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FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. My wife needed a laptop for class a year ago, so I gave her my old macbook pro 13 i bought in 2014. I also ha

FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. My wife needed a laptop for class a year ago, so I gave her my old macbook pro 13 i bought in 2014. I also had a macbook air m1 for personal use, which I replaced recently with a macbook pro 14 m1, and planned to give my wife the air. She refuses the air bc she likes the old 13 so much, and she abuses the shit out of it. How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years? Even the battery life is still ok. I am going to have to force her to consider the air bc the old 13 is a security risk without OS updates. The only reason why I replaced the old 13 with the air was bc the 13 could not render 4k 60fps on an external display. Otherwise, I would have kept using it. The old 13 cost me about $1600 USD new (256GB HD, 8 GB ram). Amortize that cost over 9 years and that doesn't seem so bad. Even my iphone 8 is still going strong. Another anecdote - my current employer gave me a new macbook pro 15 when I started here back in 2017. It took my abuse well and the only reason I am not still using it is bc my employer forced me to upgrade when the m1 pros came out. You probably won't need to replace your air for like 7 years, or when apple stops updates for your machine. EDIT - I am surprised I am getting downvoted. You would think more folks on HN would be happy about long lasting products but the anti-apple bias is strong enough to override the concern of having a more sustainable product.

