Quietly made available on May 27th 2009, the 13″ Mid-2009 MacBook was a silent upgrade to the lineup of portables, released without much fanfare or any press release, for that matter.
This was the second “older-style” A1181 MacBook model sold after the debut of the Aluminum Unibody MacBook, and the final “older-style” MacBook before Apple switched to the polycarbonate unibodies.
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The upgrades for the Mid-2009 model versus the early-09 were minor, but will improve improve the bottom line performance regardless – 2.13 Ghz versus the Early 09s 2 Ghz CPU, RAM spec is bumped from PC2-5300 to PC2-6400, and the hard drive space is bumped up to 160 GB from 120 GB.
While a Core 2 Duo-equipped computer is regarded as very low end and even outdated by many in 2025, quite a few people who hung onto these found they’re good for basic tasks and even web browsing with maxed out RAM and an SSD upgrade.
This model plus previous 2 models of MacBooks: the Late 2008 aluminum and the early 2009 A1181 come with an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, they take take advantage of the Open Core Legacy Patcher‘s “Non-Metal and Legacy GPU” patches.
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(Above: Screenshot from OCLP website, overlayed on an OG Apple image to illustrate macOS 15 + this.)
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A $999 MacBook
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Pricing in Mid-2025
Despite there being plenty to come by online and this being half the age of a Macintosh Color Classic, these ‘Books have held in value ever so slightly more than older A1181 models. This is possibly due to the inclusion of a Penryn C2D CPU and a 9400m which makes it compatible with OCLP, driving the value slightly above older 2006-08 A1181 MacBooks.
Pricing can vary wildly and I encourage people to do their own research as I tend to get most of my stuff on eBay, and my opinion reflects what I see there as well as some of what I see on the Facebook Marketplace. An “older” A1181 tends to be more likely than not to be under $70, whereas a Mid-2009 A1181 can range between $50 – $100+ for a well configured one.
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In Hindsight
Was the Mid-2009 MacBook a road Apple? Far from it – At the time of its release this was considered a good buy precisely because it was seen as having components on par with MacBook Pros, but for far less money.
The Mid-2009 MacBook hung onto DDR2 but carried the GeForce 9400M which the 13″ MacBook Pro had including some 15″ MacBook Pros from 2009, so this means the graphics aren’t a weak spot compared to when A1181 MacBooks had the GMA GPUs in 2006-08. This day and age, you won’t notice much difference between a 2009 MacBook or a MacBook Pro on OCLP Sequoia except for screen real estate.
Dealing with the same family of GPUs through legacy metal patches and with performance limited to Metal and CPU performance, the MacBook can keep up like the others of it’s time so it’s definitely not a road Apple. Maybe it can’t take as much RAM and it has a smaller screen, but you can still put some upgrades into an old Mac like this and surf the web just fine.
