- Hey guys, this is Austin, and this
is the Macbook Pro Project.
So something that I've always been really interested in
is the ridiculous resale of Macs.
I mean, when you look at a PC versus a Mac,
almost always the Mac holds it's value
for a lot longer, which is weird,
because even though the hardware is solid,
a lot of times the actual operating system,
the software support, doesn't last that long.
Case in point, take a look at a super old
Core2Duo Windows laptop.
Odds are you can still throw a copy
of Windows 10 on it and it will work fine.
However when it comes to Mac hardware, usually you've got
six to eight years of support and that's it.
Now there are of course third party tools
to be able to side load, and kind of update
a bunch of the drivers to still technically
support a new operating system, but as far
as I'm concerned, this is about the oldest Mac
which is still supported, which gave me an idea.
This is a mid-2012 Macbook Pro 13 inch.
Now this is the 101 model, which was sold in Apple stores
for quite a while, and for good reason.
This still has all the ports, it still has
the optical drive, it's pre-Retina.
Now based on the listing, this is not exactly
in the world's greatest shape, however,
at 240 bucks, what I hope, especially
with a few upgrades, is that I can get
a Macbook which is actually still very usable even today.
Ah, yes, the good old days of MagSafe, when you didn't
have to kick your USBC cable across the room.
Oh, that's actually, oh, eh.
Alright, well, it's definitely been well used.
Okay, so the main problems here is that it's just dented,
right, so there's a big scratch here
there's a couple of major dents.
It's certainly not a perfect looking Macbook,
but I don't really care about that.
What I wanna do is just see if I can actually get
a very usable Macbook, which is much much cheaper
than anything you can buy today.
Now there are a bunch of reasons why
this Macbook was sold in Apple stores for years and years
beyond when it actually first came out.
Now one of the big ones is the port selection.
This guy has pretty much everything
you might want, short of USB-C I guess?
I mean, we've got Thunderbolt 1,
USB 3.0, SD card reader, we've got MagSafe,
gigabit Ethernet, there's even FireWire,
and there's an optical drive.
Open it up, and you'll see the same great
old school keyboard, and inside,
this guy is actually properly upgradable.
Now you might be wondering, why exactly
a seven year old Macbook, which is not
in great cosmetic shape, is still worth a full $240.
Well a big reason for that is that it is still upgradable.
When you look at the general spec,
I mean, it's still a Core i5, and especially
once you throw a little bit more RAM
and an SSD and stuff, it could be a properly modern machine.
Contrast that with a brand new Macbook,
which while it works great right now,
it's obviously much faster, much more modern,
but three, five, seven years from now,
this system really has nowhere to go.
I can't add more RAM, I can't upgrade the SSD,
there's really nothing about the system
which I can do anything with in the future,
which I think is going to hurt the resale,
whereas a lot of the older Macs, especially the ones
with the optical drives, actually have
a fair bit of resale value even today.
So now let's see if this actually works.
(robotic whirring) (gentle chord)
I mean that sounds good, although I don't know,
I guess the optical drive was doing something.
Okay, so we've got High Sierra,
we can definitely upgrade that,
2.5 gigahertz Core i5, four gigs of RAM,
as well as a 500 GB hard drive.
That touch pad's still so good!
Okay, so we've got, okay, 290 cycles.
So the battery still does hold a charge,
however I do wanna swap out the battery,
I wanna upgrade memory, I wanna upgrade SSD,
I wanna see what we can do about that DVD drive.
I legitimately think that by the end of this video,
I will have a very usable computer.
Hopefully a computer which is powerful enough
to edit the video that I'm shooting right now,
'cause I wanna do it all on this guy.
But first I feel like I need to actually
clean it up a little bit.
Nothing I can really do about the dents
and the scratches, but at the very least
I can get rid of some of this sort of grime, some of the...
Look, used laptops, kind of gross.
So after some cleaning, the Macbook actually
is looking pretty decent, so now it's time
to open it up and start upgrading,
as well as, well, probably dust it out. (laughs)
Now as far as upgrades go, thankfully
they are so much cheaper than they used to be.
So for example, I was able to pick up
16 gigs of RAM, which technically
this only supports eight, but I'm pretty sure
16 will work, and this was like 60 bucks.
Same thing, I was able to grab a 500 gig SSD
which was around 55, $60, was able to pick up
a brand new battery, which hopefully should be,
even though the one here's not bad,
we might as well just swap it out.
And the thing I'm really excited about,
is even though this shipped with a DVD drive,
with a little bit of Frankenstein action,
I think we actually can get a Blu-Ray drive
working inside the Macbook.
Now the only thing that I wanna upgrade
that I can't right now is the WiFi card.
So there actually is a guy who custom builds
WiFi cards which are compatible with this Macbook,
and it will give you not only Bluetooth 4.0,
but importantly it will work with Airdrop,
however they're out of stock for the next couple months.
So that might be an upgrade I do a little bit later.
After removing a few screws and some tape,
I have the top shell of the DVD SuperDrive
that was originally in our Macbook.
We're going to need to transplant that onto this.
So I'm following a tutorial I'll have linked
in the description, but essentially
this is a Blu-Ray drive, which by all accounts
should technically work inside macOS, and fit,
just with some minor modifications.
Mostly I need to replace the metal shell
with something that actually has
the correct mounting holes for our Macbook.
