Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Adds Last MacBook Pro With CD Drive to Obsolete Products List

abatabia said:
Still the best MacBook ever made.
Click to expand...
If you discount the advancements in display, processor, storage, and battery technologies, I think the best notebook Apple ever made is the aluminum PowerBook G4 with removable battery, user upgradable RAM, storage (even the optical drive), and Wi-Fi. I do have a deep fondness for the first Mac I ever purchased, Titanium PowerBook G4, but the paint peeled off within a year and it looked nasty afterward.

But yeah, technically speaking, PowerBooks aren't MacBooks, so I agree with your sentiment.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Stenik, Victor Mortimer and meson
Some people are making fun now -- poor SATA cables and low-quality screen -- but this was the design that changed everything. Before this design, which I believe debuted in 2009, no laptop had ever felt as rigid. It was like it was made out of a solid piece of aluminum. This was such a high point for pro-user Apple innovation, as opposed to the later obsession with innovating away any post-sale upgrade paths.
 
  • Like
Reactions: gusmula, Antoniosmalakia, JMStearnsX2 and 2 others
I bought this model out of the gate and am still using it as my primary remote machine 12 years later. It’s been through RAM/SSD upgrades and several batteries. The trackpad no longer clicks so have to use an external mouse, but it still gets the job done. Holding out one more year for a 16” M4 Max that will hopefully last me another 12 years.
 
  • Like
Reactions: NMBob
blazerunner said:
That was the last truly upgradeable laptop. Soldering the RAM to the motherboard after that was a giant middle finger to the consumer and force them to buy whole new laptops instead of a simple small upgrade. You just can't respect Apple for that... their 'environmentally friendly' claims are complete garbage.

That said, pro-consumer policies don't concern Apple which is why they're now worth 3 trillion dollars... by ripping off consumers. Nice.
Click to expand...
Sure, it's nice to be able to swap the drive, but the max RAM was 16GB which wasn't even that expensive or huge then. When I bought one and immediately maxed out the ram. In the end just the disk is upgradable, and even then, it's not that fast.
 
That was one of my all tine favorite MBs. I think I bought it brand new at BestBuy in 2016/2017 or so. I put a SSD and replaced the battery in it a few years later. It's been in my storage locker for last 2.5 years so t he battery might be junk again. I enjoyed using it when I did.
 
i got one of these at work in 2014. still using it 10 years later!! replaced the HD with 500Gb SSD a few years back. machine then ran 10x faster! still a great wee laptop. better than the cheap ****** PCs they are handing out now. im hanging onto my mac for dear life!
 
  • Like
Reactions: NMBob
abatabia said:
Still the best MacBook ever made.
Click to expand...
I just bought one last fall to run my mothers household. 16GB of Ram, the Intel gpu that doesn't burn up, 16TB of SSD storage and it runs Monterey perfectly smoothly. A fantastic little machine, especially when paired with the 30" Cinema Display, & is small enough to bring in her little MG on her fly fishing adventures. Even matches her Rollie E110. Perfect.

Interesting to hear of some peoples experiences re the data cables. I'm still using an 2010 17", and have swapped SSDs in & out of it at least a few hundred times by now & never had a failure, but did notice that theres a different OEM sata cable in each year of MBP I've owned, from '09, to '10, '11 and '12 they kept changing it. I wonder which was the problem year.
 
Last edited:
GMShadow said:
Was it the low quality screen, the crap design of the SATA cables that resulted in frequent failures, or the meh performance at launch that grabbed you?

View attachment 2343513
Click to expand...
I had this exact same MacBook and I had to upgrade it in 2019 because I had an online class, it couldn't even handle Zoom. Thank god I did because I needed it in 2020 obviously lol.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TechnoMonk
MacRumors said:


Apple today added the Mid 2012 model of the 13-inch MacBook Pro to its obsolete products list worldwide, according to its website.

13-Inch-MacBook-Pro-Mid-2012.jpg

Released in June 2012, this 13-inch MacBook Pro model was the last Mac with a built-in CD/DVD drive sold by Apple, and it remained for sale until October 2016 as a lower-priced option. Apple continues to sell an external SuperDrive for customers who need a CD/DVD drive, but a USB-C adapter is required to use it with modern MacBooks.

Apple considers a device to be "technologically obsolete" once more than seven years have passed since the company last distributed it for sale. Apple says MacBooks "may be eligible for an extended battery-only repair period for up to 10 years from when the product was last distributed for sale, subject to parts availability."

On the software side, Apple dropped support for the Mid 2012 model of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with macOS Big Sur in 2020.

