Notes on Old Macs

I am frequently asked why I use Macs, often in rigorous critique related to their closed operating system, anti-repairability, and locked-in ecosystem, all things I stand against. This writeup is to help shed some light on this.

I have used Macs for a long time. My first Mac was a Mid-2012 iMac, paired with a MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2010). Back then, it was the first computer I had ever personally owned other than a school-issued Chromebook. I had some prior experience with Windows on my mother's laptop, but had never owned a Windows machine of my own. I believe on the iMac I ran the native [], while on the MacBook I had it patched to Catalina, which was the latest OS available at the time. It was far from smooth, but most of what I did was done in the browser (Chrome at the time...) and thankfully there was not much to compare the computing experience to, so it pained me much less than one would think.

My modern use of Macs has nothing to do with the gated ecosystem, macOS, or any other proprietary Apple feature. I choose my computers on a requirement-first basis, and I am currently carrying two laptops: my primary for writing and development work, and a pentest laptop. As I am sure both of you can guess, both of these have simple requirements. I fill this need with 2x MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2015), what I consider to be the peak of Macs for a few reasons. First is that Apple engineering and aesthetics are in a league of their own, with these MacBooks possessing an anodized aluminum shell with a smooth finish. The 2015s are also the last MacBook Pros before the awful butterfly keyboards came into place, so this era still possessed proper scissor-switch keyboards. In addition to this, they also have 2x mini DisplayPort, HDMI, 2x USB-A, 3.5mm aux port, and a full SD card slot. On the go I only ever use one external display, but the function is always there via dual mini DisplayPort to use two. It is convenient beyond imagination to be confidently dongleless.

Another underappreciated feature of older Macs is the display. The Mid-2015s have a 2560-by-1600 native resolution LED display with an IPS panel at 227 PPI. It reaches 300 nits peak brightness, but this is comfortably enough as I am an indoors hermit. My builds feature 256GB of storage, which is much more than needed as I SSH into my server for file storage. Mine runs the 2.7GHz dual-core Intel i5 with 16GB of RAM. The native resolution was already a plus for me, but the HDMI video output has support for 4K at 30Hz (3840-by-2160).

Use of old Macs is primarily for users with a focus on build quality, display, and low amounts of GUI work. My workflow is terminal-based with an email-based patch workflow for development. My notes, blog, and academic work are all operated via TUI programs like Neovim and Emacs, backed by a well-tuned scripting setup. I would definitely steer clear for modern web developers as heavy JS frameworks ramp up the fan speeds to produce an irritating hum, and manually tweaking these settings can lead to major cooling issues down the road if you don't know what you're doing.

For reference on the MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2010), see the technical specifications.