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we talkin about poly macbooks? i have 2 early 2008 A1181s (one is a black 2.4, other is a white 2.1) and i plan to upgrade the black one with a 2009 board if i can.
 
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Well this thread is giving me ideas! I have a Mid 2010 MacBook which an Apple Store gave me in January or February 2011 because they couldn't fix my iBook G4. It's always been slow, is now pretty much unusable and is still my only notebook. Applications do not respond. I suppose if I wiped it and put everything back that might solve the lack of responding and then I could consider putting an SSD in.
 
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Well this thread is giving me ideas! I have a Mid 2010 MacBook which an Apple Store gave me in January or February 2011 because they couldn't fix my iBook G4. It's always been slow, is now pretty much unusable and is still my only notebook. Applications do not respond. I suppose if I wiped it and put everything back that might solve the lack of responding and then I could consider putting an SSD in.
Yeah, that would probably do it. An SSD is a pretty good bet for speeding it up and a clean wipe might be just the ticket if you have never reinstalled the OS before :)
 
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Well this thread is giving me ideas! I have a Mid 2010 MacBook which an Apple Store gave me in January or February 2011 because they couldn't fix my iBook G4. It's always been slow, is now pretty much unusable and is still my only notebook. Applications do not respond. I suppose if I wiped it and put everything back that might solve the lack of responding and then I could consider putting an SSD in.

WOW! That's cool you got it as an upgrade to a G4 iBook then. That rocks. Sucks that its slow... If this is the mid-2010 model dude... it will max out with 16GB RAM. Grab that from macsales.com

Also a nice fast SSD will make this thing fly with El Capitan! AND if you decide, you can make the DOSDude1 High Sierra boot USB for it to install High Sierra.

It will be like a brand-new laptop!!!!

Make sure you upgrade the RAM to at least 8GB.

I posted above to the other guy, but the Unibody 2010 white MacBooks will go all the way up to 16GB RAM!
 
Honestly, they're not too bad to swap. You want to be sure to get a 2010/2011 MacBook Pro keyboard, as I've seen a few reports of issues with older or newer ones swapping over the caps. With a decent spudger, some patience, and a gentle touch the keys just pop right off. Sticking them back on is nearly as simple. The larger keys (Shift, Space, Return, Caps Lock, Tab, Delete) all have a metal stabilizer bar below them. The design was slightly different between the two keyboards (I swapped from a 13" 2011 MBP), but keeping the bars with the original keyboards worked. The new key caps snapped into the old bar just fine. It's just where they hooked into the keyboard below that was different. If you're interested, go for it! Keyboards are cheap to find on eBay, and it makes for a very visually-striking MacBook that I still get compliments on today :)

Also, why you're prying, note that for most of the keys you wanna approach them from the top or bottom to pop 'em off. The larger keys along the bottom row and the keys with the metal bar, approach them from the side. The scissor mechanism is vertical in those, while it's horizontal in most of the keys. See the attached pictures for details.
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First I would like to say thanks for helping me realize that black keys on a white Mac is a possibility. I just inherited a mid 2010 from my wife as she recently upgraded. I immediately started looking for ways to make this "mine" and just so happened across your post while searching for "Whats the maximum amount of RAM a mid 2010 macbook can functionally use". Before I could even continue to read the remainder of the thread I was prying at one of the keys to see if I could get it off. It came off very easy. I didnt realize that you had posted the pictures that I have quoted here and now I am worried. The reason I am worried is because I was able to find a used keyboard on Ebay for $4.50USD ,however, I see in the last picture that you seem to be prying up the clip that holds the key in place and I am curious am I going to have to do that as well? I dont know that I will be as comfortable prying at the clip as I was the actual key. Thanks ahead of time. I look forward to your response!
 
WOW! That's cool you got it as an upgrade to a G4 iBook then. That rocks. Sucks that its slow... If this is the mid-2010 model dude... it will max out with 16GB RAM. Grab that from macsales.com

Also a nice fast SSD will make this thing fly with El Capitan! AND if you decide, you can make the DOSDude1 High Sierra boot USB for it to install High Sierra.

It will be like a brand-new laptop!!!!



