Chosen Solution
Hi there! I’m rocking a mid 2012 15” Macbook Pro with 8GB’s of RAM and a 500GB SSD. It still runs incredibly smooth. By far the most long-lasting laptop I’ve ever had. But… Boy is this thing heavy. And I don’t really need the big screen. So, what’s stopping me from taking the internals of my 15” device and ‘moving’ them to the unibody casing of a 13” mid 2012 one? My train of thought: as long as I find an old 13” mid 2012 Macbook Pro with a working screen and speakers, I can just take my motherboard/SSD/fans/battery and put them in the 13” ‘body’. Effectively keeping ‘my’ 15” laptop, in a refurbished 13” housing. Would this work? What issues could I encounter? Any pointers are more than welcome! Kind regards, Phil
Well, you just can’t do it! While some parts are transferable like the RAM, HD and optical drive… The logic board and other sundry parts are not sized to fit! Even the reverse is not possible. And lastly it won’t be a sizable weight difference! So what to do? What do I use. I use an iPad Air2 (soon to be an Air3) if a lightweight system will do when I travel. If I need a laptop I use my 2015 15” retina system and I use this 2012 15” MacBook Pro (unibody) just for working on iFixit while at home. And lastly, I use a 2013 MacPro for my work. I personally find the 13” models too limiting, but your eyesight and work flow might make it more workable for you. Maybe you need to just pony up for a new M1 system, I’ll tell you I’m leaning for one my self. I wouldn’t get an Intel 2016 or newer system as the thinner models overheat! Intel messed up Apple, and Apple messed up by not jumping to the new thinner design as it too was highly flawed! i.e. Butterfly keyboard & cooking the T-CON logic due to hot chips.
