As someone who’s disassembled a lot of these unibody macs, I felt like a proud dad watching Austin working on his

Used to eBay & craigslist laptops like this all the time as a side hustle back in like 08. Macs were always my favorite as could make the best return for my efforts. Glad to see that kind of recycling still being done

Had the same issue with my MacBook, took me multiple hours to install MacOS on that thing... Linux and Windows installed within minutes. Its crazy how apple doesn't want you to use their OS on their machines ^^

Years of use out of it- AUSTIN EVANS. And it's all thanks to the OCLP- Open Core Project and Team which help with older Mac's being usable still now till the future. Without the OCLP and the team dedicated to providing this for so many different models of older Mac's , their saving people lots of money and upgrading older Mac's.

As an IT Admin of 26 years, 15 being at an mostly Apple school, I do this all the time with our old teacher laptops. I most recently bought a 2014 MacBook Air for $1 due to non-working condition that someone slapped on it. It was just a bad M.2 and battery, took a M.2 from a parts machine slated for recycling. I then upgraded the ram to 8GB, replaced the bad battery with a new old stock OEM battery from eBay with 2 cycles. I installed MacOS Ventura using OpenCore Legacy Patcher. It works great for vacation trips, watching "legally Downloaded" movies, Netflix etc. Works great for downloading, storing and editing all of our vacation pictures and short videos. I also take it to my in-laws for entertainment purposes because they live in the sticks with basically no internet. I've sold a few this way too, great easy money. I even made more off one I painted black due to it was a complete tear-down to repair anyway. So Thanks Austin for doing a vidoe to show old hardware still has some life in it, just make sure to install all security patches. Then install linux when it gets outdated. Ubuntu works great on these old MacBooks!

I did the same to an a1278. This mac was going to the bin. I replace keyboard, battery, Harddisk, speakers and wifi card, put on 8gb of ram, a SSD, a bought a hd caddy to replace the broken CD drive, and now sports 2 SSDs. Perfectly usable and lots of fun rebuilding uit

I got lucky with a i7 16gb macbook pro from 2017, payed 230€ for it and the guy said it just turned off. Reset and reinstalled the os and cleaned the super dusty fan and it works like a charm and its even in like new condition. So happy for my first macbook. The 2500x1600 display is still soo good.

i love these revamp old tech type of videos, keep it going

A fun and interesting video showing how to bring new life to old devices. But missing the important point that this cannot be done with modern MacBooks: no user upgradable ram; no user upgradable storage; IF you can find parts they are likely serialized and require software pairing. It is very sad to see neat (and useful) projects like this will be impossible in the future.

I’ve taken many Mackbook out of the recycling bin, and honestly even the ones that are old. Have always turned out amazing all things considering. It’s amazing how long they last.

I was given a mid 2009 MacBook Pro 15", 8 Gb ram. It needed a cleaning, a battery and I put in a 500GB Samsung 870 EVO with Catalina. I spent $100 CDN, so mine was cheaper. It's my first Mac so it's perfect for light office work when I need to spend more time in the office.

As an Apple Certified Pro who has built and repaired many desktops and laptops in the past, it is always a joy watch videos such as this.

I love how repairable older Mac models were compared to newer ones. It's sad Apple doesn't support these Macs with new OS versions. I'm using a Macbook Pro 2012 that still works great (read 4k video editing on fcpx using proxies) but stuck with Catalina. No security updates either.

Over here in the uk a short while ago I purchased a early 2015 MacBook Pro with delamination and battery service error (bloated battery just needed replacing) I paid the equivilant of $80 for the MacBook and $36 for a 3rd party battery. Yes it would of been $16 over your budget but it would of been a much better option especially as it used M.2 SSD

I have the same exact MacBook Pro and just updated to Sonoma thanks to this video, thanks Austin. It's been stuck on El Capitan since 2015.

Overall great video about refurbishing macbook! Also... i need to know how austin did reput the screws that were mixed (i dont wanna say Linused, i'd say...Evansised) for a future potential Behind of scenes video. Also i hope his next future projects, need to use magnetic pad. P.D: i laughed about fixing the hinge, just little pressure and thats all, and ye, ken is totally right. Denki saved Austin the money and gets free shoutout!

I love these older unibodies, they run rings around the reliability of the newer ones, ***Though i do own an A1398***

Used my upgraded 2012 Macbook Pro for close to a decade before upgrading to the M1 Air, it's really incredible how well these machines have aged

Austin I love watching you and you are my inspiration. People use to make fun of me for being a nerd. Your awesome

It is absolutely ridiculous how hard apple makes it to create bootable media for older macs.

