Glad to hear it’s working out for you. It’s still a handy little laptop.

You can add a second SDD (or HDD) to where the optical drive was they're both full 6GBs slots I think. I still use 3 of these for my photo Booths.

I have a 13" version of this laptop I upgraded it to an SSD, 16GB of RAM & even got an adaptor so I could use a newer Wireless AC (WiFi 5) Airport card in it and I dual booted "Ubuntu MATE" & "macOS Ventura" and honestly for what I need it for it works perfect.

@@arranmc182 Hi can you share the link to the wifi adapter?

@@natbrownizzle1387 RAM to 16 + the SSD is the move!

I got a souped up one from OWC and the build quality and value was great. Just $370 with a 2tb ssd

I’ve upgraded from Catalina to Monterey by following Mr Macintosh instructions exactly.

Is Ventura work well n smooth in MBP 2012? Wanna patch but a bit hesitate. How big is your SSD & RAM?

@@aswinvtomo it works fine on mine. I have a 1 tb ssd and 16gb of ram

@@carson2646 Do I have to reinstall my softwares on macos patch?

Computers have gotten super powerful over the last decade. But the NEED for powerful computers by consumers hasn't grown significantly.

You could also boot from your external hard disk.

You do this before putting new SSD in ?

Can you explain how you would do that ?

@@dushaneperry4763 you literally get a sata enclosure and clone the disk over using disk utility, then it’s just a case of swapping them over

No sé recomienda hacer una clonación, es mejor instalar el S.O limpio y después pasar tus archivos como documentos música etc.

@@ELMAULOThere are reasons to clone. If you wanted to basically have a carbon copy of your system settings and would rather save time than set it up from scratch, then cloning is your friend. Don’t do cloning if you’ve got some weird behaviors by installing weird stuff you can’t remove from your Mac. Just do a clean install by then

Glad it was helpful!

For real. I think people underestimate how wonderful of a device this was/is?

They were wonderful machines, and fortunately, very durable. Even if something is broken on it, finding replacement parts and upgrades is super affordable.

I've worked on those MacBooks before, and they're really simple. If you're nervous, check iFixit's repair guide. Also, remember to keep the screws organised, as some of them are different lengths. You should also clean out the fan while you're in there, they tend to clog up with dust

I also have but no battery it's totally dead😢😢

i have a 2012 macbook pro and i just followed this tutorial step by step. it’s definitely as easy as it looks. i just knew i was gonna brick my computer 😅

Just upgraded the ram and swapped the original hdd with a Samsung ssd. Night and day.... never seen this macbook pro this fast.

same here!

The replacement 🔋s only last for 2-3 hrs unplugged. These are ideally best for a main home computer with the screen flapped-down when in sleep mode.

The iFixit battery is pretty good. Just be sure to get the high capacity one if available and do the battery calibration thing described in the insert card.

I was wondering just that (the Adobe CC support). So, it really would support working with Photoshop, Illustrator and maybe Lightroom? I dont need video or sound editing, just simple photo editing and vectoring.

@@victorhugosanchezhuerta5715 I have a 2015 model I use mainly so my 2012 has just been sitting, but I remember Photoshop and Illustrator working fine on it. I may have older versions though, so if you plan to use official Adobe CC current stuff you should check the Mac OS requirements they need and be sure the Macbook supports it. I'd guess it would be fine, but for a 12 year old laptop I'd verify.

I'm not a computer savvy guy but how would you install the second SSD? I'm interested in audio engineering

can you elaborate on this pls? cheers

@@Presidential.44 You remove DVD and fit an SSD with adapter.

@@Presidential.44 If your computer has an USB3-interface, you can use an external ssd with an adapter, like an usb-stick... I used to start my iMac from external SSD, bc I didn't want to use the slow internal HDD.

Will it last for more years? I’m thinking about buying a used one from a store. 5-10 years old

@@wulu3519 Not sure, fingers crossed! I will say, though, that the battery does seem to go down faster than I would like, but I don't know if that's the quality of the battery or installer error.

Glad you enjoyed it

Good luck with it!

​@@nerdyneighborthank you, telling from the pictures tho I can tell that the thing is definitely gonna need an entirely new screen assembly lol

It's gonna still be Catalina, I'd say. I have this machine myself. Used to have 16GB ram in it. (One ram slot died lol) Extra ram makes it faster at compiling code. Doesn't change the OS compatibility for the model.

How do you do that??

Me too on 15 inch 13inch and Mac mini 2012. its great fun. Make sure you use OCLP 0.6.4. to fix bugs with 2012 models.

