Thirteen Years Later, an Old MacBook Pro Is Still My Favourite Laptop

It has a lower res TN screen. It runs an outdated processor. Heck, it hasn't been officially supported by macOS since 2020. But why am I still using this old beat-up unibody hunk of aluminium?

I just think they're neat

Honestly though, I can't believe how usable this machine still is. I got this thing last year from a friend of mine and I am typing this post on it right now. It's nice.

If you know your laptops, you know that the mid-2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro 15 A1286 (9,1) is the last Apple computer that is truly upgradeable, featuring a SATA drive, socketed DDR3 RAM, a removable DVD, and even a removable wireless card (take that, Apple silicon Macs with soldered SSDs). If you're crazy enough you can even replace the original 15.4 inch screen with one of the rare matte screens they used to option the laptop with.

Not that the default screen is bad. Sure, it is a low res TN panel and those are ancient by modern standards and have poor viewing angles, but it's a far cry from eye-searingly awful TNs that PC laptop manufacturers put in their budget laptops back in the day (looking at you, Lenovo and HP). The viewing angels are fairly usable, the contrast is alright, and colours are quite accurate. These machines were used by photographers and videographers, after all.

Also, contrary to many a cheap PC laptop, this bad boy houses a quad-core i7 and a Nvidia GeForce 650M inside. That's better than my old HP Pavilion Sleekbook which had a 630M and a poultry 1.6 Ghz dual-core Intel Core i3 with no Turbo Boost (I low-key hate that laptop, but it still somehow trucks along, so maybe I'm the one who's wrong).

Also, I hate, hate, hate how flimsy many consumer Windows laptops with their plastic chassis and horrible materials, and even when it comes to metal Windows laptops, a lot of the manufacturers cheap out on the hinges, and instead of milling the screw poles into the top case (like Apple does) just glue the hinge and the case together to save cost. My Lenovo Legion 5, as much as I like that thing despite it being a cheaper gaming laptop, still doesn't compare. It's flimsy top lid is paired with a rather tight hinge, which doesn't inspire confidence in its longevity. The lid even arches a little when closed. As a result, I don't want to pick it up and use it as much. The MacBook, however, is a hefty aluminium monster. I don't think I can damage it easily. It's already beat up from years of use: the bottom cover is scratched up, the top lid has a small dent on it, and the hinge is also a little squeaky. Doesn't matter, it still feels really nice. I know this thing will still work just fine unless I abuse it.

There are a lot of other little things I like about this computer. There is a battery indicator on the side that shows you how much battery is left even when you're not using it. The keyboard is impeccable and has just enough tactility and key travel that I actually began to like it more than the Lenovo keyboard, despite it being more tactile and snappy. Ports! It has them! It only lacks an HDMI receptacle (but has a mini DisplayPort). Also, MagSafe is incredible and I wish every other laptop had a magnetic charger.

Not everything is perfect about it, though. This laptop loves toasting your lap when it's running resource intensive tasks. Cooling on MacBooks has been historically bad, and Apple doesn't help the situation by keeping fan speeds low until the CPU temperature is in the 90s and the poor thing becomes hot to touch in places. For this reason many Intel Mac owners (myself included) prefer to manually control fan curves with apps like Macs Fan Control and also turn off Turbo Boost on the CPU when it's not needed to lower temps. I also replaced the stock thermal paste with a PTM7950 pad to help with cooling. I didn't really notice much of a difference because it still got really toasty when doing more intensive work, but at least I can sleep well knowing the thermal compound isn't going to cause any issues for many years.

Another thing I came to like about the MacBook is macOS. Even on this old machine, it is a much smoother laptop experience than Windows. Touchpad gestures are extremely responsive, multiple desktops support is top notch and it isn't trying to annoy the living hell out of me, unlike Windows 11. Also, even though I didn't originally like how instead of maximizing an app window, I came to enjoy the fullscreen mode on macOS quite a lot when using its built-in display. Having an app running in full screen helps me focus much easier, and if I ever need to move to a different app, I can just swipe on the touchpad and switch to a different virtual screen. Yes, Windows also has virtual desktop support, but it's not as nice as on the Mac. What's nicer on Windows is support for snapping app windows. To do the same on the Mac you needed (until the latest macOS versions) to find and use third-party software (which thankfully works great and overall it's a minor nuisance rather than a deal-breaker). I also like how Mac handles app installation. It just keeps them as .app packages in a folder! And to uninstall 99% of them you just need to drag them into trash. No uninstaller required.

