High Sierra and Safari 13 - Safe to use on older MacBook Pro?

Hello, aberrant_soul.

Very good questions all.

As you suspect, Safari and High Sierra will become potentially less and less secure as the MacBook Pro ages now, simply because Apple will no longer support them with continuous updates. Knowing that, you will just need to be more vigilant as you go about using your MBP from now on. Continue to be aware of threats out there on the internet and do you diligence to keep your system safe.

Regarding upgrading your MBP... IF you choose to do this I suggest you will get the best bang for the buck simply by upgrading from the internal HDD to an SSD. That alone will make your computer perform very much more quickly. You'd be surprised.

Upgrading the RAM from 4 to 8GB won't necessarily improve the performance, but might allow the macOS a little breathing room to operate. I suggest you replace the SSD first and see how you feel about the performance. It's likely that you won't feel a need to upgrade the RAM after that.

As for the battery, yes, it definitely sound like it's in need of replacement. An aging battery won't affect the performance of the computer beyond limiting the amount of time between rundowns and recharging.

If you're handy with a small repair toolkit and comfortable with doing your own maintenance, you can find the resources you need to do all of these upgrades by visiting these links to get started:

click> ifixit.com or

click> macsales.com

FYI... a battery will cost ~$80... SSD ~$50... and RAM ~$70. Prices will vary.

So, you decide if it's worth putting any money at all into this machine knowing that you're definitely looking at the late, late autumn of its lifespan. 🙂

I don't think the cybersecurity concerns should keep you from using the computer. We have modern computers and MacOS, but also have some obsolete ones, like a 2010 Macbook Air (High Sierra), 2008 iMac (El Capitan), 2013 Macbook Air (Catalina).

Yours is classified as "obsolete" by Apple. This is notable because this means that Apple no longer stocks parts for it nor services them. However some Apple authorized shops will continue to do so and you can still get some parts from places like OWC.

Personally, I would no longer invest further in this computer because the battery will cost $69 (from OWC), a new SSD will be $100-200 depending on capacity, and labor will be $50 (I know because I replaced the SSD and battery recently on our 2013 Macbook Air). And memory (parts and labor) will be another $100 or so. Meanwhile the hardware is probably wearing out due to age, wear on solder joints from thermal cycles, etc.; however the ports on your laptop are also very limiting, just USB 2 and a firewire and Thunderbolt 1 port, none of these are used much anymore and the USB 2 is very slow, and its WiFi is the older, slower kind. We decided to keep the 2013 Macbook Air mainly because it has two USB 3 ports, up to 10 Gb/s, and it can go to Big Sur. However our 2010 Macbook Air won't have anymore invested in it, it has only USB 2 and can't go past High Sierra. With High Sierra, already some web sites aren't fully functional and some emails don't display properly, even Apple's own App Store doesn't display fully (although it still works). You can't even run the latest version of TurboTax small business version on it nor the latest Adobe software nor the latest MS-Office.

So if you can afford it, I'd suggest getting a new M1 Mac. They start at a price that is just about three times what you would spend to replace the battery, HDD, and memory on the old laptop, and its speed will probably be 30x faster, maybe more. It also has the latest security and can run the latest software and has modern WiFi. It can even run iPhone apps.

BDAqua wrote:

Great help from 2 great helpers!

I'm a bit more of a Cave Dweller though, I use my 10.13.6 iMac Daily & have no problems. :)

Of course it has 24GB of RAM.

I can beat that, because our 2008 iMac (10.11) and 2010 Macbook Air (10.13) both have only their original 4 GB RAM (they do have SSDs). And they are both quite responsive, including Adobe Lightroom and MS-Office (the latest versions that run on their systems). Although I use the newer Macbook Pro 16-inch purchased a year ago for things that demand more computing power, the older ones work fine for most browsing and email (as does the 2013 Macbook Air (10.15) we have as well).

Having a 13-inch laptop is a plus in my view because sometimes hotel safes are small and the 16-inch model won't fit, the smaller ones usually do. The 2013 Macbook Air just got a new SSD and battery that are each much better than the original equipment so it's good to go for a while, it has USB 3 and 8 GB RAM (unlike the two older guys) so everything is pretty fast with it. I may put Big Sur on it now just to see how Big Sur goes as an OS.

I have a hard time disposing of older computers like these that are still working well. I find these Macs' design elegant and they are fun to have.

If you go that way, I think you'll be very happy with the M1 MacBook Air, even though it's a 13" model. I really like my MBP 15" 2012 workhorse, but I've had my hands on the new 13" M1and it's pretty sweet. It's fast and portable... and it's so much lighter than my dino.

And you're welcome. 🙂

As far as sites, might try this, it's Chrome without google & without Ads...

https://brave.com/

Look into the Free LibreOffice, it handles MS Office files like Word & Excel, & Page Layout…

https://www.libreoffice.org/

Great help from 2 great helpers!

I'm a bit more of a Cave Dweller though, I use my 10.13.6 iMac Daily & have no problems. :)

Of course it has 24GB of RAM.

Full disclosure: I obv lean geeky and have a handful of "hobby" machines of my own. 🤣

:)

:)