Kind of, but without a sub you only get a trivial amount of storage.

That's a big ask. Probably only work the few hundred it'd take to do that, then get the data off it, if you had some super important documents // crypto wallet.

Key is held on a separate chip unfortunately

Just use. There were two models that had issues with the gpu desoldering, 2012 and 2015 iirc? I was lucky enough to have them. I put the mobos in the oven (180deg for seven minutes?) and that would fix it. For about a month… and then 2 weeks.. and then… I actually have a 2018 that I borrowed from a friend after my 2013 Air ssd gave up, it is still working I think, but its twice as slow, at least as my Air was. Its so weird. The Air stayed ‘snappy’ even after my friends Pro’s would become too sluggish. Maybe because I never update ;)

Similar experience. In active use in my house:

    2012 MacBook Pro
    2015 MacBook Pro
    2019 MacBook Air
    2020 M1 MacBook Pro

the 2012 was a really solid generation (the 2010 as well. i still have both, not running osx anymore of course)

Another 2012 Air user here.

The battery doesn't hold a charge anymore, but as long as it's plugged in, it keeps chugging along.

> The old airs were legendary.

You gotta be kidding me. The old M1 Air had the "bendgate" where several people, me included, saw their screen die overnight for no reason. Tens and tens of pages of people complaining about it only to be with "you're holding it wrong" answers. Insanity.

I think Apple fixed that mess with the gen after that one.

Yeah the formfactor, the noise, the heat… even the performance seems better except for what, benchmarks..?

I'd say Snow Leopard was peak.

On the Windows side, Windows 2000 and XP/Vista/7’s Classic mode, though Aero was quite nice. I’m not a fan of the interfaces from 8 onward, and I didn’t like Luna in XP.

On the Mac side, it’s a toss up between the platinum interface of Mac OS 8/9 and Mac OS X Tiger. With that said, I have a work-issued MacBook Pro running Golden Gate as my daily driver, and Liquid Glass is alright. It’s not what I’d prefer if I had a choice, but it’s not a dramatic departure from previous versions of macOS. A Cheetah or Puma Mac OS X user should be able to navigate Golden Gate with ease, mostly.

Liquid Glass was not a "small UI change". It disrupted many accessibility aspects of macOS, so much so that Apple toned down quite a few aspects of the design in subsequent updates, even adding a slider to reduce the effect. [1]

The quantity of requests for how to disable Liquid Glass on Apple Discussions is staggering. [2]

[1]https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/09/macos-golden-gate-liqui...

[2]https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256227663

I think the biggest thing isn't really whatever it is but the act of changing and forcing everyone to change into the new ui that is the disruptive part. It is a combination of window dressing changing but also sometimes functions breaking. It is ironic because software written for developers prides itself generally on maintaining compatibility with say depreciated flags, or if things will be depreciated plenty of notice ahead of time. But that only holds for cli software. GUI software and the OS that all goes out the window. Stuff breaks, workflows break, you have no recourse and in fact they might make it genuinely difficult to go back to an older version. Like this part of it is the shitty part. Never mind how it happens to look. It is the forcing effect.

Windows 2000 / XP in classic mode / XP / Vista / 7. For OSX I'd say High Sierra to Catalina.

Mac OS 7.6.1 was peak Apple

Small improvements don't get much accolades. And for the most part, the UX is so good that most changes tend to be neutral or for the worse. And when you're really attached to something and there's on an unnecessary change, it feels almost like betrayal!

I, for one, prefer Apple products because they sweat the small stuff more than the other options, and when they have put in effort to make things worse it's kind of infuriating.

I do a bit of desktop Linux work too, and it's OK, but hard to complain when it's all open source volunteer work! Windows is so terrible that I wouldn't even know where to start. What's the point? There's nobody at Microsoft that even gives a damn.

No, it was Windows 3.11

Small?

They're going to force us soon. When getting a new device I don't think you can install an older version either.

Liquid Glass is more than just the transparency. There are many other changes that cannot be disabled that way. Not to mention the overall lag compared to Sequoia (I skipped Tahoe entirely so I had a direct knife-edge transition). 27 is less bad than 26 but Liquid Glass doesn't make anything better than prior UI and makes several things worse, even if you turn down the transparency.