gaoshan 4y ago
I'm still rocking a maxed out MacBook Pro from 2013. The battery IS shot but plugged in and connected to a monitor it still gets the job done as a home machine.
- ecliptik 4y ago
  Maxed out Macbook Air 2013 here. Replacing the battery was surprisingly easy and cost about $30. I should replace the SSD at some point too. It's still getting new MacOS releases/updates using OpenCore Legacy Patcher [1]. Once MacOS is ARM only will put Linux or OpenBSD on it and see how long it goes. 1. https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher
- LegitShady 4y ago
  I dont know how comfortable you are with with opening laptops but please make sure there is no spicy pillow issue (expanded lithium ion battery) in your machine because they represent a real fire hazard. Replacing old batteries is sometimes extremely affordable if you're willing to open the machine yourself.
megous 4y ago
Thinkpad T440 - 7 years of daily use (could probably use some cleaning inside). I expect it to last quite a bit longer, still. It did cost $500 + some upgrades. Windows 10 is still supported. :) 17 or so year old IBM T41 stopped working about 2 years ago.
- game_the0ry 4y ago
  My friend, I am not shitting on other products, just pointing out that macs are up there with the best of them, including lenovo :)
  - megous 4y ago
    I was just saying this is not unique to Apple.
- kjs3 4y ago
  Yeah, give laptops a good cleanout every couple of years even if you're a non-smoking obsessive clean freak. My T42 started acting weird a while back and opened it up...numerous odd places clogged with lint, dust and what I assume is cat hair. Worked fine after degunking.
  - megous 4y ago
    So I checked the T41, and it was just a dead power adapter. After making a new one from a spare DC-DC converter, the laptop itself still seems to work. Cleaning it up might be a next step. :)
joshstrange 4y ago
This has been my experience since I first went from windows to mac. People always talk about the "Apple Tax" and it's real but it's not as obscene as people make it out to be when you factor in longevity. I had friends in college who were replacing ~$400-500 machines almost yearly while my ~$1,200 machine (2009) lasted all 4 years and then some. I only upgraded since I was using it professionally and wanted some more power. I have friends who are using their old MacBooks from college up until a few years ago (over 10 years). Now if you are using the machine professionally you might want to upgrade more often but I still get 4 years easily out of my MBPs. I upgraded early (~2 years in) for the M1 Max because it was such a nice jump but I could still be using my 2019 right now if I wanted to.
- anthonypasq 4y ago
  did you ever stop to think that maybe if they bought a $1200 windows machine it would have lasted 4 years. also macs were very early to hop on the ssd train and that was an insane advantage over most windows machines. I think that gap has closed substantially at this point.
  - joshstrange 4y ago
    It might have lasted 4 years, but you'll note I said I knew people using them up to 10 years. In fact my 2014 MBP is still in service, a friend of mine uses it. I had a $1k+ Windows laptop that was a few years old in 2007-2009 and I was thoroughly unimpressed in it's build quality and how crappy/slow it was after 2 years. This was all pre-ssd even on macs (or at least the macs I was buying). I have no doubt that Windows laptop build quality has improved in the last decade, in no small part to chasing after Apple, but at this point I can't imagine going back to Windows so I'll never really know.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      There are also laptops that went the opposite direction from Apple, yet they keep on trucking. Old Thinkpads, Panasonic Toughbooks and HP Elitebooks are perfectly usable today, arguably moreso than older Macs. Toss Linux on it, and you'll have longer first-party support than any Macbook shipped in the last decade. If anything, the repairability and upgradability that prevented old Macs from being e-waste is gone now. It's hard to imagine Apple pushing the envelope on reusability or device longevity in their current era.
wkat4242 4y ago
Yeah my 2010 MacBook Pro 15 is also still working ok including the battery. Running Linux on it now though because Apple has given up supporting it many years ago :(
- windowsrookie 4y ago
  If you want MacOS on it opencore supports even the current version of MacOS on this machine. I have MacOS 11 running great on a 17” 2010 MacBook Pro for a friend. I will likely upgrade it to MacOS 12.
itg 4y ago
My Thinkpad X220 from 2011 works just fine, although I don't use it as my primary laptop anymore. Was also able to upgrade the memory from 4GB to 16GB and updated the HDD to a 1TB SSD :)
FpUser 4y ago
>How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years? Even the battery life is still ok. I am going to have to force her to consider the air bc the old 13 is a security risk without OS updates. My ASUS G73 is 12 years old. I stuffed it with 32GB RAM and it works just fine. I use it to create 3D models and assemblies. I do clone the SSD once in a while but still there was no need to replace. Since I use it mostly as a portable desktop (external keyboard, mouse and 4K monitor) the relevant parts are pristine.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Yeah, i have no idea how he managed to extrapolate sustainability from the fact that nothing has gone wrong with his macbooks. Well, nothing went wrong with all the computers I've ever had, but that's just an anecdotal measure of reliability, not of sustainability. Very weird logic.
- j7f3 4y ago
  I have an Asus G75 and I will never buy any hardware from Asus again. I rarely used that thing, basically once or twice per month yet the battery died after just a few years, then the keyboard, then the screen, and it weighs a ton too.
gamblor956 4y ago
Dells are also high quality and last a long time. My Dell laptops from college, law school, and my first job have all lasted over a decade, requiring only a battery replacement or two over the years. My dad's (IBM) Thinkpad from the 90s still works. OTOH, literally every Mac owner I know has had to replace their Mac laptop multiple times due to various hardware issues. (And yes, that includes Macbook Pros, Airs, etc.) It's great that Apple has such good support. I couldn't tell you what Dell or IBM's support is like; I've never had to use it.
r0m4n0 4y ago
I have had two MacBook Air m1 failures in my family that has started to change how I recommend purchasing a mac. They have 1 year warranties and one had logic board failure around the 18 month mark. It’s possible they last 7 years (I have a 2015 mbp that is going strong) but also it’s possible any high end brand lasts that long (I have an Hp envy that is running strong as well). The repairability of a MacBook m1 is basically zero. I’m too afraid to buy a new logic board because of the T2 chip). Anyway, a 1 year warranty is absurd on a product that expensive that you shouldn’t be having problems with. The tiny warranty is a scam to get you into AppleCare plus for hundreds more, so factor that into the price you pay as well. I feel like I’m responsible for recommending the m1 to my cousin that got fried this last week
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>EDIT - I am surprised I am getting downvoted. You would think more folks on HN would be happy about long lasting products but the anti-apple bias is strong enough to override the concern of having a more sustainable product. A small part of the reasons I downvoted you is this flamey statement here, because you seem more worried about the downvotes you were getting than with the content of your message and seem to base your opinion an what you think other people will like to hear, and when that doesn't work and people downvote you, you then resort to generalize and perhaps falsely calling people who disagree with you that they must have an anti Apple bias when that's not true. You should always speak your mind free regardless of other people's upvotes or downvotes, and not start to attack those who don't agree with you as if only your opinion is the right one and everyone else who disagrees must certainly be biased. Back on topic, no, I don't have an Apple bias, and the main reason I downvoted you is that I don't agree with your assessment of Apple making sustainable products when they've demonstrated time and time again being at the forefront of the anti right-to-repair movement and did everything they could to make sure to restrict, disable and discourage third party repairs as much as possible. See Luis Rossman's and Linus Tech Tips's videos. That's not what a sustainable company does. I'm glad you've never had any issue with your Macbooks, but one, that's survivorship bias of sample size one, and two, that's just shows reliability, and in no way proves anything about sustainability. Sustainability would be if you would have had issues and Apple would have provided you with assistance to reapir your old devices on the cheap. But your anecdotal experience of something never going wrong is no proof of sustainability as nothing ever went wrong with my Acer, HP, and Lenovo machines either, but that doesn't mean they're models of sustainability. Framework is an example of sustainability, not Apple, because sell you with the parts to keep your machines going, in case something goes wrong. Apple does not do that, in fact the opposite: "Oh, the display cable of your out of warranty Macbook is toast? Bummer. How about buying a new laptop then?" That's not what a sustainable company does. Ever. Based on these facts, I would encourage you to reevaluate your stance on what sustainability actually means and how it's defined on a consumer company and products. Peace.
Kon5ole 4y ago
>FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. That was also true for older macs, which were cheaper. I believe that the Apple Silicon macs are the highest-margin macs Apple has ever made, since they no longer have to pay Intel for the CPUs or AMD for the GPUs. I can see no technical or logistical reason why Apple had to increase prices, and believe it is entirely driven by the idea that the market can bear it.
- sbuk 4y ago
  The money they save from buying components from Intel is sunk into development of the processors. They also have to pay for manufacturing and logistics. TSMC have also increased the cost of manufacturing by 9%. Add rampant inflation and a strong dollar into the mix, there’s your technical/logical reason.
  - jocaal 4y ago
    > The money they save from buying components from Intel is sunk into development of the processors That doesn't sound right. The m series chips are literally copy pasted from their a series and they operate at a scale where they probably get nice economies of scale. I bet they increased their margins a substancial amount.
  - Kon5ole 4y ago
    >The money they save from buying components from Intel is sunk into development of the processors. They also have to pay for manufacturing and logistics. I am not convinced. Most of the development cost for Apple Silicon is already covered by the iphone and ipad. They always had to pay for manufacturing and logistics so that's not a new thing, and I bet they paid AMD and Intel way more than they pay TSMC even now.
ouid 4y ago
All computers last a long time...
evandale 4y ago
My anecdote is the complete opposite experience. I bought a new 2012 MBA in June and the hard drive started failing on me in August of 2013. It was just out of the warranty so Apple did me a "favour" and let me buy a 3-year Apple care so the repair would be free. They made the Apple care start on the day I bought the MBA back in June, which was something that I got screwed on later on. Then they recalled the 2012 MBAs because of failing SSDs in October 2013 and refused to refund my Apple care because they did me a "favour" and I got a good "deal" with getting Apple care because I shouldn't have been able to buy it post-warranty. It didn't matter that they recalled the SSD literally 2 months later free of charge, they wouldn't let me get rid of the Apple care and have it refunded. In April 2016 the battery died on me and it was out of Apple care warranty because the Apple care was June 2012 - June 2015 instead of the August 2013 I purchased it on and being valid until August 2016. So that cost me another $250 to replace. Another repair I had to pay for that should have been free. Finally in 2019 I updated to Catalina and it hosed the entire laptop which was working flawlessly before the update. It started randomly beach balling after about an hour of use and would stutter every couple of minutes until it eventually would lock up and turn off completely. Then it would randomly show the flashing question mark when booting up and it stopped working completely. The laptop couldn't even factory restore itself or stay on long enough to be restored over the internet. I brought it to Apple a few times, they didn't detect anything wrong with the laptop, and I eventually gave up on it. I still have no clue what that update did to kill my entire laptop but I was done putting money into it at that point.
