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Can a MacBook last for 10 years?
- Thread starter Hieveryone
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I'm thinking of purchasing a refurbished 2015 15.4 Macbook Pro I know I want 16GB ram and a 256 GB SSD but what is the difference between the Intel Iris Pro Graphics and one that has both the Intel Iris Pro Graphics and the AMD Radeon R9 M370X.
I'm not really a Pro user but I want a 15" display I won't be running any intense programs or any video editing just web surfing, email, facetime, word docs maybe light photo editing etc but I do want the largest display so it has to be the pro so will the Iris Pro Graphics be just fine for my needs?
I'm not really a Pro user but I want a 15" display I won't be running any intense programs or any video editing just web surfing, email, facetime, word docs maybe light photo editing etc but I do want the largest display so it has to be the pro so will the Iris Pro Graphics be just fine for my needs?
At 10 years, Apple will no longer support the hardware and the latest OS will not be compatible. You will run into issues with other application updates too. I think Apple tends to support OS updates on computers for about 6 years. Now, that isn't measured from the time you buy it. This is measured from the model year. As an example, if you bought a new 2015 MacBook Pro in 2016, it would probably be supported for OS updates until 2021.....so more like 5 years.
I saw a web page that showed Apple's history of supporting OS updates on laptops, and it seemed to range from 5-7 years.
BTW - This is only significant if you are looking at the long term cost of ownership. A $1299 2015 MBP that lasts 5 years is really more expensive over the long run than a $1499 new 2016 MBP that lasts 6 years....food for thought.
I saw a web page that showed Apple's history of supporting OS updates on laptops, and it seemed to range from 5-7 years.
BTW - This is only significant if you are looking at the long term cost of ownership. A $1299 2015 MBP that lasts 5 years is really more expensive over the long run than a $1499 new 2016 MBP that lasts 6 years....food for thought.
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The step from integrated to an R9 M370 is huge.
That said though, neither will play games very well. If you are just doing non-gaming stuff, the integrated GPU will be fine.
If you're planning to run anything other than e-sports 3d games, buy something else. Or try to stretch for a machine with thunderbolt 3 and buy an e-GPU box to hook up via thunderbolt 3 later.
yes, that'll be fine. for the tasks you listed you'd probably not see any benefit from having a dedicated GPU over the iris pro anyway.
I have a 2011 MBP and this thing is still kickin' ass and takin' names, but I got "lucky" and had the graphics card issue/recall on mine about two months before the recall expired last year. When I took it in, apple not only replaced the motherboard, but they also replaced the battery, DVD drive, and hard drive. So not sure that my MBP would be the best example of a computer enduring a 10-year lifespan. Although I don't expect it to last another five years, it is surely good for another 2-3 years. Disclaimer: I have upgraded to an SSD and 16 GB RAM which extends the life somewhat.
The closer to the higher-end you get (the dGPU issues withstanding), the longer it will last. A friend has a 2008 Mac Pro that is still going strong.
The MacBook Pros I think 7-8 is stretching it, the Airs I think are good for about 5.
They will last longer if you don't upgrade the OS. The problem you will run into is if an app needs a newer version of the OS.
The MacBook Pros I think 7-8 is stretching it, the Airs I think are good for about 5.
They will last longer if you don't upgrade the OS. The problem you will run into is if an app needs a newer version of the OS.
I've still got a TiBook from around 2002 but the battery is gone and I admit I just power it up, look for whatever it was, put the docs on a stick and power TiBook down again.
I'm tempted to get it a new battery if they still exist (Hey for the days of a user serviceable part!) and see how it goes.
Limited by the OS though I would imagine now.
Apparently not.
I just dug it out and fired it up.
It can see the WIFI networks but it's failing the security protocols which is fair.
It's running OS X 10.4.11 which was as far as you can go without an Intel processor.
It was the last of the Power PCs.
Strangely, although the clock had to be reset (not surprisingly) Photoshop CS2 still remembered and opened the last used documents.
The battery says it's charging, which I don't believe, but I'll leave plugged in overnight in case.
It's doing something, there's a lot of chatter and the fans are humming.
Internet notwithstanding (and because of updated security protocols which it doesn't have due to only being able to run an outdated operating system) it is still a functioning computer.
Respect!
This cannot be stressed enough. I personally never update past the OS that was installed on the device at purchase, on any Apple product.
And usually, when people talk about GPU failures and stuff like that, that stuff almost always happens after an update.
Anyways, the #1 way to extend the life of a computer is not updating or changing the operating system. You do the first couple updates to .1 or .2 to get the kinks out, then only update again when you absolutely have to (ideally never).
To the OP's original question, I'd vote 'probably not'.
There certainly are 10 year old MacBooks out there, in active use today, but... a) not many, and b) I don't think the people using them are having a very good experience.
