I need to pick up another MBP for programming work and Big Sur just obsoleted the 2012 MBP which has me second guessing picking up a 2015 model because it's the last year of that generation and I fear that Apple will obsolete that generation relatively soon. There are a number of reasons why I prefer the previous gen to the current gen, not the least of which is not having to pay Apple $724 to replace the SSD if it goes bad. Therefore, how much more life do you think the 2015 MBP has for future OS support?
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How much more life do you think the 2015 MBP has left?
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Replacing an SSD is always really expensive when something goes wrong.
I think that you would be good for at least 2 years. However, if you need it for intensive programming tasks, you'd probably need 16 GB of RAM and on that generation it isn't cheap. For instance, on Macsales, it costs 819 $.
I think that you would be good for at least 2 years. However, if you need it for intensive programming tasks, you'd probably need 16 GB of RAM and on that generation it isn't cheap. For instance, on Macsales, it costs 819 $.
Post-2015 Macs have built-in soldered obsolescence, much more accelerated than anything previous. The 2015s were still being sold in mid-2018, so should be supported for at least 2 more years.
I'm not buying "new" until there's a track record with the new tech and OS; current buyers are paying to be guinea pigs IMHO. It is entirely possibe something like flexgate might raise it's ugly head in a year or two. In fact, I just upgraded from a unibody 2012 to a loaded mid-2015.
I'm not buying "new" until there's a track record with the new tech and OS; current buyers are paying to be guinea pigs IMHO. It is entirely possibe something like flexgate might raise it's ugly head in a year or two. In fact, I just upgraded from a unibody 2012 to a loaded mid-2015.
i mean i bought a 2015 13" Retina recently, because even if it's not updated past Monterey which i doubt, but even if it is unsupported, i am getting at least a few more years of security updates.
but these are REALLY popular since many many people didn't want a type c or butterfly Mac, so...
but these are REALLY popular since many many people didn't want a type c or butterfly Mac, so...
According to Apple, at least MacOS Monterey will run on 2015 MBP:
However, read the the fine print footnotes in the following link, as a number of features in MacOS Monterey will not be available on the 2015 MBP:
Who knows beyond this. I suspect if it is supported, even more features will not be available.
btw, I have a 2015 MBP. No complaints, works great, great keyboard. You probably should plan on a battery replacement, if not already been replaced. It is prone to swelling. I replaced mine myself for about $50 using a Chinese knock-off battery from Amazon. Not super easy to replace, but not too hard if you are careful. Or pay more for Apple to replace it.
EDIT: OP has a single post and "Cancelled," so maybe no longer interested. Oh well.
However, read the the fine print footnotes in the following link, as a number of features in MacOS Monterey will not be available on the 2015 MBP:
OS - macOS Tahoe 26
macOS Tahoe 26 with a new design, more ways to work seamlessly across devices, and new features to turbocharge productivity every day.
www.apple.com
Who knows beyond this. I suspect if it is supported, even more features will not be available.
btw, I have a 2015 MBP. No complaints, works great, great keyboard. You probably should plan on a battery replacement, if not already been replaced. It is prone to swelling. I replaced mine myself for about $50 using a Chinese knock-off battery from Amazon. Not super easy to replace, but not too hard if you are careful. Or pay more for Apple to replace it.
EDIT: OP has a single post and "Cancelled," so maybe no longer interested. Oh well.
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I got my local Apple Store to replace the battery in my 2015 retina MacBook Pro this summer. They also replaced the delaminating screen at no extra cost so I felt like I got a lot of value for the £200 battery replacement. I had left it on Sierra, which is what it was running when I bought it, but I also upgraded to Mojave this year, which is the last MacOS version to support 32-bit programs. It now runs noticeably slower so for me, the combination of poor thermals and loud fan noise - I teach online and the noise is a real problem - and now laggy performance mean I will be in the market for a new M1X 16" MacBook Pro when they are launched.
it shouldn't run that much slower though. i'm running the Monterey beta on mine and it's fine. it might be thermals, i'd check for dust and stuff.
How can a 8 GB 2015" MBP with 128 GB SSD be your main laptop? Don't you use any heavy software?
Lol really? My 2013 iMac is still plugging along as my main machine and I am far from a light user. It has an i7 and a couple dozen gigs of ram and still does everything well. Photography, Plex server, video conversion, compiling code, homebridge, etc.
It has more storage than that laptop but otherwise it is even more “obsolete”. Any 2015 Mac is still a very good and powerful computer.
Your computer doesn't have anything to do with theirs.