Never so early, but here we are. Although it's not simple, I believe the effort and money required to repair a MacBook are well worth it.❤️

I just built a 1060 desktop for under $100, running great now with an ssd upgrade!

Alright I’m convinced. I have a 2012 15” pro that’s been sitting in my closet for years. If I remember right it was a mid tier one with an external GPU, and an i7. I need to do this and get it running again.

Great video, could be a series with increasing budgets.

I think you can do this again pretty easily with a 2013. Personally bought one for cheap a few months back as the previous owner thought it would need a new screen. Turns out it was apples anti glare layer coming off and it was easy enough to remove completely. Installed open core and currently running Ventura without much of an issue.

Repaired a 2012 mac mini earlier this year to use for school and it still does the job!

I MISS these actual videos, not going to lie. haven't really been a fan of all the "Mystery tech videos back-to-back".

I've done this same idea. on ebay i bought a 2012 Macbok Pro for around $95 and just replaced the hard drive with an ssd. it's very usable with linux but i have it dual booted with Debian and MacOS Ventura with opencore legacy boot patcher.

i just bought a 2017 MacBook Air '13 1.8GHz core i5 with 8GB of ram and 128GB of SSD used for $150 + $10 shipping on eBay this summer, had a new battery in it when I purchased it and only had very minimal wear, had to get a used magsafe charger for $15 also. I can't believe how much these MacBooks really depreciate considering the decent performance it still produces depending per model.

Sounds like you've got a good media center there. Dust off the classic iPod and you're set to rock it retro.

This would be cool to light to moderate music production and if you want stability during live gigs to use some virtual instruments

Keep the series going!!!!!

mid 2012 MBP are still fantastic you can use Open Core Legacy Patcher (OCLP) to even install the latest macOS 14 Sonoma, they also run Linux super well, they can be had super cheap and honestly I think they are a better buy than some newer end low end chrombook/windows computer that would have nasty build quality and have a very super low end modern CPU, I personally have a Mid 2012 13" i7 2.9ghz with 16GB RAM & 500gb SSD and I use it with Linux mostly and it performs perfect for what I need.

2011 MacBook Pro, did something similar to what Austin did. Love it, works great! Can’t get the latest Mac OS, stuck on el captain but I’m alright with that. Beats buying a new machine and gives me time to save for a better laptop down the road.

I love those Macs that they had the optical drive! Pure nostalgia!

I got a 2009 in good condition for $60. It has the anti-glare display. It’s fantastic. It’s my 2nd one because my old one nearly burned my hand off. I wished I could upgrade to an SSD on my new one but a screw is stripped.

screen hinges which are wobbly/have play, normally just need to tighten some screws inside the screen lid, or where the hinges meet the bottom section. I've fixed a whole of Dell Latitudes from my school this way.

Always love seeing Austin on Matt's KZfaq channel

Upgraded my late 2013 mbp last night with open core, such an easy process. Also those macs can have their ssd upgraded with a standard nvme drive through the use of an adaptor. You should do a followup for a pc, lower the budget and take a chance to play with some alternative OS

I owned a used 2012 Unibody MacBook and it for the years I used it it was a great little computer, I ended up replacing it for an M1 Pro 16 inch but for the 4 years I did use my unibody, it was a great wee machine. I did all these upgrades to my unibody before I sold it and my gosh it’s such a runner, wish I did them sooner rather than paying a lot of money for my M1 machine, probably would still be using it today butttttt, idk I wanted a new computer 😂

Good find! I look for these locally. I picked up a 2009 macbook pro with a bad keyboard and trackpad for $40 a few months ago. The guy even threw in a wired keyboard and mouse. I used it as a desktop for a while. Unfortunately I did not make videos back then. I still have it though!

This is real content Austin . Keep it up!

I still have my old MacBook Pro from 2012. I don't use it anymore, but it still works perfectly fine

Good funny and informational at the same time might do the same for my old mac

very cool idea n loved watching it, an idea for a next vid (unfortunately i have to use these for work) getting an old dell e6440 (i7) and upgrading it as much as you can and then bench mark it against its never version 5340 (also i7)

Just last week our IT guy gave me a 14 year old Macbook Pro ( 8 Gigs and 500 GB SSD ) because it just didn't work properly. It only starts up 1 or 2 out of 10 times. And when it does it black screens after putting some load on it. After cleaning and repasting the same issue occured. I found out that 1 of the RAM sticks is at fault. So now I'm going to use OpenCore Patcher to install a newer OS on it. Have to get some screws and rubber feet for the bottom, and a matched kit of 8 Gigs of DDR3. Nice thing for that price.