So time for a little more surgery.
Alright, so things are coming together.
So the Blu-Ray swap isn't the worst thing,
but it's definitely the most challenging part.
It ended up taking maybe 25, 30 minutes.
Now however, we need to install the SSD,
we need to put our 16 gigs of RAM in,
throw the battery, and we actually
should be good to start installing
the wonderfully supported macOS Catalina.
Alright, so, it is another day
and the Macbook is finally done.
So one thing you missed is that
I had to install Catalina by way of installing
Mavericks first, and then upgrading,
but after 45 minutes or so, it's up and running,
and I've gotta say it's actually surprisingly usable.
Would you like to try the Macbook
extravaganza that I have created?
- Yeah, for sure, I mean I haven't used
this body style since, what, 2013?
Obviously, it has the keyboard that everyone likes.
- [Austin] The keyboard they just
brought back for the 16 inch?
- [Ken] Yeah, probably just a little more shallower, but-
- No, it's pretty much the exact same I think.
- Is it, I thought- - I think it's
almost the same.
- That's an interesting point, I would like to try
the 16 inch Mac, we can actually see how-
- [Austin] Hey, wrong video!
2012 Macbook, that's where it's at.
- Okay, okay.
I mean, the body style is pretty big,
but I mean it's not that bad.
We still definitely see thicker laptops.
- [Austin] Well the problem is is that this, well actually,
not the problem, the advantage of this one
is that I picked it up in fairly poor cosmetic condition,
but it's just purely on the outside.
So it's all dented up. - Oh, I see all that here.
- [Austin] But the thing is, the inside
is fine, The keyboard's fine,
trackpad, screen. - This is totally clean,
I didn't see the front side of this.
For now the bezels are kinda thick.
- [Austin] Yeah, and the screen's 1,280 by 800.
So it's not great. - Yeah, you can see pixels,
I mean it's not perfect, but I mean, for 200 bucks?
- [Austin] Well it's looking a little like 230, 240.
- 230, and then how much for the upgrades?
- Realistically, I was trying to go a little bit overkill
with this, if this was a system
that I was trying to be a little more price sensitive with,
I would not have done the Blu-Ray drive,
I probably wouldn't have done the battery,
although that's a pretty decent upgrade,
and realistically, eight gigs of RAM
would probably be fine here, which means
that this actually would be a roughly $300 upgrade.
For everything I've done here, it's a little less than 400.
- [Ken] Including buying the computer?
- Including buying the computer, all the upgrades,
the Blu-Ray drive, everything.
As you will be seeing here shortly,
all the footage from the video
has been imported to this Macbook.
So this is 4K footage that I just shot,
alright, so pull it up here.
Obviously still in log, so it's not full quality, but.
- [Ken] Oh, it's playing back fine.
This 4K? - 4K.
- [Ken] Oh wow!
- [Austin] It's definitely slower than something
like a current Macbook Air, but also
I bought this thing for a little over $200.
- I actually just came back from an anime con,
so I picked up, yeah, so I just got
a Blu-Ray, Liz and the Blue Bird.
This is a DVD though, we'll pop in the DVD first
just to even see if it's working, which I don't like that.
Assuming your tolerances are just a little off,
I'm just gonna let this grind,
'cause it is the one I don't care about.
- [Austin] This is bad.
We're just gonna cut this part of the video out. (laughs)
- No, I think you get to live with your-
- (laughing) - you get to live
with your failure.
- Okay, you know what, I will open this up,
I'll figure it out, I have an edit to do.
Let me have some victory, let me have some success here.
I'm proud of my Macbook, even though that was probably,
this was not my finest idea here, I guess.
My next challenge is to see if I can actually
edit this entire video on this 13 inch Macbook.
I actually think it's going to be doable.
- [Ken] Ooh!
- Cut to montage!
(singing)
Wait, no, wait, I shouldn't do any crazy effects,
'cause I don't think this thing can handle. (laughs)
(laid back electronic music)
Okay, so I've just spent the last two hours
editing the video you're watching right now
on the 13 inch Macbook, and you know what?
Totally fine, actually totally fine.
So come take a look at this.
So I've got my timeline here, so for reference
this is all 4K Sony footage coming off of an A7 III,
but I'm playing back right now,
and you can see if I unplug my headphones.
- World's greatest shape, however
- Look at that, no problem, I can scrub.
Nice and smooth.
Now I am editing on the internal SSD
that I installed, but you can see
it is not really working hard at all.
So obviously I don't have color and whatnot on here,
but that's the last stage of any of my edits anyway,
and real talk, as far as editing this Sony footage goes,
this feels almost as snappy as a brand new Macbook.
Which is crazy to me.
Now is it gonna be slower to render,
is it gonna be slower to export, definitely,
but as far as being able to edit a 4K video, it works.
I am so impressed with what we were able to do
for just a few hundred dollars.
Now is it the best looking Macbook?
Definitely not, however, for light,
even fairly intensive tasks, it does a good job.
I mean, this, I don't know, I have always been
a little bit skeptical about Mac resale value,
but this video really kind of has opened my eyes
to just how good even a seven year old Macbook can be.
No wonder they sold these things for years and years
after the rest of the non-Retina line was discontinued.
Let's just not worry about the Blu-Ray player,
I'll fix that one later.
- [Ken] Please do.