Apple MacBook Pro early 2015

Fair enough. I suppose that the experience depends heavily on the particular MacBook model and its age. For example, I have used a 13 inch MacBook Air (Early 2015) for almost 4 years now exclusively with Linux and I have had a very good experience with it so far. WiFi, Bluetooth, webcam, touchpad, card reader and sleep all work well. Battery time is very similar to OS X. The configuration took some time but it is well documented on the Arch Linux wiki. This model is now quite old and relatively many people use it with Linux. That is probably the reason why there are no major outstanding issues with it. When it was new, the situation might have been different.

Not as old but I am still typing this on a MacBook Pro Early 2015 with a Broadwell CPU. It is doing pretty well with Chrome and Firefox, not so much with Safari.

This. I just did a comparison between my MacBook Pro Early 2015 to MacBook Air M4 Early 2025. *Intel Core i5-5287U*: - *Single-Core Maximum Wattage*: ~7-12W - *Process Node*: 14nm - *GB6 Single Core *: ~950 - *Apple M4*: - *Single-Core Maximum Wattage*: ~4-6W - *Process Node*: 3nm - *GB6 Single Core *: ~3600 Intel 14nm = TSMC 10nm > 7nm > 5nm > 3nm In 10 years, we got ~3.5x Single Core performance at ~50% Wattage. i.e 7x Performance per Watt with 3 Node Generation improvements. In terms of Multi Core we got 20x Performance per Watt. I guess that is not too bad depending on how you look at it. Had we compared it to x86 Intel or AMD it would have been worst. I hope M5 have something new.

I bought an early 2015 MBP (my favorite design) when the 2016 models where announced and waited until the M1 to buy a new one again, and the keyboard is good again.

At home, I am still on my Early 2015 MacBook Pro running latest macOS with OpenCore patcher. As long as you don't use Safari because Cloudflare think you are a bot it is mostly fine. The problem with all MacBook after my generation is their keyboard sucks. They have some variant and tiny improvement every year but it still sucks. The 1.5mm key travel is about the minimum I could take. Both butterfly and new scissors, despite giving them time I never quite come to terms with it. But I guess this is one more year of macOS and perhaps two more for Safari + security. 2028 will be the final deadline.

I am typing this on my MacBook Pro early 2015. Dual Core i5 with 8GB Memory. For 99% of usage on Chrome and Firefox it is fine. ( 12 years using Safari it is still the worst browser for many tabs ) Basically the last real big jump in performance was SSD. I have used M1 - M3 Macbook at work. While they are faster it wasn't that much faster compared to the switch between HDD and SSD. Even On devices Voice Dictation and other AI features worked pretty well. As many stated software is getting slower. Security and all the other requirement will likely put more burden on your machine. So there may be a need to upgrade this 2015 machine in the future, but as far as I am concern most of those have to do with Memory rather than CPU performance. I could have a 2015 Quad Core MacBook Pro and 32GB and I am sure it will last me till 2030. ARM and Qualcomm have both catch up to Apple in CPU performance. Oryon and Cortex X725 is now within ~12% ( IIRC ) IPC difference or even similar if you ignore a small type of workload. With X730 and Oryon 2 both expect to eliminate or even exceed that gap. Unless A19 / M5 pull some other magic tricks we have basically make High CPU Performance a commodity.

>a great keyboard, look to the 2008-11 era ThinkPads for inspiration That is asking for more Key Travel. 2011 Era Thinkpad I believe had 1.8cm Key travel. Compared to 1.5cm in Pre 2016 MacBook Pro, 0.7cm pathetic Butterfly Keyboard, or 1cm new Magic Keyboard. >webcam that doesn’t make it look like your laptop (or you) are a potato during a videoconference I am not sure if there are any laptop webcam that fit my standard of high quality. And they may probably never will due to how thin the screen. I like the solution of using your Smartphone camera for better quality. >a large, quality touchpad backed by great software another Apple can’t put my finger on why this is so much better than everyone else things Unfortunately large trackpad aka Post 2020 MacBook have a tendency of false positive. Personally I much prefer the 2015 MacBook Pro design. Arguably the perfect design for Laptop is my current MacBook Pro 13 Early 2015. Just make it faster with new M3, Fanless, Display Port, USB 4, without the Fan it could be made thinner and lighter.

It indeed was the 2015 model. I have an early 2015 MBP sitting in my desk as I’m typing this which I use primarily as a slack machine and it still has the old good keyboard.