Sure, game support is poor but I'd rather not run games on a 12-year-old computer, if I can help it. And if I can't help it, I can just run Windows through BootCamp.

Overall macOS is much nicer in many ways than Windows and I hate how bad Microsoft's OS has become in recent years. Plus, macOS has a ton of really useful software that I genuinely like using. The only major problem I have with macOS is Apple's policy of dropping support for older OS versions and locking out older machines from upgrading to newer versions. I would continue running 10.15 Catalina on the Mac, if not for Electron dropping support for 10.15 last year. And because desktop app developers suck and everything runs Electron these days, I couldn't run Signal or Discord. At some point, older versions of OneNote stopped syncing with the cloud too, leaving me with no choice but to install Big Sur using OpenCore. And somehow, this "unsupported" OS runs as well as the last officially supported version, leaving me puzzled as to why Apple would artificially try to make this machine obsolete. I then updated to the latest version of macOS 12 Monterey (mostly because the newest version of kdenlive didn't work on macOS 11) and it ran just as well. Every app I threw at the MacBook worked like a charm. Universal Control (a feature that allows you to control your iPad with your Mac's mouse and keyboard and vice versa) It does beachball a tiny bit here and there, but i can't believe how good thing is so good at doing what I need from a laptop on a daily basis. Heck, I wouldn't be too inconvenienced if I only had this laptop to work on.

But how come? 13 years ago, when this thing was new, a then decade-plus old laptop would've been completely obsolete and unusable, this thing however still manages to give some lower end PCs a run for its money (and the money you pay for an Intel Mac these days is pretty low).

I feel that for the last decade plus technological progress in the consumer PC sphere has been largely stagnant. There hasn't been a huge jump in technology that suddenly rendered old PCs obsolete and unusable (and no, "AI" is not it). Yes, most modern laptops run circles around their counterparts from a decade ago in terms of raw power, but even in 2012 the computers we had were more than enough for the vast majority of people. Office apps, web browsers, Photoshop and email don't need that much power to run well. A decently spec'd machine from 2012 (like a quad-core MacBook Pro) can even edit HD video (heck, with a proxy workflow you can get away doing some 4K editing). You can still pick up an old laptop from circa mid 2012-2015 running at least a second-gen i3 and expect it to be a decent machine for less demanding tasks. We had reached the point where the computer were just good enough for the stuff an average person would need a computer, and for gaming and more niche tasks you'd seek a more.

Sure, having a quad-core i7 helps, but even my slow-as-molasses Sleekbook is still competent at browsing the web and watching videos. It can even play an old game or two. Just because it sucks doesn't mean it isn't functional.

A lot of this stagnation can be blamed on Intel. For around 10 years (after Sandy Bridge) they shipped smaller and smaller upgrades to their CPU lineup, refused to offer more than four cores in their consumer CPUs, and, even more egregiously, kept selling dual-cores as mid-range i5 laptop CPUs for way longer than they should have. 

This situation can also be in part blamed on AMD, who haven't shipped any remotely good laptop CPUs for more than a decade, leaving Intel with the de-facto the monopoly on CPU chips and no incentive to improve their products. Intel's laptop chips underperformed, but also ran really hot and drew a lot of power.

The result of all this is that computers made in the last decade still have a lot of life in them. And this MacBook is a lucky one, because not only it runs a quad-core in a chassis that manages to mostly keep its temperatures in check, but also because it's extremely repairable and upgradable and will probably outlive many of the newer Intel Macs released post-2016 with butterfly keyboards and soldered-in SSDs. If you have a machine like this – keep it. It still packs a punch.