This is the end of the old Austin Evan’s profile picture 😢

One week ago I bought 2012 MBP in pristine condition (i5, 16GB RAM, 250SSD + another 500HDD in DVD drive bay and ofc DVD drive) for ca 190 USD. Unfortunately SSD was in bad shape (22MB/s write/100MB/s read) so I bought 1TB 870EVO for another 70 USD. Now it works great @ 10.15.7.

Thanks Austin, now all the used Macbooks on eBay are gonna go way up in price!! 🙂

i feel like the disk error pops up when the user initially installed open core and patched the machine upto macos 13.3 Ventura so the disc pops up when it tries to boot of the macos 13 which it cant unless boots with open core efi partition to gain access to Ventura. a simple option key on boot would select the opencore partition and boot from the macos 13

It’s a bit frustrating looking for a cheap unibody mbp in Canada in comparison. The cheapest ones are found in the US but then after shipping and then customs/import fees and taxes, it quickly becomes bad for value.

That is pretty cool, I do have a mac mini from 2012 that works still on catalina but also I just upgraded ram to 16gb and its not bad. No ssd sadly but I plan on getting the m2 mac mini this year possibly.

I had a 2011 MacBook Pro from new. Lasted me to 2020 (maybe 2021) till the logic board just died one day. I did the 16gb ram upgrade, new battery, ssd and replaced the disc drive with the original hdd. If it wasn’t for the logic board dying I think it would still be with us to this day! These laptops were the best!

Really liked this video. Btw in the future most MacBooks have a feature called Internet Recovery where you can just install macOS on a Mac and you don’t even need a usb drive. I’d give you the shortcut but I keep forgetting it. Very useful if you can never find your USB Drives (which I do all the time lol)

I happen to have a Mid-2012 Macbook Pro, it's so ridiculous slow though that for even general browsing use I find it too unresponsive, not sure what specifically its bottleneck is

the video was amazing, it just felt empty without ken's and matt's commentary, overall the video was amazing and brilliant

best one yet austin love the old macs

I bought awhile back a 2011 MacBook Pro with a white screen. I was afraid that would be a problem for you. My solution was to remove the chip that controls the AMD processor (which gets hot and causes this problem) and let it run the Intel Processor. A video of this maybe still on the internet. Did three laptops like this and quit.... I still have them but can't upgrade the HD. Your method makes sense.

You should put the light Windows 10 version on that MacBook and see if it's even possible to get other operating systems to run on a older MacBook

I remember earlier this year I fixed a 2014 MBA 13” with a USB drive with Mojave on it, THEN IT WENT INTO RECOVERY FOR YOSEMITE (During a road trip from California to Florida, when i arrived to Florida and saw it was on recovery like that, i was mad.) Then i lost the Mojave Usb drive. So i had to buy a Monterey drive (I know, it doesn’t officially support it) and it worked and to this day it runs Big Sur, i downgraded because Monterey was too much for it.

Installing those older versions of macOS is insanely difficult. Ive worked for hours and days trying to get versions installed, especially High Sierra. The most reliable method ive discovered is installing to an external 2.5" hdd instead of a usb drive, it works every time now.

funny you post this video cos I have been doing just this for the last week pretty much! me and my sis had the same MBP. Mine randomly started showing lines on the screen and when I took it to the guys at apple they said it needs a new logic board but that shit was almost as expensive as a new laptop so I just bought a gaming laptop after that. this was like 3 + years ago. my sisters laptop had a broken hinge and eventually the screen stopped working. so i just exchanged their logic boards and got one laptop working. the other one ill just remove the hinge and screen and use it as a cd drive/media pc. all that'll be left is the screen which needs a new lvds cable.

I’ve still got a pair of early 2010s MacBooks that still run and function just fine

Guessing the white screen has to do with that one side of the hinge being jacked up and being all crunchy.

