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dimmkeHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I tried to impress upon him that having the same computer for over 10 years without ever having to …

… I tried to impress upon him that having the same computer for over 10 years without ever having to take it in (or really do any kind of maintenance besides software updates) is extraordinary - he understands now that computers are a little more like cars. They need to be serviced sometimes. Not nearly as frequently as cars. And those laptops were not known for having good thermals. I'm on the verge of buying him a new MacBook just so he will be on the latest software - but for what he does (email, web browsing) the Air works just as well as it did in 2011. I think I might end up getting him a gently used M1 Mac Mini though since it never moves from his desk and it would be under $500. Anyways, I'm on an M1 MacBook Pro and it's hard to see myself buying a new Macbook Pro in the next 5 years minimum. I just don't need to. They fixed pretty much all of the problems their laptops had.

Original discussionApple Halted M2 Chip Production in January Amid 'Plummeting' Mac Sales1,014 source comments · at import
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game_the0ryHN

FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. My wife needed a laptop for class a year ago, so I gave her my old macbook pro 13 i bought in 2014. I also had a macbook air m1 for personal use, which I replaced recently with a macbook pro 14 m1, and planned to give my wife the air. She refuses the air bc she likes the old 13 so much, and she abuses the shit out of it. How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years? Even the battery life is still ok. I am going to have to force her to consider the air bc the old 13 is a security risk without OS updates. The only reason why I replaced the old 13 with the air was bc the 13 could not render 4k 60fps on an external display. Otherwise, I would have kept using it. The old 13 cost me about $1600 USD new (256GB HD, 8 GB ram). Amortize that cost over 9 years and that doesn't seem so bad. Even my iphone 8 is still going strong. Another anecdote - …

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komeHN

My MacBook Air 11-inch from 2015 with 1.7 GHz Dual-Core Intel i7 and 8 GB of RAM is still my main computer. And I love it, and it feels new. Perhaps i'm just lucky... but I use it everyday for hours. It traveled to super remote places. I want to use it for 2 or 3 more years (10 years in total would be nice!)

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sleepybrettHN

I dump my old macbooks on friends and family when I do an upgrade for speed reasons. I usually rotate every 2-4 years. My parents are still using a 2014 air that I got out of a box my previous employer was going to send to recycling. It's probably about time to upgrade them. They generally have the same usecase. They use iPads for most things, but sometimes they want a physical keyboard. They have rejected generally the ipad keyboards as 'weird'.

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heavyset_goHN

> Anyways, I'm on an M1 MacBook Pro and it's hard to see myself buying a new Macbook Pro in the next 5 years minimum. How much memory do you have? Seemed like my biggest concern when it came to this generation of MacBooks and longevity.

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paulmdHN

Be sure to enable the "optimized charging", when it decides that you're mostly running plugged in then it'll hold the battery at 80% to avoid holding it at 100% forever. There is an application called "AlDente" that lets you control this more precisely - not only can you essentially force it to hold at a specific charge level at any time, but you can also configure battery temperature limits (battery won't charge above, eg, 35C) and also "sailing mode" which gives it some hysteresis so it won't immediately charge up to 80% (or whatever you set) but rather stay at (eg) 76% if you run unplugged for a few minutes.

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