I‘d say it’s definitely possible. My 2013 MBA 11” (i5/256/8gb) is still in service and looks like it’s in mint condition as well. It will lag a bit if you have tons of stuff open at once but for light usage I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t still be in service another 2-3 years from now.
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Guy at electronics store said MacBook Pro will last 10 years, what do you think?
- Thread starter Hieveryone
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My 2011 MBP still runs well but can’t be upgraded to current OS and some apps need a newer version of the OS. Was thinking about upgrading when the ASi announcement came so will probably wait until it all shakes out.
Imo the minute we switched to SSD, the longevity of our laptops extended significantly. The major component breakage is that spinning platter hard drive.
I have a windows laptop with SSD in it from 2014, and I don’t see why it would not work for 4 more years (discounting battery age).
I also just got a 2012 Mac mini, and once I put an SSD in it, it is a fine working Mac.
On laptops, battery becomes the bottleneck of aging. On desktops, maybe dust and the fans? The less moving parts you have, the better the longevity.
But Apple knew this, and thus imposed another bottleneck, which is software. Using my example above, that 2012 mini will no longer be supported by Big Sur. In contrast, my Windows laptop will continue running the latest Windows 10 until probably forever. This what’s annoyed me of Apple.
The great thing about desktops is that you can replace everything. You can also upgrade most components with modern stuff. And add RAM.
The first thing that went on my ancient Dell was the Power Supply. Dell likes to put in power supplies that provide just enough power for your system. The problem is that PSUs lose capacity over time and, for me, I saw random crashes. So I replaced the PSU with a much bigger one.
You might look at Hackintosh to run the latest version of macOS on older equipment. Sometimes it works.
I'm on year 9 of my 2011 17" MacBook Pro. The last 17" model!
But it is crashing a lot, so I have to replace it soon.
And I still have some of my older PowerBooks from 20 years ago that still work.
Wow so many great stories.
I honestly wish I was still using my late 2013 rMBP.
It’s nice to hear stories of machines running decent or great even after so many years.
I don’t regret upgrading. I use my 24” LG 4K all day and couldn’t do without it.
So that means I needed to have upgraded my machine.
I don’t think my 2013 rMBP could have worked with this external monitor. It doesn’t have USB C.
I honestly wish I was still using my late 2013 rMBP.
It’s nice to hear stories of machines running decent or great even after so many years.
I don’t regret upgrading. I use my 24” LG 4K all day and couldn’t do without it.
So that means I needed to have upgraded my machine.
I don’t think my 2013 rMBP could have worked with this external monitor. It doesn’t have USB C.
Consider that INTEL duped us with 10 Years of tech imprisonment with Core i7 limited to 4 Cores. That alone styfuled tech advances for 10 years.
Now we have 7nm 8 Core AMD laptop CPUS and we are noted limited by Intel running the show.
in 5 years we’ll have 32 Cores
Apple hardware is pretty decent in surviving abuse that employees give it.
The hardware lasts FAR longer than anything I've seen from Lenovo of Dell or so.
10 years: I would not stretch it beyond where the hardware can't run the most recent OS any longer. Or certainly not beyond the point where the OS it runs does not get any more (security) updates from Apple.
We phased the Apple laptops out after 5 years (give or take a bit). Windows laptops typically hardly make it past year 3 in other places I've managed employee machines in the same industry - and they need far more work and staff to keep running properly.
What does wear out on a MBP:
#1: physical drop damage
#2: battery was by far the most common component to fail
#3: some generations MBPs had trackpads that needed service after a few years (fixed in more modern ones) - was always a free fix at Apple.
Aside of that: no complaints: solid performers in a hostile environment.
Now with the Apple Silicon transition about to happen: I'd not bet on 10 years. 7 will be stretching it already (not just Apple, also thinking other 3rd party software crafters)
The hardware lasts FAR longer than anything I've seen from Lenovo of Dell or so.
10 years: I would not stretch it beyond where the hardware can't run the most recent OS any longer. Or certainly not beyond the point where the OS it runs does not get any more (security) updates from Apple.
We phased the Apple laptops out after 5 years (give or take a bit). Windows laptops typically hardly make it past year 3 in other places I've managed employee machines in the same industry - and they need far more work and staff to keep running properly.
What does wear out on a MBP:
#1: physical drop damage
#2: battery was by far the most common component to fail
#3: some generations MBPs had trackpads that needed service after a few years (fixed in more modern ones) - was always a free fix at Apple.
Aside of that: no complaints: solid performers in a hostile environment.
Now with the Apple Silicon transition about to happen: I'd not bet on 10 years. 7 will be stretching it already (not just Apple, also thinking other 3rd party software crafters)
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I think he’s trying to sell you a computer. It can last 10 years hardware wise but it will be so out of date by then. If you’re just using it to browse the web and other light activity sure but for the applications people normally use the 16 which MacBook Pro for you probably would want to replace it within five years. I have a 25 year old computer that works fine but it’s not practical to use as a modern system.
Yes, Microsoft is better when it comes to software support. You can run Windows 10 on a 32 bit Pentium 4 system with 1GB of memory, however the experience will be garbage. I would prefer having the choice to run a system into the ground with the latest software but Apple's logic of only supporting hardware that runs their latest software swiftly and with little compromise in terms of feature support is the reason why we now have computers from 2013 that aren't able to officially run macOS 11.
The problem with Apple is not the hardware, it's their arbitrary decision to drop certain macs from an OS upgrade. It always baffles me since nowadays, most computers in the past 10 years or so are still good enough to run basic tasks that most people do. They decided to use software as the planned obsolescence.
I believe that Microsoft is building separate exeutables or sharable images for each processor generation. So if your CPU only supports SSE2, then your system will use code optimized for that generation. If you use newer equipment, then it will use newer instruction sets. I do not know whether or not they optimize for latencies.
