Why do people still buy Intel Macs in 2024? - Aren't Apple Silicon Macs better? 

WOYS Discord! Really excited to talk about Macs, upgrades, accessories and repairs with you guys. Hop in and tell me about your Mac setup… discord.gg/ZMpSk875qN

2012 macbook pro owner here, running sonoma and upgraded to 16GB of ram and 1TB SSD. Still on it's original battery too, although it's nearing 900 cycles.

All valid points, I think the Mac Pro 2013 deserves an honorable mention as a hobby PC due to the prices falling as they should have long ago.

Intel Mac can run older macOS ( games-app 32/64) and dual boot, can run 3 or more display. I’m allow to upgrade my own GPU, HD/SSD/PCI slot PCI.. Intel Mac have Blu ray drives

Im more worried about the software. If Apple stops rolling out Updates to any Intel-based mashine, you'll not be able to install the newer OS on unsupported devices due to the different CPU-architechtures. Opencore will die evenuelly and there is nothing we can do about it. You'll need to buy the newest tech if you want to run MacOS, where hte RAM and SSD's are soldered to the board and Apple just messes with the consumer market, by charging absurd prices for fixing dead SSD's. Anyway, you still did a good job explainung the pros and cons when buying Intel-based Macs.

I bought last year a 2019 16” MacBook Pro for the reason that all engineering apps are only available on windows. I’m talking about Revit, autocad plant 3D, aveva e3D etc. It’s noisy and battery life is not great, but the build quality and the possibility to boot both in macOS and windows is priceless. If I had the possibility to run my engineering apps on the new Mac’s I would switch immediately. And parallels is not a solution, I need hardware accelerated graphics.

I'm still using a Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015 and I love it. It's still my go-to laptop despite also having a 14" 2021 Pro machine as well.

i sold my M1 TB 13" MacBook Pro back in 2023 and bought a 16" i9 TB MacBook Pro... i loved the performance of the M1 in Luminar or FCPX but for i really wanted that bigger screen size! A Thin but still decent sized, portable Mac... I started to see the REAL benefit of the Intels by a couple of Weeks and Months, for me it is surprisingly the Touchbar is what holds me back from upgrading, also the phenomenal Speakers on this thing! Never heard such good speakers in any laptop. Also the Quad Thunderbolt Port selection is a major point for me, i personally never use HDMI or a SD card reader... I mean yes it gets burning hot when cutting Video, Editing Photos or just putting it under a heavy workload BUT it still runs perfectly in alomost any condition performance wise! I could go on and on why i still love my i9 Mac :)

I upgraded my mothers 5k iMac (2015) with 16gb of RAM, changed the Fusion Drive for a SSD and renewed its thermal paste. Having the capability of upgrading is something I miss about the ARM Macs because its kind of a hobby. I did this to several iMacs and changed the battery on a retina MacBook Pro.

recently replaced battery of my MacBook Pro 2014, cleaned up dusty inside and added new thermal paste. running smoothly again, not bad for a 10 year old laptop.

I have a 13" 2016 Macbook pro, with 16 GB of RAM and I upgraded the ssd to 2 TB. I have it plugged into a doc and use it as a desktop machine, and it works great. Additionally, I have made a Dell Latitude into a hackintosh, running Sonoma 14.3 with a 1 TB SSD and 32 GB of RAM. It runs incredibly fast. I have no desire to pay for Apple's M1 or higher, can't be upgraded, Macintrashes until I am forced to, and my machines become unusable.

i bought a refurb late 2015 5k iMac right before c*vid hit in 2020, then didn't need it. just pulled it out of the box a few months ago and stuck 64 gigs in it. probably won't upgrade the OS past Sonoma. fantastic machine.

The only reason I would get intel macbook pro, would be the price and piece of mind. Being a photographer(no video editing) that travels, the potential of damaging the computer is actually real. $500 or less provides you with a decent machine in terms of RAM and storage to take care of your basic needs on the road with an amazing screen. If you buy the last ones of the breed you have another 5-6 years of updates for a very small monetary outlay.

virtual machine support also seems to much better which is great for cybersecurity

I work in IT, and I have a 2019 MBP with Windows and macOS.I tend to favor macOS, but I do have Windows for support or running various other tools if needed.

