Rob Isaac: if you ever donated a 24” iMac to my recycling shenanigans, you might like to know that these three friends outlasted the charity to which they were donated, and are here being refurbished for a second time. The Jobs-era Apple did not suck.

if you ever donated a 24” iMac to my recycling shenanigans, you might like to know that these three friends outlasted the charity to which they were donated, and are here being refurbished for a second time. The Jobs-era Apple did not suck.

Even today, the 10+ year old macs do make great machines, and run Linux faster than they ever ran macosx, from an era when Apple still did actually know how to make computer hardware, something it has utterly forgotten.

Yeah, I’d been kinda ignoring it, but refurbing these and some first-gen iPads has really underscored how dumb and soulless their stuff has become. iOS 5.ish is just an absolute delight to use.

For me the best laptop I ever could find remains a 2013ish one-off Mac book pro. It was the very last one made with ethernet built-in, and the first with usb 3 ports. You could open it with a jewelers screwdriver, and replace everything important (battery, ram, harddisk).

Right after that it was all crap, with that crappy new keyboard, sealing things off, etc.

My mistake, that was the one-off mid 2012ish mac powerbook pro, so it's actually now 12 years since Apple made something other than garbage.

My 2010 iMac survived the Christchurch Eqs, was removed by crane from a 12th story window and was used by me for many years including running models overnight. When I retired I had an SSD fitted and it's now used every day by my (nearly) 90 year old mother. Not sure who will last longer.

Back when you could replace a hard drive or upgrade your RAM

My old iPod classic is still used every single day at home (in a Bose dock) and that thing, yeah, has legs. It'll probably outlive me.

Listening to that very setup right now. The plug at the back of the Bose is a little fiddly, but as long as I don't try to move it often, it's good.

Haha we definitely have the same SoundDock.

Our computer teacher at my last school resurrected so many of these! He collected "dead" ones from other school sites & did his Frankenputer magic to get some working. He put enough computers in to make 2 full computer labs! When the district did our tech refresh, we ended up 1:1 with new PCs 😹

Have one of these I pulled from a dumpster years ago in the rain. Runs perfect after you slap on some Linux. Saw a 4K retina 2015 model and the local dump and they wanted NZ$300k for it.

300,000 dollars is a bit above list price when new, so you might want to haggle a bit with the dump operator.

Lol, where did that k come from 😂

Yeah, I'd be rich if they fetched that much. What flavour of Linux did you put on your old Mac? (I have a couple of them lying around.)

Not at home at the moment but I think it’s Mint? Worked out of the box, no fiddling needed.

Thanks.

ChromeOS Flex is the shiz, too. We use it for Google Meet boxes at work, with Logitech camera/mic/speaker setups and big 4k TVs. Works GREAT tho Google could do better with the integration :)

ChromeOS is slowly replacing macOS as my daily driver.

Haven't bought a new MacBook since 2012. It still works even if the battery is long gone. Kind of crazy how good those were.

I have a 2010 27” imac sitting in my office floor collecting dust

Do they encounter the famous power management issues of linux running on Apple devices ? (sleep mode not working, reboot when clicking shutdown...)

I haven’t had any of those problems, but ChromeOS tracks a pretty bleeding-edge kernel, and these machines are from an era where Apple computers were much closer to generic PC hardware than any of their later amd64 models.

I remember when a technician would actually come to the house to fix your Mac. That would have been around 1990 when we had our second Mac.

Not a bad choice with Chrome OS Flex! Love to see old machines chugging along!

Oh, there has been some word that Google may be killing of Flex, so it may be worth looking at some alternatives, I probably wouldn't use the ones in this article, but there are options www.zdnet.com/article/goog...

Google might abandon ChromeOS Flex. Here's why - and what you can do about itwww.zdnet.com With Google's free-to-use lightweight operating system facing possible end-of-life, users looking to sustain older hardware functionality and environmental benefits should explore these alternatives.

Well, most of them, Mint and Lubuntu may be solid, just haven't heard much of the others

It’s interesting that the article misses the point by recommending alternatives to chrome os which aren’t really alternatives but just light Linux distros. Not one mention of immutable distros.

Know any good immutables? Wouldn't mind trying one, most of them I have seen seem a bit limiting with the software you can install, usually just flatpaks, but I'm curious if there's more out there.

Imho the best is going to be the fedora atomic releases. You can install native packages also but mostly people use flatpak and distrobox for their userland.

I used to daydream about owning a iMAC Pro to do my 3D work 😊

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ChromeOS flex on a iMac is very… interesting

Yeah, the range of practical choices for hardware this old grows narrower with each passing year.

They can't even accept a Windows- formatted floppy disc; not sure what good they are.

I just acquired one of these, should I go debian?

Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t use debian on the desktop any more.

Fwiw, I'm struggling with Debian on a MacBook right now. The tools exist to make it work, but it's more trouble than I thought it would be: the wifi and Bluetooth are being *reluctant*. That said, I'm a noob, so YMMV.

Apple tends to go through cycles and phases. Some of their Hardware has been extremely long lived some of it is gone like the wind. I kept my Mac pro 2012 till last year when I replace it with an M2 ultra Studio..

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