late 2011 MBP lifespan? is yours still running?

The 2012 non-Retina MBPros were the last really good Apple laptops in my opinion. While a few of the later Retina models are Ok, the later 2016+ laptops are not very nice and don't hold up very well. You definitely want to choose a laptop without the Butterfly keyboard mechanism as the butterfly keyboards have been extremely unreliable and many people (myself included) hate the feel of the keys. Plus the Trackpad is huge on the new laptops which I find awkward as I prefer a smaller trackpad used on the older laptops.

Currently the 16" model an a recently announced 13" MBPro 2020 are the only current laptops that I'm aware of which went back to the old style keyboards with the scissor mechanism. I've also seen a lot of user reports on these forums regarding a GPU and/or power related hardware issue with the 16" model.

Keep in mind the memory and SSDs are soldered onto the Logic Board of all new Apple laptops so you must make sure to buy a computer with enough memory & storage to last its full life since these cannot be upgraded after purchase. Definitely keep frequent regular backups since it is impossible to recover accidentally deleted data from an SSD. Plus an SSD can fail at anytime without any warning signs. Plus the new laptops use the T2 security chip so it makes data recovery during a repair nearly impossible.

The newer Apple laptops will run a bit hotter than the older laptops since they are even thinner and harder to cool since they use even more powerful CPUs. Don't be surprised if the laptop gets hot when working on it.

FYI, here is a current list of all the publicly acknowledged free repair programs for various Apple products. Some products especially the 2016-2017 laptops have multiple repair programs available. Apple is also known to have some secret undisclosed free repair programs as well.

https://support.apple.com/exchange_repair

As with all electronics and non-electronic items sometimes you may have some warning signs of an impending problem and other times things will just fail. That older laptop is a good model except for the known GPU issues. Even though your Logic Board was replaced you could still suffer the GPU issue again. An SSD can fail without any warning signs whatsoever and I've heard reports that the internal hard drive SATA cable can sometimes be problematic especially when using an SSD. I'm glad you are backing up your system.

marc cardwell wrote:

regarding the butterfly kb, i’d assumed apple was taking care of affected people. i did NOT know ram and ssd were not updateable, thanks.

Apple is replacing the keyboards, but the replacement keyboards are of the same terrible design so it is very likely the keyboard will fail again. There are multiple issues with the butterfly keyboards. Besides the terrible feel of the keys, the butterfly mechanism easily jams with the smallest spec of dirt and the mechanism can just jam on its own as well. Plus the electronic key switch becomes damaged as well because it is so thin & fragile. While the replacement keyboards feel a bit nicer than the original they still contain the same flaws as evidenced by the free repair program which covers all butterfly keyboards from 2016-present including the slightly redesigned keyboards for the 2018/9 MBPros which is supposed to help prevent dirt from jamming the mechanism.

Of course I've heard a few people do like the butterfly keyboards so there are always exceptions.

The MacBook Pro 16-in model is the "muscle car" of laptop computers. It is extremely capable. But if you frequently use an external display, the 5300 and 5500 versions issued in 2019 use high power display RAM for the external display, and there are MANY complaints of high (but not maximum) fan noise under certain conditions when using many kinds of external displays.

At this writing, the new, improved 5600 graphics version has not been delivered, so no one knows whether it can be quieter.

In the meantime, the MacBook Pro 13-in models -- specifically the higher-end models with FOUR ThunderBolt ports are very capable computers, and if you regularly use an external display (but fall short of being a professional movie editor by trade) you may be happier with one of these models.

My Late 2011 17” MBP is still running just fine. I bought a new 16” MBP a couple weeks ago but haven’t yet set it up. The only repair the 2011 17” needed was Apple’s battery replacement program. At some point, I swapped out the HDD it came with for a 1 TB SSD.

But going back further, my wife’s 2008 MacBook (aluminum unibody) still runs fine, has never needed service.

Further back? My 17” MBP from 2006 (Core Duo model) still works. A few years ago the battery started swelling, I removed it so now it only works when connected to power, but it boots, runs an ancient version of Safari for web browsing, etc.