You'll be glad you did. I loved my 2015 MBP. I even drove 3 hours to the nearest Best Buy to snag one. That display was glorious. A fantastic machine. I eventually gave it to my sister, who continued using it until a few years ago. The battery was gone, but it still worked great.
When you upgrade, prepare to be astonished.
The performance improvement is difficult to convey. It's akin to traveling by horse and buggy. And then hopping into a modern jetliner, flying first class.
It's not just speed. Display quality, build quality, sound quality, keyboard quality, trackpad, ports, etc., have all improved considerably.
The performance jump between a top-of-the-line intel MBP (I don't remember the year, probably 2019) and the m1 max I got to replace it.. was rather like the perf jump between spinning disks and SSDs.
When I migrated all my laptops to SSDs (lenovos at the time, so it was drop-dead simple), I thought to myself, "this is a once-in-a-generation feeling". I didn't think I would ever be impressed by a laptop's speed ever again. It was nice to be wrong.
> The battery was gone, but it still worked great.
A family 2018 Macbook Air got a second life with a battery replacement. Cheap kit from Amazon, screwdrivers included, extremely easy to do. Still in use, no problems.
My 2015 15" MBP is also still kickin, is/was an absolutely fabulous unit. Was my work machine for 3-4 years, and now another almost-6 years as my personal laptop. My personal use case is obviously not very demanding but it's only now starting to really show its age.
I also have a M1 from work that is absolutely wonderful, but I think it's time for me to upgrade the 2015 with one of these new M4s.
Honestly, my Thinkpad from 2015 was still used in my family until recently. The battery was pretty bad, same as on my 2015 MBP, but other than that, I put Fedora on it, and it was still really fast.
Longevity is not only a thing of MBPs. OTOH, IIRC, some 2017-2019 MBPs (before the Mx switch) were terrible for longevity, given their problematic keyboard.
I was also a mid-2012 MBP user. I eventually got the M2 MBA because I was investing in my eyesight (modern displays are significantly better). I was never impressed with the touchbar-era macs, they didn't appeal to me and their keyboards were terrible.
I think this M-series macbook airs are a worthy successor to the 2012 MBP. I fully intend to use this laptop for at least the same amount of time, ideally more. The lack of replaceable battery will probably be the eventual killer, which is a shame.
That is amazing. Mine lasted for a super long time as well, and like you, I upgraded everything to its max. I think it was the last model with a 17 inch screen.
Sold mine last year for $100 to some dude who claimed to have some software that only runs on that specific laptop. I didn't question it.
I still have my 2015, and it lived just long enough to keep me going until the death of the touch bar and horrible keyboard, which went away when I immediately bought the M1 Pro on release day.
I used that same model for 5 years until I finally upgraded in 2017 and totally regretted it, the upgrade was not worth it at all, I would have been just as happy with the 2012. I quickly replaced it again with the "Mea Culpa" 2019 where they added back in ports, etc, would have been just about worth the upgrade over the 2012, 7 years later, but again, not by a big margin.
The 2012 MBP 15" Retina was probably the only machine I bought where the performance actually got better over the years, as the OS got more optimized for it (the early OS revisions had very slow graphics drivers dealing with the retina display)
The M1 Pro on the other hand, that was a true upgrade. Just a completely different experience to any Apple Intel laptop.
I was considering upgrading to an M3 up until about a month ago when Apple replaced my battery, keyboard, top case, and trackpad completely for free. An upgrade would be nice as it no longer supports the latest MacOS, but at this point, I may just load Ubuntu on the thing and keep using it for another few years. What a machine.
I've just replaced a 2012 i5 mbp, and used it for Dev work and presentations into 2018.
It has gotten significantly slower the last 2 years, but the more obvious issue is the sound, inability to virtual background, and now lack of software updates.
But if you had told me I'd need to replace it in 2022 I wouldn't believe you
Ah my 2013 mbp died in 2019. It was the gpu. No way to repair it for cheap enough so I had to replace it with a 2019 mbp which was the computer I kept the shortest (I hated the keyboard).
My 2015 MBP would like to have a word.
It’s the only laptop purchase I’ve made. I still use it to this day, though not as regularly.
I will likely get a new MBP one of these days.