Journal · September 29, 2026
Goose: Giving an Old MacBook a New Purpose
My 2015 MacBook once promised to be the future and let me down. Years later, I brought it back—not to make it new, but to give it a job that fits.
In 2015, I bought a 12-inch MacBook because I thought it was the future.
I was traveling the world and needed one computer to do everything. My other computers were in storage at my parents’ house, and I was moving up from an 11-inch MacBook Air. The new MacBook was wonderfully small and light. I wanted it to run the world.
It didn’t. It overheated. The battery was terrible. It had problems serious enough that Apple replaced everything inside it—twice. I liked the idea of the machine, and I loved traveling with something so small, but the experience was a disappointment.
By 2018, I had bought an iPad to replace it and started building a small homelab. After that came a 2020 MacBook Pro, then a 16-inch M4 Max MacBook Pro. The 2015 MacBook stayed on a shelf.
There was always something about it I couldn’t quite let go of. It weighed about two pounds, had a sharp 12-inch Retina display, and felt different from the larger laptops I used every day. Last year, when I wanted something small to bring to meetings and carry around the house, I looked at the old machine and thought: why not try the laptop that had always had problems? Maybe I could solve them now.
I named it Goose and started again with a different goal. I didn’t need it to replace my main computer or run every workload. I wanted a light, useful companion for meetings, writing, browser work, SSH, and the homelab. That changed how I judged it. The question wasn’t whether an eleven-year-old laptop could compete with a new high-end Mac. It was whether it could do a few useful things well.
The original macOS setup wasn’t the only option. I installed Ubuntu and worked through the parts that made the machine difficult to use. The internal keyboard and trackpad had a low-level hardware communication problem: the normal Linux driver kept timing out. I built a custom kernel with a targeted fix so the input devices would work reliably. I also got the internal speakers working with a MacBook-specific audio driver, and validated lid-close suspend and wake.
It took patience, research, and more kernel troubleshooting than I expected. But the result was not a restored showpiece. Goose is a working computer again.
The battery is still the biggest compromise. Its capacity is worn down, so the runtime isn’t great. A replacement may make it a better grab-and-go laptop, and I think that repair is worth considering. Bluetooth also remains unresolved. I don’t need to pretend every component works perfectly to say the project succeeded.
I use Goose around the house and take it to meetings. People notice it because almost nobody carries a laptop this small anymore. It becomes a conversation piece, but the appeal isn’t only nostalgia. I genuinely love bringing it with me. It has a purpose that matches what it can do: be light, convenient, and ready for everyday work that doesn’t require my 16-inch machine.
That’s what I mean when I say old hardware doesn’t have to die; sometimes it needs a purpose. The purpose doesn’t have to be ambitious. It doesn’t need to make an old device faster than a new one or turn every limitation into a triumph. It can be as simple as finding a job the machine can do, fixing the problems that matter for that job, and accepting the ones that don’t.
Goose let me down when I expected it to run the world. It works much better now that I only ask it to come along.