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Comment by can16358p | Hacker News Reader

MacBooks can easily exceed 10+ years rock solid. (Only battery may need a replacement)

Not anymore. Now Apple will drop MacOS support for their computers way earlier. I tried to update my barely used MacBook from 2012/2013 somewhere last year and learned that it was dropped quite some time ago - so if I would have kept it on the newest release (there were serious bugs, I was hesitant), I think it would have got around 8 years max, if memory serves me right. No security updates at all anymore, not possible to download older release than the newest. I did not expect that.

And I had to upgrade SSD and RAM 2 and 4 years after buying, it became unusable for work (granted, it was not spec'ed out originally).

MacBook Pros and Airs from 2012 are supported by Catalina, and that is still getting security releases. It does require 4GB of RAM though if you didn’t have that to start with.

Aehm, thanks?

If you bought your MacBook until MID 2012, you're out of luck though.

And 10 years old would be early 2011, and those are also not supported.

Mojave has the same requirements basically, that leaves High Sierra, and High Sierra had a few months of support left (ended Dec 2020), so I just aborted.

Obviously that depends on a number of factors, including whether you purchase early or late in the generational cycle, whether you spring for the extra memory, total hours of runtime, exposure to rough handling / mechanical stress, and of course blind luck.

Not anymore? It's not like battery replacement is very viable on modern Macs, and the SSD wear issue means that most of these "daily driver" machines will end up dead in more like 3 or 4 years.

But yes, older Macs were notorious for being great machines.

While I’d much prefer if the SSDs were replaceable, I don’t think there’s any evidence that Apple SSDs were failing or will fail in only 3-4 years.

Apple SSDs have historically had a lower TBW than the rest of the drives on the market, and combined with their swap abuse issue right now, I think it's fair for people to be alarmed.

> It's not like battery replacement is very viable on modern Macs

Why? Apple still offers battery replacements for modern Macs, and some more adventurous types of people still do it themselves. They're glued to the chassis, not spot welded.

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