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Comment by davee5 | Hacker News Reader

I've been daily driving a 2013 MBP. After occasional memory upgrades, hard drive upgrades, and battery swaps this decade-young computer of Theseus runs great.

But the real reason I'm not upgrading is because of software compatibility:

1. This is about as new a machine I can get that runs Adobe CS6 & Lightroom with perpetual licenses. (F your subscription)

2. The new M machines do not appear to run the Intel-driven CAD software I currently run in Bootcamp, not even in emulation. (I'm not keen on owning 2 machines for my dayjob, nor wholly converting to Windows.)

Meanwhile my less mission critical software has gotten cheeky lately and started telling me my machine is too old. Spotify and Signal both refuse to update further and launch with big nastygram windows saying so. Wheeee.

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For #1, I can’t imagine either switching over to open source or an Adobe competitor isn’t going to easily surpass CS6 with how old it is. I have to think GIMP has caught up with and surpassed CS6 by now.

For #2, I think if it was me and I really wanted to stick with the Mac and upgrad I’d just run Parallels. Sure, it’s yet another license, but it runs a lot of stuff pretty well, including some 3D games, so I think it might be worth trying.

Another part of me wonders if Crossover/Wine could run that CAD software.

Of course, you want to be able to run these on a trial before you buy any hardware.

If you’re not aware of OpenCore Legacy I might as well mention that in case you need a newer version of macOS on that hardware.

> I have to think GIMP has caught up with and surpassed CS6 by now.

Feature-wise, maybe, but UX is totally different.

If you are using the latest Adobe products at work, for example, you would want the same UI when you are doing something at home.

my current dd laptop is also an early 2013 MBP, which I had installed Linux on a few years ago. however recently I picked up music again and preferred to use Mac for certain software. oh man was the reinstallation process a nightmare. the recovery install didn't have a browser that would render the Firefox download page. the Mac app store didn't have downloads for the highest version of macOS I could install on Intel architecture. it was problem after problem but now in finally running the last version I'll be able to run: 11.17. funny how much can change or become obsolete in only a decade :D

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