyyz 8y ago
  This is anecdotal - on my 2008 Macbook (not Pro) and on my 2011 MBP, Windows 8+ always felt snappier than the latest version of OSX (ymmv based on what you do). I have seen other people on HN report similar.

xaldir 8y ago

My thinkpad x220 is my work laptop since 2011, with a few upgrades (ssd, 16gb ram, battery, because you can actually upgrade it) it performs quite well to this day.

pjmlp 8y ago

My 10 year old Asus is still working quite well, already went through Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and all releases of 10. The GPU is a GT200M with 1GB dedicated RAM, still pretty much in shape versus the toy Intel GPUs. In those 10 years extended it to 8GB and replaced the HD with a SSD. Original sales price, 1 000 euros.