I have a 2009 cMP that’s been upgraded as much as it reasonably can be (dual 3.33 6 core xeons, 1080 GTX, 32GB RAM, NVME storage) but my M2 MBP runs circles around it, and works flawlessly with my studio display, and can be taken on the road, etc. If it wasn’t for the fact that I occasionally need a windows machine, I’d have no use for it (though I will NEVER get rid of it) It’s a brilliant machine that has remained useful way longer than it has any right to but it’s now 15 years old and that’s practically prehistoric in computer years. I wish there was a way to get a modern Intel motherboard in there along with modern GPUs (you can run modern GPUs in the old cMP but you’re going to experience massive CPU bottlenecks, negating any kind of performance advantage), RAM, Thunderbolt, etc. The cMP still remains the one of the best cases ever - it still looks fantastic and fresh today. If only we could get modern hardware and macOS running on it. That said, anyone know how to make a cMP form factor logic board based on 2024 architecture? :-D

1 word for me: BOOTCAMP. but I still prefer MSeries for macOS but Windows on ARM is absolutely dog garbage

I still use a PowerBook from early 2011- the LAST 17" screen model. It was my dad's old work laptop (he personally bought it)... and I moved it to Fedora 39 a while back, it's amazing for it's age. I need to get a 2.5" solid state drive to really get more out of it, but for it's age and size... it's really nice... And with Linux it even gets modern updates and security. Not a bad machine honestly. BEST OF ALL... people using older machines that are capable for the common tasks online and such... it prevents E-waste and throwing are GOOD hardware.

My old Macbook 2012 was great at running Linux,I was sorry when it finally gave up the ghost as it gave great service as a Linux machine.

The switch to Apple Silicon was the motivation for me to switch back to Windows. They made me choose between the operating system I loved for 11 years, and my 33 years of PC gaming. I intend to keep gaming till the day I die, so Apple basically said said they don't want my money. I guess Tim Cook is a game-o-phobe.

Well, I have upgraded several old basic macbooks (maxing the memory and installing a SSD) along with a few 2012 15" Macbook Pros. From what I see with a more typical Apple Mac user, they basically use it for Internet, and the occasional office application. So, an upgraded Pro does quite well for them. I just bought one for $100 to have as a swap out for future upgrades (Some in my family are Apple fans, don't know why, but they are.) for family members.

I got a refurbished late 2014 MBP 16/512GB and I have side loaded the newest MacBook OS(Sonoma). It looks amazing and has works perfectly. As much as I like the newest MBP in midnight, I can’t justify the ridiculous prices they cost. And the hardware is nowhere near as durable these days as it used to be in the mid 2010’s.

I’m about to ditch my i9 I bought 4 years ago asap… software is losing compatibility.

I just bought a 2017 iMac Pro the base option which has 1TB/32gb Ram/8 core cpu/Radeon Pro Vega 8GB etc for $1,600 refurbished from Best Buy. Flawless panel, basically zero damage at all to the body, runs the latest Mac OS with ease, and came with 24 month warranty with my total tech membership. I always wanted one and I couldn’t be more satisfied for what I’ll be using it for. I have a couple apple silicon Macs as well as a 2020 27 i7 iMac and this 2017 iMac Pro handles everything even on the latest Mac OS Sonoma effortlessly

My everyday work and gaming computer is an M1 Max Mac Studio, which I'm extremely happy with (and before that, an M1 Mac Mini), but I have a growing collection of Intel and PowerPC Macs, many of which see frequent use. I use a mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro or an 11-inch 2013 MacBook Air as my work commute laptop, I use a 2013 trashcan Mac Pro for Mac games (mostly 32-bit games) and Photoshop, and I often use a Pismo PowerBook G3 or a Titanium PowerBook G4 to revisit games from my childhood. My vintage Macs, and the Intel Macs especially, are still very useful and feel fast and capable for light-to-medium tasks and even gaming, and they've been very fulfilling upgrade projects. My 2010 cheesegrater Mac Pro, in particular, is a screamer: a 3.46 GHz six-core CPU; 48 GB of RAM; a 1 TB NVMe drive; an RX 580; a USB C/3 combo card; two Blu Ray drives.

I have a maxed out 2012 MBP and a pretty high end 2019 MBP. The only downside of running Windows on them (native or VM) is that it runs hotter, so MacFansControl app is important.

