[TxMt] Re: TM2 on 10.11.6?

[Andrew Hodgkinson]

On 30 May 2020, at 13:05, list_email at icloud.com wrote:

> Thanks for the tip, Matt. I checked around a couple of minutes and the 
> 2011 model seems to have all the same holes.

A 2011 15" MBP with the higher resolution anti-glare screen was a 
workhorse for me for many years and still works today. It did falter, 
though; these models were early in the run of lead-free solder and, 
through hot/cold cycling, the GPUs could become partially desoldered 
from the main board resulting in crashes if the on-board graphics 
switched over to the discrete GPU. A "reballing" with better solder 
solves it. If buying 2nd hand, might be worth checking the auction to 
see if anything's mentioned about it.

* 
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/class-action-suit-alleges-2011-apple-macbook-pros-were-defective/
* https://bit-tech.net/news/tech/laptops/apple-admits-gpu-design-flaw/1/

Mine failed well before the repair extension programme happened so I 
paid at the time for it out of my own pocket, and mighty expensive it 
was too. This particular one serious issue aside, the machine has been 
excellent. The final irony these days is that I've pushed it up to 
Catalina via the DOSDude1 patcher, which thanks to Apple's very dubious 
decision to ditch OpenGL in favour of Metal, means that the discrete 
graphics aren't supported and have to be entirely disabled - after all 
that money repairing them! Oh well `:-)` it's nice to be fully up to 
date on the OS side even on a 9 year old laptop, though.

* http://dosdude1.com/catalina/

If you want to retain 32-bit software compatibility (but also without 
discrete GPU support):

* http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

Note that while the 2011 MBP can be taken up to OS X 10.13 "High Sierra" 
as an officially supported OS upgrade, your 2008 computer can run it 
with very few issues too if you don't mind using a 3rd party tool for 
that - so perhaps there's still more life left in your 12-year old 
computer!

* http://dosdude1.com/highsierra/

For any Mac laptop where the memory can be upgraded, I recommend maxing 
out to the full 16GB supported by the chipset. Note that larger amounts 
of RAM might be able to be physically installed depending on DIMM 
availability, but simply cannot be accessed by the hardware itself - so 
don't waste money on that.

-- 
TTFN, Andrew Hodgkinson
Find photos, software, music and more at my home site, Bandcamp and 
GitHub:
https://pond.org.uk / https://pondnz.bandcamp.com / 
https://github.com/pond
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.macromates.com/textmate/attachments/20200530/7333e2dd/attachment.html>