Today in Ax's Geek Life
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Replaced the fans in my mid-2012 model MacBook Pro 15" with Retina display.
It's one of the best Macs I have ever bought and overall it still works great except (1) the battery cannot hold a charge anymore and (2) the fans have been rattling for maybe a couple of years.The fan rattling got drastically worse off late, to the point that the sound is no longer bearable and it sounds like something worse might happen if I don't stop using it. Today I finally got the fans replaced, so no more rattling. Had to do this myself because Apple Inc. ended support for that model years ago. Had to buy third-party parts to do it.
As for the battery not holding much of a charge, this laptop is used more as a desktop and is almost always plugged in, so that will be fine for a long time. (Knock on wood.)
Why I want to keep this old computer going:
- It really is a very good piece of hardware, and it has been well taken care of over the years; so everything is still in good shape apart from the fans (moving parts!) and the battery (chemicals!).
- It runs
Snow LeopardEl Capitan, IMO probably the most stablemodernpost-PowerPC OS for the Mac to date. It still has the old PDF implementation that works really well (not the newer PDF implementation that I suspect Apple ported over from iOS to macOS that I find rather buggy; I have some PDF files that simply won't open/render/print right on newer versions of macOS/iOS but works find with older versions of OS X likeSnow LeopardEl Capitan). - Good, pricey software with perpetual license, not the newer subscription stuff that I have to keep paying year after year. I have Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection on that computer that I want to keep using for a long, long, long time.
- Its
Snow LeopardEl Capitan OS works well with another piece of pricey, outdated, but still nice hardware -- a Wacom Cintiq 21UX interactive pen display. In all honesty I do not use the pen function with the Cintiq much, but still I appreciate the design and engineering of the Cintiq and I really don't want to part with it yet. There is something nice about drawing/sketching on the big Cintiq that doing the same on an iPad cannot compare.
ERRATA: mixed up "El Capitan" with "Snow Leopard" earlier.
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It's always nice to have the brightest/shiniest/most current piece of hardware. I always feel...betrayed (?) when current software no longer supports a vintage machine.
Mrs. George had a 2012 Macbook Air (11 inch) that was "obsolete." Its battery was not holding a charge, but it had no fan issues. I replaced it (for her) with a M2 13" MacBook Air. The old one has become a permanent resident sitting atop my Roland digital piano. It runs PianoTeq and does nothing else. It's constantly plugged into power, so battery is not an issue. It's only worth about $100 on eBay, so it's not worth selling when it does its job so well. Its ONE job.
But, regarding battery, have you looked at OWC (Other World Computing)? They sell replacement batteries for "vintage" Macs. I've used them a couple of times to replace D2's battery. Their prices are good and their tech support is outstanding.
A replacement battery for your Mac is about $90. If you're comfortable replacing fans, this should be stupid-easy for you.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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All good reasons to keep it running. Macs in my experience run a long, long time. It’s a tool. If it does things you want done it’s a steal.
The fan on a Lenovo I inherited from the last treasurer just started surging. I have to figure out why if I want to keep it, but it’s a serious dog anyway.
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It's always nice to have the brightest/shiniest/most current piece of hardware. I always feel...betrayed (?) when current software no longer supports a vintage machine.
Mrs. George had a 2012 Macbook Air (11 inch) that was "obsolete." Its battery was not holding a charge, but it had no fan issues. I replaced it (for her) with a M2 13" MacBook Air. The old one has become a permanent resident sitting atop my Roland digital piano. It runs PianoTeq and does nothing else. It's constantly plugged into power, so battery is not an issue. It's only worth about $100 on eBay, so it's not worth selling when it does its job so well. Its ONE job.
But, regarding battery, have you looked at OWC (Other World Computing)? They sell replacement batteries for "vintage" Macs. I've used them a couple of times to replace D2's battery. Their prices are good and their tech support is outstanding.
A replacement battery for your Mac is about $90. If you're comfortable replacing fans, this should be stupid-easy for you.
@George-K said in Today in Ax's Geek Life:
A replacement battery for your Mac is about $90. If you're comfortable replacing fans, this should be stupid-easy for you.
Thanks for the link, though the lower part of the page says that particular battery is not compatible my Mac (it's the one with "Retina" display). It tracks, too, because visually I can see that the OWC battery and my Mac's OEM battery look different. In any case, I will poke around the OWC site and see if I can find a replacement battery that is compatible with my "Retina" Mac. Thanks!
EDIT to add: more likely this is the battery that's compatible with my Mac: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/BAP15MBR95WK/ ... it comes with this warning:
Professional Installation Highly Recommended
Due to the complex nature of this installation, OWC recommends that this battery replacement be performed by a trained professional.":man-shrugging:
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@George-K said in Today in Ax's Geek Life:
A replacement battery for your Mac is about $90. If you're comfortable replacing fans, this should be stupid-easy for you.