I posted above to the other guy, but the Unibody 2010 white MacBooks will go all the way up to 16GB RAM!

Mid 2010 supports 13, no need for a patcher, Mojave runs well on these machines with a patcher.
 
It great to see what everyone is doing with there 2010’s glad to see everyone is pusing them to the max!! Mine is a secondary machine that I brought new in 2010 it has intel 535 256gb ssd and only 4gb of ram mainly due to it taking on my iTunes duty’s for my iPods, for this reason it still rocks 10.6.8 and has a CD drive for the odd rip I wanna do!! Also has Win xp pro in bootcamp because I’m forever coming across odd pieces of software which refuse to work in Windows 10!

23F1BB68-1A98-468A-A651-743E1F71D577.jpeg
 
It great to see what everyone is doing with there 2010’s glad to see everyone is pusing them to the max!! Mine is a secondary machine that I brought new in 2010 it has intel 535 256gb ssd and only 4gb of ram mainly due to it taking on my iTunes duty’s for my iPods, for this reason it still rocks 10.6.8 and has a CD drive for the odd rip I wanna do!! Also has Win xp pro in bootcamp because I’m forever coming across odd pieces of software which refuse to work in Windows 10!

View attachment 910127

Thats a pretty sight.. I have SL running on a 5,2 and Tiger on a 2,1 for nostalgia.
 
Thats a pretty sight.. I have SL running on a 5,2 and Tiger on a 2,1 for nostalgia.
Pretty sure I might have said this before, but I have El Cap and SL on my 5,2. Eventually, once I upgrade to a new daily driver, I'd like to remove El Cap and make it primarily an SL machine (I might dual boot with Linux just cuz tho ;)).
 
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For running older versions of OSX, it seems better to have more RAM than a SSD, at least in my experience. For clicking around on the web and doing non-disk intensive things, it almost feels as quick as some SSD machines I have (using a 120 GB Fujitsu with a pretty good amount of cache, I think ). 4 GB of RAM and it absolutely flies running Lion. The optical drive has failed though. I've decided its not worth it to upgrade to an SSD or install an optical drive hdd caddy, as I think the optical drive uses PATA on the 2008.
 
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Thats a pretty sight.. I have SL running on a 5,2 and Tiger on a 2,1 for nostalgia.

That's pretty cool, yeah it's mainly for nostalgia reasons and that snow leopard is crazy fast with an ssd and trim!

Pretty sure I might have said this before, but I have El Cap and SL on my 5,2. Eventually, once I upgrade to a new daily driver, I'd like to remove El Cap and make it primarily an SL machine (I might dual boot with Linux just cuz tho ;)).

Yeah, I can only have this as an iTunes mac as I have access to far more powerful macs. Linux would be a cool dual boot, that would be interesting!!

For running older versions of OSX, it seems better to have more RAM than a SSD, at least in my experience. For clicking around on the web and doing non-disk intensive things, it almost feels as quick as some SSD machines I have (using a 120 GB Fujitsu with a pretty good amount of cache, I think ). 4 GB of RAM and it absolutely flies running Lion. The optical drive has failed though. I've decided its not worth it to upgrade to an SSD or install an optical drive hdd caddy, as I think the optical drive uses PATA on the 2008.

Yeah, I paid and upgrade to lion through the store back in the day, but it chugged on this machine on stock specs, (I think it probably was the 2 GB of ram that was the issue) it wasn't until moutian lion that things got better. That is annoying that the 2008 only had PATA on the optical drive, even more reason to get on of these unibody ones at some point ;)
 
Yeah, I can only have this as an iTunes mac as I have access to far more powerful macs. Linux would be a cool dual boot, that would be interesting!!
I know it can be done, but I've always been too afraid I'll mess something up trying to triple boot on the current configuration. I think I'll probably install Ubuntu MATE or Linux Mint, as those are the distros I have the most familiarity with.
 