@@mikepxg6406 I need to try that with a Mac Mini.

Did similar. Very happy with improved performance and wringing a few more productive years out of laptop. Can I suggest renewing the thermal paste to help ensure good cooling. And compiling list of tasks on paper or phone in advance. Helps to ensure no mistakes, doing all the steps and in the correct order...

@@davidgraham9577I should have removed the thermal paste. What I did to help with cooling was drilled some small holes in the bottom plate to allow for air to flow out & it makes a difference

@@mrmartywaring that’s a good point. I like my machine from OWC and it gets rather warm. They did the ssd and ram upgrades. I bought a new battery but haven’t swapped yet. I’m never satisfied with anything Apple and battery. You can update it to Monterey using Mr Macintosh vid instructions to the letter. With the stock Catalina it was useless. So far so good

You shouldn't have to, no. But I've actually never done it that way before because I run out of the freespace with icloud, and I don't like paying for icloud. Lol

I wondered the same thing. I have a gigantic external drive from work, because they were sold out of everything else and I needed to move stuff from really old iMac to my blazing fast new one. My IT guy was concerned that I might have issues with some of the old files, etc., and told me to examine everything before I moved it and not move everything at once. Just to be safe, I think I’ll copy everything to the external drive and then follow your instructions for comparison. I’ll let you know how this goes. I’ve never done anything except replace the battery in the olden days when it was accessible from the outside and you could just pop a new one in.

@@helenmacqueen8856 I used a SATA-USB cable.

Upgrading the RAM and SSD would make the biggest difference. Anything beyond that would be a lot of effort for very little increase.

IMHO, your repair shops are wrong. Unfortunately there are a ton of cheap and low-quality batteries on the market… If you want the original capacity and run time, you have to choose wisely. Good batteries are quite expensive. around 90 - 110 euros.

I've heard that since then. When you have a 2nd gen, dual core I5, I wonder how much of a difference it ends up making, though.

I would like to know this too.

No, would probably totally be worth it. I just forgot.

Great question! I’ve been able to do boot camp before. But that was for Windows 10, which is obviously still a great operating system, but it’s getting older. I’m thinking re-doing the thermal paste shouldn’t be too much harder. I just bought another one of these models, and I’ll try it out on that.

It definitely is possible to reapply thermal paste, that was the first thing I did when I upgraded my 15’ 2012 MacBook. The fans kick on much less due to it being more efficient.

Definitely can run bootcamp on the mid 2012 MacBook Pro.

16gb is officially what you can have for ram. You can use any SSD you want. (its a Sata 2.5) I would look at 1tb or more. In general a larger capacity SSD will last longer. Brands like Samsung, Crucial, WD and Sandisk are cool. Google the model and maker before you buy. The 2012 can run the latest OS from Apple but will require a patcher. I use Linux on mine but the patchers aren't hard to use. Consider buying an external enclosure to load MacOS unto the SSD. This way you can make sure things are working fine before you replace the drive in the laptop.

Thanks, @a.lawrence4969! I couldn't have said it better myself. Another brand I would include in that "trusted" brands list is WD (Western Digital). For the video, I used a TeamGroup, which has been a pretty reliable brand for me, and they're always really well priced. So I would feel totally comfortable recommending that brand too.

Upgrade to at least Mojave, for 32 bit access, otherwise you'll learn Catalina is 64-bit ONLY!

Thank you. Will give it a bash....@@jrstrong

It's worth doing. I have a video out about it now.

Surprisingly capable.

You can not change the disk, but change the operating system to ssd, an optibay adapter is installed instead of the disk reader, your previous disk is transferred there, Ssd is installed instead of the regular place, and the operating system is installed on it, as a result, the laptop works 10 times faster and with a volume of 1000gb hdd + xxxgb ssd

An increase in the amount of RAM gives a difference only when it is critically lacking, the best result will be given by RAM with DDR3L 2Rx8 8gb 1600Mhz chips, two of these will give a difference of 20% in application speed but no more, only ssd will give the biggest difference, even replacing the processor with a more powerful does not give such a result as ssd

Yeah, that seems to be the consensus. But I don't think many people would notice much of a difference in performance. It would be there. I just don't think you'd notice it much.

Ok some progress made. Onto El Capitan now. Done by downloading the updater in the browser. And then the app store worked. Now I'm getting High Sierra via the app store. Hopefully on to Catilina one that's complete. Anyone reading yes you need plenty of patience doing these OS upgrades! If you have a Macbook that's very out of date.