- kristjansson 4y ago
  So, as a negative example, you provide ... a laptop you paid $1500 + $200 + $250 for, and got 7+ years of use?
  - evandale 4y ago
    Yeah, but only because I built a desktop in 2010, spent $1100 and didn't have to put a penny more into it until last year. And that was because I wanted to upgrade, not because I had to. I had a Dell laptop survive 8 years without paying for anything. It really annoys me that the laptop died for no reason overnight after an OS upgrade and Apple couldn't even come up with an explanation or attempt to fix it. I've done some Googling recently because this was in my mind again and apparently Catalina bricked a lot of laptops but I can't seem to find any acknowledgment from Apple on that.
stateofinquiry 4y ago
to your point, this discussion from a few days ago features quite a few Apple Macs, <a href="https://slashdot.org/story/23/04/02/0058226/ask-slashdot-what-was-your-longest-lived-pc">which https://slashdot.org/story/23/04/02/0058226/ask-slashdot-wha... I thought was telling.</a>
runjake 4y ago
> I am surprised I am getting downvoted Probably for this statement: > FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. and subsequently for this flamey statement: > You would think more folks on HN would be happy about long lasting products but the anti-apple bias is strong enough to override the concern of having a more sustainable product. FWIW, it seems like you got incredibly lucky. In recent years, I've been through the following MacBooks: - 2013 MB (Glorious, ran forever, needed more RAM and speed) - 2016 MBP (bad keyboard, then rapid battery expansion) - 2018 MBP (battery expansion, then logic board failure) - 2019/2020 MBP (logic board failure) - M1 MBP 13" (nothing, it's running beautifully.) IIRC, all of the above failures happened just outside of the warranty period. For personal MacBooks, I will no longer go without AppleCare+. The risk of failure and accidental damage is too great. We have an org with thousands of MBPs with similar experiences. It got bad enough that discussions were had about switching staff to Chromebooks or Windows laptops. (Chromebooks didn't meet requirements and Windows laptops are even worse for hardware and software reasons) All of these devices basically sat on a desk in a ~68F office most of the time.
- dimmke 4y ago
  I guess I got lucky too. Because I bought a 2012 MBP (the first generation that had the HiDPI Retina displays) and it lasted me over 6 years of daily, hard use. It was still in decent condition but my job at the time got me one of the newer ones. Of course, that one had the bad keyboard and had to be swapped. 2016-2020 the dark ages but outside of that 4 year period (that Apple has firmly reversed course on), Apple's reputation for excellent laptops is well deserved.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    The #1 thing preventing Apple from getting into S-tier is user-serviceable storage. Baking on the memory? It's frustrating and gimps the device lifespan, but arguably unavoidable with the bandwidth Apple is targeting. Without replaceable storage though, every Apple Silicon device is effectively a ticking time-bomb. These devices will all hit their TBW limit long before they're unusable, and Apple refused to anticipate this because... it side-steps their pricing scheme? The current Macbook lineup is a step in the right direction, but far from perfect. Even ignoring my hundred gripes with MacOS, I think there are clear hardware improvements they can make with future iterations. None of these improvements seem particularly profitable though, so I'm not counting on Apple adding them.
dimmke 4y ago
My dad bought an 11" MacBook Air in 2011 - I think it was the cheapest possible Mac you could get at the time (maybe $900-$1000?) But I really wanted him to be on MacOS. He basically never used it as a laptop, and it's been plugged in to an external monitor and keyboard for many years. He used to stack paper on top of it until I told him to stop it so it could vent better. I would update the software, but I think it's been a while since there's been a new security update. I picked it up recently while visiting and noticed it wouldn't close all the way - uh oh. So I told him his battery was going bad and could explode. He took it to an independent repair shop the next day. They replaced it with a new battery and cleaned out over a decade of dust in the chassis for $120. I tried to impress upon him that having the same computer for over 10 years without ever having to take it in (or really do any kind of maintenance besides software updates) is extraordinary - he understands now that computers are a little more like cars. They need to be serviced sometimes. Not nearly as frequently as cars. And those laptops were not known for having good thermals. I'm on the verge of buying him a new MacBook just so he will be on the latest software - but for what he does (email, web browsing) the Air works just as well as it did in 2011. I think I might end up getting him a gently used M1 Mac Mini though since it never moves from his desk and it would be under $500. Anyways, I'm on an M1 MacBook Pro and it's hard to see myself buying a new Macbook Pro in the next 5 years minimum. I just don't need to. They fixed pretty much all of the problems their laptops had.
- kome 4y ago
  My MacBook Air 11-inch from 2015 with 1.7 GHz Dual-Core Intel i7 and 8 GB of RAM is still my main computer. And I love it, and it feels new. Perhaps i'm just lucky... but I use it everyday for hours. It traveled to super remote places. I want to use it for 2 or 3 more years (10 years in total would be nice!)
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  > for what he does (email, web browsing) A $200 Chromebook will work fine.
  - robopsychology 4y ago
    To be fair the build quality of a $200 Chromebook is pretty rubbish. The pixel is probably on par with Macbooks in terms of build quality but again that's so expensive you may as well get a macbook air.
ornornor 4y ago
> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. Except when they’re not and Apple tries very hard to bury the problem while the machine is still relevant, so your choices are either to pay for (expensive) repairs out of pocket or dump it and buy a different model. Then years later once the machine is obsolete for most, will they finally give in and offer a free repair to the lucky ones who have been left holding these hot potatoes of a defective model. Not every time though, sometimes they just won’t accept responsibility at all, ever. See the GPU issues, the battery issues, the butterfly keyboards, the yellow tinted panels…
- spullara 4y ago
  The used Mac market disagrees with your anecdote.
- eatfish 4y ago
  You forgot the stage light effect. Mysteriously Apple give a free fix/service program for the 13" models but not the 15" models. Kind of sucks if you had a 15" model that started to go bad.
  - ornornor 4y ago
    I gave up apple computers a long time ago so I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of these ignored issues. It illustrates my point though.
M_bara 4y ago
Ditto. Macs are surprisingly long lasting. I have - a 2011 MacBook Pro that is used for midi and piano classes. One battery change in 2018 and that’s it. It’s used every other day by kids for 2 hours. - a 2013 MacBook air. Workhorse for the kids homeschooling. Used every day for 8 hours or so. One battery change and a MagSafe adapter change. - a 16” 2016 MacBook Pro. My daily work device for the past 5 years. One battery change and 2 MagSafe adapters. - a 13” 2019 MacBook air for the wife. It’s been puked on till the screen is a bit messed but it still works. No hardware updates. So we are talking about ~ 30 years cumulative ownership with 3 battery changes and 3 MagSafes. Not bad in my book. If you want to nuke e waste, buy a Mac and hope it’s not a lemon. They rarely are
cyral 4y ago
My personal experience is that they do not. Had one Macbook pro that would crash and then fail to boot after about 5 minutes of use around the 1.5 year mark. (It appeared that once it was warm it would not work). Then, my current Macbook pro needed a full logic board replacement at 11 months (so close to being out of warranty). It is still going strong but I am concerned the issue will happen again. I very much enjoy using my Macbook over any windows laptop (the trackpad and keyboard are just so much better), but I am concerned about spending $3k on another laptop in a year or so when this one runs into an issue again.
Popcorn3865 4y ago
> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. My own experience (4 MacBooks Pros) and that of providing MacBook Air and Pros to a dozen or so staff (with 50 or so on non-Mac kit) leads me to conclude this statement is not true. They are great as long as they work but no better in terms of longevity to equivalent kit from other manufacturers, at least in my limited, non-scientific, IMHO experience.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  Maybe I am just very unlucky, but I'd add 2 more datapoints. - M1 mba, 1 usb port dead. - 15' mbp 2019, all ports dead. I have been told that the logicboard is dead, and they wanted 850 euro to replace it. I am fairly certain that the is actually the ports as they gave out one by one in the same manner the M1 mba's did.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    that the issue with the MBP*
- dacryn 4y ago
  Last year I asked the numbers to our IT department for a similar discussion. On about 2000 macbooks, 2000 thinkbooks and 6000 hp elitebooks, all of various generations, the macbooks scored best on reliability and best on 'how many tickets do these users create for our service desk'. The cost savings are there. But obviously there was still a significant amount of issues with these laptops. They are not perfect, but they performed better than the other two families. The big issue with macbooks is usually that if they fail after 3 years, they are an immediate write off. The others get repaired. Oh and those butterfly keyboard years were horrible and nearly stopped us from allowing macbooks apparently.
bcrosby95 4y ago
FWIW I still have a system76 laptop from 2015 that's going strong. My wife's thinkpad is 13 years old by now - I've been able to keep it chugging by replacing the hard drive and memory.
- LeifCarrotson 4y ago
  That's a big advantage of the older Macs and Thinkpads and Elitebooks and XPS and so on: you can trivially restore an aged 10-year-old T440P into a highly functional machine by bumping it up to 16GB of RAM, adding a new battery, and a couple of 1 or 2TB SSDs. I did the same a couple of times with my 2008 MBP, that was indeed a great machine. All of the above can easily be updated to modern Linux or Windows 10 installs to your liking. But new Macs with soldered RAM and soldered storage and glued batteries may feel nicer on the Apple Store shelf, but a few years down the road when the base model specs are no longer adequate and the latest OSX releases drop them from support, you won't be able to repeat that process.
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    This is why I'm looking forward to the framework 16". My system76 still works great, but I would love an upgraded graphics card. The framework 16" could be the last laptop I ever buy.
    - kristopolous 4y ago
      I really wish they had other keyboard options. The macbook clone keyboard and trackpad is a dealbreaker for me. Something with a little less "design" and a little more function would be great. Or alternatively there were 3rd party providers of them
notatoad 4y ago
my previous air went for 3 years before something got screwed up in the thermals and the fan needed to run constantly, and selling it to somebody who wanted to fix it was the easiest way to deal with it. The apple store wouldn't do anything for me. now the M1 Air that i got in january 2021 has a failing keyboard. this isn't "anti-apple bias", i like macs and will keep buying them. but the claim that they're more durable or longer-lasting than equivalent windows laptops is just nonsense. you can't expect 9 years out of one, but if you're very very lucky it might last that long. my Acer chromebook that i bought in 2013 is "still going strong". so is the pair of the absolute cheapest possible dell inspiron i bought in 2012 for rental customers to use at outdoor events. but i'm not going around telling people they should expect acer or dell laptops to last a decade.
tiledjinn 4y ago
lenovo makes better workhorses than apple. you seem to be attributing the plateau of necessary machine performance to apple's quality. the reality is that for general computation no one really needs more machine than was produced in ~2010. you simply don't need to upgrade computers like you did in the 90s and early 2000s.
havblue 4y ago
>FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. My own personal anecdote is that I spilled a trivial amount of booze on my MacBook 9 years ago and was left with the option of whether I wanted to replace the entire lower case. While it was my fault for drinking and computing, I just see it as being an expensive device to maintain when you accidentally damage it. I'd rather play a lower stakes game with a cheaper product that I'd buy more frequently as my needs change over the years.
- FireBeyond 4y ago
  Yup. Stepdaughter spilt a small amount of water on hers. It worked fine, plugged in, but the spill had damaged the charging circuitry. Laptop even showed the battery as healthy. Just couldn't be charged. Take it in, thinking okay, maybe $300 for parts and labor. Hah, no. "So we're looking at $950..." followed by the Apple guy then saying "How about we look at getting you into a new MacBook instead?" Nah. It worked fine, and was mostly attached to her desk and digital piano, and continued to work just fine on AC power.
- yencabulator 4y ago
  I've killed several Apple laptops by spilling a single drink on the keyboard. I've spilled more drinks onto a single Thinkpad than I've killed Apples with. Thinkpads (used to?) have a pan under the keys with a drainage hole that goes out below the laptop. No damage whatsoever from several spills. Apple has a lot of fanboys that are not entirely rational about their fanboyism.
lynndotpy 4y ago
I didn't downvote you, but I'd imagine you're being downvoted for arguing in favor of that laptop being economical. At the risk of sounding like a dead meme, "a laptop going strong for over 9 years" is already the default for the kinds of folks who would opt for Linux and who would replace their laptops HDD with an SSD. My $800 laptop from 2015 has been 16GiB RAM and 512TB SSD and it still works perfectly (save for an Ethernet port which I regrettably damaged). It's running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, which is supported for three more years as of this comment. This is kind of a standard experience for people in Linux land. So by comparison, a $1600 laptop with 8GiB RAM and a 256GB HDD which is no longer receiving security updates does not sound like a good deal.
akudha 4y ago
I have a 2011 Air and 2011 W series thinkpad. Air lasted until last year. W520 is still going strong. yeah, Apple computers do last long. But it is ridiculous that you can’t upgrade RAM or hard disk or pretty much anything, after spending THAT much money.
jcadam 4y ago
> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. In my experience, this was true during the 68k and PPC days, but after the x64 transition quality went downhill, fast.
wvenable 4y ago
I bought a $900 Asus Zenbook 9 years ago and it's still going strong as good as it was the day I bought it. The problem with these kinds of anecdotes is they lack a control. If you compared an identically priced PC laptop you might find that there's almost no difference. You're just making an assumption without any actual contrasting data to back it up.
croes 4y ago
The newer ones don't seem to be high quality. More like design over function https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32474827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32474827 And the problem with apple hardware is you barely can fix anything yourself and without Apple care it costs a lot of money because they can't replace single parts but only complete modules.
empressplay 4y ago
I was an Apple service technician up to 2016, then I gave up on it because 'repairing' (basically logic board replacements) the new machines (that involved cutting and gluing and other silliness) became too onerous and, quite frankly, depressing. Personally I have a mid-2012 13" MBP, 16GB, 1TB SSD, 2K external display and a third displayLink display running Ventura and it's still going strong. I have several more for giving coding lessons / as backups for me ;) I dream of the day Apple goes back to making something as serviceable as them, but I won't lose sleep waiting.
hospitalJail 4y ago
>How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years? I think this is standard for most laptops that cost over $600 Or at least my experience with my Asus and Acer brand 'gaming' laptops. My computer from 2014 is still my daily driver and I use it for modern gaming. This 2014 computer even does CAD with no slowdowns, its really hard to justify buying something new. I can afford a new computer, I just havent had a reason to. Maybe with AI, I might spend like 35k on a tower so I can run my own LLMs.
adverbly 4y ago
Am I missing something? You're saying that you bought a device 9 years ago with the exact same specs(8gb ram, 256 disk) that are currently being sold for about the exact same price. And you are saying that macs last a long time? How is that possible if the specs are 9 years old?
Tade0 4y ago
My cheapo Samsung laptop from 2013 lasted until 2020 and it went through some heavy abuse. Still turns on and all, it's just that the battery gave up and the power socket is loose, so it might randomly lose power. My mother still uses my even more cheapo laptop from 2010 - my brother in law replaced the HDD with an SSD, but that's the extent of maintenance done. The battery sort of works, but barely. Meanwhile my work MBP in 2019 started developing keyboard issues after a few months of use - just like the units my two coworkers from the same room had. To be fair that was a particularly bad model year. A laptop generally should last seven years, but most people here don't see their devices reach that age because they pass them on after less than three.
throwaway2056 4y ago
It is not anti-Apple. Everyone has anecdotal story about these. > and she abuses the shit out of it. It is all own stories. Go to any university or school. Give the student a mac. Wait for a few months and see.
jandrese 4y ago
This is anecdotal, but my daily driver Dell E6540 is closing in on 10 years old now. One nice thing about this Dell is that it is very easy to replace the battery, unlike all modern Apple laptops. My wife had a Macbook of around the same vintage, but when the battery went it was too difficult to replace and we had to buy a new laptop instead.
- jlokier 4y ago
  Apple themselves offer a battery replacement service for a fee, and it seems to be a reasonable fixed price (where I live). You might still be able to get them to upgrade that Macbook's battery. Don't use an Apple Reseller for this without checking Apple's battery replacement price first. The reseller I went to quoted 2.5x the price, and said they were unaware of Apple's price (seems unlikely), which they could not match.
hcnews 4y ago
On a different note, shouldn't Apple support viable hardware till its live? Lack of security/OS updates is basically bricking a perfectly functional device and creating more waste on Earth. They could even charge users for an upgrade after a while if it means overall less waste on the planet. Ofcourse, it means that there's less sales at Apple but hopefully they're big enough to not bother with this.
null_object 4y ago
> I am surprised I am getting downvoted. You got my upvote because I have a similar experience - still using my 2014 MacBook Pro. However, I also agree with the other take I’m seeing in these comments: the current prices do seem disproportionately high (at least in the EU). I feel I have to go back about 25 years to see the same level of expense for high-end electronics. I genuinely thought we were past that era of rarefied ‘professional’ hardware. And as others have also pointed out, adding RAM or disk capacity is ridiculously expensive.
JohnFen 4y ago
> How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years? Very often! I'm not an Apple person, but every laptop I've ever owned has kept going strong well past the 10 year mark.
diebeforei485 4y ago
Being stuck with a 256GB machine for a long time is not great. Apple should start at 512GB. It doesn't meaningfully increase their BOM, and gets rid of a lot of user frustration. Also, I notice you had a 2014 machine, so you skipped the keyboard issues that plagued Apple until ~2021.
rorroe53 4y ago
Old Thinkpads are at least equally durable, though not sure about the newest generation. Been using a T520 from 2011 for a few years with Linux, no problems. Macbooks are great if you get a model without some serious design fault - like screen protection peeling off, or butterly keyboard breaking.
deleted 4y ago
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vetinari 4y ago
> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. No. The spare parts are available 5 years since the end of sale of the product; may be longer, if they are available, but max for 7 years. Batteries for 10. See here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 I also have 2015 13" MBP. It is perfectly fine hardware-wise, but it is not supported by the current OS already. (It is supported by Monterey, which still receives security updates). I also have 2012 Thinkpad (T430s). It is also perfectly fine hardware-wise, and it is supported by current OS (both Windows and Linux), and neither of them even plans to obsolete them. (Heck, Linux distributions are just starting carefully considering x86-64 microarchitectures). > the anti-apple bias is strong enough You should consider whether you are not having apple-bias. The Job's RDF joke existed not without a reason.
tryitnow 4y ago
Just chiming in to confirm this anecdote - the only difference is that the machine I gave my partner was a macbook air, not pro. Still works fine for almost all normal person use cases.
nextaccountic 4y ago
> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. It may last, but a laptop with 8GB of RAM becomes less and less useful over time
uvesten 4y ago
> I am going to have to force her to consider the air bc the old 13 is a security risk without OS updates. Have a look at Open Core Legacy Patcher (https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/ https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/), it’s great! My wife is using my old 2011 17” MBP as a desktop laptop, it works flawlessly on Ventura 13.3 :)
deergomoo 4y ago
> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. I agree with you, but that doesn’t change the fact outside the US, many Apple products are 15+% more expensive than they were a few years ago. In the UK we’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis—my bills have shot up and I simply don’t have the extra disposable income. I mean shit, I’m a decently paid developer (for the north of the UK, so not London) and until my most recent rise a base 16” MacBook Pro cost almost an entire month’s take-home salary.
kristopolous 4y ago
i'm writing this on an 11 year old thinkpad i got used 8 years ago for like $300. There's actually plenty of high quality hardware out there, it just takes a bit of unbiasing in your assessments.
rootcage 4y ago
I just bought a Mac Pro M2 in January after using a 2013 Macbook air for ~10 years. It lasted me through college and more, still runs smoothly to this day. Apple's build quality cannot be understated.
hetman 4y ago
Since we're trading anecdotes. I have a 2013 Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro which refuses to die. I've always used it when I travel so I definitely haven't coddled it. I've kind of been hoping it would die so I could justify replacing it because it's been good enough to get the job done. And the best part is that since it's running Windows I've been able to upgrade the OS and still get security updates. As other posters have demonstrated, having a laptop last this long is part good design and part good luck.
naasking 4y ago
> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. There is no Apple-bias. Apple hardware is not really any better than other brands, but they are chic and you pay for it. That's almost always been the case, speaking as a Mac guy before it became cool (pre-iPod). Stories of longevity for any brand are generally from people who take care of their stuff, but you can find exceptions even here. I bought a refurbished Lenovo laptop 10 years ago for $300, it's still going strong after updating to an SSD a couple of years ago. The comparable Apple hardware would have cost 3x that. I also don't have to worry about losing security updates because my hardware doesn't go EOL like you just described.
poulsbohemian 4y ago
>FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. I suspect many of us agree, and full disclaimer I am an Apple customer since about 1990. That said - that so many base units across their product line come with paltry specs is really upsetting. Frankly, it feels like environmental waste for them to still be selling machines with only 8gb ram / less than 1TB min storage. Sure, I've heard their song-and-dance about storage in the cloud and how because of their memory management 8gb isn't really just 8gb - and I find those arguments to be horse pucky. Also - if your battery is still kicking after 9 years consider yourself very, very, weirdly lucky. I bet if you put our a survey you would find a number of us who didn't come close to that, whether due to keyboard issues, battery, etc.
LeBit 4y ago
You are NOT running minikube on that 2017 MBP.

