Revitalizing A Late 2009 13-inch MacBook
Back in 2017, Apple added the last of the polycarbonate unibody series, the Mid 2010 13.3-inch MacBook, to their list of vintage and obsolete products, officially bringing an end of support to this product line.
While official support had ended for the polycarbonate unibody series, I still had a Late 2009 13.3-inch MacBook which I managed to get some extra life out of with a couple of upgrades that kept it running until it was officially retired after more than a decade in service.
When I purchased the Late 2009 MacBook, it included a 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 4GB DDR3 RAM (base version came with 2GB RAM and Apple’s official maximum is 4GB RAM, but more on this in a moment), a 250GB 5400 RPM hard drive (upgradeable to a 500GB 5400 RPM hard drive), Nvidia GeForce 9400M with 256GB RAM and OS X v.10.6 Snow Leopard.
About a year before the AppleCare warranty on the MacBook was up, I decided to upgrade the 250GB 5400 RPM hard drive to a new Sandisk 240GB SSD. This gave the MacBook a significant performance and speed boost over the 5400 RPM traditional hard drive. At the time, solid state drives were still quite pricey for limited amounts of storage, so the Sandisk 240GB SSD was at a price level that I could afford.
As for RAM, I initially operated under the belief that Apple’s official 4GB RAM limit was indeed the maximum. However, a couple years after the AppleCare warranty had expired, I did some research and learned that the Late 2009 MacBook (MacBook 6,1) could support a maximum of 8GB of RAM.
After some extensive research, I was able to confirm that the 8GB RAM maximum limit was indeed accurate and went ahead and purchased the compatible memory modules (I’ll include a link to the modules at the end of this post) to max out the MacBook’s RAM. It worked perfectly!
For over a decade, the MacBook kept pace, albeit slower than the then current Mac product line, with the 240GB SSD, 8GB of RAM and macOS High Sierra. The latest generation of Macs will certainly run circles around the Late 2009 MacBook but for what I was using it for back then, it was fine.
If you have a Late 2009 MacBook with a model identifier of “MacBook 6,1” and can find a justifiable use case for it, you can certainly upgrade the SSD and RAM; otherwise, it’s probably a good time to consider an upgrade.
To find the model identifier for your MacBook, go to the Apple menu then select “About This Mac.” In “About This Mac,” select “System Report.” In the “System Report,” select “Hardware” then look for “Model Identifier.”
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