Thanks for the link, though the lower part of the page says that particular battery is not compatible my Mac (it's the one with "Retina" display). It tracks, too, because visually I can see that the OWC battery and my Mac's OEM battery look different. In any case, I will poke around the OWC site and see if I can find a replacement battery that is compatible with my "Retina" Mac. Thanks!
EDIT to add: more likely this is the battery that's compatible with my Mac: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/BAP15MBR95WK/ ... it comes with this warning:
Professional Installation Highly Recommended
Due to the complex nature of this installation, OWC recommends that this battery replacement be performed by a trained professional.":man-shrugging:
@Axtremus ah, intersting.
The battery replacments I did on D2's MacBook Air were trivial, if time-consuming.
Perhaps go to OWC's site and have a chat with tech support. They can tell you how hard/easy your case might be. As I said, their support is great.
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Here's OWC's video on how to replace the battery.
Link to videoETA: Yeah, it's complex, to be sure.
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Just watched OWC's "how to" video on replacing the batter for my mid-2012 "Retina" 15" MacBook Pro.
No way, uh uh.
Because the battery is glued to the base, you need to disconnect/remove almost everything to get to the point where you can deal with the glue -- need to disconnect/remove the fans (again!), SSD, speakers, headphone jack, Wi-Fi card, trackpad, keyboard, display connector, power connector, I/O ports, the logic board itself. Then you have to use special chemicals to dissolve the glue below the old battery, then put everything back in.I will just live with the old battery and keep this Mac plugged in all the time.
The whole thing would have been simple if not for the glue.
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Just watched OWC's "how to" video on replacing the batter for my mid-2012 "Retina" 15" MacBook Pro.
No way, uh uh.
Because the battery is glued to the base, you need to disconnect/remove almost everything to get to the point where you can deal with the glue -- need to disconnect/remove the fans (again!), SSD, speakers, headphone jack, Wi-Fi card, trackpad, keyboard, display connector, power connector, I/O ports, the logic board itself. Then you have to use special chemicals to dissolve the glue below the old battery, then put everything back in.I will just live with the old battery and keep this Mac plugged in all the time.
The whole thing would have been simple if not for the glue.
@Axtremus said in Today in Ax's Geek Life:
the battery is glued to the base
Yeah. That was a hard stop for me as well. Keeping track of all the screws, connectors, etc was daunting enough.
The whole thing would have been simple if not for the glue
Simple but still tedious.
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@Axtremus said in Today in Ax's Geek Life:
the battery is glued to the base
Yeah. That was a hard stop for me as well. Keeping track of all the screws, connectors, etc was daunting enough.
The whole thing would have been simple if not for the glue
Simple but still tedious.
@George-K said in Today in Ax's Geek Life:
The whole thing would have been simple if not for the glue
Simple but still tedious.
I mean, if not for the glue, you would not need to remove/disconnect and put back in place and reconnect all the other components. If there is no glue to deal with, the new battery can be installed without disturbing anything else. Thus simple and not tedious if not for the glue.
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Now I have a new approach to consider: What if I first make sure the battery is discharged (should be easy since the battery is so old that it's not holding much of a charge anyway), then just dig through or scrap off the old battery, without disconnecting/removing anything else -- I do not really care if the old batter is destroyed after all. Anyway, replacing the battery is not a priority for me in the near term, so I will file this for now and revisit if that becomes necessary.
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Now I have a new approach to consider: What if I first make sure the battery is discharged (should be easy since the battery is so old that it's not holding much of a charge anyway), then just dig through or scrap off the old battery, without disconnecting/removing anything else -- I do not really care if the old batter is destroyed after all. Anyway, replacing the battery is not a priority for me in the near term, so I will file this for now and revisit if that becomes necessary.
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Cool update (literally) Ax! Damn, I used to have the Adobe creative master collection on CD. Probably still do somewhere but lost the license key, which IIRC was stolen anyway. I do miss that part… now I use the adobe cloud subscription. I went to cancel it the other day and the adobe rep gave me like 50 or 75% off btw. Almost like what you get if you call SiriusXM.
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Nice that you can keep it around. What do you use adobe creative suite master collection for?
@Horace said in Today in Ax's Geek Life:
What do you use adobe creative suite master collection for?
Maintaining a few websites (when what needed done is too much for hand-coding with a text editor), dealing with graphics (when GraphicConverter won't cut it), dealing with audio recordings, dealing with PDF (when Preview won't cut it). Also used it to produce a DVD once, with fancy scene selection menus and such, but haven't use any of its DVD functions since DVD has gone the way of the VHS tapes.
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This has been a good day to geek out. I found that someone, a Mr. Nicholas Sherlock, has fixed/updated a bunch of Wacom drivers that Wacom itself stopped updating/supporting, including the driver for my Cintiq 21UX. Now I can continue to use the Cintiq 21UX with macOS versions up to Big Sur. See https://github.com/thenickdude/wacom-driver-fix
