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Hands-On Tech 239: Breathing New Life Into an Old Computer
00:18:14
Older Computer, New Life!
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- [00:01]
Narrator
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- [01:01]
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- [02:01]
Leo Laporte
Coming up on Hands on Tech. What do we do if we've got an old machine and we want to breathe new life into it? Stay tuned for my answer. Next on Hands On Tech. This is twit. Hello and welcome to Hands On Tech, the show where you write in with your tech questions and I answer them. Oh, what a novel idea. We have some great questions. A great question this week that comes in from listener Ozzy. Ozzy writes, I'm a longtime Mica listener and Club Twit member. Thank you Ozzy. That's very kind. I do have a question, but first I wanted to thank you for introducing me to imazing. I was able to save my music library from oblivion. It took a bit of trial and error, but I was able to get my music library from my iPhone SE to my U Windows 10 PC not able to upgrade to 11 and my iPad Air 4th gen so Ozzy first and foremost super happy to hear that. For people who aren't familiar, Imazing is this tool that I have long talked about as a means of backing up stuff from your phone or your iPad, but also doing so much more. You can create backups of your device and then access the files within that backup. You can pull music from your device, you can pull files from your device, you can save out your messages that you have sent and received on your phone or your iPad. You can do so much with imazing and it's a really really really cool tool. They are not a sponsor they I just have been a longtime user of imazing and I love what it is able to do. It's an incredibly powerful app and one that I think everybody should try because I think it's one of those situations where you go I didn't think I could do this so I never thought about doing this. But now that I have this app and I've done this, I can do this. It's a pretty nice moment for sure. So Ozy, very happy to hear that it is working for you as well. Ozzy goes on to say your amazing knowledge of the Apple ecosystem could help me again. I have an old 201017 inch MacBook Pro. It still works, but since it's no longer updatable I would like to still use it for something. I don't want to send it away to Apple for recycling just yet. So this is the opposite of a question we received earlier this month about recycling some older Macs that actually aren't really usable anymore. This is one that's still usable and doesn't need to be recycled just yet, ozzy writes. Do you have any suggestions on what I can do to repurpose it? I'm on the intermediate side of understanding tech, but I can figure out most things or find the information I need. Great question Ozzy. So my first answer for you is one that if I did not say, there would be many people who would be very upset. And so I'm going to start by saying Linux. You can install Linux and with Linux you have a well, if you get a lightweight version of Linux, you're going to have a very lightweight operating system running on this machine that can breathe new life into it as like a machine that you continue to use day to day. It is a great choice because it will use the MacBook Pro hardware that you have which is capable of running modern Linux distributions and of course means that you will get most importantly and the reason why you don't want to use Mac OS in its current form, you'll get in this case security updates and access to modern web browsing others, which in some cases you would not be able to use on older machines due to the fact that they can't get the security updates that they need. So Linux is an option. Ubuntu, Linux Mint, my favorite is popos. But these are some lighter weight options that should work well on that MacBook Pro. I have included, however, a link that I have not had in the past for installing Linux on a Mac that I now having read this, am sharing anytime I talk about it. There's this great guide over on Reddit and in this guide it talks about what you need to do to properly install Linux on a Mac such that you don't run into issues going forward. And let me explain how these issues can kind of appear. So Apple's software and everything therein is owned by Apple. When you're using this hardware that you have, you are a user of software that does not belong to you, it belongs to Apple. And with that software, as I said and everything therein, you have firmware that is part of this, which is basically in this case. And of course this is not precise, but it works in this case the way that all of the different components on your machine can talk to each other, right? And so when some of that hardware needs to have an update, you need to have macOS there to properly work with that hardware. What happens is people use the Linux installer of whatever version and in the process of installing it asks do you want to wipe the drive? And you say yeah, because you know you're installing Linux, but in wiping the drive you're wiping the