> I've never kept any laptop as long as I've kept the M1.
My 2015 MBP would like to have a word.
It’s the only laptop purchase I’ve made. I still use it to this day, though not as regularly.
I will likely get a new MBP one of these days.
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You'll be glad you did. I loved my 2015 MBP. I even drove 3 hours to the nearest Best Buy to snag one. That display was glorious. A fantastic machine. I eventually gave it to my sister, who continued using it until a few years ago. The battery was gone, but it still worked great.
When you upgrade, prepare to be astonished.
The performance improvement is difficult to convey. It's akin to traveling by horse and buggy. And then hopping into a modern jetliner, flying first class.
It's not just speed. Display quality, build quality, sound quality, keyboard quality, trackpad, ports, etc., have all improved considerably.
The performance jump between a top-of-the-line intel MBP (I don't remember the year, probably 2019) and the m1 max I got to replace it.. was rather like the perf jump between spinning disks and SSDs.
When I migrated all my laptops to SSDs (lenovos at the time, so it was drop-dead simple), I thought to myself, "this is a once-in-a-generation feeling". I didn't think I would ever be impressed by a laptop's speed ever again. It was nice to be wrong.
> The battery was gone, but it still worked great.
A family 2018 Macbook Air got a second life with a battery replacement. Cheap kit from Amazon, screwdrivers included, extremely easy to do. Still in use, no problems.
My 2015 15" MBP is also still kickin, is/was an absolutely fabulous unit. Was my work machine for 3-4 years, and now another almost-6 years as my personal laptop. My personal use case is obviously not very demanding but it's only now starting to really show its age.
I also have a M1 from work that is absolutely wonderful, but I think it's time for me to upgrade the 2015 with one of these new M4s.
The longevity of Macbooks is insanely good.
Honestly, my Thinkpad from 2015 was still used in my family until recently. The battery was pretty bad, same as on my 2015 MBP, but other than that, I put Fedora on it, and it was still really fast.
Longevity is not only a thing of MBPs. OTOH, IIRC, some 2017-2019 MBPs (before the Mx switch) were terrible for longevity, given their problematic keyboard.
If we are going this way…
I still use a mid-2012 MBP as my main workstation.
Last one with upgrade capabilities, now it has two fast SSDs and maximum Ram. I changed the battery once.
Only shame is that it doesn’t get major MacOS upgrades anymore.
Still good enough to browse the web, do office productivity and web development.
12 years of good use, I am not sure I can get so much value anywhere now
Same setup here except I use Opencore Legacy Patcher so I’m on the latest OS as well. Works amazingly well.
I never questioned the limitations for these upgrades…
Thanks for reminding me that everything is possible, I may try Opencore to keep it even longer !
How’s the performance? I have 2013 MBP with 16GB RAM, and am curious if the newer OS are more RAM hungry.
I was also a mid-2012 MBP user. I eventually got the M2 MBA because I was investing in my eyesight (modern displays are significantly better). I was never impressed with the touchbar-era macs, they didn't appeal to me and their keyboards were terrible.
I think this M-series macbook airs are a worthy successor to the 2012 MBP. I fully intend to use this laptop for at least the same amount of time, ideally more. The lack of replaceable battery will probably be the eventual killer, which is a shame.
That is amazing. Mine lasted for a super long time as well, and like you, I upgraded everything to its max. I think it was the last model with a 17 inch screen.
Sold mine last year for $100 to some dude who claimed to have some software that only runs on that specific laptop. I didn't question it.
I still have my 2015, and it lived just long enough to keep me going until the death of the touch bar and horrible keyboard, which went away when I immediately bought the M1 Pro on release day.
Exactly same story here.
For it's time, the 2015 model was a fantastic package: reliable and robust in form and function.
Would've kept going on it had Apple silicon and 14 inch not come around.
Barring super niche LLM use cases, I don't see why one would need to upgrade.
I loved my 2015 MBP, probably the best machine Apple made, overall, until arguably the 2019 16" (read: after the butterfly keyboard debacle)
Traded it for an M1 Air in 2021 and was astonished at how much faster it was. It even blew away my 2019 16" from work.
You're going to be even more blown away!
My wife still uses my 2012 MBP 15 retina as her daily driver. The battery's terrible but everything else works fine.
It's extremely easy to replace the battery.
Anything you can buy online ships with all required screw drivers and dozen of Youtube videos or ifixit will give you step by step instructions.
10-15 minutes and you'll have the old battery replaced all by yourself.
It's that simple.
I used that same model for 5 years until I finally upgraded in 2017 and totally regretted it, the upgrade was not worth it at all, I would have been just as happy with the 2012. I quickly replaced it again with the "Mea Culpa" 2019 where they added back in ports, etc, would have been just about worth the upgrade over the 2012, 7 years later, but again, not by a big margin.
The 2012 MBP 15" Retina was probably the only machine I bought where the performance actually got better over the years, as the OS got more optimized for it (the early OS revisions had very slow graphics drivers dealing with the retina display)
The M1 Pro on the other hand, that was a true upgrade. Just a completely different experience to any Apple Intel laptop.
2017 and 2019 had the same ports?
Ah you're right, it was only the keyboard and battery they fixed.
It's been too long, I guess I had blocked out just just how terrible those Intel MacBooks were.
The 2015 MacBook Pro is the Nokia 3310 of our generation.
My 2015 MBP would probably have been totally fine for development... except for the Docker-based workflows that everybody uses now.
Rebuilding a bunch of Docker images on an older intel mac is quite the slow experience if you're doing it multiple times per day.
I loved my 2015 MBP too.
I recently replaced it with a used MBA M1, 16GB, 2TB.
It's insane how much faster it is, how long the battery lasts and how cool and silent it is. Completely different worlds.
The 2015 keeps going!
I was considering upgrading to an M3 up until about a month ago when Apple replaced my battery, keyboard, top case, and trackpad completely for free. An upgrade would be nice as it no longer supports the latest MacOS, but at this point, I may just load Ubuntu on the thing and keep using it for another few years. What a machine.
I've just replaced a 2012 i5 mbp, and used it for Dev work and presentations into 2018.
It has gotten significantly slower the last 2 years, but the more obvious issue is the sound, inability to virtual background, and now lack of software updates.
But if you had told me I'd need to replace it in 2022 I wouldn't believe you
2015 MBP here too, even got a new topcase and a battery replaced for free because it had some issues according to Apple.
Can't get the latest macOS on it though, but otherwise it still works perfectly well.
Kinda considering upgrading it to a used M1/M2 one at some point.
Ah my 2013 mbp died in 2019. It was the gpu. No way to repair it for cheap enough so I had to replace it with a 2019 mbp which was the computer I kept the shortest (I hated the keyboard).
My 2011 MBP died in 2023, it was used daily but very slow at the end of its life.