8 GB != "a couple dozens GB of RAM"
Fair enough but even my 2012 11” MacBook Air with 4 GB can run MacOS and two fusion VMs (win10 and Linux) simultaneously plus the tools inside while still being a useable for playing music, taking notes, recording data in excel etc.
And a 2015 mbp crushes that little machine in every way.
In terms of OS support I'm fully expecting MacOS 13 to leave the 2015s behind (Apple seem to be on a roll with slimming down the Intel support base) but then you should have 2 extra years of security updates to Monterey so probably around 3 years from now until it starts becoming a bit of a dodgy proposition as a main machine.
I have a 2014 MacBook Pro 15, currently loaned out to my son for work, and a 2015 MacBook Pro 15 2.5 Ghz, AMD graphics and the latter is my daily driver laptop. I am waiting for an M1X MacBook Pro 16.
I bought the 2015 as a backup for the 2014 in 2018 - it cost me $1,100 and it does my mobile stuff fine though it gets warm. I do my production stuff on a Windows desktop and an M1 mini. I have tested Monterey beta on the 2014 and 2015 and it runs fine on both. It's not officially supported on the 2014 but I'm using OCLP to get it to work. I think that there are people with 2012 and 2013 MacBook Pros also running Monterey Beta on their unsupported systems using OCLP. There is a thread about it in the Monterey forum. You might try it with your 2012.
I suspect that you'll be able to run macOS as long as Apple supports Intel processors by using OCLP. I would go for the 15 inch 2015 MacBook Pro. The 13-inch is sluggish for modern demands and the cooling isn't great on that model. I used one of those for a few years as a work-supplied laptop and generally just used my own MacBook Pros because the 13 wasn't very good for stuff like Zoom.
I bought the 2015 as a backup for the 2014 in 2018 - it cost me $1,100 and it does my mobile stuff fine though it gets warm. I do my production stuff on a Windows desktop and an M1 mini. I have tested Monterey beta on the 2014 and 2015 and it runs fine on both. It's not officially supported on the 2014 but I'm using OCLP to get it to work. I think that there are people with 2012 and 2013 MacBook Pros also running Monterey Beta on their unsupported systems using OCLP. There is a thread about it in the Monterey forum. You might try it with your 2012.
I suspect that you'll be able to run macOS as long as Apple supports Intel processors by using OCLP. I would go for the 15 inch 2015 MacBook Pro. The 13-inch is sluggish for modern demands and the cooling isn't great on that model. I used one of those for a few years as a work-supplied laptop and generally just used my own MacBook Pros because the 13 wasn't very good for stuff like Zoom.
not on here, it's mainly for web browsing. i have a 12 core pc with dual Xeon X5650's, 32gb of ram (basically 2012 Mac Pro spec, it uses the same cpu's) for heavy stuff running Linux. this little laptop is mainly just for chrome and discord, sometimes a video edit here or there.
It seems to be Apple's habit to provide about 7 years of OS updates for a device after the last year it was sold. My beloved late 2013 15" MBP was made until 2014 and is no longer eligible for Monterey. If this holds true, then you may be good for OS updates as long as 2024-25. Good luck, yours is very similar to my 2013 and they are great computers.
You can run Monterey with OCLP on 2013 MacBook Pros. I'd think that the 2013 would run it quite well. I've run it on the 2014 and performance is fine.
I am typing this on a 13" early 2015 MBP. Would like to think it will get another few years of macOS updates. I also run BootCamp on it and unfortunately it won't be eligible for Windows 11 because there is no TPM 2.0 chip, no Secure Boot and the CPU is too old. 😥
I think that you can install it from the ISO but it's an unsupported configuration. I think that Windows 11 is needed for Intel's Alder Lake. I will be curious to see how well Alder Lake runs on Windows 10; I don't know if they are backporting the Thread Director back to Windows 10.
I'm personally unhappy with what Microsoft is doing and it's pretty clear that they will be more aggressive about making older hardware obsolete. I still have a 2008 Dell XPS Studio which is actually quite usable (48 GB RAM, Core i7 CPU) but I'm pretty sure that W11 won't run on it.
I am probably going to give that a try but I am waiting for the final release of Monterey before figuring that all out. Thanks for the info glad to hear yours is working well.
Not a bad idea. Betas are really for people who don't mind a few bugs but I wouldn't use it for production. I don't know when the Release comes out but I'd assume that it will coincide with the M1X MacBook Pro launches.
I have been running Monterey on my 16" and it has been very solid other than this last version (Beta 8?) has introduced a jumpy mouse in Safari on some websites.
I'm running Beta 8 and will be installing Beta 9 this evening.
I have run into a few problems.
Beta 9 has Universal Control in it. I don't know if my iPad mini 5 supports it but I would like to try it out.