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Comment by coro_1 | Hacker News Reader

From what I know the entire purpose of the Macbook "Pro" line is literally that they're made to be modular. They were at least. I maintain a 2011 Pro. The build quality is noticeably nicer than the cheaper chassis they produce today. The experience itself is actually much nicer too, smoother, feels better. Added, modern displays have great resolution. But the aged units carry an interesting and rich in depth projection ability you don't find today.

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Modularity hasn't been the proclaimed goal for the Pro line, as far as I can remember. Granted, they were modular once. Today, not so much. The RAM is literally sitting on the die of the chip that includes the CPU and the GPU. This allows for tremendous increases in performance, but RAM upgradeability is sadly out of question.

I think this is something of a rose tinted glasses nostalgic look.

I remember my iBook G4 took 30 screws to get into it and swap a hard drive.

Yes, it was “modular,” but it wasn’t specifically designed to be easily repaired.

There have been times when the systems were designed to be easy to change components like the disk and RAM in the original Core 2 Duo MacBooks, but these seem to be the exception, not the rule.

Let’s not forget the “no user serviceable parts” original Macintosh. Apple has never really been repair-oriented company, they just occasionally make products that are coincidentally easy to repair.

Agreed. Brought back to life my MBP 2015 last summer (battery replacement, keyboard replacement, thermal paste, etc) and thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher, now running latest MacOS versions ensuring at least 3 years more of security patches. Also these machines run Linux and Windows pretty fine

Wow! Just discovered OpenCore Legacy Patcher! My wife's ten year old Macbook Air can get updates!!

Thank you for the tip this will help a lot since it is not the "year of the Linux desktop" for her. :)

Try to give it a shot first on a dedicated partition if you can, then make the switch (IME, I used the old SSD drive for that, then used the 1TB one for daily usage with OCLP). Pretty smooth for most users apparently. Good luck, keep repairing and maintaining old electronics!

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