gaoshan 4y ago

I'm still rocking a maxed out MacBook Pro from 2013. The battery IS shot but plugged in and connected to a monitor it still gets the job done as a home machine.

ecliptik 4y ago
Maxed out Macbook Air 2013 here. Replacing the battery was surprisingly easy and cost about $30. I should replace the SSD at some point too. It's still getting new MacOS releases/updates using OpenCore Legacy Patcher [1]. Once MacOS is ARM only will put Linux or OpenBSD on it and see how long it goes. 1. https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher
LegitShady 4y ago
I dont know how comfortable you are with with opening laptops but please make sure there is no spicy pillow issue (expanded lithium ion battery) in your machine because they represent a real fire hazard. Replacing old batteries is sometimes extremely affordable if you're willing to open the machine yourself.

megous 4y ago

Thinkpad T440 - 7 years of daily use (could probably use some cleaning inside). I expect it to last quite a bit longer, still. It did cost $500 + some upgrades. Windows 10 is still supported. :) 17 or so year old IBM T41 stopped working about 2 years ago.

game_the0ry 4y ago
My friend, I am not shitting on other products, just pointing out that macs are up there with the best of them, including lenovo :)
- megous 4y ago
  I was just saying this is not unique to Apple.
kjs3 4y ago
Yeah, give laptops a good cleanout every couple of years even if you're a non-smoking obsessive clean freak. My T42 started acting weird a while back and opened it up...numerous odd places clogged with lint, dust and what I assume is cat hair. Worked fine after degunking.
- megous 4y ago
  So I checked the T41, and it was just a dead power adapter. After making a new one from a spare DC-DC converter, the laptop itself still seems to work. Cleaning it up might be a next step. :)

joshstrange 4y ago

This has been my experience since I first went from windows to mac. People always talk about the "Apple Tax" and it's real but it's not as obscene as people make it out to be when you factor in longevity. I had friends in college who were replacing ~$400-500 machines almost yearly while my ~$1,200 machine (2009) lasted all 4 years and then some. I only upgraded since I was using it professionally and wanted some more power. I have friends who are using their old MacBooks from college up until a few years ago (over 10 years). Now if you are using the machine professionally you might want to upgrade more often but I still get 4 years easily out of my MBPs. I upgraded early (~2 years in) for the M1 Max because it was such a nice jump but I could still be using my 2019 right now if I wanted to.

anthonypasq 4y ago
did you ever stop to think that maybe if they bought a $1200 windows machine it would have lasted 4 years. also macs were very early to hop on the ssd train and that was an insane advantage over most windows machines. I think that gap has closed substantially at this point.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  It might have lasted 4 years, but you'll note I said I knew people using them up to 10 years. In fact my 2014 MBP is still in service, a friend of mine uses it. I had a $1k+ Windows laptop that was a few years old in 2007-2009 and I was thoroughly unimpressed in it's build quality and how crappy/slow it was after 2 years. This was all pre-ssd even on macs (or at least the macs I was buying). I have no doubt that Windows laptop build quality has improved in the last decade, in no small part to chasing after Apple, but at this point I can't imagine going back to Windows so I'll never really know.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    There are also laptops that went the opposite direction from Apple, yet they keep on trucking. Old Thinkpads, Panasonic Toughbooks and HP Elitebooks are perfectly usable today, arguably moreso than older Macs. Toss Linux on it, and you'll have longer first-party support than any Macbook shipped in the last decade. If anything, the repairability and upgradability that prevented old Macs from being e-waste is gone now. It's hard to imagine Apple pushing the envelope on reusability or device longevity in their current era.

wkat4242 4y ago

Yeah my 2010 MacBook Pro 15 is also still working ok including the battery. Running Linux on it now though because Apple has given up supporting it many years ago :(

windowsrookie 4y ago
If you want MacOS on it opencore supports even the current version of MacOS on this machine. I have MacOS 11 running great on a 17” 2010 MacBook Pro for a friend. I will likely upgrade it to MacOS 12.

itg 4y ago

My Thinkpad X220 from 2011 works just fine, although I don't use it as my primary laptop anymore. Was also able to upgrade the memory from 4GB to 16GB and updated the HDD to a 1TB SSD :)

FpUser 4y ago

>How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years? Even the battery life is still ok. I am going to have to force her to consider the air bc the old 13 is a security risk without OS updates. My ASUS G73 is 12 years old. I stuffed it with 32GB RAM and it works just fine. I use it to create 3D models and assemblies. I do clone the SSD once in a while but still there was no need to replace. Since I use it mostly as a portable desktop (external keyboard, mouse and 4K monitor) the relevant parts are pristine.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Yeah, i have no idea how he managed to extrapolate sustainability from the fact that nothing has gone wrong with his macbooks. Well, nothing went wrong with all the computers I've ever had, but that's just an anecdotal measure of reliability, not of sustainability. Very weird logic.
j7f3 4y ago
I have an Asus G75 and I will never buy any hardware from Asus again. I rarely used that thing, basically once or twice per month yet the battery died after just a few years, then the keyboard, then the screen, and it weighs a ton too.

gamblor956 4y ago

Dells are also high quality and last a long time. My Dell laptops from college, law school, and my first job have all lasted over a decade, requiring only a battery replacement or two over the years. My dad's (IBM) Thinkpad from the 90s still works. OTOH, literally every Mac owner I know has had to replace their Mac laptop multiple times due to various hardware issues. (And yes, that includes Macbook Pros, Airs, etc.) It's great that Apple has such good support. I couldn't tell you what Dell or IBM's support is like; I've never had to use it.

r0m4n0 4y ago

I have had two MacBook Air m1 failures in my family that has started to change how I recommend purchasing a mac. They have 1 year warranties and one had logic board failure around the 18 month mark. It’s possible they last 7 years (I have a 2015 mbp that is going strong) but also it’s possible any high end brand lasts that long (I have an Hp envy that is running strong as well). The repairability of a MacBook m1 is basically zero. I’m too afraid to buy a new logic board because of the T2 chip). Anyway, a 1 year warranty is absurd on a product that expensive that you shouldn’t be having problems with. The tiny warranty is a scam to get you into AppleCare plus for hundreds more, so factor that into the price you pay as well. I feel like I’m responsible for recommending the m1 to my cousin that got fried this last week

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>EDIT - I am surprised I am getting downvoted. You would think more folks on HN would be happy about long lasting products but the anti-apple bias is strong enough to override the concern of having a more sustainable product. A small part of the reasons I downvoted you is this flamey statement here, because you seem more worried about the downvotes you were getting than with the content of your message and seem to base your opinion an what you think other people will like to hear, and when that doesn't work and people downvote you, you then resort to generalize and perhaps falsely calling people who disagree with you that they must have an anti Apple bias when that's not true. You should always speak your mind free regardless of other people's upvotes or downvotes, and not start to attack those who don't agree with you as if only your opinion is the right one and everyone else who disagrees must certainly be biased. Back on topic, no, I don't have an Apple bias, and the main reason I downvoted you is that I don't agree with your assessment of Apple making sustainable products when they've demonstrated time and time again being at the forefront of the anti right-to-repair movement and did everything they could to make sure to restrict, disable and discourage third party repairs as much as possible. See Luis Rossman's and Linus Tech Tips's videos. That's not what a sustainable company does. I'm glad you've never had any issue with your Macbooks, but one, that's survivorship bias of sample size one, and two, that's just shows reliability, and in no way proves anything about sustainability. Sustainability would be if you would have had issues and Apple would have provided you with assistance to reapir your old devices on the cheap. But your anecdotal experience of something never going wrong is no proof of sustainability as nothing ever went wrong with my Acer, HP, and Lenovo machines either, but that doesn't mean they're models of sustainability. Framework is an example of sustainability, not Apple, because sell you with the parts to keep your machines going, in case something goes wrong. Apple does not do that, in fact the opposite: "Oh, the display cable of your out of warranty Macbook is toast? Bummer. How about buying a new laptop then?" That's not what a sustainable company does. Ever. Based on these facts, I would encourage you to reevaluate your stance on what sustainability actually means and how it's defined on a consumer company and products. Peace.