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First I would like to say thanks for helping me realize that black keys on a white Mac is a possibility. I just inherited a mid 2010 from my wife as she recently upgraded. I immediately started looking for ways to make this "mine" and just so happened across your post while searching for "Whats the maximum amount of RAM a mid 2010 macbook can functionally use". Before I could even continue to read the remainder of the thread I was prying at one of the keys to see if I could get it off. It came off very easy. I didnt realize that you had posted the pictures that I have quoted here and now I am worried. The reason I am worried is because I was able to find a used keyboard on Ebay for $4.50USD ,however, I see in the last picture that you seem to be prying up the clip that holds the key in place and I am curious am I going to have to do that as well? I dont know that I will be as comfortable prying at the clip as I was the actual key. Thanks ahead of time. I look forward to your response!
Nope, no need to pry up the clips; I was hoisting it up in those pics to show the orientation of the clips.

Just pop off the key caps, snap 'em on the new keyboard, and enjoy!
 
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It great to see what everyone is doing with there 2010’s glad to see everyone is pusing them to the max!! Mine is a secondary machine that I brought new in 2010 it has intel 535 256gb ssd and only 4gb of ram mainly due to it taking on my iTunes duty’s for my iPods, for this reason it still rocks 10.6.8 and has a CD drive for the odd rip I wanna do!! Also has Win xp pro in bootcamp because I’m forever coming across odd pieces of software which refuse to work in Windows 10!

Gorgeous machine!!! And wait -- iTunes in High Sierra won't work with older iPods?!
 
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Gorgeous machine!!! And wait -- iTunes in High Sierra won't work with older iPods?!

Nah even the first gen iPods will work with the iTunes on high sierra, but I feel like iTunes got too bloated as they shoved more and more thing into it hence why it’s now called music!

I like iTunes 10 and I like snow leopard so for me it’s a great combo!

Edit: I even though ping was an interesting idea back in the day!
 
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It great to see what everyone is doing with there 2010’s glad to see everyone is pusing them to the max!! Mine is a secondary machine that I brought new in 2010 it has intel 535 256gb ssd and only 4gb of ram mainly due to it taking on my iTunes duty’s for my iPods, for this reason it still rocks 10.6.8 and has a CD drive for the odd rip I wanna do!! Also has Win xp pro in bootcamp because I’m forever coming across odd pieces of software which refuse to work in Windows 10!

View attachment 910127

I spy that you have a delaminated rubber baseplate on the left-hand corner. Bad delamination across the base was a common defect on this model and I believe led to a recall.
Mine is shown below, was never delaminated but it was black with dirt and grime when I bought it, so just shows what a bit of elbow-grease can do with the help of a magic eraser - or as we call them here a 'Magic Rubber'.
This was during a complete refurb when I planned to turn it into a unique 'black' unibody MacBook. I was only partially successful for reasons that I'll detail in a seperate post.

DSC01207.JPG
 
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I spy that you have a delaminated rubber baseplate on the left-hand corner. Bad delamination across the base was a common defect on this model and I believe led to a recall.
Mine is shown below, was never delaminated but it was black with dirt and grime when I bought it, so just shows what a bit of elbow-grease can do with the help of a magic eraser - or as we call them here a 'Magic Rubber'.
This was during a complete refurb when I planned to turn it into a unique 'black' unibody MacBook. I was only partially successful for reasons that I'll detail in a seperate post.

View attachment 910705
Ohh that's pretty. My 7,1 is a little scuffed up but still trucking.
 
I spy that you have a delaminated rubber baseplate on the left-hand corner. Bad delamination across the base was a common defect on this model and I believe led to a recall.
Mine is shown below, was never delaminated but it was black with dirt and grime when I bought it, so just shows what a bit of elbow-grease can do with the help of a magic eraser - or as we call them here a 'Magic Rubber'.
This was during a complete refurb when I planned to turn it into a unique 'black' unibody MacBook. I was only partially successful for reasons that I'll detail in a seperate post.

View attachment 910705
Isn’t it amazing what a little TLC can do for these? Mine has some fairly deep scratches in the rubber on the bottom; years of being set on and dragged over every imaginable surface at a school from desks to floors to concrete planters haven’t been kind. But a little cleaning with a damp cloth always cleans it right back up! Mine isn’t quite as pristine as yours, but it still serves as a decent example of how well these can clean up!

I end up giving mine a little bath every month or two, since it gets dirty easily at school. In the meantime I try not to worry about it too much :p

Before.jpeg
After.jpeg
 
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