So I’ve been thinking about retirement a lot recently. But not in the have a boatload of money and stop working sense, but more in the uh hey this piece of equipment that still works fine isn’t getting updates anymore sense.
Specifically my 2016 era MacBook Pro, which I bought a couple of months after the refresh came out. As Macs go I think it’s the peak John Ivy design and hubris trying to push the market forward. Innovative new features like the keyboard switch design or the Touch Bar thing. Neither of which survived the transition to the Apple M series of ARM processors. In fact when the first proper mac book pros on the M1 came out and they went back to a dedicated mag safe port and HDMI thats when I knew I had a bad design. Also that apple dropped OS support for it in 2022 which is in the 6 year time frame that you normally see apple drop support on some lower end products. Not on a flagship laptop though.
All in all it’s been a good laptop, I did have to get some work on it and did get a keyboard replacement along with the battery when it was still under warranty but even by then the writing was on the wall. At the end of the day though it got me through a masters program, multiple work trips where I couldn’t use a work laptop, 4 moves, covid, and a bunch of other things. At the end of the day it’s still a laptop and it probably has another good 2 or 3 years left in it. But because of the keyboard and the known thermal issues with intel macs (did you think about doing work? OK the fans are going to kick on now) I can’t in good conscious give it or sell it someone I know… I basically don’t want to be responsible for when it craps out.
It’s a me thing… just roll with it.
The other thing is that I’ve gone back to a desktop as my daily driver across the board. When I use a computer I’m doing a thing I’m not just using it. A laptop still has it’s place in my workflow, just not a primary place like it used to be. So it’s odd to me that I have a piece of equipment that’s good enough for backup work, but I don’t trust it enough to do that. Not good enough to sell because I don’t trust it and so it has sat on my desk for the last year randomly used.
6+ years is a good run for a laptop for me, I got 9 years out of Anubis and 5 years out of the two preceding mac laptops. About the only thing that gets replaced before it’s time is my phone and honestly I may keep the current one another year just because it’s doing all the things I need it to do. Unless usb-c and something else just really drives me over the edge.
So with this post, I retire “I-Am-Groot” you were a good laptop. You did actual work and never complained and I didn’t upgrade you at all… mainly because you were the first Mac I bought with everything soldered on so I didn’t have a choice. Honestly outside of storage and ram I almost never upgrade my computers anymore.
“BruntFCA” MBP M1 14″, welcome to the shit show.