I got a 2010 model i found a couple years ago i need to to this to it. Great vidoe

Well i got a mid 2012 MacBook pro sold as broken but in very good cosmetic shape with it's box and all the accessories for 30€ turned out it was working just fine

I've got a first gen iPad mini that you guys can have for free if you want to try and do a fun project with it. See if you can make it usable at all. It's been sitting in a drawer in my desk for years untouched

Shipping that very swollen Macbook seems like a VERY BAD idea that could go horribly wrong in transit. That seems like a fire waiting to happen especially with how rough lot of postal companies are with packages. Yikes.

Hey Austin I'm looking for a good laptop do to some editing. Got any ideas or suggestions? Thanks brother

Missed opportunity to install linux. Older intel Macs are amazing with something like Debian or Lubuntu on them.

You mentioned the shipping cost of the mac. So did the SSD, RAM and Battery have free shipping?

I have a 2020 M1 and I absolutely love it. For some tasks it dumps on my 18 core 3070 PC

may i know how exactly to install the Mac OS onto the new SSD externally?

i've got a 2008 lenovo thinkpad t400, can you make an upgrade video of this model too?

I've refurbished my wife's MacBook Air from 2010 with a new battery and thermal paste + cleaning, but I was not able to get OpenCore Legacy running .. I've tried and repeated this process several times until I gave up. Now it runs the latest Ubuntu with a fully MacOS Monterey skin (booting screen too) and my lovely wife thinks it is still Mac. The system is stable and she can use the latest software (so she needs just web browsing and mail...) Am I cheating her?

Shame you needed a newer MacBook at times to restore the old one. I think anyone trying to do this won't have new hardware lying around to support themselves.

I wanna do something like this but I don't have a Mac in case of having to reflash the software version

the issue is your hard drive cable, it fails on those macs, had the same thing happen. you will eventually have it fail on the SSD anyway.

If you see a circle with a line on bootup, it means the computer doesn't support the version of macOS on the HDD because it's too new for the MacBook, and therefore can't boot.

You should get friendly with someone at a mid-size corporation. They often have a buyback program where they sell their old out-of-warranty laptops to the staff. Can be as low as $50 for a 3 year old machine.

Love the new updated profile photo btw.

I just snagged a mid 2014 retina macbook pro for exactly 100 shipped. All it needs is new feet but I already have some from my last repair of my neighbors macbook.

ugly over price screw driver but i love open core legacy i did the same thing on a 2014 macbook pro with 16 gb of ram upgraded the ssd and it works great for simple use all for 200 dollars great video !

Nice shoutout to Luke who did just make similar video but for ARM based Macbook specifically, lol.

I have an early 2015 MacBook Pro, is it worth using open core legacy patcher to get macOS Sonoma? currently its running macOS Monetary just fine.

Nice to see I might do this

I cannot wait for touch bar MacBooks to be this cheap. I want one soooooo badly, but not for 700 bucks badly.

Austin: I bought this laptop for $20 Also Austin: this laptop isn’t perfect. I’m concerned.

This is not a good idea because the laptop likely won't play 1080p30 videos, your only chance is with Firefox! I recommend getting a 2015+ MacBook - spend a little bit extra! Keyboard replacement is almost impossible on the MacBook because of the 40 plastic locks holding the keyboard into the base - base swaps are your only possible choice

In my country you can buy a 2013 macbook in 100 dollars... My czn bought one 6 months ago, as a secondary pc... (I think for people who have good PC , if they want a laptop they can buy 2012,13 macbooks still at this day... They work pretty good for just web browsing, multimedia, simple coding etc etc)

U may have already done this but I would love to see u compare what u could do for 100$ with a Windows laptop see which is better ?

Whats the best amd and intel CPU you would recommend for under $400, for both gaming and productivity(say using unity)

I bought a 2012 MacBook Pro a few years ago for cheap that was almost mint threw in an ssd and 16Gigs of ram the thing runs flawless to this day. Perfect daily driver for light - regular use. It was well worth it rather then spending hella dough on a newer one

Great video!!

the reviews i been asking u to in the emails i want to how they stack up with the well known brands

this is the same mac that i use daily on macos snoma using open core legacy patcher and it is very good even in 2024 (I put 16gb of ram and a 512 gb ssd in it and it is very smooth.

this video is awesome would love to see more

Still using a MBA 2017 ❤

Felt like I just watched a "Psivewri" video just with more side script and less gameplay demo. Linked it immediately after Austin said "Runescape" ...like.. you gotta show some OSRS gameplay at least to certify it's worthwhile

Hey Austin! I’m a newb….. I would love to do something like that. I would love to have a run of the mill MacBook. Can you list instructions that someone like me could follow???