Hacker News Reader

Comment by overcast | Hacker News Reader

Ugh. I don't know what to do here. I've been waiting for Mac updates for ages, and this is what we get. My 2008 Mac Pro is maxed out on upgrades, and has been on the fritz lately. I can't go forever on an 8+ year old machine. Especially one that is no longer "officially supported" by Apple, and now requires 3rd party patches to install Sierra and its updates.

Microsoft's Surface presentation yesterday was VERY tempting.

View on HN

I went hackintosh a few years ago and while it's got tons of it's own headaches, its a good way to get solid hardware that you can pick out yourself.

I won't pretend that I ever press 'install updates' without a few hours to spare and db backups ready.

I used Hackintosh for about a year as primary macOS development machine.

Updates were a headache and the inability to install pre-release software.

But with Xcode and Swift being so slow I'm thinking about going back there and just getting the 4ghz i7...

Another option is a Mac Pro, but I really don't have 3000+ money to spend on a computer...

If you've already got experience doing hackintoshes you can't beat building your own Xeon machine and just dealing with a few hours here and there of update headache.

The price of raw commodity hardware is suuuuper cheap compared to off the shelf macs. There are even nice mini-itx cases if you want a powerful, slightly-larger-than-mac-mini machine.

I'm in the same boat. I have an 8 year old Macbook Unibody. Maxed out RAM to 8GB (officially supports 6 GB but there was a way to utilize 8 GB), have replaced HDD with a 256 SSD, replaced the battery once (sadly now can't do so again, they don't make it), replaced power adapter twice. I was looking forward to this event, this is the first year I cannot upgrade to the latest OS X without hacking around. I am ready to buy. However this event was disappointing. I don't care for any of the new features and really that would not have mattered, but then the prices surprised me. So much more than I payed for what I'm using right now. Feeling a bit stuck here. I don't need a lot of power with the type of code I write but the new Macbook is too small and has only one port. I'm actually considering the model without the touch bar but that's only got two ports. Touch decision especially because I don't like what I see out in Windows land either and I can't use Linux as a client OS because I use apps that are only available for Windows and OS X. Damn...

I also have a 2008 unibody aluminum MacBook - just an FYI you can still get new batteries for it:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple_laptop/batteries/MacBo...

Have you bought one here? I bought a non Apple power adapter and it stopped working in two weeks so then I had to buy an official one (was trying to save money, ended up spending more). With battery it's a huge concern because I don't want my apartment to be go down in flames.

Yep - am using one right now and have had no issues. To be honest this is my third battery - the second one I got from Apple only last about 2 years and ended up swelling up to the point the track pad no longer "clicked". Have been with the one from OWC for almost 2 years now and no issues.

Thanks, this is great information. My current battery lasts a couple of hours so if it gets any worse I'll buy one here. At home I usually have it on power.

Huge respect for you for keeping your MacBook for so long.

I personally tired of stuff that "breaks" or becomes "obsolete" in a year or so.

Our environment is doomed if we continue to have lifestyles like this: buying new shit in a year.

2008 Mac Pro tower! Only reason I'm considering MacBOOK Pro, is because the Mac Pro desktop has been just forgotten.

FWIW, I love my (last-gen) MBP. i7, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Maybe you can get one for less now?

It's really not a matter of money. It's getting something at least comparable to eight year old hardware. I don't need 8 cores, but more RAM, and disk space should be realistic eight years later.

yeah, 256GB is much too small for a premium laptop, I understand they are trying to push their cloud storage, but programs and files are getting bigger and bigger these days and storage is pretty cheap.

I have to say that I am personally surprised there wasn't an update for any of the desktop computers. Even a token refresh would have been nice.

Hackintosh?

Considered it, and I've built PC's since my very first one. Even have a PC dedicated for gaming. I just don't want to deal with it for my primary work space machine. Same philosophy with phone, and the reason I have an iPhone. I don't want to dick around with it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com