base macOS system. And in doing so, the Mac no longer has access to the copyrighted software portion of from Apple, which would give that machine the ability to, in these rare cases, do those necessary updates that allow the hardware that is part of the Mac to continue to function properly. So people would run into firmware issues, driver issues going forward with their Linux machines that were once Apple Mac machines and they couldn't do anything about it because they they didn't have that base macOS installation that facilitates this. So great guide on Reddit that talks about this exact issue and how to deal with it. ScooterX in the chat has reminded me of another option that I always forget for some reason, and Scooter X is always the person that reminds both Leo and myself about it, which is an option that lets you update an older Mac to the latest version of macOS. It is a tool called OpenCore Legacy Patcher. OpenCore Legacy Patcher is a tool that will basically say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the hardware is older and Apple says no, you can't support it, but it doesn't matter, let's just let them install the latest version of macOS or one of the later versions of macOS. Are you curious about Club Twit? I can't blame you. It's our premium membership that transforms your Twit experience. Every show ad free and uninterrupted, exclusive podcasts you won't find anywhere else, behind the scenes content and VIP access to our private Discord community where you can connect directly with hosts and fellow tech enthusiasts. Sound good and ready to Upgrade? Visit TWiT TV Club TWiT this episode of Hands On Tech is brought to you by Zapier. Look, if you're anything like me, you love to be able to just automate some tasks and Zapier has always been a way for me to do so. I use it all the time across all of my Google work stuff. So being able to move things from an email into a spreadsheet or being able to take something from a spreadsheet and drop it in Slack, that's something that I've been able to do for a while. And then Zapier came along and said, by the way, we've added AI to make this even better. Now you've got this little buddy that hangs out with you while you're creating new automations, new zaps, and it makes things so much easier. As much of an automation expert as I like to think I am, there are times where I'm going, okay, so do I need to look for the metadata? I can just ask my little copilot and it does the work for me. Yeah, put AI to work for you. 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- [12:14]
Commercial Announcer
Everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U V R I K.com Now.
- [12:46]
Leo Laporte
I've heard from lots of people who have used this tool and everything's just fine. Peachy dandy, good to go. I don't know that it's a tool that I would use simply because it feels it. It feels like I would always have that in the back of my mind that I am using sort of an unblessed, a completely unblessed version of Mac os. Right? And by that I mean it is not past muster in that way with, with the Apple gods. And if Apple decided, oh, suddenly we're figuring out a way to the OpenCore legacy patcher versions of macOS and then I just don't want to rely on something that is overall what amounts to a type of a hack, right? Like it's a very not nefarious hack, but it is using the system in a way other than how the company intended for you to use the system. And for many people that's fine. For me it's not. And so I have never personally the reason I say all that is I have Never personally used OpenCore Legacy Patcher. But again, I know a lot of people who have and they have just fine a dandy time with it. ScooterX says I used this on a 2017 iMac for years, worked great to keep it running current Mac OS's until Scooter X ended up with an M4 Pro in December. So that was just fine for what Scooter X needed. There's something else to bear in mind, which is that newer oss make use of newer technologies, make use of more powerful processors, and so you may suffer a pretty intense slowdown over Time as well, depending on how old the device is. Let's talk about what we could do if we want to not just have a straight up PC, could make it into a media server or a home hub. You could use Plex. Plex is a media server. You could use Jellyfin, it's another media server option. You've got that 17 inch screen, right? So you can go through and manage that media library and then stream all that content on your other devices. So if you've got an iPad or a television that can access your Plex, especially if you've got, you know, like an Apple TV or something, you can get the Plex Apple and then be able to use it that way. All of your local media right there, you plug in a nice big hard drive to it and you're suddenly good to go. And then you can also use it as a home automation hub. Install and run Home Assistant. It is a little bit more technical, but much like the other. Much like, you know, Linux or any of the other tools that we've talked about. Home Assistant, very well documented, lots of people who use it, lots of people who are eager