And the 17" has very good screen realestate and good quality of image for when it was built.

Rhino for mac v8 only just released to work on apple silicon and it's a crash fest so I'm still on Intel.

Interesting topic. Just 2 additional tips - with an OpenCore OCLP installer, 2012-17 macs can run the most recent OS Sonoma almost perfectly. Also for eGPU a great use case is for local AI training with a Nvidia GPU (from 3060 and up) - under Win/Linux, if you don’t want to build a brand new box. Many Windows laptop/mini/sff models lack Thunderbolt, and therefore does not eGPU. Mac Mini 2018 is the most cost effective model to run this. And AI on m1/2/3 is still under early development.

4:41 "Blud" 💀💀💀 Bro is up to date with the memes. Also you can upgrade the storage on all the mac's, even M1 and higher but it takes ALOT of skill

Intel: 1. Native Windows Support (BootCamp) 2. Native Linux support (Dual OS) 3. Upgradability (Especially on Desktop Computers) 4. eGPU Support (in macOS and Windows)

I still use a 2013 Intel MBA. I’ve upgraded the RAM, replaced the battery and keyboard, and replaced the original SSD with a fast nve drive. With OpenCore it runs Monterey perfectly. The ARM MBA is very nice but with no fan it thermal throttles under sustained load, which I need (compiling). This is not an issue on the Intel as I can control the fan. And it’s difficult to justify buying a machine that will become e-waste WHEN its proprietary non-replaceable SSD dies. This is especially true of used machines with just 8GB of RAM. A LOT of these Silicon macs will start dying in the next five years and there will be no way to fix them.

Have a 2018 Mini that you'd have to pry out of my cold, dead hands. (On it right now, as a matter of fact.) It runs a couple of monitors, is fine at web browsing and does the Affinity Suite with no problem. But its real advantage is I can still run 32-bit apps if I boot it into Mojave (which I have on an external drive). Have a few apps I still use that'll never be recompiled to 64-bit.

I love the Apple Logo led light. I really hope they will bring it back.

I have an M1 MBP and an M1 MBA but all I want to use is my 16" Intel i9 MBP. I just love the damn thing.

I’m a pretty big Intel Mac guy but one of the things Apple has done that’s kinda ended Intel Macs is not adding AMD 7000 support. Kinda makes my 2019 not worth it

Payed $20 for a mid 2012 MacBook pro, non rentna. Best $20 I've ever spent.

I have an iMac Pro with a Vega 56, plus, 3 eGPU: a 6800 and two 6900. I use it for Redshift and its quite, quite fast. Electricity bill is a thing, but still, not a complain. And also, if you can get a MacBook Pro with a 5600 GPU plus an extra eGPU with the 6900 AMD card, you still have a great machine nowadays.

I picked up a late 2012 MBP (Catalina) for $130 CDN for the single purpose of running REW and miniDSP Device Console to fine tune DSP setting on 2x4HD on two separate multichannel audio systems. While the MIDI controller won’t properly map more than 7.1 surround ( i.e. Atmos, etc) , and a mini display port to HDMI adapter is required to connect to my surround receiver, it works like a charm. The budget priced Dayton calibrated microphone and stand cost more than the MBP, so for a total investment of less than $300, my use case is fully satisfied.

I was surprised that there was no mention of 2014-2020 iMacs, particularly the 2014 and 2015 models. 2014s can be had for under $200 and 2015s for under $300. I bought my 2015 iMac 27 five months ago. It has an i5, came with 32 GB of RAM and a 1 TB hard drive. I added an external SSD from my parts box and it's perfectly fine for running my office programs. So $200 for a 5k monitor, great speakers, webcam, and microphones, Apple keyboard and mouse. I was looking to buy a Dell Ultrasharp 4k 27 inch but those are around $500-$600.

I just bought a 2019 intel mac with 32 gb ram for $200 USD. It works amazingly well and if I wanted to, I can dual boot it with linux, even install linux or Windows on an external SSD. It runs very fast, as long as I use Catalina on it. I don't use it for gaming, but for what I use it for, it boots up fast and works very well. Why would I spend $4k for a new macbook pro?

