You just pick it up, throw it in the trash, and then buy a new one. The machine was still useable, but only after I’d waited for the unstoppable startup indexing to complete (at least five minutes). Another issue was only about 50GB free on the 500GB internal drive, with that drive probably close to the end of its natural life.
I installed a memory management program ( Memory Clean) which indicated I often had less than 100MB of free RAM. Part of the problem was only 4GB of RAM (both slots filled with 2GB each). I’d heard that new versions of MacOS were very resource intensive, so I hadn’t upgraded since Mavericks (MacOS 10.9). Starting it up became a “walk away and get a cup of coffee” type of thing, and opening even lightweight apps triggered the spinning beachball. But over the last year it got really slow. I use it for writing stories, making beats, writing this blog, some of my consulting work, all kinds of stuff. I’ve had the 13″ MacBook Pro ever since, and it’s one of my favorite computers ever. I had a recent full backup, and only ended up losing a few days of email. Though I never recovered that machine, Statefarm homeowner’s insurance covered the theft, and I was able to get a new 13″ MacBook Pro for the coverage amount less the deductible. Back in 2011 my 15″ Macbook Pro was stolen while on vacation in Kauai.
