Probably why they cottoned on to not let the newer macs be so adaptable for changing RAM, batteries, and SSD. The difference in price for SSD size has gone mad with Apple on the latest machines. 200£ 1TB and 600 for 2.. Just mad
You mentioned the casing with the 3.0 USB, but presumably as the old MBP is only at 2, it won't make any difference?
A cheap 2tb ssd for this old Macbook Pro would only cost me about €120-€180 at this point. Although apple’s ssds are higher quality their prices are still absolutely ridiculous.
1) I have a 13-inch 2011 MacBook Pro with:
Yes, I suspected the experience won't be great. Going from Sierra to High Sierra has made the fans work much harder than they did before, which wasn't great. Even on Snow Leopard. Also on an i5 with 8GB instead of the installed 4. No idea how much difference that has made because it was changed at the same time as the SSD.
Hello, Rocknrotty, Is the Macbook pro 2012 still running well or it had some problems with Sonoma, Could you install and run new softwares as MS Office and Adobe?
I'm someone who would opt for Linux as an alternative OS for unsupported Macs. However, as far as Linux has come in maturity finding replacements isn't always easy. For example one main thing that keeps macOS around for me is the ability to text from the mac instead of relying on a touch screen for typing, or speech to text e.g. dictation, as that can be unreliable. Even with Ventura being a more stable solution than Sonoma for OCLP, it's still not perfect, the graphics related issues i mentioned above also exist in Ventura being patched vs natively supported. Either way I will agree that overall OCLP works well except for graphics specific tasks, depending on the particular hardware being used. (At least that's been my impression) I will also add that in testing, most of my stuff still works in Mojave, so if an OS release that far back still works for a majority of stuff. Monterey should be even better for non Apple specific support.
Hey@Powerbooky, I've tried all manner of things to update the iMovie I have but it just doesn't want to know, and the App store is a nightmare for that, so if I delete the 9.0.4, I should just be able to install this one instead, in theory?
You can pick up a decent configured MacBook Pro (either a 13-inch or 15-inch) for around $300 on eBay and then you can use this laptop with OCLP and install MacOS Sonoma 14.4.1 with no issues.
Thanks, so you're saying a 2015 would make that much difference over my 2011 MBP?
Thank you!
Absolutely! The 2015 laptops can support the much faster NVMe M.2 storage drives whereas the 2011 can not. I currently have a 2TB Western Digital NVMe M.2 drive in my mid 2015 15-inch MBP with disk transfer speeds of as much as 2400mb/sec to 2500mb/sec. At best your 2011 disk access speeds would be around 400mb/sec. A huge difference.
Interesting that the iMovie I've been using all this time is about 400MB, and that one is 3GB
Thank you for all this info, I had no clue it would be so different, and a quarter of the priceAbsolutely! The 2015 laptops can support the much faster NVMe M.2 storage drives whereas the 2011 can not. I currently have a 2TB Western Digital NVMe M.2 drive in my mid 2015 15-inch MBP with disk transfer speeds of as much as 2400mb/sec to 2500mb/sec. At best your 2011 disk access speeds would be around 400mb/sec. A huge difference.
Also the graphics processor found in the 2015 laptops are metal-based so it can run MacOS up to the current vers 14.5 Developer Beta which my 11-inch AIR and 13-inch MBPs are currently running without any issue.
I was able to obtain all my 2015 laptops (see sig below) for around $300 with my Air being the cheapest acquisition at $95. The Air was advertised as not being able power on so everyone stayed away from it. I purchased the Air and found out the reason is because the battery was completely discharged and the seller chose to sell it as a non functioning laptop rather than try charging it up first.
The point being if you really know what you're buying and know what to look for in an eBay auction you can source a very nice near mint 2015 laptop and then get a Western Digital NVMe M.2 and Syntech adapter to boost your read/write speeds for faster performance and then run the latest MacOS using OCLP and have a decent laptop for minimum investment. In my humble opinion, not everyone requires cutting edge performance from their computers and rather than throw money away on a device that will rapidly depreciate over time, I would rather source one of these build to order laptops (in their day) for pennies of what they originally sold for and still be able to have years of good usage from them without throwing away lots of money. Of course if you have to have cutting edge performance from your computer so that you can access the internet, watch videos, check your email and do simple video editing/photo processing then by all means feel free to get the newer Apple products but keep in mind you can not upgrade your storage drives or change out components like your display, trackpad, or logic board without it being disabled for some reason due to Apple's anti-rights to repair attitude.
Yes the writing is on the wall for all Intel devices but for now I am content using my 2015 laptops for at least another 6 more years before I have to decide to either upgrade or run a different OS on them. Sorry about being on my soapbox there.
No problem. I just wanted to make sure you got all the info before doing anything. I highly recommend upgrading to the 2015 models if you would like to somethat future-proof your laptop for many more years of usage as I have done with mine
Thanks again! And the 2015 models still use the SSD that you can swap out yourself or was it different by then?No problem. I just wanted to make sure you got all the info before doing anything. I highly recommend upgrading to the 2015 models if you would like to somethat future-proof your laptop for many more years of usage as I have done with mine
When people realize they can do what I have been doing to my laptops they will most likely start grabbing these like I have and pricing for both the Early 2015 and Mid 2015 laptops will begin to rise. Keep this in mind . . .
From the 2011 laptop you have the 2013 thru 2015 models use a different type of SSD. A much faster version. You can install the faster NVMe M.2 SSDs using a Syntech adapter and have much faster transfer rates over Apple's stock 400mb/sec transfer rates.