to help other people use it. So you don't really have to worry about that in terms of, you know, trying to figure out what to do with it. Home Assistant is a very powerful way to control your smart home, if that's something that you're interested in. You could also use it as a retro gaming machine because it can run emulators. So there's RetroArch and then there's also OpenEMU or OpenEMU, which is. They're both emulators to let you play, you know, games from NES, SNES, PlayStation, so many more. And because you've got that powerful graphics card in this, powerful, in this case for running these emulated games. There you go. You can use it in that way. The last thing I'll mention is if you are still looking at trying to make it into a machine that you can use regularly, but a machine that you don't want to have to use or that you don't want to use Linux with, if you struggle with Linux or just Linux, doesn't seem like it's something that you're interested in and you don't want to use a modern version of macOS because you're worried about it kind of slowing things down. The last option I would recommend is Chrome OS Flex. Chrome OS Flex is basically a way to turn your Mac into a Chromebook. And that means that you've basically just got an Internet connected device that does everything kind of in a browser, but that doesn't quite encapsulate the Chrome OS experience. It is like a lightweight machine that, that can, it can do documents, it can do, of course, web browsing, email, all that kind of stuff. And feels like a PC that you would have otherwise, but is specifically this lightweight online tool where it gets as much of the processing out of the machine and into the cloud. So you don't need to worry about that and have it slow things down. So this is a great way to turn a Mac into a Chromebook that makes it incredibly lightweight and then is probably more than you would ever need in terms of processing power locally on that device. Before you decide on what you want to do, be sure to run Apple diagnostics on the machine so you turn it off. Then while you're starting it up, hold down the D key until Apple diagnostics starts and just run that and let it check the machine for hardware issues. That's just a good idea to do. But this will make it so that you know for sure everything in the device is good to go before you start. Because you don't want to get rid of macOS, which it knows and is comfortable with. Right. While you've got a hardware issue, you want to be able to handle that before you decide, okay, I'm wiping this thing or I'm installing, you know, one of these other tools on it. After that, might I recommend and suggest putting an SSD into your device for between like $50 to $100 at this point with this older machine and the cost of SSDs maybe a little bit more. It just depends. You can get quite the performance boost. A lot of people think that especially you know, in Kos, that RAM is the thing that makes all the difference. And I think you'd be shocked by the performance improvements you would get by way of an SSD upgrade. So with that I forgot to include this link, but we can look up on iFixit 2010 MacBook Pro and let me see all results here. And with a 2010, I think you said it was a mid. Yeah, mid 2010 MacBook Pro unibody. So there it is. You said it was the 17 inch model, so I found that. And in there we have, let me see, should be a hard drive replacement option. There's RAM replacement. I see also there we go. Hard drive. So we'll include a link in the show notes to the hard drive replacement and then you can do that. And of course, yes, as Joe is saying, in our club Twit. If you are going to use it as a Plex server, SSD is not going to be important for that. Having the transcoding, all of that is more on the RAM side. But if you are planning on continuing to use this as a Mac, then again you would be shocked, I think by the performance improvements you would see as a user who is installing a new hard drive. And this is great. I'm looking at it now. The process for taking out the hard drive, very simple in comparison to how things can be. It's in the, it's just in the corner underneath the you unscrew the bottom and you unplug the battery, temporarily unscrew the hard drive bracket, pull it out and then of course replace it after that. So very good that it is that easy to do. So yes, you can check out that guide which has, as I mentioned, all the information on on replacing the hard drive in a Mac. Who was this again? Ozzy, thank you so much for your question. Would love to hear what you decide to do with this older MacBook. Thank you for being a listener and of course thank you all of you out there for listening to hands on Tech. If you are not subscribed to the show and you're just coming across at Twitter TV Hot, head there to subscribe and of course get in touch with me, hotwit TV with your questions. I would love, love to answer. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon. Next month in fact. November, can you believe? Bye bye everybody.
- [22:46]
Commercial Announcer
AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U B R-I K.com.