… or how I pimped my 2013 Retina MacBook Pro

Bought in 2013, this MacBook Pro has been my trusty companion for over 10 years. Many trips, moving from abroad back home, moving from a town to another, this beast of a computer has always been by my side. I could write a ton of posts about this model, but I want to speak instead about this particular unit.

Almost maxed out, with an i7 processor and 16GB of RAM, sporting a 2GB dedicated video card (nVidia even!) and 512GB of storage, this laptop was a powerbeast. For countless years it ate and chewed and churned any task I threw at it, regardless of how complex or complicated it was. But at some point, the technological progress made this not obsolete, but definitely a bit slow. Keep in mind, these specs are still beyond some of the entry-level laptops, so this is one of the greatest things about this. In 2023, it still is very usable. I work on it, I surf the web on it, I play some older games on it. It handles Windows 7 virtual machines like a champ. The only thing where it starts to violently spin its fans is when a browser tabs tries to load a javascript frameworks-based website, because some retarded developer thought that you need 184MB of Javascript to make a parallax effect on an image in the footer. Seriously, those are cancer. 1080p/1440p video playback is not an issue and the battery still holds decent charge, because I changed it a few years ago and has only 133 cycles.

It’s not my main machine anymore, as I used to keep it in clamshell mode behind the screens, except for when I was travelling, it still is my main “on the road” computer, because it’s still actual in 2023 and still performs just fine most of the tasks I give it (pretty much everything, except 4K iMovie rendering which is slooooow).

The best part of it was when I start to customize my lid with stickers. It all started with an Alternosfera sticker, then soon many others followed, some from friends, others from artists, some from friends who are also artists. Here’s a list of them, in a random order (might go top-left to bottom-right), along with some source or comment.

PS: Because this laptop was so great, when Apple decided back in 2015 to literally kill I/O connectivity, I bought a second unit identical in specs for about a third of the price of the original one. But we’ll speak about that some other time.

Ceva Marunt - Vaca
cevamarunt.ro sticker pack

Parov Stelar - Demon Diaries
came with record

Minion
gift from my niece

E mare – Nu-i chiar asa mare
cevamarunt.ro sticker pack

Minion 2
gift from my niece

Schwarzwald
gift from Silvia

LateNightTales
came with record

Rabbit on a Bike
gift from Silvia

Om La Luna
came with record

Starbucks
cute barista named Alexandra in Gara de Nord

finest ego
hvv.de sticker pack

Luigi
Kinder egg surprise

The Kryptonite Sparks
from the band

Zen Raccoon
Chillhop sticker pack

Gary the Snail
gift from my niece

Rafinaria La Prezent
taken at the event

LateNightTales - Bonobo
came with record

Chillhop Raccoon
Chillhop sticker pack

Smiley face
Deliric x Silent Strike II

Mondo Eye
Mondotees.com sticker pack

Alternosfera
From a concert

Mario
Kinder egg surprise

Carrera
My current glasses

Black Mirror - San Junipero
came with record

Central Perk Coffee
gift from Patricia

Rupe-le Capu’ Gogule
from Andreea at some comics fair

Rammstein
their shop

Maru
From a concert

Coma
From a concert

hhv
hhv.de sticker pack

Toma
cevamarunt.ro sticker pack

Monster Energy Drink
don’t remember

Because I promised Aaron, below you can find a photo of my other laptop’s lid.

Also, there’s a follow-up on how I made the image map shortcode.

This post was part of Agora Road Travelogue for the month of September.