I own a mid-2012 MacBook Pro, model A1278, and it is most certainly the best computer I have ever owned.
In my senior years of high school, I did Cambridge Computer Science. Throughout this time I used two laptops, a ThinkPad T410 which earned me mockery for it’s excessive quantity of USB ports, and a Sony Viao SVE15128CGB, which was a heavy, 15-inch beast with an awful trackpad and flimsy construction that really did not do good things to my opinion of Viao. These middling experiences with laptops lead me to want a better one for my upcoming university studies. A friend of mine whom I’d done Computer Science with, had a MacBook which he’d used during our time in school. He was upgrading for uni, and after I enquired, was open to selling me his MacBook - after all, it was already four years old.
I purchased it from him in the closing days of 2016. It was a mid-2012 MacBook Pro 13" of the base spec, which was a 2.5GHz i5-3210M and came from the factory with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB 5200 RPM spinning disk. Shortly after purchasing it I would replace that spinning disk with a Samsung 850 EVO 256GB SSD. This would turn out to be directly related to my only major issue with the laptop. My friend had already doubled the RAM to 8GB prior to my purchase.
A spiel on this specific model of MacBook Pro. The mid-2012 MacBook Pro is probably, in my opinion, one of the best models of MacBook ever made, and represents the last light of a dead era of Apple. It was the last off the production line of the ‘Unibody’ MacBooks, which would be replaced by the ‘Retina’ line that would dominate lecture theatres through my time at uni in the late 2010’s. The change from Unibody to Retina caused the loss of the largest amount of connectivity and user-upgradeability to perhaps ever happen for an Apple device in one go. Assuming the reader is familiar with modern MacBooks of Retina era and beyond, a rough breakdown of what was lost: the mid-2012 MacBook Pro was the last to have onboard Ethernet, the last Mac of any kind to have onboard Firewire, the last to have an optical drive, the last to have an external battery indicator, the last to support Infrared communication, and the last to have a Kensington lock slot. It was also the last to have slotted SODIMM RAM slots (all following models were soldered), the last to have a standard SATA connector for the hard disk, and the last to feature the model name at the bottom of the display. The big gain of the Retina MacBooks was the introduction of onboard HDMI, which had to be adapted from the Thunderbolt 2 port on the Unibody MacBooks.
I appreciate much of this connectivity is useless to most, but to me, it was fantastic. Throughout my hobby in retro tech and tinkering, it has proved incredibly convenient to have a CD burner, access to Ethernet for debugging networks, access to FireWire for interacting with old Mac’s, and the ability easily and cheaply upgrade it. It’s also the only Mac to ever officially support 9 versions of macOS, giving it unbeaten breadth in software compatibility. Despite being eleven years old by this point, it only lost official support from Apple in November of 2022. Examples have been seen in the wild with unofficial modifications running Ventura. Boot Camp gave it the ability to run Windows, which was convenient when needed, although I always found battery life suffered. Basically, it was the ultimate tinkerer’s device, with the ability to delve into the retro, which suited me exactly. It’s native UNIX OS made interaction with my Linux and BSD boxes convenient, all the while having superior software compatibility to running Linux on an ex-Windows laptop, which I had attempted previously.
Those two upgrades, the RAM and the SSD, have kept it tolerably fast up to this day. I found it highly performant all through university, and only in the last few years of heavy Electron apps like Discord and Teams has it started to suffer. If I manage it well, it is still acceptable as a work device. Nowadays, it’s mostly relegated to web browsing, tinkering, and streaming content, all of which it can do adeptly and I see no reason why it will start to struggle with these tasks any time soon. Firefox on macOS 10.15 Catalina is still receiving updates, and even then with ESR versions of Firefox I can expect another 5 years at least of excellent web compatibility, something my late 2000’s Macs are starting to really struggle with.
In my time with it, I’ve only experienced two major faults. The first - one of the USB ports seems to have a loose solder joint and just stopped working one day. Managing with one USB port is challenge, but not insurmountable. The other - there is a thin ribbon cable that connects the hard disk to the motherboard. If you’re not careful with it, the OEM part is likely to break the internal connections. After much confusion diagnosing this, I ordered third-party replacement parts from eBay which fixed my issue, until it happened again, about 7 months later. Another second replacement has solved this since, and I ordered a third in case it ever happens again.
It’s battery life is poor these days, about 1 hour under any serious use, but simple web browsing extends it to about 1 hour 30 minutes. But to be frank, since I bought it, it was at max about 3.5 hours so it’s not reduced as badly as some devices of similar age. It’s 1200x800 resolution is pretty low now, but, on a 13" device I find it tolerable. UI elements, especially on YouTube, are comically large, but I actually see this as a boon - it’s easier to read the nice large text and I experience no scaling artefacts. I find this a very nice balance - just enough resolution so I don’t really think about it, but low enough to make UI elements easy to read without scaling, and reduce effort for the graphics chip in games. It has also, as most MacBooks have, the god aspect ratio of 16:10.
I’ve used this laptop for 7 years now. About 6 months before I purchased it, my GTX560 failed which triggered the death of my desktop PC. It was my only ‘modern’ computer until a new PC was built in late 2019, and during this time I gamed, worked, watched, and learned with it. I owe my degree to it - I wrote every essay, did every test on this keyboard. Many of the articles on this site have been written on it. It’s travelled all round the world with me since I’ve owned it. If you count the fact it was made in China, it’s been to more countries than I have. I’m still running the same macOS install from 2016, and I see no reason to change it. It’s fast, and does what I want it to do.
Last year, I purchased a Samsung Galaxy Fold4, and with adapters, it makes a very portable computer. A month ago, I thought, for the first time, that I might consider taking that, instead of my MacBook Pro, on any future overseas trips. This, to me, represents the metaphorical death of this laptop. If I’m no longer reaching for it to come across the globe with me, it’s past it’s time in the spotlight. I still haven’t decided, and I might bring it one last time, but I suspect it’s journeys are now coming to an end.
Having said that, I have no intention to throw it in a box. I will continue to use it as my laptop around the house, through it’s retirement as long as that may be. Who knows, in this role it could soldier on for another 5 years. And I hope it does, because I’ve come to really value it.