Five years? No problem - most Mac laptops should be still going strong after five years. But after that things start going downhill pretty quickly. Parts begin to break, OS updates start to outpace the hardware, etc.
You can bet with decent confidence on a MacBook to be a good companion for five years, if you do your part and don't break it. Some will die an early death, of course, no matter how nicely you treat them - reality is just like that. But the odds are in your favor.
Beyond five years, and for sure six years, the odds aren't in your favor anymore. By year 7/8, I'd argue you're on borrowed time, and after that, it's just pure luck and/or stubbornness keeping the thing running.
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Couldn't disagree more. I'm running my 2010 17" MBP and 2011 iMac 27" on Sierra, both are running beautifully. I've always upgraded my family's apple devices to the latest OS, as long as they were compatible, and it's never been an issue.
How are you imagining an OS update causes a GPU failure? I'm baffled.
There certainly are 10 year old MacBooks out there, in active use today, but... a) not many, and b) I don't think the people using them are having a very good experience.
Five years? No problem - most Mac laptops should be still going strong after five years. But after that things start going downhill pretty quickly. Parts begin to break, OS updates start to outpace the hardware, etc.
You can bet with decent confidence on a MacBook to be a good companion for five years, if you do your part and don't break it. Some will die an early death, of course, no matter how nicely you treat them - reality is just like that. But the odds are in your favor.
Beyond five years, and for sure six years, the odds aren't in your favor anymore. By year 7/8, I'd argue you're on borrowed time, and after that, it's just pure luck and/or stubbornness keeping the thing running.
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Couldn't disagree more. I'm running my 2010 17" MBP and 2011 iMac 27" on Sierra, both are running beautifully. I've always upgraded my family's apple devices to the latest OS, as long as they were compatible, and it's never been an issue.
How are you imagining an OS update causes a GPU failure? I'm baffled.
Not imagining – just knowing a lot about GPUs from many years of building computers with top-spec GPUs (was a bigtime gamer in my early 20s), overclocking them, testing them, blabla being a general hardware build nerd (back when I had more time for such things).
A lot of factors come into play, chief amongst them being drivers, resource allocation, power management, and most importantly: optimization. Newer OSes are optimized for newer devices, and the engineers aren't spending their days making compromises for their current customers to please users of past devices. So a ga-jillion little changes get made that make things run slightly less efficiently, which becomes a problem when you run your machines at the performance margins, where specs matter the most.
The next data point I provide is: reality. The big 2011 iMac GPU-failure recall (i had to bring mine in 3 times) was basically just what I described: people updating OSes, some of them who are heavy users running the GPUs to the limit in some heavy application, their GPU frying the motherboard, and Apple replacing the entire guts of the machine (including throwing out my aftermarket RAM I forgot to remove one time - argh!), while a bunch of other people go on never knowing that if they happened to install the latest shooter and run on high settings it or edited a 4K video or something, their computer would start cooking itself.
Now you may have not experience this – great! But it happens quite a bit. You can see it on a smaller scale as iOS devices start grinding to a halt after about 3 versions of iOS updates go by.
And this is true of all components, not just GPUs. It's just more apparent in GPUs because they're more volatile technologies that draw a lot more juice so they're often one of the first places software starts to cause problems with hardware.
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What about security updates?
If I'm correct Mavericks no longer gets them.
That's why I upgraded to El Cap.
Am on El Cap now.
Yeah that's the tradeoff. If you want your computer to last a decade you're probably going to have to just live with some spyware I guess. Be smart. Don't go sticking your tongue on doorknobs while on vacation in a tropical country. Install the ultimate security update: not going to sketchy websites on your workhorse computer.
I'm on Mavericks and I did download the El Cap update but never actually installed it so if you were me (late 2012 mac mini) and still on Mavericks would it be better/easier to install El Cap from my download or forget El Cap and just go right to install Sierra?
My 2011 MBP is god-awful slow. I put in a SSHD in it (Seagate HDD with 8GB flash buffer cache on it) and it's barely any faster booting and patching and loading things than it was with the original HDD it came delivered with. Also upgraded RAM in it from standard 4GB to 8GB, and it didn't do much for keeping it snappy. It feels quite slow for most any task other than web browsing and such.
Also, anything that accesses the drive for any length of time ramps processor use to 100% on at least one CPU thread and sometimes more than one. This causes the fan to spin up to max revs and cause quite a high-pitched racket.
And forget games, ugh. I used to be able to play World of Warcraft with sort of medium-ish settings on my MBP; these days the game chugs so badly even with everything set to rock-bottom lowest possible.
As a computer, it works. No more than that, though. It's not fun to use, or comfortable. It feels more sluggish today than my iPhone 4 did when iOS 7 launched.
The SSD cache on those is waaaaayyyy too small. Better than nothing, but most read/writes will still end up being off the rotating platter.
