The main issue with a 2012 is that the hard drive cables fail constantly. But the part is cheap and even the technically clueless could replace it themselves with YouTube or ifixit.

Tell me about it! I'm using a 2012 MBP right now, and I love it, except that every 2 - 3 months the hard drive flex cable fails (except for one period where it happened to last 2 years). I'm on my 4th cable, and Apple isn't offering any remedy except "when it breaks again, bring it in again and we'll replace it for free again".

At least the last time I took it in, the guy replaced it on the spot in 15 minutes while I waited. Every other time they've needed to keep the device for a week to replace the cable... I've had a lot of downtime with this machine.

Electrical tape works wonders, especially as a preventative:

MacBook Pro Hard Drive Cable Failure - Free fix and preventative maintenance - Question mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amg5w0rlwDo

Oh wow, that's the first time I've seen the actual damage. It's so small that no wonder I couldn't see it.

I've still got a month left on my AppleCare, but once that expires I'll give it a try. Thank you!

I think the issue will be that either your Mac will be unsupported for OSX Mojave or at most in an year or so while your machine physically will still be in good working condition.

Considering the lackluster updates of OSX / MacOS, and the fact that the platform matured years ago, I'm not really concerned that I won't be able to use Mojave.

I think the only issue will be if I need to use XCode, which tends to be bound to the latest OS.

> I think the issue will be that either your Mac will be unsupported

What precedent do you have for believing that to be true? The only time Apple has done that in the past is major platform changes (aka PowerPC and later 32bit CoreDuos). Unless Apple shifts to ARM (which is easily a couple years out at best) or Intel comes out with a 128bit processor (which isn’t even remotely on the roadmap), I’d say you are safe for at least another five years, even if those shifts do happen.

My 2012 Mac Pro (cheese grater) can’t run Mojave since the GPU doesn’t support Metal.

There are aftermarket GPUs available, but it’s becoming an ongoing chore to keep the machine running the latest macOS features (needed new wifi card to support handoff and watch unlock etc).

New wifi, SSD, usb3 etc are relatively cheap. The new GPU is getting more expensive and is now actually blocking keeping up to date with major OS releases.

There is no other Mac I currently want to buy (desktop, my own display). MacMini is too underspecced, MacProvis about to be updated and aside from GPU isn’t really any better than my current MacPro - feels end of life and outdated from day 1, a non-starter for me.

So I’ll probably get a new GPU and hope that buys me another couple of years.

I’m running Mojave on my cheese grater 2011 Mac Pro, but I’m guessing that’s because I already had upgraded the graphics cards and didn’t realize it (also upgraded CPUs, RAM, and a bunch of other stuff too). The cheese grater Mac Pros were one of the best machines Apple ever shipped imho.

Yep - they're great.

I've put in USB3, replaced the spinning disk with SSD, upgraded the WiFi and RAM, but haven't done the CPUs yet (already got dual 6 cores, so aside from a slight clock bump not much point).

My only concern is that the CPUs don't support something that the next major version will require, forcing a move off the MacPro 5,2 platform.

I also did USB3, upgraded wifi, SSD (also turned it into a custom fusion disk), ram bumped to 128gb, upgraded from dual quad 2.4ghz to dual hexacore 3.3ghz, added a nVidia 1080Ti (which I had to power off an extra SATA connector from the 5.25” drive bays) and upgraded the ATI (kept it split brands as the nVidia can be a momentary pain when doing OS upgrades).

I also share your concern too. :(

What wifi card is needed?

For unlock with watch an AC card with beam forming (factory was N), for handoff/continuity Bluetooth 4 (from memory, may be wrong).

I was looking for a particular model :-P

Oh sorry, I totally misread you question and thought you asked what it is needed for.

I got the kit from OSX wifi:

http://osxwifi.com/apple-broadcom-bcm94360cd-802-11-a-b-g-n-...

Works well, had a bit of trouble getting unlock with watch working, but then all of a sudden started, so not sure what that was about, but been good since then.

macOS 10.12 Sierra killed support for Macs with CPUs that didn't support SSE4.1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_Sierra#System_requiremen...

I had missed that. Thanks for calling it out!

Even if it can technically run it, speed can be a real issue trying to run modern MacOS versions on older hardware.

Me too have to 2012 no retina MBP, I upgraded the HDD to an SSD 500Gb and the RAM from 4GB to 10BG Im more than satisfied but still stressed when I think about the upgrade

I hate the idea of using a cover, but I probably should. Do you have a recommendation?