[Lammy]

> her current 2015 MBP, which has now aged-out of MacOS updates

Not trying to invalidate or lessen your complaint (which I completely agree with) but want to make sure you are aware of OpenCore Legacy Patcher. It's a little hacky by nature but can give some extra life to that machine: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.ht...

[leptons]

yeah, I looked at it, but this MBP has a speaker that died, the SD card reader died a long time ago, had to replace the battery, it's slow, and it doesn't really play nicely on the SMB network, etc, etc. I'll be glad when it's gone. And OpenCore patcher seemed like a lot of hassle to keep putting up with this machine. Thanks for suggesting it though.