“Found” tech - “new” MBA 2012

M

MarkAtl

macrumors 6502
Nearly 8 years ago I gave my wife a mid-2012 MacBook Air for Christmas, and she tried it for a day or 2 and then put it aside (luckily for me her birthday is in January so she didn’t remain without another gift for long). My older son played with it a few years ago, and then decided he didn’t like the Mac. So I packed it away a second time. Then after a couple of house moves I was going through some boxes and found it.

Pristine condition due to being in a case all this time, only 56 battery cycles and an 8 year old battery that still is at 87% of charge capacity. Loaded Catalina, works fine. Only 4GB memory but a great keyboard so I’m going to use it with Scrivener to do some writing.

Anyone still use a vintage 2012 for regular use? I love my 2017 MB 12” but this MBA keyboard is better. I’d say even better than the new Magic Keyboard in the 2020 models.

It won‘t upgrade to Big Sur but who cares?
 
Had a 2011 11" with 4 GB until just over a year ago. Size was becoming an issue - ain't that always the case - storage and screen. It was my daily runner - home and mobile. All the ports I needed. Anyways, it was a great machine.
 
I have a 2010 MBP 15" non-Retina, matte screen, upgraded to 8gb ram and SSD. Love the thing. Best keyboard I ever used. Plan on keeping it until it dies, and even after that, I'll probably send it to Louis Rossmann Repair Group to fix and hopefully get another ten years out of it.
 
Depending on how it was stored I would check to see if there is any battery swelling. Otherwise it's still a decent computer and a great web browsing/productivity machine.
 
I have a 2012 MBA 11" i7 8GB 256 I bought brand new from the apple store. Used it for a while then my daughter needed a computer so pretended to give it to her. She used it for about 3 years gave her a 2017 MacBook and I got it back. Cleaned it up, blew the dust out, and it works great. I now use it to run Ableton.
 
I just replaced my 2010 MBA with a new 2020. It still runs strong though! I found the fan coming on more and more, plus there were some programs that were not getting updates for High Sierra so I bit the bullet and upgraded.
 
The keyboard on the MBA 2012 is very nice. I like it more than the keyboards on the 2013 and newer MBAs. I don’t know what they changed, but the later ones aren’t as good.

I still have my 2012 13” i7/8GB/256GB MBA. I replaced the battery on it a few months ago as it had the “service battery” message. It’s very easy to replace on MBAs. Also replaced the thermal paste on the CPU and cleaned out the fan.

It’s not my main Mac as I have a 16” MBP for that, but it still works great. I currently have Mojave on it and will probably move over to Catalina later.
 
smbu2000 said:
The keyboard on the MBA 2012 is very nice. I like it more than the keyboards on the 2013 and newer MBAs. I don’t know what they changed, but the later ones aren’t as good.

I still have my 2012 13” i7/8GB/256GB MBA. I replaced the battery on it a few months ago as it had the “service battery” message. It’s very easy to replace on MBAs. Also replaced the thermal paste on the CPU and cleaned out the fan.

It’s not my main Mac as I have a 16” MBP for that, but it still works great. I currently have Mojave on it and will probably move over to Catalina later.
Click to expand...
If mine had 8GB it’d be even better, but it has 4. Still usable. I was tempted to upgrade to the same logic board as yours but there’s no real return on investment.
 
Screenshot 2020-08-30 at 13.16.17.png
 
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MarkAtl said:
If mine had 8GB it’d be even better, but it has 4. Still usable. I was tempted to upgrade to the same logic board as yours but there’s no real return on investment.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the 8GB is nice to have but 4GB is still usable. All MBAs came standard with 4GB until it was changed to 8GB with the 2017 model so I doubt Apple will make macOS too bloated for all of those Macs, although the 2012 is capped at Catalina.

It is still a capable machine and it must be a nice bonus having found yours again in great condition!

@finepiks: Why did you post that MBP screenshot?
This is a Macbook Air thread in the MBA forum.
 
smbu2000 said:
Yeah, the 8GB is nice to have but 4GB is still usable. All MBAs came standard with 4GB until it was changed to 8GB with the 2017 model so I doubt Apple will make macOS too bloated for all of those Macs, although the 2012 is capped at Catalina.

It is still a capable machine and it must be a nice bonus having found yours again in great condition!

@finepiks: Why did you post that MBP screenshot?
This is a Macbook Air thread in the MBA forum.
Click to expand...

ironically I have that same MBP as well. Still like the MBA keyboard better.
 
smbu2000 said:
@finepiks: Why did you post that MBP screenshot?
This is a Macbook Air thread in the MBA forum.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah - sorry - confused this thread with the other one that asked if anyone had switched from an MBP to an MBA! My MBP is also a 2012 model and hence the mixup! I'm an old man and losing my marbles!
 
I’ve been using this 2012 MBA on a daily basis now, and have put aside my 2017 MacBook 12”. For writing, editing, Word and other standard apps it works amazingly well.
 
I have a 2015 11-inch Air with 4GB of RAM and an upgraded 256GB SSD. I use it as a backup machine to my 2016 MBP. Right now my MBP is in for a repair that will take up to 10 days, so I'm using the Air as my main machine for work/home.

My Air is running Mojave connected to three external drives and my 8GB Radeon RX 580 eGPU. Surprisingly it is working really well for 90% of my needs. I think the eGPU helps, but the only problem I have is in terms of some of the VMs I run regularly (it slows down a bit due to the RAM limitation).

Still, I'm really surprised at how well this machine with only 4GB of RAM is performing. Honestly I am not noticing a massive difference in my day to day work.
 
I have just inherited a 2012 13 inch Air i5-4-128.
My wife's 2017 failed to boot one day as mentioned in another thread here and was given this for her to use by a friend.
The 2017 is now alive again and this had no home as the owner doesn't want it returning.
The fan ran at full speed constantly when we got it and it was rather hot. Gave it a good clean, some new thermal paste and spent a whole £3.45 on a brand new fan!
This machine is so silent now it's like using my old clamshell iBook all over again. It has now been pressed into duty as my everyday, throw in a bag and go machine and is doing a damn fine job.
 
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