Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells • Hacker News Board

Re: Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells

#41

Post by soared » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 4:50 AM UTC

dflock wrote: post #26

soared wrote: post #16

> It’s very inexpensive, even when specced up. $1400 buys the fastest CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB disk from Apple I had to laugh a little at this. $900 bought me a 5th gen i7, 16gb RAM, 1TB SSD and 256gb SSD. I do have to suffer through w10 and a lenovo backdoor though.

You don't have to - you can install a different OS, if you want to.

Hackintosh for my model is said to be unstable, otherwise I would've done osx in a hertbeart. Linux is fun to play with, but not something I am willing to use day-to-day. This laptop and w10 have killed all my M$ enthusiasm though, my next computer WILL be a mac.

Re: Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells

#42

Post by rbanffy » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 4:50 AM UTC

soared wrote: post #16

> It’s very inexpensive, even when specced up. $1400 buys the fastest CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB disk from Apple I had to laugh a little at this. $900 bought me a 5th gen i7, 16gb RAM, 1TB SSD and 256gb SSD. I do have to suffer through w10 and a lenovo backdoor though.

Let's see how that Lenovo is in five years.

Re: Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells

#43

Post by mrsteveman1 » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 4:54 AM UTC

discodave wrote: post #24

I hear that a large Seattle based software company known for being 'cheap' gives their developers the oldest/cheapest Macbooks that they can... :)

You reminded me of this interesting bit of tech history :)

> "It's an alpha kit, it has the Power PC processor. It's the closest thing to what is in the console. It's the best source," Mario Rodriguez, a Microsoft employee on hand at Microsoft's Xbox 360 booth at E3, told TMO.

> The Xbox 360 has long been known to use a special version of the G5 processor, as has the fact that temporary Xbox development systems were modified Power Mac G5 units. The demonstration at E3, however, are the first time that Power Macs have been used to show Xbox 360 games to the public.

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Power_Mac_G5s_run_Mic...

Re: Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells

#44

Post by doggydogs94 » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:16 AM UTC

I needed a Mac to write iPhone apps using XCode. I found a 101 on eBay for about $750; 256GB SSD plus 4GB memory; upgraded to 16GB memory for $80. The 101 was perfect for what I wanted.

Re: Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells

#45

Post by mrpippy » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:17 AM UTC

centizen wrote: post #20

This 2012 MacBook has been a cult hit amongst doctors and other medical professionals that I support, largely because patient information is still transferred via CD or DVD.

Makes me think that there could be a business in making a snap-in case for the 12" MacBook to add an optical drive, extra battery, Ethernet, etc.

Re: Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells

#46

Post by stonogo » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:21 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #42

soared wrote: post #16

> It’s very inexpensive, even when specced up. $1400 buys the fastest CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB disk from Apple I had to laugh a little at this. $900 bought me a 5th gen i7, 16gb RAM, 1TB SSD and 256gb SSD. I do have to suffer through w10 and a lenovo backdoor though.

Let's see how that Lenovo is in five years.

Is this a joke? I have a Lenovo-produced T60 in its tenth year in daily use. I also still have its predecessor, a T43 labeled IBM (but manufactured by Lenovo) in regular use, but by my sister. Lenovo has a lot of problems, but they're every bit as capable of making a durable product as Apple.

Re: Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells

#47

Post by shirro » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:27 AM UTC

escap wrote: post #35

shirro wrote: post #21

I have an ancient mid-2009 MacBook. I walked out the Apple retailer and straight into a cut-price PC parts shop and upgraded the ram and hard drive to avoid some Apple tax. I am probably overdue to replace my second battery but I haven't been travelling much for awhile. My second or third HDD was swapped for an SSD quite some time ago. It wouldn't be fast enough for some jobs but as long as I have browser and termina…

> I will buy a quality laptop that isn't disposable and run Linux again. you have a model to suggest ?

Not really. The Mac keeps on going. I lost interest and stopped looking. I bought a nice carbon road bike instead. Much better investment for me. All those components I can adjust, swap and upgrade for the life of the bike. Jobs wanted using a computer to be like riding a bike. Here we are in 2016 and I can still upgrade a bike. No hope with the shit the computer industry is making.

At one stage I thought I should put business Dell's way because they made an effort shipping some XPS-13 with Ubuntu but they were limited to 8GB. I had that in 2009. What is the point?

The nail in the coffin for an upgrade was when I bought a Chromebook to play with. I realised I could just about live with a machine that only had a terminal and browser. I moved local dev to VPS and I can scale that however I want, whenever I want. No concerns about soldered in RAM there. The Chromebook was a bit flakey so I went back to the Mac, deleted a heap of virtual machines and containers and apps and I pretty much live in Chrome and iTerm2 now and feel less pressure to change than I did two years ago.

Re: Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells

#48

Post by HSO » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:31 AM UTC

stonogo wrote: post #46

rbanffy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see how that Lenovo is in five years.

Is this a joke? I have a Lenovo-produced T60 in its tenth year in daily use. I also still have its predecessor, a T43 labeled IBM (but manufactured by Lenovo) in regular use, but by my sister. Lenovo has a lot of problems, but they're every bit as capable of making a durable product as Apple.

Wasn't there a change of ownership a few years ago? If so, I'd also tend to a wait-and-see attitude until it's clear what changed and what didn't.

Re: Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells

#49

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:46 AM UTC

xt00 wrote: post #37

mschuster91 wrote: post #5

13 inch is SMALL. Does a MBP exist with the same features (user-accessible disk/ram/battery/optical) in the 15in range?

Yea when they killed the 15" MBP with matte display, I pretty much freaked out since I was planning on buying it as my main computer from the remainder of my life if Apple continued to exist as a company.. instead, I am now trying to figure out what to do next.. I've been thinking about getting a new computer, but really don't want to buy a non-apple piece of junk that has a super crappy battery or trackpad or displa…

tbh the long battery life of OS X/iOS devices is a byproduct of a more resource-efficient OS.

Apple really can optimize its kernel and userland because it controls the hardware, Microsoft (and Google/Android) not as much because their software needs to run on everything that people dream up when smoking pot.

Re: Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells

#50

Post by petemc_ » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:48 AM UTC

The built-in ethernet is the biggest selling point for me. My work often requires me to plug into various devices via wired ethernet and it's almost guaranteed I would forget/lose an adapter one day.

If the 2008 macbook I've used every day since I bought it new fails, and the spare I got from a rich client who felt the need to upgrade also fails, I would probably consider buying 2012 version.