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2ndLife: Refurbishing Macbook Pro (A1502) For Daily Use(Replace MacOS with Linux Lite)

    I recently dumpster dived a Macbook Pro (A1502) with a plastic peeling power adapter. I usually do not dumpster dive Macbooks since I have not managed to reuse any until now. Since Apple Macbook hardware is pretty good and better battery life, I decided to try to reinstall the operating system (MacOS) to Linux Lite. Main reasons are not having the login password for previous owner and also the installed MacOS likely is no longer supported so not worth reinstalling a fresh copy of MacOS. Linux Lite has been my favourite lightweight Linux distribution since I like to reuse older laptop hardware. Previously I did this for Acer and Dell laptops. 

Macbook Pro (A1502) image from cp24.pl

Specs:

  • LED-backlit 13.3" widescreen 2560x1600 (227 ppi) "Retina" display
  • 2.9GHz Intel "Core i5" processor (5287U)
  • 8GB DDR3 RAM
  • 128GB Solid State Drive
  • Intel Iris 6100 graphics processor
  • FaceTime HD Camera
  • Two USB 3.0 ports, two "Thunderbolt 2" ports, an HDMI port, an audio in/out port, and an SDXC card slot.
  • Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0
  • macOS 10.13 High Sierra
    Reinstalling Linux Lite operating system was an easy task. Just press the "Option" button during boot up after pressing the "Power" button and select the USB drive on screen. Once selected, the normal Linux installation process starts. After completing the installation process, remove the USB drive and reboot. Then I got a working Linux Lite Macbook Pro laptop. I have taped the cracking cables with black tape but on the safe side, I better dumpster dive another power adapter for this laptop. 


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