I was personally close to give up on my MacBook Pro 2010 which I’ve upgraded to the max possible mentioned in the video (matte / i7 / SSD / 8gb ram) Overall Sonoma works okay for basic tasks and and I ended up buying a new battery. In case Mac OS 15 is the last open core can patch, it will still extend his lifetime until technically 2027 for security updates. If it manages to survive, I will likely end up putting some Linux. They are still power pc distro maintained around so I’m not worried to find one for intel i7 even in 3 years. I guess it strongly depends of the usage everyone wants to make. In my case I’m already happy to have a 14 years MacBook still beating apple obsolescence.

I recently had a phone call with a co-worker about a software problem. He was on the latest Intel Mac generation, I was on a Macbook M2 Pro. We both fired up XCode at the same time to look into the source code. On my machine, XCode was up in a few seconds on the project. On the other end of the call it took minutes.....

The best business decision Apple has ever made was leading into and creating their own Apple Silicon. Period.

This aged nicely when every apple silicon mac currently has the gofetch vulnerability.

2018 Mac Mini i5, 32GB of RAM, TB3 eGPU RX 570 XT. I think it performs better than an M1 Mac Mini. I also made the eGPU work on my 2012 Mac Mini quad i7 with good results, despite the Thunderbolt 1 bus. Some problems on a rMBP 2012 with dGPU, so if you're planning to use an eGPU, prefer Intel Macs without a dGPU.

My 2009 white macbook still works to this day, runs a lightweight linux distro

I was happy with my 2012 MBP, but by 2018 I needed something more current that I could upgrade too. After a lot of internal debate, I went back to a Windows based PC and laptop. Doubled the ram on the laptop, and I put in two 2 TB m.2 nvme SSDs. It was easy peasy with no painful decisions that I had to live with because the specs could never change. Every once in awhile I think about an M2 Max or even an Ultra, but what I have now is cheaper and does what I need it to do. Apple makes appliances, and I need a computer. It's just one of those things.

Loving my 2012 MBP in 2024. High Sierra,16G RAM, fast SSD, runs all I need and more. Full multimedia & digital art studio w basic 1080p video editing no prob. Workhorse. If you take care of your tools they'll take care of you.

I use an older intel mac because it lets me do everything I need under macOS, windows and linux. Loosing the ability to dual boot windows and linux on the M1 is just too much to give up for my use case.

But the SoC approach does come with latency advantages, nowadays thin and light windows laptops are also doing this

I have a 2019 intel equipped mbp and a 2022 (I think) m1 mba. I mostly work in macOS, so I don’t worry about other OSs. I love the MBA. It’s light, battery is amazing and it just feels faster in all of my day-to-day uses. But the thing that my intel powered laptop can do far better than the newer Apple silicon powered laptop is drive external monitors. Apple really dropped the ball with that imo. The intel MacBook Pro feels like a desktop replacement when paired with a thunderbolt dock and some external monitors. The Apple powered MacBook Air never feels like anything more than a very, very, good laptop which sometimes has an external monitor hooked up.

It absolutely makes no sense to max out some old Intel Mac in 2024. Whoever does that is burning money.

I have a 2017 MacBook Pro. Apple replaced the keyboard, battery and top case a year ago. The machine is a dream to use. This MacBook is only used for productivity purposes and it fulfills that role perfectly. At some point down the road, I'll get a Silicon Mac but not right now.

Not having the latest macOS is a dealbreaker to me. I’m a software developer..

Very late to the conversation, but Apple stating that they care about gaming is such a bald faced lie. They've been so adamantly anti-gaming since the first Jobs years that anything they say in regards to that gets a "Yep. Uh-huh. Sure." from me. They just care about making you buy everything from the App Store. That isn't to say that I didn't mind gaming on a Mac when I did. I played quite a few games on it when it was my main laptop, but I hardly miss it for that. Development was a lot easier though than in Linux or Windows since the former is usually varying degrees of bootstraps and the latter is just "no one makes it for Windows without paying hundreds of dollars" or "we hope you can actually figure out how the registry works".

Still have my original Macbook 2008 where I upgraded the memory to 8GB and 1TB SSD. It have multiple versions of Windows using Parallel and it is an amazing machine. I would only get an M? Macbook if I get a crazy deal from it probably after the M4 comes out.

