It is recommended to apply new thermal paste every so often so that heat can dissipate from the MacBook more efficiently.

The 2012 MacBook Pros are excellent, and they're among the last fully upgradeable ones as well. It's always amusing to me that Apple ditched them years ago, yet they can still run the latest firmware very smoothly.

The 2015 MacBooks are great. One of the best parts about them is that they stick to the roots of the older unibody MacBooks like the two I discussed in the video but refine them with improvements to the trackpad, retina screen, and a sufficient graphics processor to handle daily tasks. Down the road, I will definitely attempt to source more 2015 MacBooks and share my experience with them.

Linux runs great on these machines. It's almost unbelievably surprising how smoothly everything runs even after many years. Laptops nowadays just don't compare to how they were made in the past.

A curious question: Are there people over eighty years of age who are very elderly people who own modern smart phones???​@@EntertainmentAnarchist

This is largely what makes these older Intel MacBooks such a bargain, as there are only incremental performance upgrades between generations. You don't miss out on much when comparing them to the two 2010 and 2011 MacBooks I discussed in the video, a 2015 MacBook, or even the last Intel models made, which were the 2019 models. They all work great for web browsing and traditional computer tasks like moving files or connecting to file servers. It's very hard to beat them for the price, especially if you have facilities nearby with a surplus, such as education buildings that tend to replace all of their equipment in bulk every few years. This makes it possible to find them for a dime a dozen on auction websites and combine parts to get fully specked-out machines. While Apple Silicon may be superior, it's also the start of a generation where you don't have control over how the computer works or the option to upgrade parts, which is what makes the older machines last forever.

It's very strange that your MacOS cannot be restored over the internet. What I would recommend is creating a bootable installer if you want to attempt to install High Sierra on the 2011 MacBook. Alternatively, you could consider downloading a Linux installation, as they are even more optimized and have newer drivers for web browsing, along with more spare resources to handle videos smoothly. Something worth noting is that the discrete GPU often fails on the 2011 models, which was a hassle for me. It requires some maintenance to fix, but if you didn't have any graphical artifacts during the process, it should be fine. If you did encounter issues, you could look into temporary fixes such as attempting to reheat the GPU to reflow it temporarily or disable it through the software side. Regarding performance, I've noticed that these MacBooks aren't ideal for tasks like video editing or heavy graphics use. However, they perform well for web browsing and offer extremely premium build quality. I haven't had issues playing videos on mine, but one suggestion might be to lower the video quality to 720p when watching KZfaq videos in windowed mode, as that matches the MacBook's screen resolution. Higher resolutions can only be taken advantage of by MacBooks with retina or high-resolution screens. Older MacBooks may take some time to get used to for upgrades, but I haven't found the same integration with my existing Apple ecosystem in any other laptop brand.