I’ve owned a number of Macs purchased new. Starting in 2005, every two or three years I would buy a new Mac. In my case, Mac Mini or MacBook. It was never the best, usually it was the lowest model, and I spent a little extra money to upgrade it to max ram or a bigger harddrive on my own to save money. I also always did my research so that I knew what I had would last me a few years.
My refresh cycle has gotten longer and longer and longer, however. In 2005, I bought an Mac Mini G4. In 2008, I bought a MacBook white. In early 2011, I bought a 13" 2010 MacBook Pro. That lasted me until March of 2015, when I purchased a 13" 2012 MacBook Pro, still my daily driver. In fact, it still has Apple Care (and thank goodness for it, I’m on my second battery and my third magsafe adaptor, and I still have Apple Care until March 2018). I have taken extremely good care of it, and it’s in near perfect condition, save for my A and my E keys which are worn from use. I have really strong nails, and I usually destroy E keys very quickly, even when I try to keep them cut. But it’s a minor thing to replace them.
Of course, I have owned a wide variety of used and rescued systems (like G4 Towers, a second Mac Mini, and my current Mac Pro 3,1, but those are not my primary machines).
You’d expect that in 2018, I would replace the 13" 2012 MacBook Pro according to my previous refresh cycle. So a new MacBook Pro something or other, except…
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The MacBook Pro 13" 2012 is still a capable machine: Honestly, while the CPU and RAM are maxed out (it’s the Intel dual-core Ivy Bridge i5 with 16GB of RAM), and works very well already, my next step is going to be to toss in a second Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD in Raid 0.
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I want to be able to change parts out: Frankly, that can’t be done on recent MacBook Pros, so my plan is to actually go from the 13" 2012 to a 17" Late 2011, and put my 16GBs of RAM and my Raid 0 SSDs in it. I will then sell the 13" 2012 in some kind of configuration.
Desktops:
I’m not doing anything with Apple desktops until I’m done updating my 2008 Mac Pro.
iPhone:
Not only is my iPhone 6S still perfectly fine for me, I’m also jailbroken on iOS 9 and have kept it there for specific reasons. I see no reason to get a new phone at this time, and if I do get a new phone, given my specific feature demands, I may finally switch to an Android phone.
iPad:
At this time, I probably don’t need or want an iPad. I was one of the first in line for the iPad 1 in 2010, and I only sold it very recently. Given the great disparity between the most recent iPads and the iPad 1, I am sure I can get a “wow, this seems really fast” feeling from an older iPad.
Honestly, at this point, have we reached a stage where there’s no real strong reason for a prosumer like me, who does a little bit of everything, but nothing to a professional standard, to purchase a new product from Apple? My feeling is we have. And given the seemingly limited nature of future “proofing” the current systems, there’s not even anything I feel I really want.