Kon5ole 4y ago

>FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. That was also true for older macs, which were cheaper. I believe that the Apple Silicon macs are the highest-margin macs Apple has ever made, since they no longer have to pay Intel for the CPUs or AMD for the GPUs. I can see no technical or logistical reason why Apple had to increase prices, and believe it is entirely driven by the idea that the market can bear it.

sbuk 4y ago
The money they save from buying components from Intel is sunk into development of the processors. They also have to pay for manufacturing and logistics. TSMC have also increased the cost of manufacturing by 9%. Add rampant inflation and a strong dollar into the mix, there’s your technical/logical reason.
- jocaal 4y ago
  > The money they save from buying components from Intel is sunk into development of the processors That doesn't sound right. The m series chips are literally copy pasted from their a series and they operate at a scale where they probably get nice economies of scale. I bet they increased their margins a substancial amount.
- Kon5ole 4y ago
  >The money they save from buying components from Intel is sunk into development of the processors. They also have to pay for manufacturing and logistics. I am not convinced. Most of the development cost for Apple Silicon is already covered by the iphone and ipad. They always had to pay for manufacturing and logistics so that's not a new thing, and I bet they paid AMD and Intel way more than they pay TSMC even now.

ouid 4y ago

All computers last a long time...

evandale 4y ago

My anecdote is the complete opposite experience. I bought a new 2012 MBA in June and the hard drive started failing on me in August of 2013. It was just out of the warranty so Apple did me a "favour" and let me buy a 3-year Apple care so the repair would be free. They made the Apple care start on the day I bought the MBA back in June, which was something that I got screwed on later on. Then they recalled the 2012 MBAs because of failing SSDs in October 2013 and refused to refund my Apple care because they did me a "favour" and I got a good "deal" with getting Apple care because I shouldn't have been able to buy it post-warranty. It didn't matter that they recalled the SSD literally 2 months later free of charge, they wouldn't let me get rid of the Apple care and have it refunded. In April 2016 the battery died on me and it was out of Apple care warranty because the Apple care was June 2012 - June 2015 instead of the August 2013 I purchased it on and being valid until August 2016. So that cost me another $250 to replace. Another repair I had to pay for that should have been free. Finally in 2019 I updated to Catalina and it hosed the entire laptop which was working flawlessly before the update. It started randomly beach balling after about an hour of use and would stutter every couple of minutes until it eventually would lock up and turn off completely. Then it would randomly show the flashing question mark when booting up and it stopped working completely. The laptop couldn't even factory restore itself or stay on long enough to be restored over the internet. I brought it to Apple a few times, they didn't detect anything wrong with the laptop, and I eventually gave up on it. I still have no clue what that update did to kill my entire laptop but I was done putting money into it at that point.

kristjansson 4y ago
So, as a negative example, you provide ... a laptop you paid $1500 + $200 + $250 for, and got 7+ years of use?
- evandale 4y ago
  Yeah, but only because I built a desktop in 2010, spent $1100 and didn't have to put a penny more into it until last year. And that was because I wanted to upgrade, not because I had to. I had a Dell laptop survive 8 years without paying for anything. It really annoys me that the laptop died for no reason overnight after an OS upgrade and Apple couldn't even come up with an explanation or attempt to fix it. I've done some Googling recently because this was in my mind again and apparently Catalina bricked a lot of laptops but I can't seem to find any acknowledgment from Apple on that.

stateofinquiry 4y ago

to your point, this discussion from a few days ago features quite a few Apple Macs, <a href="https://slashdot.org/story/23/04/02/0058226/ask-slashdot-what-was-your-longest-lived-pc">which https://slashdot.org/story/23/04/02/0058226/ask-slashdot-wha... I thought was telling.</a>

runjake 4y ago

> I am surprised I am getting downvoted Probably for this statement: > FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. and subsequently for this flamey statement: > You would think more folks on HN would be happy about long lasting products but the anti-apple bias is strong enough to override the concern of having a more sustainable product. FWIW, it seems like you got incredibly lucky. In recent years, I've been through the following MacBooks: - 2013 MB (Glorious, ran forever, needed more RAM and speed) - 2016 MBP (bad keyboard, then rapid battery expansion) - 2018 MBP (battery expansion, then logic board failure) - 2019/2020 MBP (logic board failure) - M1 MBP 13" (nothing, it's running beautifully.) IIRC, all of the above failures happened just outside of the warranty period. For personal MacBooks, I will no longer go without AppleCare+. The risk of failure and accidental damage is too great. We have an org with thousands of MBPs with similar experiences. It got bad enough that discussions were had about switching staff to Chromebooks or Windows laptops. (Chromebooks didn't meet requirements and Windows laptops are even worse for hardware and software reasons) All of these devices basically sat on a desk in a ~68F office most of the time.

dimmke 4y ago
I guess I got lucky too. Because I bought a 2012 MBP (the first generation that had the HiDPI Retina displays) and it lasted me over 6 years of daily, hard use. It was still in decent condition but my job at the time got me one of the newer ones. Of course, that one had the bad keyboard and had to be swapped. 2016-2020 the dark ages but outside of that 4 year period (that Apple has firmly reversed course on), Apple's reputation for excellent laptops is well deserved.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  The #1 thing preventing Apple from getting into S-tier is user-serviceable storage. Baking on the memory? It's frustrating and gimps the device lifespan, but arguably unavoidable with the bandwidth Apple is targeting. Without replaceable storage though, every Apple Silicon device is effectively a ticking time-bomb. These devices will all hit their TBW limit long before they're unusable, and Apple refused to anticipate this because... it side-steps their pricing scheme? The current Macbook lineup is a step in the right direction, but far from perfect. Even ignoring my hundred gripes with MacOS, I think there are clear hardware improvements they can make with future iterations. None of these improvements seem particularly profitable though, so I'm not counting on Apple adding them.

dimmke 4y ago

My dad bought an 11" MacBook Air in 2011 - I think it was the cheapest possible Mac you could get at the time (maybe $900-$1000?) But I really wanted him to be on MacOS. He basically never used it as a laptop, and it's been plugged in to an external monitor and keyboard for many years. He used to stack paper on top of it until I told him to stop it so it could vent better. I would update the software, but I think it's been a while since there's been a new security update. I picked it up recently while visiting and noticed it wouldn't close all the way - uh oh. So I told him his battery was going bad and could explode. He took it to an independent repair shop the next day. They replaced it with a new battery and cleaned out over a decade of dust in the chassis for $120. I tried to impress upon him that having the same computer for over 10 years without ever having to take it in (or really do any kind of maintenance besides software updates) is extraordinary - he understands now that computers are a little more like cars. They need to be serviced sometimes. Not nearly as frequently as cars. And those laptops were not known for having good thermals. I'm on the verge of buying him a new MacBook just so he will be on the latest software - but for what he does (email, web browsing) the Air works just as well as it did in 2011. I think I might end up getting him a gently used M1 Mac Mini though since it never moves from his desk and it would be under $500. Anyways, I'm on an M1 MacBook Pro and it's hard to see myself buying a new Macbook Pro in the next 5 years minimum. I just don't need to. They fixed pretty much all of the problems their laptops had.

kome 4y ago
My MacBook Air 11-inch from 2015 with 1.7 GHz Dual-Core Intel i7 and 8 GB of RAM is still my main computer. And I love it, and it feels new. Perhaps i'm just lucky... but I use it everyday for hours. It traveled to super remote places. I want to use it for 2 or 3 more years (10 years in total would be nice!)
SoftTalker 4y ago
> for what he does (email, web browsing) A $200 Chromebook will work fine.
- robopsychology 4y ago
  To be fair the build quality of a $200 Chromebook is pretty rubbish. The pixel is probably on par with Macbooks in terms of build quality but again that's so expensive you may as well get a macbook air.

ornornor 4y ago

> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. Except when they’re not and Apple tries very hard to bury the problem while the machine is still relevant, so your choices are either to pay for (expensive) repairs out of pocket or dump it and buy a different model. Then years later once the machine is obsolete for most, will they finally give in and offer a free repair to the lucky ones who have been left holding these hot potatoes of a defective model. Not every time though, sometimes they just won’t accept responsibility at all, ever. See the GPU issues, the battery issues, the butterfly keyboards, the yellow tinted panels…

spullara 4y ago
The used Mac market disagrees with your anecdote.
eatfish 4y ago
You forgot the stage light effect. Mysteriously Apple give a free fix/service program for the 13" models but not the 15" models. Kind of sucks if you had a 15" model that started to go bad.
- ornornor 4y ago
  I gave up apple computers a long time ago so I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of these ignored issues. It illustrates my point though.