Something like a Samsung 850evo SSD is a much better option. 256 GB is reasonable, and 512 isn't particularly expensive these days. You can also look at running a home-brew Fusion setup, get the bay adapter and replace your SuperDrive with something like a 2TB hard drive, and put 128 or 256GB SSD in the hard drive slot, then combine them into one logical Core Storage volume. Works like a charm, and you do most of your daily work off the SSD.
Something like a Samsung 850evo SSD is a much better option. 256 GB is reasonable, and 512 isn't particularly expensive these days. You can also look at running a home-brew Fusion setup, get the bay adapter and replace your SuperDrive with something like a 2TB hard drive, and put 128 or 256GB SSD in the hard drive slot, then combine them into one logical Core Storage volume. Works like a charm, and you do most of your daily work off the SSD.
my 2010 MBP has had 10.9.5 many years now and my content on that machine hasn't changed (maybe a bit but not significally). It performed well the first 4.5 years but then started to get really slow to the point now (6 years) that it's practically unusable spinning beachball. So your statement that "if you stay put and don't do anything, everything will stay unchanged" doesn't ring true for me :/
My new early 2015 MBP came with 10.11.5. I was set to stay on that version but then I realized that .5 doesn't get security updates, only the last version .6 gets them so I'll have to update to that at least. But then I'm set for some time, when El Capitan stops getting security updates (Mavericks is now 3 years old and last security update was July 18th so I'm good with El Capitan until 2018). I wonder if the same unavoidable beachball "death" waits me then...
Don't be too sure. My early 2009 17" Macbook Pro is still going strong - working well on El Cap with its 1Tb SSD & 8 Gigs of RAM.
But recently it's started saying 'Service Battery' in the battery indicator. I contacted Apple, and they won't touch it - my MBP is now obsolete. I don't use it on Battery much anyway so it doesn't really bother me, but it will seriously hit the re-sale value.
I guess the moral of the story is to get your battery replaced just before your Macbook goes 'end-of life- whether or not it needs it at the time.
SSHD is not much of a step up in my experience. i used to use those seagate 7200 rpm ones and they are plenty faster than what apple shipped as default but a very far cry from an actual SSD.
anyway, if your system feels slow overall and spins up the fans quickly - have a look if the fan exhausts at the rear of the case are clogged by any chance. if your computer can't 'breathe' the system will throttle. also perhaps check if kernel- and indexing-processes are running wild on your machine.
Here is my experience with a mid 2012 rMBP (2,6 GHz, 512 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM, 650M) after exactly 4 years of usage.
I borrowed this laptop to my brother for 9 months , who played the hell out of this thing. Playing an MMO for 8-12 hours a day and letting the battery drain over night while watching movies untill he fell asleep. All in Bootcamp.
When I got my MacBook back I was sursprised how well it worked after this torture. I thought the battery would be dead and the keyboard (yes he played using the onboard keyboard - and he played very hard) out for an exchange.
The thermal paste was still in good condition, but I changed it out for an MX-4 which works just as new. Don't use Acrtic Silver 5 or Noctua, it is medicore and lasts not more than a year.
Battery has 310 cycles and 86% of its first day capacity. macOS lasts for around 6-7 hours just browsing and 4-5 hours with heavy usage.
Speed, display and keyboard are still top notch and like new on this device. After 4 years of every day use you can't see and feel the age on this machine and I can absoluteley imagine to use it for the next 1-2 years, swap the battery for 200 bucks, and use it another 3-4 years productively.
Because of the SSD everything opens instantly and I don't see a reason to upgrade. Performance is not an issue here.
Gaming is one thing though, you can't play the latest games with a 650M on at least 900p.
I borrowed this laptop to my brother for 9 months , who played the hell out of this thing. Playing an MMO for 8-12 hours a day and letting the battery drain over night while watching movies untill he fell asleep. All in Bootcamp.
When I got my MacBook back I was sursprised how well it worked after this torture. I thought the battery would be dead and the keyboard (yes he played using the onboard keyboard - and he played very hard) out for an exchange.
The thermal paste was still in good condition, but I changed it out for an MX-4 which works just as new. Don't use Acrtic Silver 5 or Noctua, it is medicore and lasts not more than a year.
Battery has 310 cycles and 86% of its first day capacity. macOS lasts for around 6-7 hours just browsing and 4-5 hours with heavy usage.
Speed, display and keyboard are still top notch and like new on this device. After 4 years of every day use you can't see and feel the age on this machine and I can absoluteley imagine to use it for the next 1-2 years, swap the battery for 200 bucks, and use it another 3-4 years productively.
Because of the SSD everything opens instantly and I don't see a reason to upgrade. Performance is not an issue here.
Gaming is one thing though, you can't play the latest games with a 650M on at least 900p.
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