Apple MacBook Pro 2010

"The Apple tax on ram and storage has always been ridiculous, but a long long time ago in a galaxy far away you could use aftermarket RAM and drives, and batteries even used to be removable (and give easy access to RAM and drive, on the old polycarbonate macbooks). On my 2010 I could even replace the DVD drive by an aftermarket drive caddy." Those were the good days. I loved dropping dual SSDs and additional RAM in my MBP. I harvested guts from broken ones off craigslist and kept it going for about 13 years before it finally kicked out.

I was one of those annoying Apple evangelists for years. My 2010 MacBook Pro was my baby and I loved it. Eventually it got to the point where I had to replace it (after 7 years!) and when I went to look around at the new MacBook Pro range, I was so disgusted by all the problems that I ended up getting a Dell XPS 13. I consider my original MBP and the following models to be some of the best laptops you could buy at the time. If I could buy a 2015 MBP with a modern processor I would do it in a heartbeat. Meanwhile I wouldn't recommend the current range of Apple laptops to anyone.

In 2024 I sold a 2010 MBP that still worked. I beat the hell out of it in college dual booting and cooking the cpu playing Trackmania for 12 hours at a time or running Solidworks, then after I graduated it sat closed behind my stove sharing its wifi connection (my neighbors unprotected wifi) out the ethernet port and into my own managed router for about 4 years. Up until the last days it was running Windows as a host for controlling my old not-network-connected 3d printer. I definitely got my money out of that machine, someone paid $150 for it.

Thing I hare about the Air is no internal fan. The Macbook Pro has them so if you do anything intensive like AI inference you have actual airflow. Additional point since you are considering Mac Minis. My wifes 2008 and 2010 Macbooks (the 2010 is a Pro) still turn on and run the OS just fine. I swapped the drive on the 2010 but its because she dropped it ages ago. Thats 16 years for the 2010, and 18 years for the 2008. I cant find a single Windows laptop that has lasted me this long EXCEPT the ones I installed Linux on. Something about *NIX literally saves your hardware lifespan.

Digression here but, man, Apple knows how to engineer a laptop that will keep on ticking. Every other laptop I've had is depricated in 2 years and virtually worthless by 5. My 2010 MBP isn't even remotely my daily driver but it is still kicking around. Only issue is a dead ram port (and there are some fixes for that I haven't attempted yet).

Surprised about the mac- I still have a maxed out 2010 Macbook Pro - 16gb ram and SATA- and it has aged so well it is still fully usable with most modern software and workflows, and feels fast. I also have a new Apple Silicon Macbook Pro and it is the screen and battery that mostly makes the newer one fundamentally nicer to use. I don’t game or do intensive things like video editing though- mostly just web and coding in a terminal.

> I see absolutely nothing wrong with the original comment. I see a person who wants to use their Mac long-term I can put an SSD drive into my wife's 2010 Macbook Pro, and give it new life, and Linux works really nicely on older Macs, though I'd rather let her keep her old Mac so she can look at all her old photos, etc. I can't truly do that on most Macs anymore, nor replace the RAM. Apple made their macbooks too thin, arguably I'm grateful for less carry weight, but realistically, I want to be able to replace faulty components with ease.

More than 10 years ago I spilled miso soup on a 2010 MacBook Pro on my first day moving to Japan. I took it apart and cleaned it but the keyboard and trackpad couldn't be saved. Some keys always sent a signal and it would only boot into safe mode. But I could disassemble the laptop, turn it on, and remove the keyboard connector and then use it with an external mouse and keyboard. I did that for about a week until replacement parts arrived. I fixed it and the MacBook still works to this day.