Apple Silicon Macs are incredible. I bought a Mac Mini M2 Pro a month ago and it is a total beast. But a year ago I also bought a Macbook Pro 13 2017 inch without touch bar for approx. 500 euros used in very good condition and it is still incredibly good for HomeOffice and even video editing.

For me, the whole point of intel Macs is NOT having to be forced into news Mac OS versions. Intel Macs are infinitely capable of running pro audio apps that don’t require subscriptions like everything does today, that goes for plugins as well as DAW’s. And they are much more serviceable.

I wanted to buy the macbook pro 2019 16 for my engineering degree and run windows on it thinking the battery life will outperform any windows out there in its price range, or am i wrong on this? The budget is 700 euros

I do have an 2020 M1 MacBook Air base model, it’s crazy that it beats my i7-7700k workstation by like 1000 point on Cinebench! I mainly use my systems for cpu intensive tasks so graphics is different story. I don’t even play any games so i dont care about the graphics card too much on any of my machines. I bought the Air to replace my old MacBook Pro Late 2011 and the performance difference is huge! 😂 I do still use my old for sd cards and usb drives etc cause i dont have any dongles yet.

Biggest thing is able to upgrade memory relatively cheaply. The new macs are so ridiculous, they have very limited future proofing.

Surprised no one mentioned an unfixable problem for us engineers. Some engineering SW requires extended floats which doesn’t exist on ARM architecture. There is no workaround. In addition the Intel Math Kernel Library is a corner stone of many scientific packages and the uncountable man-years put into numerically stable algorithms using MKL is not something you can reimplement in a year or two. But I guess us engineers on apple HW are not a big enough group for large sw packages (like matlab) to motivate feature parity or even critical bug fixes. So, I will keep my Mac Pro 2019 until it doesn’t run any more or my retirement (whatever comes first …)

You can bench mark all you want. In real use case scenarios with video editing and audio production, my 2018 i9 Macbook Pro outpreforms my M2 Mac Studio hands down in every way.

All my needs are met by Ubuntu, so those used Intel machines work great for me. Shop carefully and the prices can be advantageous. My 2010 i7 imac was just $99. I only needed to put in a thermal sensor and SSD.

2013 Mac Pros are still great for Pro Tools for almost no money. I've compared my 10 core 2013 to a new M2 max studio and although the M2 was maybe a little quicker there wasn't much in it!

For a Musician with tones of Plugins and Virtual instruments not compatible with Silicone Macs it was just absolutely a downgrade for me to upgrade. Now what i did is I got the last Imac 2020 27 inch with 3.8ghz 8 core i7 and 8gb GPU with 16 GB of Ram but i upgraded to 64GB.I Bought the Imac and the ram on my local bestbuy for less than $1k this was new on clearance and this was to replace my 2013 Imac that was already struggling even after i did a few upgrades including morr ram an ssd. The 2020 Imac was the best decision for me I keept all my Plugins and VSTs. This thing is a monster so fast on logic pro where RAM is the most important thing. No regrets.

And that's why I built my own Intel based "Mac" i7 13700k with 6800xt 128 gb ram and 4 TB worth of drives. It'll smash any current Mac silicon for half the price.

I have a 2012 Macbook Pro and 2012 cMP tower. The fastest unibody you can get on the old style, upgrade friendly chassis is Ivy Bridge based. The 2012 cMP can take up to dual x5960s and 128 GB RAM. If you run it in the 96 GB configuration (memory controller quirk) and leave the sockets near each CPU empty, the system can use all three memory channels fully and you will gain something like 20% performance. Throw in a NVME drive on a PCIe card and it is still a very quick / usable machine once you get rid of the bottlenecks Can't stand the thought of a fully locked down system. I've had very little hardware fail, but it irks me to not be able to replace wear items (SSD / battery) easily. It's very much a tactic to destroy the used Mac market

Thanks for this! I am a vintage Mac user, from 2008 and 2012I they are long past OS upgrades, but they are the most reliable of machines. Since I retired, they are just fun machines now. If I need a battery or a part or two, IFixit is just a call away.

