every year Apple releases updates to its
major operating systems and they seem to
be removing support as much as they gain
features right now the oldest and
weakest Mac that will run Ventura is
this guy the 2017 12-inch retina MacBook
now I've had this for about a year I
paid a hundred and forty dollars for it
and I was thinking hey wouldn't it be
fun to make a video on the minimum spec
MacBook but then I thought why just stop
at the Mac let's do the full minimum
requirements Apple ecosystem iPhone iPad
and Mac so get subscribed leave a like
down below and let's get into the
cheapest Apple ecosystem setup I've ever
done
[Music]
today's video is sponsored by light me
and their new flagship lighting bundle
fantasy plus fantasy plus media lighting
kit transforms your living room into a
high-end moodlet movie theater with just
a few simple steps the kit includes a TV
backlight with HDMI sync box under glow
lighting strip and color bars and with
that there are numerous combinations for
making your living room look insanely
professional you can install the light
strip under a couch or as I have inside
the TV stand for a cool ambient glow the
color bars add Ambiance even when your
TV is off and with the HDMI sync box
your HDMI signal is reflected as a
glowing Halo extending the borders of
your screen setup is super easy through
the like me home app and you can control
settings for all your devices with just
a tap check out light me with the link
in the description below and you can
save 10 with my exclusive code so go
ahead and check that out and now let's
get back to the video
so the Apple ecosystem is something that
we've talked about a number of times on
this channel and it can be quite
daunting and expensive but the goal for
today is the bare minimum the oldest or
worst or cheapest devices that actually
run the newest software and we're going
to start over here with the iPhone at
least I assume this is the iPhone
because the box is smaller now when you
buy an iPhone you are kind of expecting
that it's going to be supported for a
long time and that would have been the
case if you bought this iPhone back in
2017 this being an iPhone 8. now
this one honestly doesn't look that bad
we've got some definite scratching
around the camera lens and I'm very
annoyed that they put this stupid ass
paper sticker hopefully I can get this
off in one go okay thankfully I did not
have to sit here and peel for a while so
condition does not look bad the the
edges of the aluminum look pretty good
the only real damage or wear that I'm
seeing are a couple of scratches on the
display and the camera ring looks a
little bit
yeah let's take a look at the iPad
so there we have it this is a 5th gen
iPad and well you know there's okay it's
on that's great it's on and it's
unlocked look at those bezels
I wouldn't worry about it too much
basically this entire ecosystem is 2017
entry-level products now you could get a
cheaper MacBook Air in 2017 however for
some reason Apple doesn't support that
anymore they support the MacBook which
is slower don't ask me why now I'm
assuming that these devices are yeah the
iPad's on 15.7 the iPhone well it's just
turning on now but I'm assuming that
it's not on iOS 16. yeah that's that's
not okay we're gonna have to do some
updating here charge all these things up
get to know them a little bit and then I
think you're going to be very interested
by this ecosystem
[Music]
okay I'm actually super excited to talk
about this apple ecosystem because this
is the most interesting one that I have
ever done now my initial goal with this
video was to just go out and buy the
minimum required specification to run
the latest version of Mac OS iPad OS and
iOS and a side effect is that this has
now become the cheapest Apple ecosystem
I've ever taken a look at so how much
did everything actually cost well we'll
start with the MacBook here I've
actually had this for a couple of months
and I paid 140 for it it was listed as
having a bad battery and I replaced that
now the interesting Quirk of this
MacBook is that the batteries actually
fuse to the bottom case in almost every
other MacBook is fused at the top case
so as a result of that the batteries for
this thing are pretty cheap I paid ten
dollars for mine so I'm all in on this
thing at a hundred and fifty bucks that
is pretty cheap if you ask me now the
iPhone this is a base model iPhone 8
it's just 64 gigabytes nothing special
and I paid a hundred and fifteen dollars
for this
115 bucks for a fully working iPhone
with a decent battery that runs the
latest IOS what and now we get to the
iPad how much did I spend on this iPad
5th generation also base model which
means 32 gigabytes of storage well I
paid 90 for this which brings the price
of this entire Apple ecosystem to
355 bucks this entire ecosystem a Mac an
iPhone an iPad all costs less than what
you would still consider to be a cheap
MacBook and so the question is
with expectations as low as this with an
ecosystem this cheap but all on the
latest software
is it any good and I honestly would
argue that it is now when you buy
devices like this just because they can
run the latest software doesn't mean
they get all the latest features for
example this iPad is on an A9 chip it's
a little old and basically it's the same
recipe as now it's an iPad Air pretty
much spec for spec but just with a newer
iPad stuffed inside of it and the result
of that is it doesn't have a ton of the
features that newer iPads have for one
there's no SMART connector so you can't
use this with any of apples or the
third-party SMART connector keyboards
