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Laptops · Apple MacBook Pro

Apple MacBook Pro i7 16GB

7owners with an opinion
67%of verdicts positive
2/0positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for reliability and performance; criticized for ease of use.

What people wrote

Likes it
You’ll probably be fine! As an axis of comparison, I work on a really snappy and fast 5800X3D desktop with a couple of 180Hz monitors. My laptop is a 15" Macbook Pro i7 from 2018. Comparatively, the most sluggish-feeling part of the laptop is the 60Hz display. Everything else feels fine. Comparable. Laptop-y. The differences between laptops now and 5 years ago are subtle – finer photolithography processes mean lower power draw which means longer battery life and/or faster charging. Screens are sharper, more responsive, have better color. Little things that make a difference to some and not to others. Generally speaking, as long as it has a NVMe SSD, it’s modern? maybe?
Likes it
Ok here's the thing. I used to build PCs, and I'd tinker with linux distros on laptops. Things would be flakey, need maintenance and upgrading and that was fun. That's fine when you're laser focused on your career and are in 'career as personality' part of your life, which is essential imo and I'm not sneering at it by making reference to it in that way. But ultimately, I now need to get to my desk just on time, know my machine will work and not just be an opportunity cost sink, and get what I've scheduled done and then clock off when I need to. Now, that can happen with custom bits and tinkery bobs, but I'd much rather have the insurance policy of using what I personally have experienced as the most solid and reliable hardware/software combo in the business and not concern myself with the other stuff, even if sometimes it's more fun. I work on a 13" 2013 mbp i7/16g ram and 2021 13" m1 / 16gig ram and have never had a single issue with either that cost me work time. Having to install more stuff to then claim "it just works" isn't just working, it's adding more "oh it now doesn't work for some esoteric reason" to the chain.
Doesn’t like it
I don't really use laptops so have no horse in this race; but during the pandemic I was forced to set up a separate WFH desk and I used a Windows laptop and an (i7) MacBook Pro side-by-side, hooked up to 2 external monitors and sharing a keyboard / mouse with Barrier. Despite the machines having similar specs, I find the Windows machine snappier (even with all the Intune / VPN / spyware bullshit built-in) and really only use the mac as a browser box. Anecdote: browsing was super slow on the mac even though it's sitting right next to the Asus laptop and using the same WiFi network, so I bought a couple of USB Ethernet dongles. I found it surprising in 2021 that I need to download drivers and reboot the macOS machine to install an USB Ethernet dongle; Windows just picked it up in seconds (yes, it wasn't an Apple branded Ethernet dongle, just sorted by most popular on Amazon and with advertised macOS support). If I ever need to purchase a laptop for myself (though I don't have a reason for it), it will most definitely not be a mac.
Likes it
personal bias: i've been using vscode for about 4 years > I couldn't type more than a few lines before the high latency, and the fact that I could feel my CPU heating up, gave me all the info I needed. Consider that you must be doing something deeply wrong? I have a MacBook Pro (2015) i7, 4 cores, 16GB of ram, and VS Code is quite fast.
Doesn’t like it
I'm a PC person and just got a brand new Macbook Pro 2018 i7 16GB of RAM for work. The keyboard is pretty terrible if you're used to mechanical keys. The trackpad (with the "taptic feedback") while strange and annoying at first, grew on me and is nice. MacOS for Java dev has been fine. The touchbar is fairly useless, but I was able to bind escape to caps lock very easily, muscle memory though is still a problem. I personally don't like MacOS more than Windows 10 after Windows 10 got the Linux subsystem. I hate all the USB-C only stuff. I can't plug anything in anymore without tons of dongles, and I can't seem to find a dongle that has all the ports I want on it at once. And the ones I have to buy are crazy expensive. The thing gets REALLY hot when doing anything taxing. It warmed my entire desk up where I noticed it when touching the desk from 5 inches away from the laptop. It burns my legs when I'm wearing shorts. It also slides off my legs because it's made of slippery metal. The speakers are very nice. Webcam is okay (all laptop cams suck compared to phones). Touch ID is okay I guess. I shut my laptop off when I'm done using it and each time you do that you have to type your password back in to use touch id, so I don't find myself using it that much. All in all, I think if I had a choice, I would choose something else over a 2018 Macbook Pro. At least considering how much it costs.
Neutral
Macbook 15 inch i7 2010. It's fast but worthless battery life. Recently got the $249 Chromebook and i'm finding that besides creating actual ipa's and apk's, I'm not touching the macbook anymore. I usually get 8+ hours out of the ultra light thing and it's fast enough to do mostly anything I want on it (including web dev, mobile dev and 2d game dev). Manage to do quite a bit of work on an old Fuijitsu p1510, my Galaxy s2 and, when in on the move, the openpandora.