I use a 2015 MBP (a 2.8GHz CPU version with 16GB RAM and a 2TB SSD, running Sonoma), got spare ones of those (less than 120 USD's each) and I also have 2012 MBP's (with the HDD replaced by SSD). I don't use windows and I don't customize that much. And I destroyed more than one M2 MBP, although technically one was bitten into. In Apple's quest to make nice thin light laptops, they made ones that are a bit more fragile. As a photographer and writer I don't need a powerful laptop, not does it have to be a small one. I need a laptop that's durable, cheap to replace if something goes wrong, offering enough storage capacity without working with external drives, powerful enough to edit my photos and be a Mac (for several reasons). The old MBP is just the thing I need. I don't like the risk of having a really expensive machine with me, knowing the sort of conditions it will be in. My 2015 MBP is a rather cheap machine that still packs a punch and can do everything I need. It survived arctic and tropical conditions. And it being technically the 2nd one, because the first one eventually died after I tried to build a usb-c port IN it (which did work on number 2). I have a newer MacBook. However, I use the 2015 one more and I absolutely love it more, even with its shortcomings.

The last Intel Mac, the 2020 27” iMac has ram slots. You can upgrade it to 128GB of RAM.

DosDude1 is the guy who performs exorcism on Apple products

I upgraded my friend's early 2015 macbook air from macos monterey to vanilla windows 10. While in MacOS, the computer estimated 3 DAYS for a simple folder copy of an app. (App's size was 64 mb) Now in Win10 with drivers installed, it preserved its former glory when it was fast and well optimized on MacOS. I also did this to an Early 2014 MBA and it also performs very well. To be concise, Windows is a very well optimized OS for everything you can imagine. Just go with windows if you have problems with macos or perhaps linux, in my case I did.

Apple Silicon can easily run native Windows games and applications with Crossover.

So happy to find your channel. 2017 mbp owner here. I'm so bitter about being stuck in this ecosystem. For audio, windows can be really shaky.

I buy them because 1) they don't have soldered in SSD's 2) they're not grossly overpriced like the new "apple silicon" ones.. My current system is a 2015 MBA 8gb of ram, and I replaced the 128Gb SSD that came with it, with a 512Gb SSD. Total cost $200 ($150 for the MBA and $50 for the SSD)

I wish someone would come up with a graphics fix (other than bypassing the dedicated) for the late 2011 macbook pros

ARM64 was set to replace x86 long before M1 released, Apple were just the first to implement it in a consumer laptop. The whole point of technology is that it gets better each year. It’s better to sell your device after a couple years and buy the latest.

Points highlighted are pretty much why I have invested heavily on MacBook Pros such as Boot Camp although I never go for the eGPU setup. I'm still keeping my following MacBook Pro 15 2019 (Personal) and MacBook Pro 16 2019 (Professional). Use case is VMware Fusion running Windows Server and RHEL/Ubuntu x86 based for test bed for system application. Enterprise applications are mostly running x86. The only fear now is that I have is Apple drop OS support entirely for Intel Macs entirely.

Upgrade-ability, repaire-ability . Ability to run 32 bit software and 64 bit is why I run windows 11.

I just bought second handed Macbook Pro 2016 touchbar for my daily drive work and I happy how it still can run smoothly in 2024. Might change to silicon once this 2016 total obsolete

Watching this on my mid 2009 MacBook Pro running El Capitan with maxed out 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD that I recently installed after my third failed HDD. I've thought about buying something newer for a long long time now, but it's so discouraging to see that all of the upgrades for the new Macs these days have to be bought upfront for crazy prices and that there's no way to upgrade them later on. This video really affirmed my feelings towards the whole thing. Until my laptop literally quits booting up one day, or I actually need something more powerful, I just can't justify paying thousands for a machine that will be outdated in a few years, although it can be very tempting seeing how slim, lightweight, fast and pretty the new MacBooks are! Was considering maybe taking a middle ground and finding a newer used intel i7 or i9 iMac and maxing out the internals instead....

talking about local prices, my 2015 macbook air was $150 and I could put a ridiculous 2TB SSD upgrade on it, an M1 macbook air is $800, $150 dollars was already a big enough expense, can't justify $800 when that's like 3 months of work

I gave my grandson my intel macbook pro which he still uses. I have a 27 inch imac with 32 gigs of memory. You could not ask for a better looking screen and I could easily upgrade the harddrive to a ssd, the memory to 64 gigs of memory and other upgrades. A beautiful machine. Allow me to mention that I realize that I cannot update the OS anymore, however if it should come to it I understand that Linux would run brilliantly on it.

