Buying a new Apple device can be daunting, and buying a second-hand device can be even more so. But one thing that often gets missed out when looking for a device is its age.

Hi, I'm Kia

I'm a Tech Minimalist and founder of MacJunky. I work remotely while travelling in a classic Chevy K5 Blazer with my dog Woof! and sharing the journey.

Transcript

In today's episode, I want to talk about your Mac or your iPhone, or actually any device you have iPad or whatever.

I get asked quite often about what Mac, should I get? How old should it be?

I understand buying a new machine is quite expensive. So you can't always go out and buy a new machine.

What a lot of people don't think about when they. Decide to get a secondhand Mac and there's nothing wrong with secondhand Macs at all...

Is... the age of the machine? Some people go and buy like a machine that's five years old or six years old or seven years old. Now those machines would work, that's fine. And they still will work.

The problem comes with the operating system and how you can upgrade them. Now, the upgrade I'm talking about, it's not like the hardware at the hard drive or anything. In fact, any machine after 2000... late 2012, 2013, you couldn't really upgrade. Properly.

A nd if, even if you did, it was going to be really, really expensive. So there was no point to doing it because the machine... the SSDs that they used in those machines and those Macs were specific to Apple, Apple created them. So getting replacements were crazy and upgrades were just crazy expensive.

So we're talking about the operating system. Now, I usually would say, make sure you get a machine, that's not more than two, three years old.

And that's because these machines generally have a life of about five years, seven years, if you really push it. Now, the reason is the operating system, when a new operating system comes out for these machines and they are coming out every year.

Apple usually make the older machines and they call them vintage machines. So they, you can't actually put the newer operating system on the newer machines, sorry... the new operating system on the older machines, I should say.

So you've got to be careful of how old, the second hand Mac you need to buy,and usually, as I said, I wouldn't buy anything older than two or three years. Precisely for that point.

It's the same with your phone, if you think about it. Yes. There's a slowdown issue that Apple went through, the hardware can't handle the software that they're creating every year.

So to get a new, new second hand phone to get a second hand phone, for instance, if you get something that's five years old, because it's 400 euros, it's not going to last you long because the new operating system that they're going to come out with probably won't work on it.

So there's just no point buying it. So a lot of people don't think about the operating system. They just think about how much money I can spend. And I completely understand that and I completely agree with it.

But the thing is, if you spend 400 euros now in another year or two, maybe two years, you'll have to spend another 400 euros.

Whereas if you spend 800 euros, for instance, on a better device now it would last, you much longer, basically, because you can put a later operating system on it. Anyway, kind of convoluted. But I think you understand what I mean.

Anyway, so if you need to buy a machine, if you want to get a second hand machine try not to get anything older than two or three years. That's it.

That's the episode, have a great day. Hopefully that was helpful.

As always Keep IT Simple. And I'll see you tomorrow.

Friday Fury tomorrow. Yes, I will be annoyed. I 'llsee then.

Ciao. Bye. Bye.