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<p>I've been bitten by the nostalgia bug recently, and one of those memories revolved around docked laptops as a desktop replacement. I was reminded by the <a href="#techconnect">Technology Connections video below</a> on the subject. I also just so happened to pick up two Dell docks for my Precision 5540: a WD19 and WD19TB. USB 3.2 and Thunderbolt 3 respectively. They work great, but unfortunately, the Type C port on my laptop is failing, so I'm sending it for repair under warranty. In the meantime, though, I've been using my Mid 2015 MacBook Pro 15 as a replacement and connecting it to my two displays, USB hub, and power cable with their respective connections. It's not as seamless as the single Type C cable solution for data and charging, but the feeling of disconnecting the peripherals, moving to the couch, and having everything still open on the laptop is wonderful. There's no hunting browser history for previous sessions, file transferring, or any of that nonsense.</p>
<iframe id="techconnect" width="1000" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Pc31L3zJiaU?si=EJp7TCsIF0eJgUsX" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p><i>Technology Connections video on docks.</i></p>
<p>That being said, I've now had a chance to dive into nine-year-old hardware and macOS as a daily for the last few days, and I've had a few observations. I should preface, for a long time, the only acceptable computer to me was a desktop with Windows, or a ThinkPad running Linux. Preferably a desktop running Linux, but I liked to play video games, and support on Linux was a lot more of a hack than it is today. I always felt macOS was just for people who should really be running Linux and that Mac hardware was useless garbage because evil Apple couldn't engineer a good, long-lasting product. Things have changed for me in the last few years.</p>
<p><i><a href="#tldr">Bypass the backstory</a></i></p>
<h3>Original Gripes with macOS</h3>
<p>Around the time I interacted with macOS was the same time I started my Linux journey. The idea of Linux made a lot of sense to a person whose current website mantra is make, design, tinker. I was big on using the terminal and appreciated a minimal user interface. Mac is all about the opposite. It creates special files for Finder, .DS_Store, which clutter up a nice, neat file structure when viewing things in the terminal with <code>ls -la</code>. My little brain couldn't comprehend how someone could use a device that generated such ugly files and existed in the same *NIX space with BSDs and Linuxes. Of course, the other factor for disliking macOS was cost. Or rather the cost of the hardware required to run it. MacOS is free as long as you have Apple hardware. And if you don't, you can't run it. This closed ecosystem seemed (and still is) ridiculous in a world where Linux was free for anyone to run on any hardware. The Apple hardware requirement made a steep barrier to entry for broke middle-school me, so finding cheap, years-old retired business machines for nearly free and running Linux on them as smoothly as a new Windows machine was like seeing the light of God.</p>
<p>And like the devotion to a God in religion, I was steadfast in my thinking and position regarding computer hardware and operating systems.</p>
<h3>Passage of Time</h3>
<p>As the old phrase goes, time heals all wounds. And in the case of relentless consumerism, time makes the old worthless. And this worthlessness is good news for people like me who look back on "the good old days" of tech and try to recreate them by collecting various bits of hardware. I was able to purchase a 2008 MacBook for under $100, and it was my first venture into macOS. Of course, it was old, pretty slow, and did not run the latest version of the operating system. What it did, though, was bring me closer to the reason Mac users are devoted to their machines. The hardware experience, even on that "low-end" model, was superb. No touchpad felt as good, and only a pre-chicklet ThinkPad keyboard could top the keyboard experience. The feeling of precision and density gave the plastic product the feel of a product twice the value on the Windows side, and that was their low-end model. It only gets better as you move to the aluminum models.</p>
<p>Of course, there was still envy for my mentors' MacBook Pros with their Retina Display and slim chassis, and the whithering MacBook couldn't be used for much more than web-browsing with its measly 4GB of RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo, and bastard Nvidia GPU (I don't mean this as an insult. The <a href="https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2021/10/13/apple-vs-nvidia-what-happened.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nvidia and Apple history</a> is a storied one). Apple has been incredibly effective at winning the consumerism model. Products that are no longer supported and actively kicked into the past by Apple's software development are still sought after by end-users, keeping prices high years after a product's EOL. Good news for Apple. Bad news for people like me looking for extremely cheap, yester-year systems. I reverted to Hackintoshing, the act of installing macOS on unsupported hardware and EOL Macs. This wasn't quite as seamless as a true Mac, but even handicapped the way mine was with a custom reverse-engineered Intel WiFi driver (not by me of course) and hackitosh quirks, it was still a better experience than Windows.</p>
<h3>Finally on Useful Hardware</h3>
<p>Fast forward a couple of years, and I was no longer using macOS on anything, including Hackintoshed computers. My design classes require stable, fast computers, and anything I owned that was Mac or Mac-adjacent wasn't that. I doubled down on the use of Windows to be able to use Autodesk Alias, specifically, that couldn't be run on Linux. At the same time, however, this is an art school, and Mac is an industry standard for some disciplines, so there was an abundance of hardware around campus. If you know me, you know where I'm going with this. At an IT infrastructure sale, there were many retired 2012-2015 era Macs for sale, mostly under $200. I went and picked up my MacBook Pro for $100 and a 2012 Mac Pro tower for $10 because they thought it was broken (all it needed was an OS re-install). Finally, I owned a competent Mac, if not right on the edge of dropped support. Still, an i7-4980HQ, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and a decent IGP (Intel Iris Pro 5200) is nothing to scoff at for light digital modeling in Blender or Photoshop work.</p>
<p>I used the Mac tower as a supplemental PC for a while but quickly found it needed a more modern version of macOS. The MacBook ended up as the Liberal Arts computer, as I still needed certain applications on Windows and the GPU power for the project I was working on. The year ended, and the tower stayed home for the Fall 2024 semester.</p>
