As some avid listeners may know, last October my 2011 MacBook Pro 17″ died, and I had to perform a “transplant” of the two 2TB SSDs into a “new used” recipient laptop. That lasted until the other day, when the GPU on the current machine died…so I had to do it all over again. Why not just get a new MacBook Pro, you ask? Well, first of all,
Apple no longer makes a 17″ MacBook Pro.
Which is fine: I could totally just use a 15″ laptop. Except that mine also has an ExpressCard slot that I use a lot—which is also no longer offered. I use the heck out of that slot, both for my UAD2 SOLO/Laptop card for all my UAD plugins; and for my SD card reader. (Which I suppose I probably wouldn’t need a card for if I had a newer model…but anyway….)
Also, it would be a huge pain, even using Time Machine, to migrate all my apps and whatnot to a new machine—and I’d be stuck with an OS that is probably too new to for a number of my apps to run in.
And I have two 2TB SSDs in the laptop, which have—knock on wood—performed really well. (I used OWC’s kit to remove the DVD drive and put a second SSD in the space. You can see on the video.)
Finally, the new MBPs aren’t that much snappier in their specs than mine…and they are apparently sealed, so you can’t change or upgrade anything. Apple doesn’t even offer a 2TB SSD in any of them, let alone two.
So…short story: The “simple” fix, in my opinion—until—Apple offers a laptop I can’t refuse—is to keep buying $500-$600 2011 MacBook Pros, and keep transplanting the SSDs.
Which is exactly what I did.
Enjoy! (And by all means, if you have any questions, just hit me up in the comments…)
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