My $62 MacBook runs MacOS Sequoia weirdly well...

It's so sad to see my first MacBook get older and less usable every year. For £50 you can't go wrong, though. Still a charming laptop, as you can see.
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Would you buy a 2012 MacBook Pro 13" in 2025?

[@sergejs.970]

Thanks to your channel, I bought a 2015 MacBook for $117 on eBay and I am very happy with its quality! I already have a MacBook with M1 and I can compare them with each other. Here's what I can say: For normal work, this is more than enough! Sound, screen, keyboard - everything is top notch. Thanks for the ride! Why pay $1,000 if you can pay $100?

[@montaguebarnabasltd]

Excellent! Happy to hear you got a bargain, and you’re exactly right.

[@pash_j]

i have a 2011 MacBook pro running Ubuntu and to this day It's still a beast

[@ExcellenceHub-fu1tv]

Storage .??.

[@ronjatter]

Hello it is important you pay 1000 to keep apple going. They are only a small company and need the support of customers.

[@mikefreeman63553]

i actually adore these old macbooks. capability of swopping things and this design was fantastic! what a legend…

[@ConcordeRN]

Just uploaded 16 seconds ago and I have a feeling its gonna be a banger

[@randomfinn13]

16 seconds is crazy tho

[@mlthmp]

Miss my mid 2012.. wish I never sold it. It was still solid

[@ShelterCats]

Picked up one for $60 a few months ago. It was a base model with a cracked trackpad. Was able to replace the trackpad and upgrade the ram and install an SSD for less than $50. Best MacBook ever made.

[@Plainapple287]

I ran one of these things for 4 years reliably, and honestly it was one of my favourite machines I’ve ever used. I would happily still be using this machine if I didn’t decide to upgrade to the 16” 2019 for the dedicated graphics. I used to edit videos on this laptop, I used to run everything through this machine. To be honest, for those who hate Apple, forget this is an Apple product or a MacBook, this thing might as well be Apple’s ThinkPad; the stories I could tell of the times mine should’ve been broken and it never did. It’s the only laptop I still have after years of daily driving it. It was well built, upgradable and durable. It withstood a lot, fantastic machine.

[@fragsie]

The old unibody 13' laptops still work very well for basic computing. And I agree, the keyboard is the best they have ever had imho SSD, 8gb ram and a new battery and they are great for most things.

[@volatilx]

I had MacBook (White 2010), my sister this one. Both incredible machines, at the same time we had iPhone 3GS's, could you imagine using those today? The Macs are revolutions ahead

[@oldipodee]

I use one to this day for doing things away from home. Found it abandoned in school when I was in high school, got permission to take it, and been using it for 2 years now. With an SSD, and 16GB of RAM, it's pretty good for tasks, although yeah I didn't notice a difference between 8GB and 16GB, but hey it runs fine and can play Minecraft fine, and can do some photo editing fine too. Battery is a little rough but it's an old computer with a 2 year old aftermarket battery running the latest version of macOS.

[@butlerwm]

I bought a 15 inch 2012 with an i7 and dedicated GPU for right at $200 back in 2023. I still have it and recently used the patcher to upgrade the OS. The i7 and GPU lets it do some light gaming and with Boot Camp, I have Windows 10 up and running. Interestingly, it compares rather well to my 2020 Dell laptop with a 10th Gen i5. All of my laptops are plugged into dock stations and run desktop monitors with keyboard and mouse through a four PC KVM switch. Couldn't ask for better.

[@agpcel]

i got a mid 2012 15" with the antiglare display for $90. one of the best macbooks of all time

[@Mbro-dq2do]

I have 4 of these. 13 inch and 15 inch. Open core makes them very useful still. They run bare metal linux extremely well. Amazing still

[@alantristam9654]

Your channel is amazing! I have a 2019 Macbook Pro that I use for college and it’s amazing how well it runs windows! Could you consider running games on intel vs arm macbooks through RPCS3?

[@bazookadud]

I daily drived my mid 2012 13” as an secondary machine right until the backlight started to die out in mid October of 2024, it was my favourite macbook due to how it was user upgradable, I personally ran it with 2 ssds & 16gb of RAM for a decent experience with 13 Ventura on OCLP. now it’s just collecting dust in my wardrobe drawer.