Apple discontinued the 13-inch MacBook Pro entirely last year.

Article Link: Apple Adds Last MacBook Pro With CD Drive to Obsolete Products List
Click to expand...
If you are gonna attack people or Apple for selling an external DVD drive then you need to replace my entire DVD and CD library.
 
  • Like
Reactions: NMBob
guzhogi said:
Do what you like, but as someone in IT, I kinda hate the soldered/integrated everything. Yes, that's great for performance, but terrible for repairing. It's not even about upgrading for me (though it is nice). Plus for places like public schools, or non profit organizations, repairability is far better than having to replace the whole thing just because a single component failed. Plus more important than performance.
Click to expand...
My kids public school system replaces Laptops, too expensive labor charges to repair. They just buy cheap tablets and Laptops. Most of the Non Apple Laptops also come with soldered RAM.
 
I have the 15" inch version of that model, I've been using it for almost 10 years now as a backup laptop. I received it damaged by a family member, and I've been repairing/upgrading it since then. I maxed out the memory and put a data doubler so it has 2 500 gb SSDs. Just last week, I repasted the CPU/GPU and moved everything to a used bottom shell I purchased with a trackpad/keyboard, since the old one was bent and the keyboard attached to it was missing a key.

I'm probably going to keep this thing until it completely dies.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Antoniosmalakia and NMBob
The optical CD/DVD drive has long since gone the way of the floppy disk. I haven’t use my Blu-ray player for almost five years now to watch a movie. Streaming has taken over. Most software is no longer sold as a CD/DVD anymore. CD/DVD as an archival storage medium no longer makes sense because they DO deteriorate over time, especially the user-burned ones. The CD/DVD movies that I treasure and are no longer available I have long since ripped into the TV app.
 
Typing this right now on a 2012 macbook pro. As other's have said, it's the best laptop Apple has ever made. Years ago, I upgraded this macbook with 16GB's RAM, a 2tb SSD, and a 5TB HDD in place of the disk drive. Steve jobs must be rolling in his grave seeing what has become of his company. Ever since he died, Apple went backwards with almost every product. Yes the company has grown a lot since his death, but i would argue that's all based on the momentum from the legacy he created. Apple has gone backwards in so many ways. Removing ports like SD card readers, USB, magsafe, etc, only to admit they f'ed up with that, and reintroduced all those ports. Adding notches to their displays on phones, and now laptops. That's probably the most idiotic thing I have ever seen. Upgrading to an M series MBP just doesn't feel good. Less storage than my MPB from 12 years ago, notch on the screen, fewer ports, no way to upgrade, etc... Yuck!
 
  • Wow
  • Like
Reactions: witchcult and gusmula
avz said:
Lower quality screen means that it is less taxing on a CPU(which is identical to its retina variant) so you have more CPU power to do what you like.
Click to expand...

I didn't say lower resolution (though 1280x800 was embarrassing in 2012), I said low quality.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Chuckeee
ricketysquire said:
It's ironic how the more "green" things get the more disposable and non-upgradable things get.
Click to expand...
Upgradeable has become a catch phrase. When I worked for the largest telecommunications giant a tech NEVER came to my desk to upgrade the RAM, put a bigger Hard Drive in, etc. Nope, my current laptop was simply swapped out for a new one. That’s how companies do things. The old equipment gets recycled or resold on the used market.

As for other devices, I’ve never heard of anyone upgrading their HDTV, their AVR and the like. Not possible.

The vast, vast, did i say VAST, number of users never upgrade anything, including the operating system.

The upgradeable mantra is reserved completely for the nerd herd, the tinkerers, the “I assemble my own” crowd.
 
  • Like
  • Disagree
Reactions: JMStearnsX2, subjonas, G5isAlive and 2 others
dannyyankou said:
I had this exact same MacBook and I had to upgrade it in 2019 because I had an online class, it couldn't even handle Zoom. Thank god I did because I needed it in 2020 obviously lol.
Click to expand...
I was amazed to find that my 2010 MacBook Air, as the newest Mac I own, could run Zoom, and even record the session ... with just me on it, that is. I needed to make an instructional video and it did the job ... but editing that later on Windows really showed how much it actually struggled, with the recording rather low res and showing significant lag in mouse cursor movement on the screen share. Always interesting to see the good and the somewhat poorer aspects of these machines' ageing!
 
GMShadow said:
I didn't say lower resolution (though 1280x800 was embarrassing in 2012), I said low quality.
Click to expand...
Well it is still better than what my Late 2008 unibody MacBook has although the word on the street is that the quality of these screens were always the luck of the draw.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back