<h3 id="tldr">Using an Older Mac in 2024</h3>
<p>While waiting for my Dell Precision to get repaired, I've been using the MacBook Pro as my main computer for everything over the last few days. When I'm at home, I connect my LG ultrawide, Wacom DTK2200, and mouse and keyboard to use it like a desktop.</p>
<figure>
<img src="/static/media/MacBook_Pro/MacBook_Pro_15_At_Work_1000.jpg" alt="Picture of my Mid 2015 MacBook Pro 15-inch on a woodworking bench with VS Codium open on-screen editing this article." width="1000" height="1000" />
<figcaption>Editing this article on my MacBook Pro.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Its specs are as follows:</p>
<pre>
Apple MacBook Pro 11,4 A1398
Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015
macOS Monterey 12.7.6
2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel i7-4980HQ
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Intel Iris Pro 5200 1536 MB VRAM
512 GB SSD
</pre>
<p>Monterey is the highest this model officially supports, and its pre-Skylake CPU is starting to hinder its compatibility. Blender 4.x is not supported, so I'm forced to stay on 3.6. That being said, it's pretty snappy for what it is. I'm able to perform the modeling tasks I need without much trouble. I expect this to change as I continue, but there are workflow changes that can minimize the performance impact. Photoshop is also surprisingly smooth, except in artboard documents where it is extremely easy to soft-lock the program. I can't be too upset at the computer though, my Ryzen 9 5950X and the school's Xeon Gold powered desktops also struggle with the same things in artboard documents. The difference is, though, that you can recover from the issues on those systems by waiting a couple of minutes. Not so on this Mac. Performance aside, I'm back to seeing the Apple appeal as well as some new UX issues I hadn't previously noticed.</p>
<p>As mentioned in my long backstory above, Apple makes great feeling hardware, and the feelings I felt towards my 2008 MacBook are only amplified with this 2015 MacBook Pro. My Dell Precision's (XPS chassis) trackpad was heralded as being the closest to Mac trackpads back in the day, and it is good, but it still doesn't hold a candle to the smoothness, precision, and premium feel of Apple's Force Touch trackpad introduced on the first Retina Macs. The keyboard is pleasant to type on and embarrasses Apple's next-generation Butterfly keyboards that were riddled with self-destructive design flaws and poor typing feel. MagSafe does what it was built to do, though it can be a bit frustrating in some lap situations (MagSafe 1's 90° connector had this issue solved already), and the 2880x1800 display is still vibrant and crisp, though noticeably not as bright as some modern displays like in my Precision.</p>
<p>After dealing with broken sleep settings with Intel on Windows platforms, and the fiddly nature of Linux, I've come to a greater appreciation of the hardware/software integration in macOS. You close the lid, it sleeps. As it should. There's no risk of <a href="https://www.spacebar.news/windows-pc-sleep-broken/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">battery drain and dangerously hot temperatures</a> that force the use of hibernation instead. There's also coherence in the UI. No Microsoft 20-questions as you figure out which version of the settings menu you need to be in to complete a task. <i>Am I in Windows 11 or Vista?</i></p>
<p>It's not all kittens and rainbows though. Apple isn't known for their end-user support on old devices, and it shows. Trying to download new apps from the app store while not signed in to iCloud will not let you download legacy versions. This is bothersome when you are running an outdated version of macOS. Even when you are signed in it's not obvious. You need to sift through forum posts telling to you buy a new machine before eventually finding the real answer, which is that you can download old versions by clicking on your account in the App Store. It wouldn't be hard for Apple to just make this a normal feature on the main App Store page, but that wouldn't annoy users into wanting a new machine. A recent hardware scare was another reminder of poor repairability. I noticed what I thought to be a dead pixel on my display. A new display shouldn't be a big deal. It's not on most laptops, but you can't buy the display separately, and there is a high chance of destroying the glass cover in the process, leaving you with one option, buy a new assembly. These start at around $250 on the used market for a decent panel that might actually be an upgrade instead of a side grade to one with a failing anti-glare coating (a common issue on displays with it applied) or cracked glass. Luckily, it seems to have been a stuck pixel, as I don't notice it anymore. I wouldn't have trashed the whole display for a single dead pixel, but when this does eventually fail, I will be having a heck of a time finding replacement parts. The keyboard is only slightly better. I've had to replace one on this generation before, and it's not a pleasant experience, requiring you to pry away the old keyboard and screw the new one into the holes left behind by the torn rivets.</p>
<p>Aside from the obvious anti-repair stuff, there are some macOS quirks I'm not a fan of. When interacting with multiple windows side-by-side, you need to first click the window to bring it into focus before you can interact with the content. While at first, this sounds like a silly complaint, it's extremely frustrating when trying to quickly copy and paste between windows or play/pause YouTube videos on a second monitor. The other issue is mouse acceleration. I don't know what causes companies to default to pointer acceleration for mice. Microsoft enables it by default as well, but it's ridiculous. Apple is excused for its use on the trackpad. It is well-tuned and gets out of the way of the user. On Windows, it's a disaster and must be turned off immediately. At least you can turn it off in Windows. When using an external mouse on a Mac, pointing operations are met with song and dance. "Hey mouse, could we get moving? Hello? ... WHOA there, not so fast! We overshot. Okay, can we get going again, please? Hello? Whoa, where are you going?? The target is right there!" Rinse and repeat until you are eventually pointing at the thing you intended. The alternative is to slow the tracking speed and suffer through molasses-slow mouse movements. There are fixes, but they are clunky and feel more like the hacks I come up with in Linux than the real user experience that Apple is known for.</p>
<p>All that said, this is still an impressive device for its age, and I'll report back when I retire it from daily use in about a week.</p>
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