Cursor over a macOS Shut Down... menu option

My beloved MacBook Pro 13" mid 2010 is nearing its end of life as Apple is preparing to halt any support for macOS 10.13 High Sierra and as much as I hate to, I will have to replace it by the end of 2020. It might seem odd it's still my main machine but having upgraded it with a fast SSD and 10 GB of RAM a few years ago, I still find it capable of handling my everyday web development needs.

So what is my dream replacement machine? Honestly, if Apple offered today the same laptop with up-to-date internals, it would be an instant purchase for me. Just give me the same enclosure, ports (I wouldn't mind if you swap the FireWire for USB-C), keyboard and I would be more than happy. I don't even care about the screen, I use an external monitor most of the time.

The keyboard alone deserves a separate paragraph. I have never used an external keyboard and you can imagine how much beating mine has seen in 10 years. And add to that a couple of times my little son forcefully disassemble many of the keys (the Space bar is hardest to reassemble BTW 🙂 ) and still to this day not a single key has failed!

But no, Apple seems to have a different opinion. And I honestly have no clue why they chose to break and cripple something that was not broken. Not broken at all. Soldered RAM, even soldered SSD (is this a joke?), a single port type, no MagSafe (this thing has saved my laptop from dents at least a dozen times), stupid experiments with a rock-solid keyboard (hopefully, they got it right finally). I mean if this is some kind of smart phone-like consumer device, I could understand but you still dare to call this a professional laptop? Sorry, I'll pass.

I've already ordered a HP ProBook 430 G7 which offers practically the same upgradability like my MacBook Pro mid 2010 - 2 RAM slots, SSD slot + 2.5" HDD slot I will gladly use for a backup drive (I like keeping my private data "private" instead of storing it somewhere in the cloud). I don't need a beefy GPU so the integrated one will do just fine. It has a touchscreen and that's always handy for testing. Honestly, I just hope the keyboard is reliable enough, everything else is ideal for me.

Of course, the main thing I will miss initially is macOS but switching to a new platform was not a big issue last time. Ten years ago I went from Windows to Mac. I am certainly never getting back to Windows considering what a complete mess it is today. Honestly, in 10 years I feel like it's only gotten worse, I can't even stand looking at Windows 10's interface mess. UI consistency is arguably not great on any platform but to me it feels like in Windows 10 it's a whole new level of inconsistency.

So it's Linux for me this time and Pop!_OS is my initial choice. I've never used Linux for work but I've played with many different distros through the years and configuring a work station will not be a problem. What does a web dev need today anyway - a terminal, a text editor, a browser, some collaboration app?... It's all there.