I was thinking about something tonight…
Those of you familiar with vintage Apple will know about the Macintosh Plus - Introduced in 1986 and sold till 1990 it holds the record for the longest selling Mac ever, and the last of the original design all in one black and white macintosh (The Classic had a new design).
Today we have the Mid 2012 Macbook Pro still for sale. Introduced in June 2012, the Macbook Pro Mid 2012, it is the last Macbook to have the original Unibody Macbook Pro design. Why is it still sold? I’ve read and been told numerous times that the non Retina Pro sells in high numbers despite its age, due to the large storage, optical drive and for some, the ports.
I wonder if the Non retina pro will beat the Macintosh Plus to be the mac sold for the longest period - that would require being sold until April 2017. I assume that it will at least end up in second place.
I persoanally rate this Macbook as Apple’s best ever. Its also lucky for me that they’ve sold it so long. purchased one in September 2012, and again in August 2015. Apple actually gave me a 2015 Retina Pro, 2.9 GHZ + 512GB SSD, which I quickly realised it was the first time a computer ‘upgrade’ because a ‘downgrade’, so I sold it and purchased another 2012 Macbook Pro - this time with the 2.9GHZ i7.
You might question my sanity but I had the following reasons:
- The Need for at least 1TB of storage. I was able to purchase a 1TB SSD with the difference between the Retina Pro and the Non Retina Pro.
- I wanted the ability to upgrade to 16GB of ram in the near future.
- I use ethernet + firewire regularly and enjoy doing so without an adaptor
- I prefer the old trackpad + the feel of the keyboard over the new force touch track pad and the retina pro keyboard.
- I use the optical drive a lot.
- I use the IR sensor a lot
- I like the sleep light
- I like the battery indicator
- I like the ability to replace the battery without replacing the whole top case. Given the inevitability of battery replacements ( I go through batteries fast), this is important.
- The i7 2.9GHZ benchmarks fairly close to the 2.9 GHZ i5.
So in the end I’ve ended up with a souped up nearly perfect laptop for me. The only caveat is the ageing graphics, and battery life, which in all honesty, is still fairly good at 7 hours. If Apple were to chuck in a Broadwell processor with Iris graphics, this thing would be amazing.