[@pretty_bored]

You could use it with an external display maybe

[@bazookadud]

@@pretty_bored i could but i don't have a thunderbolt 1/2 to hdmi adapter laying around

[@randomfinn13]

My advice = get a 15'' model with a quad core i7, Nvidia geforce gt650m with 1 gig of video memory and 8 gigs of ram. Then throw a ssd at it and daily it!

[@randomfinn13]

That's what I did btw

[@Whyalwaysreparingstuff]

Lol my model came with all that stock just reprogrammed it to remove the firmware password and planning on upgrading to 16gb of ram

[@LowEndGamer-gy9lc]

Got it for free from a relative when he shifted to the US. He hadn't used it much because he said the backlight didn't work and many repair shops couldn't fix the issue. But when I booted it up, the display had no issues. But after I disconnected and reconnected the display cable for repasting the CPU, the backlight didn't work. But it was easily solved by reconnecting the cable with a good tug and never caused any issues since. It's an i5 model with 8 Gigs of RAM and I replaced the HDD with a cheap SSD. Currently Running Ventura using OCLP👍

[@reinhardfranzwehringer7803]

I have a 2013 MacBook Pro with the NVIDIA 750 mobile GPU, which I intend to upgrade to Sequoia soon.

[@user-pp3dl8id7r]

Excellent content.

[@nath1606]

I wonder if this would make for a good archival computer if I put two 4tb drives in it. Just somewhere to dump my (LEGALLY ACQUIRED) movies/tv shows/anime, my music library, ROMs & the projects that I work on. I could also use it to store my photos/videos from my phone.

[@montaguebarnabasltd]

@@nath1606 it would. Only if they’re legally acquired tho

[@nath1606]

@@montaguebarnabasltd Oh yeah, TOTALLY.

[@janoo85]

i dont get it just buy a 4 TB external drive

[@nath1606]

@janoo85 I have multiple external drives. Especially with a laptop setup, it can become a bit annoying.

[@An-ri1iy]

Take it easy, we won't judge you if you like piracy :)

[@slizeres]

I have 2011 MacBook but with a 2012 motherboard. I have windows 11, osx sequoia and linux mint installed on it. It runs great to this day. Apple used to do things right.

[@tuworlds]

these macs are good BUT it all comes down to what you will use it for...... many people buy laptops for one thing then some months later they are doing something else and then they are unhappy with the purchase because the excuse is it's too slow when i bought a 2015 mbp i wanted to browse the net send mail, office stuff and code C. and till this day that is what i do on that machine. i can bang it around throw it down because i take it everywhere with me and i mean everyday and it is super reliable. plus it handle my coding well as that is a source of income

[@JonTrott]

I own newer machines but use one of two of 15" macbook pro 2012 unibodies every day. Souped them both up to 16gigs a couple years back. Have Open Core Legacy Patcher sequoia on one and Mint Linux on the other (a slightly slower i5 instead of i7). Both of them are tanks and great for all the work I do.

[@tanja-k]

Were there any issues installing the Linux Mint, drivers, bluetooth and such?

[@JonTrott]

@@tanja-k Mint finds most everything. The wifi is always the guess... but yes, Mint (unlike some other distros) doesn't make you work hard for it.

[@MrBulgarianbadass]

proud owner of a unibody mbp 13" mid-2012 with a 256gb SSD and 16gb RAM. It's really decent for basic tasks. Video calls are also semi okay, BT is a bit hit or miss, battery is pretty cooked with 2hr of use on a full charge. Stilk beats a Chromebook for the money 😅

[@s1oplus_wt]

this is a certified woys banger

[@surajbagia6778]

Just picked one up for £70, with an ipad 7th gen thrown in too!

[@montaguebarnabasltd]

That’s outrageous

[@randomfinn13]

Good deal u got there

[@gmcenroe]

My 2010 19 inch MacBookPro still works, but the track pad doesn't click correctly sometime, leaving the arrow stationary. I took it out last night to try it out after many years. I was going to take the 1TB SSD out to use in an old Lenovo Thinkpad T430 but I could not do it. Since then I went through a 15inch Macbook pro with an intel chip to my current MacBookPro M2 with 32GB ram and 2 TB SSD. My old Mac hardware is piling up.

