10 years of support. Not bad.

Just install Linux on it (if this is what she wants, regardless of if you think it’s better) or find a M1 MacBook Air for 7-800 if she wants a Mac.

I have a 2012 laptop, and upgraded to the M1 Air. Using the old machine is painful now, I didn’t realise how slow it was.

10-11yrs from a laptop is pretty great. I wouldn’t call it planned obsolescence.

Keep using it until it no longer serves her needs. Then buy a MacBook Air (evidently not a power user).

Also, what 2012 pc laptop would still be usable in 2023?

11 years old

“programmed obsoletism”

Serious question, how old is your laptop?

I heard about something called Open Core Legacy Patcher the other day which is supposed to allow updates for older macbooks but I have not tried it yet.

I'm going to disagree with the OCLP people: it's a fine project, but it's absolutely horrible to deal with from an end-user perspective because they'll update something without realizing it's going to break something, and now you have to deal with someone's computer not working and get to maintain it.

If you can move to Linux, and she's happy with that, then great. Though you'd probably want normal Fedora, and not Asahi since it's not a M1/M2-based Mac.

But it sounds like she wants MacOS and, unless you want to fiddle with something that's finicky, failure-prone, and not guaranteed to work in the future, just go buy a used/refurbished M1 for like $600, and then not worry about it for the next 5-10 years.

Why would you do anything? It still works, so keep using it. Changing the OS just because you can sounds like a really bad idea to someone who's been using the same thing for 11 years (and I'm a Linux user so no pro-Apple bias here). It sure sounds like she's not the greatest fan of change.

And also, as already said by many other comments, an 11 year old laptop is about the opposite of planned obsolescence.

Look into OpenCore Legacy Patcher. I updated my GFs 2012 Air to Ventura and it's running okay. A bit clunky around MacOS updates since you have to specifically run patcher again to get graphics acceleration again but otherwise fine. It's definitely worth it for security updates.

https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

I also dislike often dislike Apple but, a nearly 11yr lifespan is more than reasonable

Just keep it on Catalina and use that until it dies. I gave my dad a 2011 MacBook Air a while ago and that hasn't been updated since High Sierra. It still works fine.

You can try using OpenCore Legacy Patcher to install a newer unsupported macOS.

Mbp from 2012 should have everything working in ventura with a bit of patching.

The 2012MBP is a fine machine. I actually just retired one. Being an intel model, you can run any Linux. You don’t need to stick to Ashashi (that’s for Apple silicon chips).

You could also put Windows on there.

Really though, if she likes the Apple ecosystem, go find a 2017/2018 MPB 4 thunderbolt port model. I recently picked one up on fb marketplace with an i7, 16 gigs of ram, and 256gb ssd for $350.

Fedora Asahi is for ARM64 versions of MacOS, your 2012 MacBook Pro is x86, meaning that any x86 Linux distribution will run on it. My personal recommendation for someone who is not as tech savvy is Linux Mint. You don’t have to install it either until you decide it’s a good fit and instead run it from RAM and fiddle around with it until you decide it’s a good choice.

I have this exact same problem! The hardware all runs great, but no more OS updates :(

I can't believe how long it has lasted.

It depends on what she wants to do with it. Does she need any first-party Apple apps? If so, she might be out of luck. If not, put your Linux flavor of choice on it and get another 10 years or more out of it.

I’m running Ubuntu Server on a 2009 Mac mini with absolutely no problems at all.

I didn’t know that Apple sold a gluten free MacBook Pro…

I'll probably regret saying, but I've been running High Sierra forever, and plan to keep doing so. Every time I've upgraded, I've run into problems and either lost the software I bought, or upgraded to the new versions which took away features I needed and added ones I didn't (looking at you, Scrivener).

I run Little Snitch and generally feel pretty secure with that. Caught an annoying notification attack just the other day. Not sure why upgrading to a new system is needed, but happy to have my ignorance un-ignored.

Well just to give an update, I’ve now installed Fedora on that MacBook Pro and it was pretty easy. The only thing which didn’t work out of the box was the wifi. I had to install ROM fusion and then it downloaded some drivers.

Otherwise everything ran smoothly except for the installation of the windows 10 virtual machine in gnome boxes. I had installed the flatpak one, but that one doesn’t allow you to use the usb ports, so I had to reinstall the machine on the Rpm version.

So that old beast can now have a long life again!