Apple MacBook Air 2014

I still use a 2014 macbook air as my home server. It was my daily driver for 7 years. No complaints, still works perfectly. Haven't been careful with it either.

Here is the thing, replacing something may be hard or easy. But getting the parts (which are already produced and available for the manufacturers for their "added value" repairs) should be as easy as how they are getting them too. Not to mention manuals/instructions. Regulation discussed here is about these too. Also as consumer, I would argue the marketing done by apple is just scammy. They keep praising how much carbon saved or sustainable new machines are. But in fact, a minor issue becomes a massive electronic dump. I also like Macs, I own several of them. Repaired a few. Mostly replacing batteries and keyboards. For example 2014 Macbook Air had a normal battery, no sticky business. Meanwhile 2020-2025 MacBook Air has sticky stuff, making repairs harder. The best part is, 2014 macbook air has 54 Watt/hr battery, 2020-2025 models are 53 watts/hour. The lasting battery gains are coming from Apple silicon efficiency as well as modern BMS. Simply put, regulation is the answer. Apple makes it difficult because they can, and also because it creates revenue. Of repairability was the source of income, you would see 10/10 repairable macbooks with no (significant) tradeoffs. (ie. it could be a few grams heavier for added screws)

The MacBook Air mentioned (2014) will install Mavericks when booted into recovery mode anyway (unless you use Option-Command-R which will give you the newest compatible version which is Big Sur). I did that a few days ago and I agree, it’s quite snappy! Missing certificates can also be installed manually (e.g. from the curl CA bundle), but even then TLS 1.3 support is lacking in most apps which breaks a lot of stuff without the suggested proxy. A lot of MacPorts ports also do not build sadly. The look is so much better than current macOS.

> The MacBook Air mentioned (2014) will install Mavericks when booted into recovery mode anyway (unless you use Option-Command-R which will give you the newest compatible version which is Big Sur). Certain 2014 Macbook Airs, including my own, will install Yosemite instead in recovery mode for some reason, even though obviously I'm using Mavericks and it runs fine.

Yes. I'm pretty sure my wifes 2014 Macbook Air has been 6 months without restart. My windows 11 workstation however has never done a week. I power down now daily to avoid dissapointment.