You can specify the vector generation for optimization on the command lines of several compilers already. I think that some of Intel's performance libraries choose code paths depending on your CPU. I know that Firefox does this for some operations - it sniffs your CPU at startup and then loads the address of the routine best optimized for your CPU. Microsoft has a big enough installed base to do this while I think that Apple doesn't care to as they'd rather you just buy a new system.
I'm looking forward to Apple Silicon which should solve a lot of problems with MacBooks. They will be able to better control the generational stuff. I don't think that they will engineer for longevity though.
10 years is a long time and I would not expect the retina MacBook Pro to be relevant for that long. At least not as a laptop due to battery.
My mom uses a 13” MacBook Pro from 2011 and it’s on its last leg. If she had used any application more demanding than word/mail/photos she would have needed to upgrade years ago. Keep in mind I have upgraded RAM and SSD, changed battery, replaced thermal paste and kept it clean.
Also the transition to arm will probably have developers focusing on that in a few years, only maintaining old intel apps and not develop them future.
My mom uses a 13” MacBook Pro from 2011 and it’s on its last leg. If she had used any application more demanding than word/mail/photos she would have needed to upgrade years ago. Keep in mind I have upgraded RAM and SSD, changed battery, replaced thermal paste and kept it clean.
Also the transition to arm will probably have developers focusing on that in a few years, only maintaining old intel apps and not develop them future.
I bought my Sony VAIO laptop in 2008 and I still use it everyday. But unlike the MacBook, the VAIO has user upgradable or replaceable components. I upgraded the RAM from 2 to 8 and replaced the keyboard twice. Without upgradable or replaceable components, I doubt any laptop would last 10 years.
I think today’s macs are different than the ones many are talking about.
6-cores, 16GB Ram are likely to be more future proof than spinning hard drives were of the past....
6-cores, 16GB Ram are likely to be more future proof than spinning hard drives were of the past....
Can't say that.
My mid-2011 MBA (13", 256GB, 4GB memory) is still going strong, even though when I bought it back then, it was for future proofing, so I wouldn't have to cough up the money again to upgrade roughly the every 2 years I had when I was building my own PCs. And nowadays? that 2-4 year rebuild would still be happening if I wanted to future-proof. My last PC (that I also future proofed for turning in to a Hackintosh) was:
Intel Core I5-3570K
Gigabyte Z77N-WIFI
8GB DDR3 PC1600 memory
Sapphire Radeon R9 280 3GB GDDR video card
various SSDs
I built that in 2012. After 2 years, the GPU was out of date. A year later, the CPU is out of date. Nowadays, that future proofed box is now obsolete as the OS is unsupported, and I've hit under the minimum requirement for what my software requires for Windows 10.
Meanwhile, my mac? still running strong, despite having been moved to Obsolete status. High Sierra is so unstable on it that I dropped back to Sierra, which is rock solid. Everything on it Just Works[tm]. I'm one of the lucky ones, where I have had no maintenance issues on it at all. I'll only be upgrading when the new MBPs come out later this year/early next year. But If one is looking at buying a 10 year old Mac for future proofing compared to today's models, then they are looking at Macs entirely wrong.
But what am I to say? My Apple IIe is still going strong, at 38 years and going.
BL.
My 2010 MBP 13 is still running great in my 10 year old's hands as I was able to upgrade the super slow 5400rpm 250gb hard drive with a 500gb modern SSD and upgrade the paltry 4gb ram to 16gb. Even replacing the battery was easy!
Today's macs are all glued/soldered up like ipads and coupled with that flakey T2 chip and bad butterfly keyboards this last gen, I'd be surprised for them to hit 10 years.
Apple going Apple Silicon will also hasten the current crop's demise compared to yesteryear macs as they won't be as supported as long with new MacOS releases.
Today's macs are all glued/soldered up like ipads and coupled with that flakey T2 chip and bad butterfly keyboards this last gen, I'd be surprised for them to hit 10 years.
Apple going Apple Silicon will also hasten the current crop's demise compared to yesteryear macs as they won't be as supported as long with new MacOS releases.
Was it in 2012 when apple removed the cd drive and added retina screens?
My guess is if you got the very first retina MacBook pros, I’m guessing 8 years ago, you would still have a usable device today
My guess is if you got the very first retina MacBook pros, I’m guessing 8 years ago, you would still have a usable device today
I don’t know if my personal MacBook Pro could last 10 years bc I push the thing. I have a 2019 base model 15” so it has good specs but I have live TV, live data feeds, a 4K external monitor attached where I work on other things, and sometimes even more all going at the same time. It stays pretty hot. Lately I’ve been turning it off more often, almost every time I leave my desk and at night. So that’s a good thing I’m guessing. But otherwise it definitely gets used quite a bit. I would imagine the way I use it, it may not last 10 years. I think the reason why my late 2013 has run so well for so long is bc I kind of used it as an iPad lol in terms of what I did with it. Notes, Safari, calculator...lol
My 2008 MBP lasted longer until 2013 due to failed logic board twice even after warranty expired.
However, my 2013 rMBP is still chugging just fine as long as you have SSD. This is still the best laptop of '13
I'm still weary about today's MBP but I think I can wait for revB of ABP (Apple Book Pro - maybe new naming?)
I'm not sure the new models can make it to 10 years, but I plan for my 2012 MBP 13 to get there. I've had one repair (I had to replace a broken hinge) and 2 upgrades (from 8 to 16gb ram and a SSD) and it works great. Love the key board, tried out the butterfly and hated it and the new scissor switch isn't much better IMO. Use it for photoshop all the time, I'm a freelance photographer, some video editing and office type stuff. About half the time is plugged into a Asus WQHD monitor.