M_bara 4y ago

Ditto. Macs are surprisingly long lasting. I have - a 2011 MacBook Pro that is used for midi and piano classes. One battery change in 2018 and that’s it. It’s used every other day by kids for 2 hours. - a 2013 MacBook air. Workhorse for the kids homeschooling. Used every day for 8 hours or so. One battery change and a MagSafe adapter change. - a 16” 2016 MacBook Pro. My daily work device for the past 5 years. One battery change and 2 MagSafe adapters. - a 13” 2019 MacBook air for the wife. It’s been puked on till the screen is a bit messed but it still works. No hardware updates. So we are talking about ~ 30 years cumulative ownership with 3 battery changes and 3 MagSafes. Not bad in my book. If you want to nuke e waste, buy a Mac and hope it’s not a lemon. They rarely are

cyral 4y ago

My personal experience is that they do not. Had one Macbook pro that would crash and then fail to boot after about 5 minutes of use around the 1.5 year mark. (It appeared that once it was warm it would not work). Then, my current Macbook pro needed a full logic board replacement at 11 months (so close to being out of warranty). It is still going strong but I am concerned the issue will happen again. I very much enjoy using my Macbook over any windows laptop (the trackpad and keyboard are just so much better), but I am concerned about spending $3k on another laptop in a year or so when this one runs into an issue again.

Popcorn3865 4y ago

> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. My own experience (4 MacBooks Pros) and that of providing MacBook Air and Pros to a dozen or so staff (with 50 or so on non-Mac kit) leads me to conclude this statement is not true. They are great as long as they work but no better in terms of longevity to equivalent kit from other manufacturers, at least in my limited, non-scientific, IMHO experience.

PartiallyTyped 4y ago
Maybe I am just very unlucky, but I'd add 2 more datapoints. - M1 mba, 1 usb port dead. - 15' mbp 2019, all ports dead. I have been told that the logicboard is dead, and they wanted 850 euro to replace it. I am fairly certain that the is actually the ports as they gave out one by one in the same manner the M1 mba's did.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  that the issue with the MBP*
dacryn 4y ago
Last year I asked the numbers to our IT department for a similar discussion. On about 2000 macbooks, 2000 thinkbooks and 6000 hp elitebooks, all of various generations, the macbooks scored best on reliability and best on 'how many tickets do these users create for our service desk'. The cost savings are there. But obviously there was still a significant amount of issues with these laptops. They are not perfect, but they performed better than the other two families. The big issue with macbooks is usually that if they fail after 3 years, they are an immediate write off. The others get repaired. Oh and those butterfly keyboard years were horrible and nearly stopped us from allowing macbooks apparently.

bcrosby95 4y ago

FWIW I still have a system76 laptop from 2015 that's going strong. My wife's thinkpad is 13 years old by now - I've been able to keep it chugging by replacing the hard drive and memory.

LeifCarrotson 4y ago
That's a big advantage of the older Macs and Thinkpads and Elitebooks and XPS and so on: you can trivially restore an aged 10-year-old T440P into a highly functional machine by bumping it up to 16GB of RAM, adding a new battery, and a couple of 1 or 2TB SSDs. I did the same a couple of times with my 2008 MBP, that was indeed a great machine. All of the above can easily be updated to modern Linux or Windows 10 installs to your liking. But new Macs with soldered RAM and soldered storage and glued batteries may feel nicer on the Apple Store shelf, but a few years down the road when the base model specs are no longer adequate and the latest OSX releases drop them from support, you won't be able to repeat that process.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  This is why I'm looking forward to the framework 16". My system76 still works great, but I would love an upgraded graphics card. The framework 16" could be the last laptop I ever buy.
  - kristopolous 4y ago
    I really wish they had other keyboard options. The macbook clone keyboard and trackpad is a dealbreaker for me. Something with a little less "design" and a little more function would be great. Or alternatively there were 3rd party providers of them

notatoad 4y ago

my previous air went for 3 years before something got screwed up in the thermals and the fan needed to run constantly, and selling it to somebody who wanted to fix it was the easiest way to deal with it. The apple store wouldn't do anything for me. now the M1 Air that i got in january 2021 has a failing keyboard. this isn't "anti-apple bias", i like macs and will keep buying them. but the claim that they're more durable or longer-lasting than equivalent windows laptops is just nonsense. you can't expect 9 years out of one, but if you're very very lucky it might last that long. my Acer chromebook that i bought in 2013 is "still going strong". so is the pair of the absolute cheapest possible dell inspiron i bought in 2012 for rental customers to use at outdoor events. but i'm not going around telling people they should expect acer or dell laptops to last a decade.

tiledjinn 4y ago

lenovo makes better workhorses than apple. you seem to be attributing the plateau of necessary machine performance to apple's quality. the reality is that for general computation no one really needs more machine than was produced in ~2010. you simply don't need to upgrade computers like you did in the 90s and early 2000s.

havblue 4y ago

>FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. My own personal anecdote is that I spilled a trivial amount of booze on my MacBook 9 years ago and was left with the option of whether I wanted to replace the entire lower case. While it was my fault for drinking and computing, I just see it as being an expensive device to maintain when you accidentally damage it. I'd rather play a lower stakes game with a cheaper product that I'd buy more frequently as my needs change over the years.

FireBeyond 4y ago
Yup. Stepdaughter spilt a small amount of water on hers. It worked fine, plugged in, but the spill had damaged the charging circuitry. Laptop even showed the battery as healthy. Just couldn't be charged. Take it in, thinking okay, maybe $300 for parts and labor. Hah, no. "So we're looking at $950..." followed by the Apple guy then saying "How about we look at getting you into a new MacBook instead?" Nah. It worked fine, and was mostly attached to her desk and digital piano, and continued to work just fine on AC power.
yencabulator 4y ago
I've killed several Apple laptops by spilling a single drink on the keyboard. I've spilled more drinks onto a single Thinkpad than I've killed Apples with. Thinkpads (used to?) have a pan under the keys with a drainage hole that goes out below the laptop. No damage whatsoever from several spills. Apple has a lot of fanboys that are not entirely rational about their fanboyism.

lynndotpy 4y ago

I didn't downvote you, but I'd imagine you're being downvoted for arguing in favor of that laptop being economical. At the risk of sounding like a dead meme, "a laptop going strong for over 9 years" is already the default for the kinds of folks who would opt for Linux and who would replace their laptops HDD with an SSD. My $800 laptop from 2015 has been 16GiB RAM and 512TB SSD and it still works perfectly (save for an Ethernet port which I regrettably damaged). It's running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, which is supported for three more years as of this comment. This is kind of a standard experience for people in Linux land. So by comparison, a $1600 laptop with 8GiB RAM and a 256GB HDD which is no longer receiving security updates does not sound like a good deal.

akudha 4y ago

I have a 2011 Air and 2011 W series thinkpad. Air lasted until last year. W520 is still going strong. yeah, Apple computers do last long. But it is ridiculous that you can’t upgrade RAM or hard disk or pretty much anything, after spending THAT much money.

jcadam 4y ago

> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. In my experience, this was true during the 68k and PPC days, but after the x64 transition quality went downhill, fast.

wvenable 4y ago

I bought a $900 Asus Zenbook 9 years ago and it's still going strong as good as it was the day I bought it. The problem with these kinds of anecdotes is they lack a control. If you compared an identically priced PC laptop you might find that there's almost no difference. You're just making an assumption without any actual contrasting data to back it up.

