The Poor Man’s Mac
Intel Macs In The Age OF Apple Silicon
Thursday, September 8, 2022
Since Apple M1 and M2 Macs came out, people are scrapping Intel Macs which run current Mac software. If you’ve been eyeing a fancy Mac for some time, now is the time to pick one up.
In my case, I’ve been hoping Apple would make a portable with excellent connectivity and storage for use in location recording. It should connect easily to my microphone interfaces, run Logic Pro without a hitch, and have lots of disk space. The 2012 MacBook Pro (non-Retina) was right on target, but expensive, so I kept using my 2008 Black MacBook which had been maxed out with 6GB RAM and a 2TB Seagate SSHD. Then Apple began moving away from what I wanted, with no upgradability, a keyboard nobody liked, and fewer ports every year. So a 2012 MacBook Pro stayed on the edges of my radar screen. I wasn’t the only one who thought 2012 was a good year for MacBooks and Minis, as quad-core i7s held their prices through the rest of the Intel era. With the introduction of M1 Macs, owners who were interested in performance began selling their i7s for new Macs, and prices started dropping. A clean working one still brings $300 - $500 at ten years of age, but a few are showing up as scrap at recycling centers.
I picked one up as scrap at Goodwill, with RAM, hard drive, and bottom cover missing. I was curious whether it could be brought back to life, and how well it would perform. A bit of research and tinkering showed I had actually grabbed a 2011 i5 model, but it worked when RAM and a HD with MacOS El Capitan borrowed from a Mini were installed. So I put the Mini back together and ordered parts for the laptop. The bottom cover was a problem, but that was solved with a clear plastic case protector, modified to attach to the unibody chassis with screws. This was a nice laptop, nicer than the old BlackBook, but now I knew what a 2012 model looked like inside.
So back to Goodwill for another scraptop. This time the best looking candidate was a 13” 2012, again missing HD, RAM, and battery. This time, I went for a full upgrade. 16GB RAM. A 2TB SanDisk SSD. A 2TB WD hard drive in place of the DVD burner. A new battery. In all, about $400 in new parts and $40 for the scrapped laptop. This is a very responsive and fast machine with lots of storage space for uncompressed audio. It has FireWire 800 for my old Apogee interface, USB 3 and Thunderbolt ports for my modern interfaces. That makes it a good fit for almost any location recording gear. It has a slot for an SD card for importing sound and movies from a Zoom or GoPro. It plugs into my Thunderbolt display. All without dongles and adapters.
A week later a check of the scrap pile found the unicorn I was looking for, a 15” i7 quad core 2012 non-retina MacBook Pro. It got the full treatment like the 13” one. 16GB RAM. Two 2TB SSDs. It had a good battery. But it turned out the HD cable was damaged when the drive was stripped out. A new cable from iFixIt cost more than another scraptop, so back to Goodwill for one with a good cable and bottom cover, but cracked screen and damaged keyboard. So the net result is three nice Intel laptops and one parts machine. I spent more than intended, and I really don’t need three more laptops. I can probably sell a couple of these and recoup some money.
I really like the construction of these. Milled from an aluminum billet, they’re a machinist’s delight. You can trace the tool paths on the inside.
The sweet spot for cheap computing is around 10 years old. In 2008 we were hacking and upgrading G4 Cubes and Towers. Before that, Wallstreet laptops and G3 iBooks.
It can be cheap fun, but it’s easy to get carried away building the ultimate example of a particular machine.
