Apple MacBook Pro 2013

10owners with an opinion

70%of verdicts positive

6/3positive/negative since 2024

12 yrslongest happy owner

3happy after 3+ years

Praised for reliability and performance; criticized for durability.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 12 yearsStill going

At the very least there should be the right to unlock and use a device after it loses support. A whole ecosystem of software could exist (and does in some cases) to help support or repurpose old devices. If the hardware is still good for something, let it be used! I'm still using my MacBook Pro 2013 and it is fine. I worry I will not be able to do this with Apple's newer laptops. In addition, I want to be able to use my Sonos hardware after Sonos inevitably discontinues support. More realistically I'll eventually have to stop using my Sonos speaker, and realizing this I will never buy another Sonos product.

Likes itOwned 10 years

Anthropic should be increasing the value and services they offer not reducing it. It’s the Apple model. Yes you pay a ton more. But my 2013 MacBook Pro 15 I got in college lasted 10 years and was still fine even when it was stolen. That’s what you pay for. You pay for a ton of built in apps and functionality and quality. Arbitrarily removing things is customer and more importantantly good will hostile.

Likes itOwned 7 yearsStill going

Very good point! I don't want to back the idea that Apple does make long-lived laptops, only that it's hypothetically possible they do sometimes :-) My 2013 MBP is still going strong thankfully, I'm very happy with it still after all these years.

Doesn’t like itOwned 6 years

Ah my 2013 mbp died in 2019. It was the gpu. No way to repair it for cheap enough so I had to replace it with a 2019 mbp which was the computer I kept the shortest (I hated the keyboard).

Doesn’t like it

i decided to do an experiment and try to run an LLM in my old 2013 MBP. i7, 16 gb mem, 1 tb hd. Installed Linux mint Xfce Edition for lightness, installed ollama, start to test different models. Gemma4 e4b runs perfectly fine, exposed it to the network, connected to it with my current notebook and use vs code codex to start to run inference. For about 30 minutes of bliss, this setup work at a reasonable speed... then the MBP shut it self down. It was so hot that it trigger the safety mechanism, the fans sounded like the laptop was about to take off. I though on leaving it on inside the fridge, but then the WIFI wouldn't reach. On the other hand, my wife saw all this and offer to buy me an M5... the experiment didn't work as intended, but it did work.

Likes it

It's sad that the M5 Apple chips don't support Linux better. I'm in the market for a laptop, and I'd buy a MBP in a heartbeat if I could wipe it and put Debian on it. My 2013 MBP was going strong with Debian until the battery started puffing up last year, and I finally had to recycle it. I get it, I know I'm not their market, but it still pains me because it was a great laptop.

Likes it

> Apple was a great option before they moved to ARM. Now they can't run much of anything (and it sucks). I used to love my 2013 MBP. ARM Macs run pretty much everything I need, and some things better than Windows (such as Lightroom and PS which don't run at all on Linux). But what kills it for me is the absolutely bonkers window management, and the fisher-price interface filling up half the screen with empty space around huge widgets.

Doesn’t like it

That 2013 model (at least the late 2013 model that I have) añready has an SSD. RAM is soldered if I remember correctly. Thr issue that mine has - aside from a broken hinge over time - is that one of the thermal sensors is fucked, so the machine puts the fans on full and heavily throttles the CPU. Before that happened (last year) it was a solid machine.

Likes it

Every time I’ve tried Linux it’s always been a little clunky. I think it’s come a long way, but recently I loaded Ubuntu on to my old 2013 MacBook Pro and it works pretty well. What’s driving me crazy is I have all these shortcuts for Mac and I’m trying to figure out the equivalent in Linux. One stupid thing is paste doesn’t work in the terminal… seriously? Why can’t I ctrl-v after ctrl-c from web browser? The little cursor/word navigation shortcuts are driving me crazy as well like jump word to the right or left, highlight entire line, jump to end of line, etc. I should probably try the Framework laptop or some other hardware Linux ready though.

Likes it

The only machine I've ever had with this GPU setup was a 2013 MBP, which ran perfectly. But yeah, I've heard horror stories with newer multi-gpu laptops, especially on Linux. So, since I've been happy with the 4k performance of iGPUs ever since the hd530 of the 6th gen core, I've specifically looked for iGPU-only laptops.

Likes it

> Yes.. so hypothetically if not for Safari/Chrome not being updatable for MacOS High Sierra, she would still be using the same laptop. If she'd preferred not to spend money on the laptop, or is just angry about Apple's planned obsolescence, you can always install another OS on the machine for her. I'm running Win10 on a 2013 Macbook Pro, and it supports Chrome just fine.