So I have my old Apple devices, such as Mid 2008 Macbook white, iPad touch 3rd gen and much more, which I bought first hand not used. What would you suggest / recommend to continue using these devices and best method to update and upgrade them?
Thanks
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
For the 2008 MacBook you could install Linux Mint on it if you are willing to learn a new non-Apple OS. Linux can run well for basic usage if the computer has at least 4GB of memory. I have been able to install & use Linux with as little as 2GB of memory (some of it used by the GPU as well) where I was able to browse two websites at one time. Several popular web browsers can be used on Linux (Firefox, Vivaldi, Brave, Google Chrome). Linux Mint also has LibreOffice installed by default (it is a free & open source office suite similar to MS Office), plus lots of other free open source apps are available from the Linux Mint software repository.
With a 2008 model, it may be necessary to copy the iSight camera firmware file from macOS to be used on Linux so it would be best to check if this is necessary before erasing macOS. You can try out Linux Mint by choosing "Live" mode when booting the Linux Mint USB installer to see what it looks like & test whether the camera is functional as is. Keep in mind the performance will be awful when booting from the very slow USB2 ports, but it can give you an idea what it is like.
Before erasing the laptop & installing Linux Mint, I highly recommend you first create a bootable macOS USB 10.11 El Capitan USB installer now while you still can. I also recommend you confirm the installer can boot as well. Otherwise you will need to use your OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Upgrade DVD to start the macOS installation process if you decide Linux is not for you.
The iPod touch (3rd generation) came out in September 2009.
It has a 32-bit processor, and you can update it to iOS 5.1.1 – but no further. So it is going to be pretty useless for running any apps other than ones you already have installed, and it may not be too useful for browsing the Web.
The most obvious way to keep using it would be as a portable music player.
Sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod using your computer - Apple Support
There isn't much use for a MacBook (13-inch, Early 2008) – other than to
If you were thinking of updating and upgrading it to modern standards, forget it.
That Mac cannot run anything later than Lion. Lion is thirteen major versions behind Sequoia, the current version of macOS. You won't be able to do much Web browsing with it. https security standards have evolved, and browsers compatible with Lion probably won't even be able to connect to modern https sites. Even if you can get to a site, a browser that's compatible with Lion would be so old that it probably would not be able to render the page properly.
Then there's the hardware.
If your Early 2008 MBP has a high-end 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, it has Geekbench scores of approximately 171 (single-core) / 307 (multi-core). A 14" MacBook Pro with a low-end plain M4 has scores of roughly 3,813 (single-core) and 14,837 (multi-core).
The SATA hard drive bay has a 1.5 Gbps SATA-1 interface, not a 6.0 Gbps SATA-3 one. If you were thinking that you might drop a SATA SSD in there, I'm not sure how many SATA SSDs would be happy with that.
It is possible to install up to 6 GB of RAM.
Other World Computing – OWC Memory Upgrades For MacBook (Late 2007 - Late 2008 & Early 2009)
But then the question is, given everything else, is it still worth investing money in a 17-year old machine?
How can I keep using and updating my 2008 MacBook and other old Apple devices?