[@mikepxg6406]

Just sold mine for £99 it had SSD 16GB Ram. Still got my 15 inch High resolution anti glare screen version. Plus my Silicon machines.

[@ColinsCity]

That's a really good deal for a fully functioning 2012 MacBook. I think the 2012 unibody MacBooks will last for a few more years before they get too slow, i mean i'm using the 2009 17" MacBook Pro for web browsing, documents and music production so if the 2009 is capable then i can only imagine there should be another 5 years left for the 2012. The one thing about the 2012 unibody MacBooks is that the screen resolution is not that high especially in today's world at least with the 17" models it was a 1200p with the possibility of anti-glare.

[@16gbramisntenough]

It feels weird to see a macbook with so many ports,dvd drive and being upgradable in terms of both ram and storage☠️

[@computeraidedworld1148]

“Balls” network observed

[@LetrixAR]

I wonder is these are faster than low-mid range laptops from the last 4 years

[@AndrewProudlove]

I have one of these that I am purposely keeping on an older OS so I can run itunes and work with my iPods :) Incidentally, if you want to sync with an iPod on a newer machine Waltr Pro does the trick.

[@Morrow420]

I upgraded my13" late 2013 MBP 8GB ram to Sequoia and it's a little bit slower than Catalina, but it's great. Slow boot times for me though.

[@MonkeyManRoboDog]

my tip: make sure to look for a mid 2012 model or later. These come with usb 3.0 ports - much more convenient.

[@katijenikz]

knackered is a great word

[@tumslucks9781]

So's birdbrain.

[@BorisaComputers]

I put a SSD in one of them today, 8Gb RAM and runs perfectly with latest OS. Customer was moaning about Mac OS 10.15 and speed with a 5400RPM hard disk lol

[@cmedeir]

The only ones I see on eBay for that price, are “for parts only”. Closer to $250

[@randomfinn13]

Yeah, they're pretty darn rare to find in good condition nowadays

[@zeeninas]

Banger Indeed

[@thelegobuilder4309]

i have a second hand 2012 macbook air and i feel it is perfect for normal office tasks, the keyboard is so fing satisfying and it is pretty damn smooth (if you use safari or firefox). i code too, tho might need help with the heat, it is still pretty smooth. the only downsides are the system and the battery tho. its running catalina and i cannot download ggl docs haha and the battery is destroyed too, cannot go 30 min without charging.

[@75sRax]

you actually dont need a usb stick. opencore lets you update to sequoia through then native settings app.

[@DcFelixxx]

Nice! which version of sequoia patcher did you use?

[@jpecorel1]

I would be interested in a performance and weight comparison between this and a 2015 MBP 13-inch with 16GB of RAM. Until recently, my travel laptop was the latter. It accompanied me to work, conferences, on flights, on car trips, etc. I had it patched up to Sequoia as well. I bought mine for around $200 a couple of years ago. $200 is not a ton of money for a 2015 in decent shape, but it is considerably more than this 2012 13-inch. I am curious to see which would be the better computer for the price.

[@montaguebarnabasltd]

@@jpecorel1 I’ll keep this in mind. Thank you.

[@dionatantss5985]

I have an MacBook Pro Retina 2015

[@Whyalwaysreparingstuff]

Just reprogrammed my 2012 15in to remove the firmware password and am about to do this and mine is fairly good

[@joakimk.4308]

I want to get into developing apps on iOS and thinking about buying my first Mac for trying out the developer path. Are these capable of doing so? I wouldn't mind having to do some upgrades like you showed in the video :)

[@aaronstone5142]

have you thought about the mac mini maybe last years or two years agos version

[@k.mccullough6763]

Is there a link or guidance for that “Patch” in updating MacOS on older machines? Reason being-I was recently gifted an Intel powered 2015 MacBook courtesy of our senior neighbor. The laptop was her husband’s. After sitting in a drawer collecting dust, she offered it as a way to give another life, so to speak. It runs perfectly fine, albeit the MacOS, which Apple no longer offers update support, thus handcuffed to MacOS Monterey 12.7.6 and its shortcomings. Virtually everything I want or need to do requires an update to at minimum MacOS 14 Sonoma. Any help would be greatly appreciated 👏🏼☺️ Thanks in advance!

