Old Macbook Air - any good?

[jonsp]

I run websites for a living. Test on PC against all the browsers + iPhone + Android. Recently started seeing significant Mac traffic so I need to get a Mac and test against that. Zero knowledge of anything Mac.

Looking at options online Macbook Air looks favourite as it's small and rather than buying new my local Cex has

Macbook air 6.2 - £155

Macbook air 7.2 - £195

Heck of a saving against new.

Seems these are ~10 years old and obviously won't run the latest OS. Bearing I mind I don't want to do any work on it just test my sites would they be any good or would I be better buying new? Obviously I want to run the same browser as my customers would.

Other option might be an iPad. I could probably get some value out of that myself beyond testing. Would they be a substitute in terms of rendering a website the same as a Mac?

[the-photographer]

Isn't Safari embedded in the OS?

Possibly only for tablets and phones, or laptop as well?

Might be worth considering any 9th gen ipad or older iphone with ios18 (Xs/XR) and a used Mac mini if you have the desk space

[miniman]

You could also look at things like https://www.browserstack.com/

[mmm-five]

Older OSes won't have the latest version of Safari...and some websites refuse to load on older versions of Safari.

I'm guessing a most of your MacOS users will be using Apple Silicon - do your logs get specific info on processor or Safari version? If so, a cheap M1 MacBook Air or M1 Mini may be a good option (from about £400 for a M1 Macbook Air or £300 for a M1 Mini on CEX).

I'm running 15.3 Sequoia on an M1 Mac Studio, and it's running Safari 18.3.

This post on the Apple discussions forum may help with what versions run on what systems/OSes...
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250003586

Alternatively, how about running a MacOS VM?

Edited by mmm-five on Thursday 6th February 12:15

[Captain_Morgan]

I’m unsure how old those devices are but OpenCore Legacy Patcher is a tool that simplifies the process of running macOS on older Macs by providing a patch or fix for specific compatibility issues.

Loads of feedback on YouTube, I run a 2013 MBP & Imac on Sequoia, should be fine for testing purposes.

[mikef]

Captain_Morgan said:

I’m unsure how old those devices are but OpenCore Legacy Patcher is a tool that simplifies the process of running macOS on older Macs by providing a patch or fix for specific compatibility issues.

Loads of feedback on YouTube, I run a 2013 MBP & Imac on Sequoia, should be fine for testing purposes.

I run Sequoia on my 2010 Mac Pro using OCLP. But I am pretty experienced with Macs, and it sounds as though the OP isn't.

My thought would be to buy an M1 Mac Mini off eBay, there looks to be good availability around £250 - £300. That will let you run the latest OS and version of Safari for the foreseeable future

Edited by mikef on Thursday 6th February 12:30

[nyt]

How about something like: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/306091089473

Runs the latest software, should be supported for a few years and will take up less space

[camel_landy]

nyt said:

How about something like: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/306091089473

Runs the latest software, should be supported for a few years and will take up less space

^^^ This...

If you don't need it to be a laptop, you could run a MacMini instead.

In fact... It might actually be easier flipping the other way. Buy yourself a more powerful Mac and then run your tests as VMs on that Mac.

M

[Buttery Ken]

camel_landy said:

In fact... It might actually be easier flipping the other way. Buy yourself a more powerful Mac and then run your tests as VMs on that Mac.

M

I was going to suggest this. Treat yourself to a (tax deductible) MacBook Air and run Windows stuff via Parallels!

[mikef]

Except that a silicon Mac VM will only run Windows for ARM, which is not what 99% of Windows browsers will be using, so the tests won't be representative of real-world Windows use

[nyt]

mikef said:

Except that a silicon Mac VM will only run Windows for ARM, which is not what 99% of Windows browsers will be using, so the tests won't be representative of real-world Windows use

I wouldn't recommend this on the lowish spec machine that I recommended above, but you can now run X86 windows on a M1 Mac: https://www.parallels.com/blogs/parallels-desktop-...
It's a 'preview' but seems solid to me.

I do think that the OP is better sticking with the development environment that he's used to

Edited by nyt on Thursday 6th February 13:36

[mikef]

I've updated to the latest version of Parallels but can't get aWin 10/11 x64 to run on Apple Silicon

Reading this review, I'm not sure that it sounds too solid

[camel_landy]

UTM & Oracle VirtualBox are other options for Apple silicon.

https://www.howtogeek.com/how-to-run-windows-on-yo...

M

[Type R Tom]

Would Hankintosh work?

Partition your boot drive and run mac os on the other half of your current PC

[Mr E]

I honestly would just pay to access a virtual machine when I needed to.

How are you testing the sites against the bazillion mobile phone platforms out there?

[CLK-GTR]

I've still got an old Macbook Air from about 2014. Last time I started it up it was virtually unusable. It was incredibly slow and most/all websites failed to load. I'd get something new or newer if I were you.

[mikef]

Mr E said:

I honestly would just pay to access a virtual machine when I needed to.

How are you testing the sites against the bazillion mobile phone platforms out there?

In the days when I looked after testing of web-based finance apps, that's what we did. Not cheap to rent cloud-based testing environments though, and it looks as though the OP is on a restricted budget

We tested against the top 90% of browser/platform combinations based on revenue, which actually wasn't that onerous. If it's a vanity site, the OP could test against the top 90% based on web traffic instead of revenue. There was higher per-user revenue from Apple (iOS and Mac) users , followed by Windows, so Safari and Chrome on Mac were priority platforms for testing. For Android, only tested against the default browser in Android One (later Google Pixel)