which are frankly quite convenient
you're gonna have to buy a third-party
Bluetooth one which you're gonna have to
charge with a micro USB port it's a
whole thing the other thing that is
slightly disappointing is this iPad is
one year off from being able to support
sidecar which would mean that we could
use it to extend the MacBook
it doesn't run that you need a 6th gen
iPad which costs a little bit more than
this and then there's the elephant in
the room the fact that this is
essentially an iPhone 6s it is slow and
it really doesn't look or feel modern I
mean just look at switching pages on the
home screen it's really slow open up the
app switcher and swipe through stuff and
you'll notice that pretty much
everything that you touch is gonna have
to reload the application but that being
said it does most of the stuff that you
would want an iPad to do you can run
applications in split screen decently
well everything works it's just not very
flashy or fast so honestly for ninety
dollars I'm not complaining too much I
don't know that this is an iPad that now
if we move over to the iPhone honestly I
think the iPhone 8 is a great deal Apple
still sells a phone that looks exactly
like this it's called the iPhone SE and
it costs four hundred and thirty dollars
now you could definitely make the
argument that because that's a much more
modern updated phone it even has 5G it's
worth essentially four times the price
but I would say absolutely not why pay
four times as much for the exact same
experience is it because you want the
new phone to be faster when has an
iPhone ever felt slow to you this thing
is more powerful than the MacBook it has
no problem running iOS 16. trust me the
only issue that you might run into with
a five-year-old iPhone 8 like this one
is the battery let's be honest a quick
check of the battery capacity shows that
we're at 93 percent that's not bad for a
five-year-old phone and I was not
particularly careful about finding this
so yeah there's gonna be some luck of
the draw but I wouldn't be afraid to use
this phone the key difference between
this five-year-old iPhone and this
five-year-old iPad is that this thing
actually feels really smooth and fluid
and that's because it's on an a11 bionic
this iPhone was when the bionic chip was
introduced and that's Apple's term for
having performance and efficiency cores
that can all work together before that
the A10 was called the fusion chip it
had two performance and two efficiency
but it couldn't use them both at the
same time it had to switch hence Fusion
and the A9 which is in this guy I mean
that's just the straight up dual core
chip so that's like the Intel to the
Apple silicon here now finally we get to
the MacBook because this is an
interesting one uh these MacBooks are
controversial because quite frankly
they're kind of terrible but I kind of
love this MacBook I think that this is a
fantastic form factor now while the 2017
version of the 12 inch MacBook is the
slowest Mac that can run Ventura it's
also the fastest 12-inch MacBook and it
fixed some of the previous concerns
mainly the fact that the original one
had completely horrible track record for
reliability they broke all the time
they're basically unusable out of the
box and this honestly is a lot better if
you set your expectations low as you
probably will if you're talking about
350 dollars for an entire Apple
ecosystem genuinely not a bad option
it's got a great trackpad with Force
touch it has a Bright Beautiful display
even if it's a small one and honestly I
don't know that the hate is all it's
cracked up to be for a hundred and fifty
bucks this is just as usable as any
other laptop that you will find for that
price when it was new and it cost
thirteen hundred bucks and it had this
processor yeah that's a bad deal but
these things are cheap as crap now you
can get these things for the price of a
potato and look at it it looks amazing
so the ecosystem overall quite frankly I
was expecting it to be terrible you know
you're talking about the base model iPad
the base model iPhone and the
controversial very slow MacBook that
sounds like a recipe for disaster but
for the money 350 for all of this
honestly it's hard to complain if I had
to make any changes to improve this
ecosystem the only one that I think is a
really compelling deal would be to get a
Sixth Gen iPad instead of a 5th gen it's
only like an extra 20 bucks and you get
sidecar support in a newer chip so I
would definitely do that over a fifth
gen but when it comes to the iPhone for
a hundred and ten dollars I don't think
you're gonna find anything that's
dramatically better than this the newer
stuff like an iPhone 10s even those are
like two hundred dollars that's twice
the price and this MacBook I mean if you
step up from this that puts you with a
2018 MacBook Air which I already made a
video on why that thing sucks uh you
could also get a 2017 two Thunderbolt
Port MacBook Pro also a pretty dismal
laptop and realistically probably a
couple hundred dollars more than this so
I don't know for this price point I
think we're doing pretty good overall
I'd spend 20 bucks on an iPad 6th gen
and pretty much call it a day so it's
weird that I'm making a video
recommending the 12-inch MacBook but
these things have gotten so cheap now
that they're they're kind of interesting
I kind of like it let me know your
thoughts on this ecosystem in the
comments below I'm super curious to hear
what you guys think of all of this and
of course as usual make sure to like
comment and subscribe and I will see you
guys in the next video
foreign