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> The Macbook is a 2010 17" so it would have been pretty easy to upgrade and repair (socketed Ram and HDD, screwed in battery) but the age would have made this
by alsetmusic 2y ago
> The Macbook is a 2010 17" so it would have been pretty easy to upgrade and repair (socketed Ram and HDD, screwed in battery) but the age would have made this laptop not only unusably slow but it was also dead as a doornail. Its [sic] one of the still good Macbooks with the glowing apple logo.
This detail from the comments explains why they'd replace hardware rather than simply installing Linux as-is. I was a little perplexed until I saw this.
- userbinator 2y agoI'm more perplexed that a reasonably high-end system from 2010 would be considered "unusably slow". There are still many who are satisfied with less. I suppose it depends on what they intend to use it for.
- andai 2y agoI used a laptop from 2010 until recently (2022?). Only downside was some games and software wouldn't run due to minimum OpenGL level. I think I had to upgrade when I needed to use Blender.
- Koshkin 2y agoMy “late 2014” Mac Mini had indeed become unusably slow (before I installed Debian on it, that is).
- wtallis 2y agoIt's closer to a RPi 4 than RPi 5 for CPU performance, and neither GPU has much in the way of video transcoding hardware. Something as simple as 1080p60 H.264 playback may be beyond the capabilities of that machine.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago> Something as simple as 1080p60 H.264 playback Where can you even find 60fps video of decent quality? That's framerate I associate more with gaming than video production. Surely 24fps is still the standard today? (I am very ignorant in this regard; please be kind.)
- wtallis 2y agoI think most people would generally expect their laptop (especially a high-end model) to be capable of playing a video shot on their phone. But today's low-end phones have much more powerful processors than that old laptop.
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoI think most would likely watch the video on their phone itself.
- achierius 2y agoI don't think it's unreasonable for people to expect to be able to tag their photos on their laptop, no? It's a very common workflow which is nevertheless kind of a pain to do on a mobile device.
- comex 2y agoPersonally, I often use my laptop to watch game footage (with commentary) on YouTube or Twitch. That’s not a use case everyone will care about, but it’s quite a popular one.
- rowanG077 2y agoYouTube has a ton of 60fps content
- userbinator 2y agoSomething as simple as 1080p60 H.264 playback may be beyond the capabilities of that machine. A 1st-gen i7 (2008) can decode 1080p60 H.264 in software in realtime. Been there, done that.
- wtallis 2y agoIn 2008 the i7 branding had only been used on desktop chips. Were you running your desktop with a 35W limit?
- afavour 2y agoI recently dug out a 2013 MacBook and I’m surprised at how slow it feels. “Unusably” is of course a subjective measure but I think if I was using this day to day I’d get annoyed.
- Yossarrian22 2y agoReplace the HDD with an SSD, max out the RAM, and repaste the CPU whilst hacking it to run the latest MacOs or Linux and you’ll find a a very usable experience. Source: I just did this with a 2011 MacBook Pro
- kelnos 2y agoI did that with a 2012 Mac Mini a few years ago, and it was ok, but not great. A few months ago I replaced it with a little Intel N100 box, and I'm much happier now. Consider that the utility of old hardware depends on what you want to do with it, as well.
- lunchmeat317 2y agoThat 2013 model (at least the late 2013 model that I have) añready has an SSD. RAM is soldered if I remember correctly. Thr issue that mine has - aside from a broken hinge over time - is that one of the thermal sensors is fucked, so the machine puts the fans on full and heavily throttles the CPU. Before that happened (last year) it was a solid machine.
- wink 2y agoI have an i7/32GB/SSD x230 from 2013 and it's perfectly usable for everything I've thrown at it so far, so ymmv.
- nopelynopington 2y agoI have an x220 and an x201 with SATA SSDs and they both run great, although repasting the cpus is on my list of things to do, as the fans do run more than I'd like. I have Debian on both but recently I was testing old SSDs and one had windows 10 and even that was perfectly usable. My main daily driver is a MacBook Pro 64GB M2 Max, so it's not like I live in a world of ancient tech and don't understand the difference.
- numpad0 2y agois macOS at Vista phase?
- justsomehnguy 2y ago> "unusably slow". There are still many who are satisfied with less Who exactly are satisfied with less than a 15 y/o notebook? Why are they on (more than) 15 y/o notebook and not on a smartphone? > I suppose it depends on what they intend to use it for. 15 notebook is enough to be a glorified typewritter or tty, or to watch some movies (forget about HEVC, x265 and even x264 is troublesome) Intel Core i5-540M @ 2.53GHz vs AMD Ryzen 3 4300U Clockspeed 2.5 GHz 2.7 GHz Turbo Speed Up to 3.1 GHz Up to 3.7 GHz # of Physical Cores 2 (Threads: 4) 4 (Threads: 4) Cache L1: 128KB, L2: 0.5MB, L3: 3MB L1: 256KB, L2: 2.0MB, L3: 4MB First Seen on Chart Q1 2010 Q1 2020 Single Thread Rating 1159(-49.8%) 2307(0.0%) CPU Mark 1808(-75.7%) 7431(0.0%)
- nopelynopington 2y ago> 15 notebook is enough to be a glorified typewritter Glorified typewriter is a perfectly acceptable use case. Plenty people out there who just want to write a novel or thesis or email or look up a recipe or Wikipedia. Not everyone is gaming and watching 4k video
- justsomehnguy 2y ago> look up a recipe Do you even internet? Just try it yourself on some 2c/4t machine from 2010. Sure, you can do it, but it would be an exercise in patience.
- userbinator 2y agoI've done it on even older machines and it's perfectly fast. Maybe it's because I don't use bloatware browsers and keep JS off by default.
- justsomehnguy 2y agoAh, that settles it. You forgot what you aren't everyone else.
- yowzadave 2y agoOlder Macs can’t run the latest macOS. My daughter uses a 2013 MacBook Air for school, and it is limited to macOS Sierra, which none of the evergreen web browsers support any more. I’ve also not been able to find a modern email client to install on it. (I guess GP’s point that installing Linux would be the sensible course of action is probably true with this laptop).
- rzzzt 2y agoFirefox 115 ESR still supports Sierra until next year: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-users-macos-1012-1013-1014-moving-to-extended-support https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-users-macos-101...
- rzzzt 2y agoUnusual slowness might be experienced if the battery is dead or missing, as the embedded controller / SMC will assert the CPUs bi-directional PROCHOT signal and with that, lock it to the lowest available clock speed (700 MHz-ish on a 2nd gen Core i7, sitting in a 2011 MBP). If you coerce it to... not do that, the laptop might reset whenever power usage goes up quickly, because it was designed with the expectation that the battery will jump in and act as a reserve.