I had two mac 5,1 machines die and finally gave up and got a mac studio. The 2019 mac pro and maybe an afterburner is almost making sense these days. Almost.

I’m running Mac OS SONOMA on my 2013 MBP 15. Runs better now then it did on Sonoma then it original Mac OS mavericks. Oh and the case has never been opened.

Lol that dosdude1 pic was of my World's Fastest 2009 Mac Mini 😂 Great video bud!

I personally think the only Apple Silicon Macs that are worth buying are the laptops. The Mac Studio and M2 Mac Pro can hardly count as upgradeable as the SSDs in both are tied to the SoC, and I guess you can put in PCIe SSDs into the M2 Mac Pro but it's just not worth what Apple are asking for, and the iMac is just stupid, so really the only options that are worth getting are a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro with a dock of some kind to use as a desktop. You get the best of both worlds then, a desktop when you want it and a laptop when you need it, that's how I do it at the moment, current setup is a 14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro 10-core, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD connected to a Lenovo USB-C dock with two DisplayPort monitors and all the peripherals I used on my old desktop PC. It works pretty well, super fast, runs cool and I only ever hear the fan running when HandBrake is compressing video, it's dead silent otherwise.

Just recently bought a late 2011 Macbook Pro with 17" non-glare screen for 250€ because my old one broke down and I simplay swapped the 2TB SSD, 16GB RAM, Blu-Ray writer and internal Wifi/BT card (for Continuity and AirDrop) to the new device. Try that with a newer Mac lol.... This is the best FCP and Logic Pro machine ever!

the software update issue isnt even an issue. opencore legacy patcher can patch macos sonoma on a 2006 macbook (no gpu support because of the gma graphics) even if apple drops support for x86 in macos the hackintosh community will find a way. if they managed to run macos on amd and some arm based machines before the apple silicon macs were even released they can do that too.

As you mentioned in the video, "Upgradeability." Not enough memory or storage in an Intel Mac? Pop it open (mostly) and install more memory or storage. Need more processing power, with Intel Macs? Buy a few used Mac computers. Put different processes on different computers, and network them. Ye Olde distributed processing scheme. Need a better Intel Mac? Hackintosh. With all the upgradeability and problems, of a Windows machine. Total cost of the above? A small fraction of a new M-series. Not enough memory in a M-series Mac? Buy a new one. And hope you get a good trade-in price. You can always get external storage. Some faster than the M-series internal storage.

I still used intel for dual boot.. I need a bootcamp

All your points make me quite happy to be a big box PC guy. This is not a dis at Apple or MacOS, this is a dis at the fact the systems are now entirely locked in. What you see is what you'll get, and that's it forever.

Just picked up a 2015 MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM and 512GB for $190. Big Sur still works great for email, RU-vid, and most web surfing, especially with FireFox. I can still upgrade to Monterey if need be.

I had an old mbp late 2011 fully maxed out. I’m a mobile software engineer, when I made the first upgrade to m1 iMac man did it feel really good. I then upgraded to M1 Max a year later (and I only lost about maybe $100-$200 when reselling the maxed out iMac) and wow I can’t even look back. The only thing that sucks is that wine doesn’t work on some old retro games, but I got a Win 11 VM that actually does work with those games. Just 1 quirk on the Star Wars rebellion space battles. Other than that I’ve been very pleased. Of course not everyone is like me though. I play the retro game consoles on my iOS/iPadOS/tvOS in their respective apps. Only windows retro games I play on my Mac

>8 gb ram, swap kill ssd >ssd and ram soldered to board >OVERPRICE

My "ohh shit everythings dead" sailing navigation solution is a 2008 Macbook running OpenCPN and any iphone running gps2ip. That gives me Sailing charts and GPS location. I have a couple of Polycarbonate 2009 as "spares". Sailing life is exceptionally hard on electronics. Just makes more sense to use something i can replace for less than £100 than a £1000 M1 device.

I hate to switch computers, but by now, I rather will consider Intel based computers than Apple. I have learned how to obtain a lovely relationship with Linux with the comfortable feeling of a Mac. My inability to make Mac Apps work the way I love, I resigned to Linux.

my 15" 2015 maxed out macbook pro died on me so i upgraded to a 16" m3max macbook pro and am really happy with it. (upgradability and repairability would be nice tough)