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Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells

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

#11

Post by jtcond13 »

Writing this from a mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro (2.26 Ghz processor). I've also upgraded RAM/HD over the years, as well as replacing the battery. It's mostly for internet with some occasional programming and sound editing. It runs the latest Mac OS.

Is there an obvious reason to upgrade that I'm missing?

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

#13

Post by cooper12 »

One reason not mentioned is that you can actually replace the disk drive with a caddy to put in another hard drive. I replaced mine with an SSD. I also upgraded the RAM so I could finally appease Chrome because I would get a lot of swapping to disk previously. I'd say it's quite competitive to the later models and does everything I need. (Just don't look at a retina screen or you'll be jealous) Repairability is a huge feature that is being lost, so I'm very grateful to iFixit for advocating for it and putting out such valuable guides. Sadly, there's an issue with mine where the hard drive cable breaks after a few months and I've had to get it replaced about 4 times already. The thermals also aren't very good so under heavy CPU load it heats up, though that doesn't happen for me much unless I (rarely) play a game or use all my cores. The added ports are just a bonus, even if I don't use them often like the Ethernet port.

Edit: Just noticed that it is mentioned in the first footnote.

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

#14

Post by eitally »

dkrich wrote: post #6

The short version of this is that there is a lot of money to be made from enterprises by selling them outdated technology because enterprises are almost always slow to adopt new technology. That's how Dell and Microsoft Sharepoint still make a lot of money. It's not necessarily a bad thing when taking into account the economics of training IT personnel and the added costs of supporting cutting edge technologies. But…

I see a lot of complaints about Sharepoint, but this one is new to me. What about it is outdated, and especially when you compare it to what other options? I'm no fan, and Sharepoint is super-heavy and requires enterprisey-typical levels of care & feeding, but it's a mature platform and offers a lot of pretty spiffy bells & whistles when correctly configured. None of the open source options remotely compare.

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

#15

Post by Overtonwindow »

An excellent write up. In 2013 I was afraid they were going to get rid of the 101, so I bought it. Still using it today, and I just purchased a hard drive upgrade to put in it. It will probably be my last MacBook for many years to come. Upgradability, is the most important feature in my book. I still have A 2009 model running Snow Leopard, and it works great. I see no reason to go to a retina machine

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

#16

Post by soared »

> 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.

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

#17

Post by bluedino »

gruturo wrote: post #8

One additional reason it still makes sense as a product: last 3-4 years have been... Quite underwhelming, from a CPU power perspective. A little bit of power efficiency, which does have its place on a laptop, but other than that, hardly anything noticeable in day to day use. Intel is clearly not feeling the heat from competition and their pricing, minimal improvement and feature fragmentation clearly show it. Giving…

Plus, when they were new, the 13" MBP (at least from 2010+) had 10 hours of battery life. Pretty good, even by today's standards.

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

#18

Post by forrestthewoods »

gruturo wrote: post #8

One additional reason it still makes sense as a product: last 3-4 years have been... Quite underwhelming, from a CPU power perspective. A little bit of power efficiency, which does have its place on a laptop, but other than that, hardly anything noticeable in day to day use. Intel is clearly not feeling the heat from competition and their pricing, minimal improvement and feature fragmentation clearly show it. Giving…

I want an ARM MacBook as that implies OS X on ARM which means an iPad Pro should be able to dual boot
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