croes 4y ago

The newer ones don't seem to be high quality. More like design over function https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32474827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32474827 And the problem with apple hardware is you barely can fix anything yourself and without Apple care it costs a lot of money because they can't replace single parts but only complete modules.

empressplay 4y ago

I was an Apple service technician up to 2016, then I gave up on it because 'repairing' (basically logic board replacements) the new machines (that involved cutting and gluing and other silliness) became too onerous and, quite frankly, depressing. Personally I have a mid-2012 13" MBP, 16GB, 1TB SSD, 2K external display and a third displayLink display running Ventura and it's still going strong. I have several more for giving coding lessons / as backups for me ;) I dream of the day Apple goes back to making something as serviceable as them, but I won't lose sleep waiting.

hospitalJail 4y ago

>How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years? I think this is standard for most laptops that cost over $600 Or at least my experience with my Asus and Acer brand 'gaming' laptops. My computer from 2014 is still my daily driver and I use it for modern gaming. This 2014 computer even does CAD with no slowdowns, its really hard to justify buying something new. I can afford a new computer, I just havent had a reason to. Maybe with AI, I might spend like 35k on a tower so I can run my own LLMs.

adverbly 4y ago

Am I missing something? You're saying that you bought a device 9 years ago with the exact same specs(8gb ram, 256 disk) that are currently being sold for about the exact same price. And you are saying that macs last a long time? How is that possible if the specs are 9 years old?

Tade0 4y ago

My cheapo Samsung laptop from 2013 lasted until 2020 and it went through some heavy abuse. Still turns on and all, it's just that the battery gave up and the power socket is loose, so it might randomly lose power. My mother still uses my even more cheapo laptop from 2010 - my brother in law replaced the HDD with an SSD, but that's the extent of maintenance done. The battery sort of works, but barely. Meanwhile my work MBP in 2019 started developing keyboard issues after a few months of use - just like the units my two coworkers from the same room had. To be fair that was a particularly bad model year. A laptop generally should last seven years, but most people here don't see their devices reach that age because they pass them on after less than three.

throwaway2056 4y ago

It is not anti-Apple. Everyone has anecdotal story about these. > and she abuses the shit out of it. It is all own stories. Go to any university or school. Give the student a mac. Wait for a few months and see.

jandrese 4y ago

This is anecdotal, but my daily driver Dell E6540 is closing in on 10 years old now. One nice thing about this Dell is that it is very easy to replace the battery, unlike all modern Apple laptops. My wife had a Macbook of around the same vintage, but when the battery went it was too difficult to replace and we had to buy a new laptop instead.

jlokier 4y ago
Apple themselves offer a battery replacement service for a fee, and it seems to be a reasonable fixed price (where I live). You might still be able to get them to upgrade that Macbook's battery. Don't use an Apple Reseller for this without checking Apple's battery replacement price first. The reseller I went to quoted 2.5x the price, and said they were unaware of Apple's price (seems unlikely), which they could not match.

hcnews 4y ago

On a different note, shouldn't Apple support viable hardware till its live? Lack of security/OS updates is basically bricking a perfectly functional device and creating more waste on Earth. They could even charge users for an upgrade after a while if it means overall less waste on the planet. Ofcourse, it means that there's less sales at Apple but hopefully they're big enough to not bother with this.

null_object 4y ago

> I am surprised I am getting downvoted. You got my upvote because I have a similar experience - still using my 2014 MacBook Pro. However, I also agree with the other take I’m seeing in these comments: the current prices do seem disproportionately high (at least in the EU). I feel I have to go back about 25 years to see the same level of expense for high-end electronics. I genuinely thought we were past that era of rarefied ‘professional’ hardware. And as others have also pointed out, adding RAM or disk capacity is ridiculously expensive.

JohnFen 4y ago

> How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years? Very often! I'm not an Apple person, but every laptop I've ever owned has kept going strong well past the 10 year mark.

diebeforei485 4y ago

Being stuck with a 256GB machine for a long time is not great. Apple should start at 512GB. It doesn't meaningfully increase their BOM, and gets rid of a lot of user frustration. Also, I notice you had a 2014 machine, so you skipped the keyboard issues that plagued Apple until ~2021.

rorroe53 4y ago

Old Thinkpads are at least equally durable, though not sure about the newest generation. Been using a T520 from 2011 for a few years with Linux, no problems. Macbooks are great if you get a model without some serious design fault - like screen protection peeling off, or butterly keyboard breaking.

deleted 4y ago

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vetinari 4y ago

> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. No. The spare parts are available 5 years since the end of sale of the product; may be longer, if they are available, but max for 7 years. Batteries for 10. See here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 I also have 2015 13" MBP. It is perfectly fine hardware-wise, but it is not supported by the current OS already. (It is supported by Monterey, which still receives security updates). I also have 2012 Thinkpad (T430s). It is also perfectly fine hardware-wise, and it is supported by current OS (both Windows and Linux), and neither of them even plans to obsolete them. (Heck, Linux distributions are just starting carefully considering x86-64 microarchitectures). > the anti-apple bias is strong enough You should consider whether you are not having apple-bias. The Job's RDF joke existed not without a reason.

tryitnow 4y ago

Just chiming in to confirm this anecdote - the only difference is that the machine I gave my partner was a macbook air, not pro. Still works fine for almost all normal person use cases.

nextaccountic 4y ago

> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. It may last, but a laptop with 8GB of RAM becomes less and less useful over time

uvesten 4y ago

> I am going to have to force her to consider the air bc the old 13 is a security risk without OS updates. Have a look at Open Core Legacy Patcher (https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/ https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/), it’s great! My wife is using my old 2011 17” MBP as a desktop laptop, it works flawlessly on Ventura 13.3 :)

deergomoo 4y ago

> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. I agree with you, but that doesn’t change the fact outside the US, many Apple products are 15+% more expensive than they were a few years ago. In the UK we’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis—my bills have shot up and I simply don’t have the extra disposable income. I mean shit, I’m a decently paid developer (for the north of the UK, so not London) and until my most recent rise a base 16” MacBook Pro cost almost an entire month’s take-home salary.

kristopolous 4y ago

i'm writing this on an 11 year old thinkpad i got used 8 years ago for like $300. There's actually plenty of high quality hardware out there, it just takes a bit of unbiasing in your assessments.

rootcage 4y ago

I just bought a Mac Pro M2 in January after using a 2013 Macbook air for ~10 years. It lasted me through college and more, still runs smoothly to this day. Apple's build quality cannot be understated.

hetman 4y ago

Since we're trading anecdotes. I have a 2013 Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro which refuses to die. I've always used it when I travel so I definitely haven't coddled it. I've kind of been hoping it would die so I could justify replacing it because it's been good enough to get the job done. And the best part is that since it's running Windows I've been able to upgrade the OS and still get security updates. As other posters have demonstrated, having a laptop last this long is part good design and part good luck.

naasking 4y ago

> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. There is no Apple-bias. Apple hardware is not really any better than other brands, but they are chic and you pay for it. That's almost always been the case, speaking as a Mac guy before it became cool (pre-iPod). Stories of longevity for any brand are generally from people who take care of their stuff, but you can find exceptions even here. I bought a refurbished Lenovo laptop 10 years ago for $300, it's still going strong after updating to an SSD a couple of years ago. The comparable Apple hardware would have cost 3x that. I also don't have to worry about losing security updates because my hardware doesn't go EOL like you just described.

poulsbohemian 4y ago

>FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. I suspect many of us agree, and full disclaimer I am an Apple customer since about 1990. That said - that so many base units across their product line come with paltry specs is really upsetting. Frankly, it feels like environmental waste for them to still be selling machines with only 8gb ram / less than 1TB min storage. Sure, I've heard their song-and-dance about storage in the cloud and how because of their memory management 8gb isn't really just 8gb - and I find those arguments to be horse pucky. Also - if your battery is still kicking after 9 years consider yourself very, very, weirdly lucky. I bet if you put our a survey you would find a number of us who didn't come close to that, whether due to keyboard issues, battery, etc.

LeBit 4y ago

You are NOT running minikube on that 2017 MBP.