[@jfrayre]

The best version for this Mac 2012 is the Monterey version, if you use Catalina it is already too heavy for the Mac 2012

[@BorisaComputers]

Ive got a 2010 white macbook, 8Gb RAM and the thing wont reliably run anything above DosDude 10.14.6, quite annoying

[@MarceloDruck]

I was wondering if Sequoia would work in my 2010 Macbook Pro (8 gb with SSD).

[@petemc4190]

Lose the DVD?! But then the Tintin DVD is unreadable!!

[@montaguebarnabasltd]

@@petemc4190 no joke the reader was dead anyway

[@lachlanlau]

Firewire!

[@YuriyUvarov]

You should try much older laptop and OS. Not newer than Core2Duo.

[@computeraidedworld1148]

Those 15 inch MacBooks often melted their dedicated GPU iirc. I’d avoid it.

[@Plainapple287]

I’ve heard stories of 15” MacBook Pros failing on GPU’s, but I’ve had a A1150 2006, two 2011 15”, a 2013 15 & a 2019 16”, only the 2013 15” failed, but it was long gone out of my ownership when it did, and my friend said he did some fuckery to it before it failed. Under normal usage these things do not fail. Its greatly exaggerated

[@computeraidedworld1148]

@ Maybe it was the 16 inch I was thinking of. The absurdly large one, I had one given to me because the GPU was cooked.

[@iborrzz.]

What would happen if you connected an Apple ID though? Would Apple catch on, and do you get security updates?

[@montaguebarnabasltd]

They do not give a butt Security updates work the normal way through settings.

[@iborrzz.]

@@montaguebarnabasltd Thanks! That's great. :)

[@pretty_bored]

My 2009 can run sequoia as well but I run Catalina bc it’s honestly just better

[@arthurd.8007]

Personally, I really don't recommend using sequoia. The computer takes a very long time to start up, and navigating through the settings is extremely slow. The whole experience feels really ... Bad in my opinion. I'm on Linux right now, the computer is amazing overall, but the processor is really starting to get too dated.

[@TheNotoriousGallery]

I can’t install Sonoma.

[@adziak]

You can replace ssd and upgrade ram but cpu is a bottleneck. Better buy newer M model or cheap Mac mini with m4.

[@ProWrestlingPsychology101]

Completely agree. But the price difference between $150 to $600 is sometimes too much to bear - especially if it's only for email/ googling. But honestly, at this point, my phone is my daily driver 😅

[@atarixle]

So what's so special about this? My 2008 MacBook Pro runs Sonoma aswell.

[@montaguebarnabasltd]

Erm actually I’m running Sequoia 👆

[@lachlanlau]

2:52 cheap ssd’s might be prone to failure.

[@triluck1450]

My $62 NotAMacBook runs MacOS Sequoia weirdly well

[@montaguebarnabasltd]

@@triluck1450 what

[@triluck1450]

@montaguebarnabasltd nah, just kidding. I have a MacBook, but the display was damaged that i have to use it with a monitor, so i called it Mac -book- 😑

[@JarppaGuru]

its not 62 someone paid 100%

[@Nightingale1887]

Yeah 👍 thats the point lmao

[@TerrorSyxke]

heyy mate, looking for a top thats light on the wallet and lasts about 4-5 hours, guess i found my match aye aye

[@janoo85]

i dont understand this kind of laptops and prices why it is even have a price and who and why pay for it ? those are actualy a no option for a todays usage why would anybody buy it i wouldnt evn for free

[@montaguebarnabasltd]

Did you watch the video..?

[@randomfinn13]

Me, I got my dad's old one that he bought back in 2012 and I daily it. I don't need anything more. It's actually pretty darn good especially as it was free for me

[@irensaga561]

What?

[@kamimaza]

DO you know what a 13 year old computer looked like in 2004? Moore's law is dead!