Have older Macbook Air's been nerfed?

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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14,178
Location
Sandwich, Kent
Hi, I'm thinking of getting an older, cheapish Macbook Air for my son to do home work on (word, google classroom, teams etc).

In 2015 I had a 2013 Macbook Air at work, and the thing was an absolute dream to use. Reliable 12 hour battery life, fast, responsive. Pretty much perfect for my usecase at the time and now in virtually every way.

However, my experience of Apple products makes me wary to touch anything a few years old, as everything I've had from themhas been nerfed in some way by them - especially iPads. (Except, an old iPad 1. Which never had an update and still runs as quick as the day it was released - but is nerfed due to lack of support).

Are the older (say 2013 macbook airs) still useable today? Do they now feel sluggish?
 
Managed to win an auction for a working 2013 8gb, 256gb MacBook air for £70.

It's only going to be used for word processing, teams calls, etc. If it still runs as smooth as it did in 2015, I'll be more than happy.

As for iPads. I used to (2013 to 2016) manage a fleet of around 100 iPads. After a couple of years they all became ridiculously slow and buggy. Intentional forced obsolescence. Never trusted apple since.
 
I'm not at all short of cash. I just wanted to know if it will run like it did when I had one in 2015 - which would be perfectly adequate for what I need now. I suspect not, however it's not a lot to loose on a gamble. New batteries aren't that expensive if that's the only down point.

If you guys are throwing £500 at a laptop for a 13 year old to chuck around in their school bag for internet browsing and word processing - then more fool you.
 
Well, the Mac Air arrived. Really pleased with it - it still works much the same as I remember. But damn, Apple make it hard to use.

Fortunately, Word 2011 worked fine once I was able to download the microsoft activation fix - and Chromium Legacy also works fine, so I can work on Google Documents through that.
 
When I first tried this Macbook, it was running it's original MacOS version of Mountain Lion, and from what I can tell the previous owner was still using that. I had to do a full system restore to remove his admin password.

I've spend most of the evening working through downloading and installing various OS versions and updates. I have now settled on High Sierra, which seems the best balance of modernness, but still compatible with some of the older software and doesn't push the hardware too much.

I'm incredibly impressed. It's running smooth and seamlessly. I've got dropbox syncing, mail working. Word works fine - and the latest version of Chrome working in sync. Battery seems in really good state too. Been running for a few hours now and still got 78% left. There's no way in hell this is a £70 laptop experience.

If anyone's thinking of using an old Macbook Air as a basic laptop, I'd thoroughly recommend it.
 
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