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What was is the most recent Black Macbook?

bunnspecial

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 3, 2014
8,391
6,565
Kentucky
I'd really like to add a black Macbook to my collection of Apple hardware, and for obvious reasons want the newest/best spec version I can find.

I'm not overly clear, however, on exactly when Apple discontinued the Black Macbook. The best information I can find is that the Early 2008 Macbook 4,1 was the last one-can anyone confirm this?
 
The early 2008 and late 2007 models are nearly identical. The only difference is a slightly faster CPU.
 
Early 2008 indeed. I've found the Mactracker app (available for OS X and iOS) to be very helpful in these situations. There is a field in the general tab that tells the color options, just for future reference.
 
Intell said:
The early 2008 and late 2007 models are nearly identical. The only difference is a slightly faster CPU.
Click to expand...

I did manage to pick up a late 2007 just a few minutes ago on Ebay. It supposedly has a dead hard drive, but does chime and the photos showed it booting and stuck on the gray Apple screen.

I have a 60gb SSD that I'm planning on sticking in it as soon as it arrives-since I have no real plans to use this for any serious work, 60gb should be plenty and I can avoid having to dump any more money into it immediately.

As per Everymac.com, this should have shipped with Leopard. Does anyone(looking at Intell specifically) know if a retail 10.5.0 disk will install on this? I'm guessing it will since the computer was released 5 days after the commercial release of Leopard.

I probably should just go ahead and buy a copy of Snow Leopard while Apple is still selling it for $20, but I'm interested in Leopard for the time being because I already have a retail disk for it. I also have never used Leopard on an Intel system(although I have lots of experience with it on PowerPC systems).
 
Intell said:
A Leopard 10.5.0 won't work on it, but a later Leopard retail disc will work.
Click to expand...

Thanks...I guess Snow Leopard it is as I don't want to spend $60 on another Leopard retail disk.

That is unless I can clone a 10.5.8 install from a PPC computer, but I'm guessing that won't work.

On another note, Newegg was running some really good deals on SSDs today, so I went ahead and ordered a new 128gb for this computer(plus a 240 for my other Macbook).
 
Intell said:
Cloning a PowerPC Leopard installation of Leopard will work. The entire operating system is universal and will run on both Intell and PowerPC Macs.



Those do appear to be the correct restore discs.
Click to expand...

Thanks again, great and wise Intell. I'd hoped from some of your past postings that might be the case. I just need to make sure I don't use one of the Leopard installs where I've stripped the Intel code out.

I may go ahead and order the restore disk anyway, though, as I always feel like they're good to have on hand.
 
I can confirm that the 10.5.0 retail disk will not work.

The computer booted fine off of it, but gave me an error message that it could not install on that computer. I was able to use disk utility to go in and correctly format the replacement drive using the 10.5 installer, however.

I'm currently cloning 10.5.8 from my Titanium Powerbook...we'll see how that goes(Carbon Copy Cloner didn't like it that the destination volume was GUID rather than APM, but let me go ahead and start the clone anyway).
 
I just finished cloning the drive, and the Macbook is now working perfectly.

Although admittedly I don't have any "pre-SSD" comparisons, it is blazingly fast. I'm to a working desktop in about 15 seconds from the time I press the power button. Programs launch almost instantaneously.

I'll see how it does with a Snow Leopard and/or Lion upgrade, but for the time being it's doing great.
 
Is there really still a market for these? I have a core 2 duo black book that I love and still use today. I was curious if I could get anything for it. It's in pretty much perfect condition.
 
yano729 said:
Is there really still a market for these? I have a core 2 duo black book that I love and still use today. I was curious if I could get anything for it. It's in pretty much perfect condition.
Click to expand...

This might be a little late of a reply...but definitely. People still collect PowerPC macs from over 10 years ago (check out people in the PowerPC forum)...and the good thing about these black MacBooks is that they are still pretty usable. I would say eBay is your best bet (over something like craigslist), depending on the condition you might be able to get even around $200, which is great for a device hitting 10 years old very soon. I know of a lot of people who really love these black models, and go hunting on eBay for them.
 
yanksrock100 said:
This might be a little late of a reply...but definitely. People still collect PowerPC macs from over 10 years ago (check out people in the PowerPC forum)...and the good thing about these black MacBooks is that they are still pretty usable. I would say eBay is your best bet (over something like craigslist), depending on the condition you might be able to get even around $200, which is great for a device hitting 10 years old very soon. I know of a lot of people who really love these black models, and go hunting on eBay for them.
Click to expand...

After having mine for a little over a month now, I still love it.

I'm somewhat of an Apple collector and have pretty seriously gotten into collecting "Steve Jobs" era PPC Macs(as well as dabbling in some older PPC computers and a few 68K computers). I wanted the Blackbook for my collection, but it really is still a very useable computer. 10.7 is current enough to run a LOT of software. Despite the 2gb of RAM, mine is also pleasantly peppy with an SSD.

The plastic on the black Macbooks has a very different "feel" from the white ones. It is a little bit rough, although not uncomfortably so like some cheap Windows laptops. This is compared to the various white polycarbonate Apple laptops(I have an iBook G3, iBook G4, and Macbook to compare), which are very "slick" feeling except around the keyboard.

Apple goes to great lengths to encompass the make the entire user experience pleasurable, and I think that the black Macbooks have by far and away the nicest feeling plastic of any plastic laptop I've used(The Lombard/Pismo Powerbooks are probably second, but a totally different class of computers). This is important for something that you actually spend a lot of time holding.
 
bunnspecial said:
After having mine for a little over a month now, I still love it.

I'm somewhat of an Apple collector and have pretty seriously gotten into collecting "Steve Jobs" era PPC Macs(as well as dabbling in some older PPC computers and a few 68K computers). I wanted the Blackbook for my collection, but it really is still a very useable computer. 10.7 is current enough to run a LOT of software. Despite the 2gb of RAM, mine is also pleasantly peppy with an SSD.

The plastic on the black Macbooks has a very different "feel" from the white ones. It is a little bit rough, although not uncomfortably so like some cheap Windows laptops. This is compared to the various white polycarbonate Apple laptops(I have an iBook G3, iBook G4, and Macbook to compare), which are very "slick" feeling except around the keyboard.

Apple goes to great lengths to encompass the make the entire user experience pleasurable, and I think that the black Macbooks have by far and away the nicest feeling plastic of any plastic laptop I've used(The Lombard/Pismo Powerbooks are probably second, but a totally different class of computers). This is important for something that you actually spend a lot of time holding.
Click to expand...

Yep, I have always heard good things about the Blackbook. After reading these posts, I actually picked one up on eBay myself! Haha. I might try to add and SSD and bump up the RAM in it, since I got it for a steal. For the past few years I have been buying and upgrading and selling old PowerPC macs because I just love the look and feel of these old machines. I make pretty much no profit, but I really enjoy them for some reason.
 
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I actually wish they'd release a new macbook pro in this casing. It would be such a great retrolooking machine... Not skilled enough to do blackbook hack myself which I've seen ppl doing.
 
Joelburman said:
I actually wish they'd release a new macbook pro in this casing. It would be such a great retrolooking machine... Not skilled enough to do blackbook hack myself which I've seen ppl doing.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the closest thing I think we will ever get is a darker colored Macbook Air that has been rumored...

I'm still it will still look great, but it isn't quite the black beauty these blackbooks were.
 
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